I liked the longer 1 act unique levels of 06 a lot more than 4 1 minute acts of the same scenery like colors had. I’d like to hear a bit more on how it feels haphazard as I feel you flow pretty naturally between the level minus momentum.
Sky Deck is fairly long but SA1 standards, but I don't think it's THAT'S long. It's one of the weakest levels in the game, however. What I like a lot about 06's level design is that that it naturally branches off into different paths that twist around each other other. There's usually enough space to stretch your legs, but at the same time you're rarely on long expanses of just running in a straight line. The levels are dense and use space effectively. This even extends to the platforming. Like in SA1 and SA2 and unlike the following boost games, there are very few clear cut differences between speed sections and platforming sections. You can maintain a good rhythm throughout the stage. The first sections of both Kingdom Valley and Wave Ocean, as well as the Elise levels of Dusty Desert and Tropical Jungle are actually excellent. Its not all good though. I said that there aren't speed sections and platforming sections. But there are a ton of rubbish combat sections. The level design is filled with empty spaces designed for enemy encounters, which are often mandatory. These drag the levels right down. Crisis City, Flame Core, White Acropolis, Kingdom Valley after the first section. That shit gets bad. The combat areas are baked into the game. They were clearly designed with combat in mind. And unlike previous 3D games, there are also areas in each level that are designed as automatic set pieces that take several seconds to complete. There's one grinding section in Shadow's Crisis City that takes over 30 seconds. We had things like the whale chase SA1 and some elaborate spring and booster chains every so often, but nothing as frequent and lengthy as in 06. Tldr 06 has some great design but it's very often bogged down by filler and it overstsys its welcome really fast. 06 design > boost design
I'm not disagreeing, but I still think they have a lot going for them (visually), even moreso in P-06. The reflections on the collapsed buildings in Crisis City, the glowing lava in Flame Core, the changing weather in Kingdom Valley... Could be just me, but when I played Wave Ocean for the first time, I could have sworn I felt a breeze blowing around my face. Lol I'm not trying to defend any of the crap (e.g. Mach Speed sections, End of the World), but sightseeing in the world of 06 would be totally awesome. I would book my next vacation in one of those places.
Yeah I'm not a fan of 06's level design either, its just more of the same ideas that plague Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog levels but prettier and significantly more automated. I don't know if it's just the way 06 is presented and how the physics work but the levels just don't feel like they have any flow to them at all, doesn't look or feel smooth if that makes sense Im confused, a huge chunk of SA2 speed stages and SA1's Sonic level are just narrow corridors for holding forward(a staple of Sonic level design in general let's be honest here), unless you mean something else when talking about "speed sections"
I feel like SA2 better wove it's platforming into its level design that the boost games do now. You naturally get some more intricate platforming whilst the level is still moving forwards. You move through the levels at a more stable pace. Part of that's down to the fact that you go faster nowadays thanks to the boost, and you can't really do a lot finer control at that speed. You end up boosting for a bit and then slowing down considerably to tackle obstacles before boosting off at top speed again.
For me, ‘06’s level design runs into the same issue of the Werehog’s level design in Unleashed: the pace of the levels, for the most part, feels plodding. It’s mostly just flat planes populated by hordes of enemies, with characters who move abysmally slow. The branching paths are neat but they don’t change the fact that most of the level design is aggressively slow and boring. When you do get to some speed sections, they’re heavily automated and hardly give you any control (with the mach speed sections feeling more like glorified QTEs than platforming). That reflex-based blend of speed and platforming that makes the classics, Adventure, and boost games enjoyable isn’t there. It’s either slow and tedious platforming or speed that’s so automated you can barely play, with no in between.
