Combat has a place in Sonic games. "Combat" has a place in Sonic games. --- Enemies should be important to the level design, not incidental. Homing Attack chains don't count, them being enemies hardly ever matters. --- Enemies can provide their own set piece in a level, it really should be memorable to interact with one that feels like its placed with purpose. They should be part of the level's aesthetic of course, but also part of the level's gameplay feel. The enemies can provide the gimmick for the level, they can be harmless & useful or...they can be dangerous & useful.
Good luck convincing any one of that. I think the combat in Freedom Planet works really well, but on principle I am not in love with the idea of Sonic games adapting a similar system. I will say that in addition to having actual combat mechanics that don’t harm the flow of the game (also wouldn’t hurt if they doubled as movement abilities), 2D Sonic’s basic movement would need to be tweaked by a lot to make that work. He is a bit too “heavy” to be able to pull off the highly agile/movement based combat of that game. —————— Thinking more about what you said, that’s even beyond what FP does. Outside of the bosses, the most efficient approach to combat in that game in a lot of cases is to run past the enemies, making them “incidental” as you don’t want. Hmm… Maybe hitting them from various angles can have you bounce off at various angles? Essentially using them as bumpers/pinball pieces or something to traverse?
Action games are usually about precision and Sonic doesn't have very precise movement mechanics. This is always going to put him at odds with any sort of real combat system. Freedom Planet is kind of exemplary of this for me, because while I like the concept a lot on paper I find a lot of the combat super unwieldy for exactly this reason. Trying to get these tiny hitboxes to collide with small weakpoints with so many fast moving objects flying by the screen. It's a mess imo. There are ways to make it work but there needs to be more thoughtful implementation than basically any Sonic-Like has presented so far. I point to Metroidvanias like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Metroid Dread that have a better balance of speed and precision, but neither are really what I want from a Sonic game at this point. Sonic being just a smidge hard to control at high speeds is part of the charm. Pitch perfect control of him makes him stop feeling like Sonic. I think a focus on quick, meaningful exchanges of enemies and moves like the cy loop which are basically mini-movement challenges are the answer. No long combos or movelists.
Making an enemy not completely irrelevant is as easy as trapping you in a room with them. But we don't want that, what I'm thinking is as simple as what Shadow Generations did in Sunset Heights. --- It's a long room. You can see the exit right there as you approach, you can see an alternate exit leading to an alternate route...and getting there is simply a matter of engaging the enemy with Shadow's ability. Doom Blast. The enemy isn't the indicator of the path, the path was clear from the moment you entered the room. But that's too simple, it's the basics of an idea the series rarely toys with. --- Now in a better example of what I want. Lets say you are trapped in a room...a room where you have to beat all the enemies to open a door, what if there was just a big enemy that launches you. It launches you and you see a faster way out of that room, but in order to get to it...you need to stun the enemy to control it like a cannon or whatever. It's an enemy you don't have to defeat to leave, but it's potentially faster if you choose to go for it...instead of the typical Eggman fodder. How do you stun it? The Sonic Tornado, the slice kick from Lost World 3DS, the Slide, the Stomp...any of these work, but it's up to you. It's up to the game to make this fun.
You're basically describing Shadow Generations here. You have engage with enemies if you want some of the better routes in the game.
...I'm glad you get the point. Shadow Generations was used as an example for a reason, it is only one game.
I'm just saying the roundabout explanations can just be done with Shadow clips. As much as I love how Shadow does it, it's still pretty vanilla. Combat in Sonic is cool. We all love badniks here. It's something that has been noticeably missing from these games since they started scaling back on unique enemies and just giving us generic mooks like the Egg Pawns, the Unleashed bots or those whatever prism things from Frontiers. Lack of interesting design just leads to them being pointless fodder the devs slap in stages to boost through or homing chain. I think what would be cool is if they start designing enemies that mess or redirect your mobility. Run into a spinning top enemy and it spins you around and sends you backwards. Homing attack into a fan or a racket at the wrong time / angle and he swats you back like a tennis ball. You can punish players in other ways thay isn't coming to an abrupt stop. Just something to make you second guess just running into something blindly. The homing attack is something I think is heavily underutilized. You can do so much more with it if you start playing around with things like angling your homing attack, maybe having a mid air charging ability to float and time your attack (like in Smash). I also think they should just let you have the option to just pierce through an enemy after a homing attack instead of being stuck to the current recoil bounce behavior.
I am trying so hard to not say those two words. I’ll just simply put it as I don’t agree that this a problem at all even a little bit, that the idea of this complaint is one I have never even heard of before ever and I don’t even know what you’re talking about, and leave it at that.