That makes a bit more sense to me thanks for clarifying! In vanilla 06 it is pretty tedious dealing with the large enemy groups. Even killing the group leader usually requires mashing homing attack or bouncing. Heaven forbid you are playing knuckles…
Okay, I'm gonna say it. I'm not huge on Sonic Frontiers' story. Now I don't think it's BAD, and definitely see why many see it as miles above the previous games, but it feels a bit like it's gone into the opposite extreme of those games, drying out ANY sense of whimsy and just being a clusterfuck of dreary exposition and fanservice quotes (Ian Flynn, it's nice you remember continuity but you need to stop winking at the audience CONSTANTLY). The characters aren't as horrendously off point as they were in the Pontac era but at the same time it's mostly only by TELLING us they're fixed rather than SHOWING us (the same reason i just wasn't sold on Flynn's Archie writing, though he at least had the excuse of writing for a medium that kinda depended on telling there), and at times I actually miss having at least some focus on silly action. It just feels like another ham fisted attempt to make Sonic contemplative and 'serious' to appeal to older fans while overlooking a lot of the appeal to the series in the first place. And when they do try to add a bit of funny character animation, it tends to be pretty damn awful, like Sonic and Knuckles' awkward smirks at each other. I still think Mania and Origins' cutscenes are the gold standard for Sonic right now, just simple cartoony acting without even the NEED for dialogue. If they can add some without dragging everything to a halt just to tell horrible jokes or dreary exposition then fine, but really, Sonic works better an energetic cartoon.
I really, really hate all the winking at the audience and the cutesy references. I haven't really read the comics but "this character is based on a glitch" and "Tails and Knuckles argue about Hydro City's name" stand out to me as unbelievably stupid. I also didn't really like the weird non-sequitor callbacks to the ancient ruins, Knuckles treasure hunting, a waterfall in the Mystic Ruins, and the kinda-hilarious screencaps. There's a lot of that "look, look, it's that thing!" energy. I loved the somber atmosphere of Frontiers but thought that the story, dialogue, and cutscenes were all just kinda awful.
I can't really say anything about the references since I never had any pop up during my playthrough and I've only watched one or two short clips of some before getting bored, but Frontiers' dialogue in general is so bland and dry that I wasn't really able to follow whatever story was being told, out of sheer disinterest. The choice of words for some lines were very strange, especially for Sonic. He has a lot of dialogue that seems to fit a more formal, posh type character than Sonic's casual, down to earth personality, and combined with his wildly different voice direction it was hard to even see this as Sonic. Frontiers does well in creating a somber, mysterious tone but establishing a mood/tone is something 3D Sonic has generally been good at. They just drop the ball when its time to actually tell a story.
Gave my brother a copy of Frontiers after he finished replaying Sonic Adventure. He hasn't touched a Sonic game since Heroes. Funniest shit I ever read. E-122 is right about everything BTW
Since we are talking about story, I will say that as must flaws 06 has on plot, I actually really like the opening, the super transformation in the final boss and especially the ending scene on the final story of the game - I don't know, I think it's kinda beautiful? Feels like I just finished watching a movie. Look, I know this doesn't make Sonic 2006 story automically good, but I still appreciate those scenes alone.
I'll take Sonic 06's philosophy over the boost games' philosophy any day. Some levels work much better than others, but overall I've come to like the general idea (as far as the Adventure formula goes anyway)
I found the levels of 06 to be repetitive and plodding. Beyond the architecture design and aesthetics (which I think still pale compared to SA1) I never agreed with the praise people lavish them with. I'd much rather have something with more speed in it—note that "speed" doesn't mean I'm asking for boost or anything of the sort.
Related to plot, Sonic Colors gets a lot of deserved flak for its writing, but it's probably the first game in the series that actually shows Sonic and Tails as best friends/brothers. The low stakes and lack of other characters means the two of them get to interact way way more and much more casually than in any game that came before it. Like yeah, we see them interacting regularly in the Adventure games and Heroes, but a lot of that comes off as just business talk and hero/sidekick dynamics, not the brotherly relationship they're described as having.
I agree, i still for the most part dont really enjoy colors story but I do like sonic and tails interactions for the most part. Probably one of the strong suits of a much lighter story like colors is that you actually have time in all the cutscenes to show them interacting and how they bounce off one another, whereas most other games have to brush that aside to focus on narrative in their cutscenes
Really, I can see what the Pontac era was trying to do most of the time and it wasn't all bad on paper, making the series more cartoony again and focusing a bit more on the main dynamics was a decent idea. It's just execution was sloppy and the jokes were cringeworthy. Lost Worlds in particular stood out as great idea, bad execution, trying to be a character study for the main three and even introducing a proper rival villain group for Eggman that aren't just generic doomsday villains. I think Tails was a standout case, I liked them TRYING to make Tails more flawed and childish again, but you could tell they were struggling to figure out HOW, he'd never really had a colourful personality in the 3D games, even Adventure 1 and 2 he's mostly TELLING us what his character is all about in the most flat way possible. It felt like Sonic Boom took a lot of the Pontac games' ideas and tone and reassembled them in a way that worked properly (eg. more cartoony plots and characterisations, a more flawed take on Sonic, more focus on Tails' character and chemistry with Sonic instead of just being an exposition machine, Eggman being the definitive pantomime villain, Orbot and Cubot becoming breakout minions). I actually think DS Colors was an improved take on the story with better dialogue and the character missions offering a bit expansion.
I've never liked Tails. /unpopular Every time I think up new Sonic games or stories, I always leave him out whether I mean to or not. He's boring. And I've always had a particular distate for the smart tech guy archtypes in fiction, especially when it's applied to a child character. Tails has other abilities and traits that are so much more interesting than "I'll analyse it and spout techno babble". Putting him in a mech for SA2 was the worst thing in my mind, but I will admit that I liked the fact he was pretty involved in all of the action that time from a story perspective. Tails role wasn't just coming up with a plan. This is true. But right from the very beginning, I hated the moment that Tails doubted their chances against Eggman's Nega Wisp Amour and Sonic shoved him into an elevator. That just struck me as so wrong, because in previous games he would have fought Eggman alongside Sonic. And it was only perpetuated In Lost World and then Forces' infamous Infinite intro and Chaos 0 scenes. Can't give Colours all of the blame for that though, as Unleashed also showed him cowering in fear from the Dark Gaia enemies. Although you could make the argument it was because the Dark Gaia enemies were supposed to be scary creatures of the night. The thing about Sonic and Tails' relationship in Colours that I liked most was how Tails occasionally and light-heartedly kept Sonic's ego in check. First there was the scene after the Planet Wisp boss when he caught Sonic talking to himself. And then later there was a scene before Terminal Velocity when he very sarcastically reminded Sonic not to take all the credit for himself. He never put Sonic down, but he wasn't going to take any of Sonic's shit. It was all just things that the two of them could laugh about. SA1 had shades of this too on at least one occasion. It really reflected well in both characters and made their relationship that much more believable. Of course, that then got taken too far in Lost World with Tails being an unlikeable, cocky twat at times, on top of being totally feckless in action.... I want to see where Tails' character goes after Frontiers. His entire role in that game felt like Flynn trying to get the pieces together, after the last decade or so throughly smashed him to pieces.
Tails' characterization in Lost World is one of the reasons I gave up on that game. It's so bad it just hurts.
My problem with Frontiers is that it's mostly just going through the same motions as before, Tails having self esteem issues. I don't think this is unfitting for Tails, but the problem is I've never found it an interesting flaw standalone, it's more or less a character just selling themselves short when they're actually awesome, there needs to be more personality traits behind it, and Tails is nearly ALWAYS just exposition dumping it rather than being a true performer. Even in SA1 he's probably the most dreary character until his big climax, he's TELLING us his story most of the time, not acting it out. I don't mind Tails being the tech genius, I actually kinda like that trope when done right, but the issue is that Tails is often that in the most boring manner possible. I loved Boom and OVA Tails because they got the point that he had to inject personality into it, a funny childish juxtoposition to him being a genius. Really they did a lot of things Lost World did but made it WORK because actual NUANCE was involved. It's fine to make Tails bratty, petty and attention seeking so long as they get the innocent vibe of his character and how to make him likeable. Heck in some places it suits PERFECTLY because Tails is all about trying to prove himself and get his mentor's attention, you expect a childish 'look at me!' approach to it from an ACTUAL CHILD, but that's what it is, just Tails being a kid, not a standoffish asshole on purpose. It's why Sonic's arrogance is so divisive as well, some writers just think he's meant to be an egotistical jerk with none of the flare or playfulness that makes him likeable.