Regular enemies that take more than one hit to destroy have been a bad thing in virtually every game they've been tried in, Heroes especially is terrible for this. This doesn't mean that you don't have to attack a specific way though.
The point isn't that they take more than one hit, yes. It's that using anything besides the homing attack causes them to function differently, like how Shadow's Chaos Spear stuns enemies that are electric or doing something you can't bypass. Something like that but more creative. My problem here is that this is exactly what I said.
I gave Freedom Planet way more of my time than most Sonic fans were willing to. I'm being genuine when I say it's pitch for combat doesn't work. It's a thoughtless mix of Sonic and Treasure action games without much of a clue as far as what makes either great. It's because it's hard to design combat around a move that's so imprecise at it's base. We saw a lot of this with Frontiers where the game would avoid complex enemy encounters because the lock on so easily gets its wires crossed. I think the cy loop was a good alternative, but other ways for Sonic to enemies up or have more control over who he actually targets would help too. Maybe a fast moving, sweeping attack he can do on the ground.
I would not say that your hitboxes are tiny at all. And yeah, the bosses do move a lot… Which is why you have to learn their attack patterns and how they move. So you can follow them. That’s… I’m sorry if some find the idea of having to actually pay attention and think about fighting enemies too much in a game like this, but let’s just say I don’t at all. In fact, I find it fun, way more fun, active, and engaging than any attempt at combat in any Sonic game ever. Regular enemies, as I mentioned before, you just run past. And even in scenarios where they are fighting them, it’s not exactly like your moving at breakneck speeds. The only thing kind of relevant is bosses going off screen. But 1) again learn the attack patterns. 2) that is honestly not even that much of a problem in 2 where the camera zooms out.
I think the only way someone could find the combat in Freedom Planet especially remarkable is if they were only comparing it to the combat in other Sonic games and not like, any of the other 2D action games it's cribbing from. It holds up alright compared to something that sucks like Sonic Heroes Black Knight or whatever. Not so much when compared to Gunstar Heroes or Alien Soldier.
Are they difficult to find some place I'm not aware of? I guess I went under the assumption that it'd be like a US store but even if you just go with a regular chili you can also find those in gas stations. I've never had trouble finding anything canned like that.
Of course I am comparing it to Sonic. Because Freedom Planet is basically a Sonic game, Sonic is what we’re talking about, and combat/bosses in Sonic generally SUCKS. Freedom Planet’s does not. I actually have any fun at all fighting these bosses which is way more that I can say for Sonic. If Sonic deleted bosses that would a net improvement in my book from a gameplay perspective but if they removed that from Freedom Planet, something would genuinely be lost there. If you sat me down and told me, “Hey! Here’s a Freedom Planet mode or level where you just fight bosses!” I would think that’s unfortunate because of what was lost. But I would still play that and likely have fun. But if you told me “Hey this is a Sonic level or mode where you just fight bosses!” I would not touch it unless it was mandatory to unlocking more levels or something. I don’t really care very much how an aspect of that game stacks up to games where that aspect is the main focus.
Sure, we mostly have canned corn, peas tuna, tomatoes, candied peaches... But stuff like canned beans or vienna sausages have very limited shelf space and are usually more expensive. Now chilli? Adobo in sauce? Unheard of. I remember popping off when I found spam (not the literal brand) at a store and finally got to taste it.
Yep. Kidney beans are comparatively rare here too, for a country that has beans as a culinary base for every main meal alongside rice. Canned chili, whatever the version, is just-- I don't think I've ever seen it. I can't seem to find it even online. Chili is just not something we eat normally, and since there's not a significant Mexican or Texan diaspora anywhere around, any kind of Mexican or Texmex food is kind of... foreign? Exotic? The kind of food you take someone for on a semi-fancy date. Which doesn't include hot dogs of any kind.
I guess the idea is strange, but in that case maybe there's a way to come up with a recipe that will be more readily available and use specific individual spices instead of falling back on a generic "chili seasoning" packet (which is also something that's given in a lot of the ingredients sections in a glace of all the recipes I've looked at) and just be simpler. Like, idk why the "Sonic-approved" ones like to add beans, the chili is meant to be a *sauce*, which is why the cans I'm talking about are so cheap (on top of usually being less in portion) Honestly might have to figure this out for myself.
There's nothing wrong with revisiting old locations and themes... Fans are only soured on it because the "only" locations that have repeatedly come back are Green Hill Zone & Chemical Plant Zone. Sonic Team has ruined the idea due to how they handled it in the past, it's only been for nostalgia and lack of creativity. --- Never about expanding the world or establishing...where places are in relation to each other.
