ramblings

I like sonic so i need to be rambling about it and would you look at that a new games come out recently. This shits addicting i have never felt such withdrawals from a demo as i did when the open network test ended. Im impressed that this can compete with all stars racing transformed so well. I should say that i started this ramble several weeks ago now so its a little disjointed. I cant keep adding to it forever so this will be good enough.

Ill go over the structure of the game and then split this into paragraphs that probably make little sense in the order i put them in, but whatever. You have the standard 3 lap races, but for the second lap the person in first place gets to choose a crossworld to go to, which is a fancy way of saying you go to a different track for a lap. This is chosen by the frontrunner of the race between a predetermined and a random option. Sometimes this will have a “frenzy” mode where there are extra items or boost opportunities. There are tracks which are exclusive to these crossworlds, but you unlock the ability to travel to main tracks once you win all the grand prix, where you will race on their lap 1. The third lap has an altered layout to the first, mostly in added obstacles and rings, but some have extra shortcuts available through crossworld rings which is fun. I enjoy every lap feeling different; anything is good to prevent racing from becoming stale. And it certainly hasnt become stale after over 60 hours. There are three main single player modes in grand prix, race park and time trial, as well as the online. At first, i was a little disappointed hearing that there was no mission mode or similar in this game, however theres enough to do throughout these modes and they shove unlockables at you frequently to keep you going. Theres a challenges menu where you progress a chao towards the goal, and you get a lot of titles for doing so. I dont know where else to put this.

customisation

The game has brilliant customisation options through being able to select parts of different vehicles (which started in team sonic racing) but more importantly, through the new gadgets system. this is one of my favourite things about this game. Each character and vehicle has five stats: speed, acceleration, handling, power and boost, so pretty standard. The gadgets can enhance these raw stats through kits built for each stat, giving extra stat boosts if you match the kit with the correct vehicle or character type. However the more interesting gadgets are the gimmicky ones for sure. Theres a handful that give you extra items in grand prix, ones that change how your drifting works, ones with different effects when colliding into other vehicles, theres so many. You can either drive a car, as is expected, or an extreme gear, which are hoverboards originating from sonic riders. As with transformed, there are three vehicle modes of car, plane and boat, which was a great decision to bring back. Despite all of these options, the game genuinely seems pretty balanced. Both builds focusing on getting ahead early and builds for holding back until the final lap are seeing success and its nice to see the variety, although from further playing online there is a bit of an issue but ill get to that.

controls

I find the game very satisfying to control, although it feels pretty different to transformed. Crossworlds is a lot easier to get the hang of, while it feels more rewarding to do well in transformed. In particular, the cars feel a little off to me here. I think its the animations making it feel worse than it is, especially the stiff air tricks. I tested a car in a time trial and was only a little behind my extreme gear time so it cant be that bad (and it really isnt that bad because i have now done over 150 races with a car and its so fine. But still objectively different to how it is in previous games). Speaking of air tricks, theyve made it so you cant fail them now. Im still not sure if the removal of that risk is a good thing or not but i think its slightly worse off for it. Somehow, they have improved both the boat and plane controls from transformed, moreso the boat controls. While the water physics were more realistic in transformed, it was a little annoying to keep control of your boat, and the difference in drifting took a bit to get used to. Theyve now replaced the normal drift with a charge jump, which leads to greater course diversity from creating shortcuts taking advantage of this, and also leads to me spamming level 1 drifts like a madman to get extra air trick boosts. This comes at the cost of turning sharp corners in water being less reliable, but theres only a couple of tracks that comes to mind that this truly affects (aqua forest and eggman expo, mainly). Despite removing many technical aspects of the flight form, its much easier to follow the racing line you want to now. Theyve stripped away air tricks completely, which is fine at base, but this leads to risk boosts (air tricking away from an obstacle at the last minute to gain a boost) being removed as well. This was perhaps the most rewarding thing to perform in transformed so this sucks. However, im content because the air drifting is much better and you can actually snake in the air now. The drifting overall feels very fluid and i gravitate towards gadgets that interact with it, such as lv1 quick charge, ultimate charge (allows for a lv4 drift) and counter drift quick charge (instantly fills the gauge to lv1 when performing a counter drift). The most fun playstyle for me is heavily investing in boost with an extreme gear and going absolutely crazy with drifting as if i constantly need to be pressing buttons or ill die. i do find myself needing to let go of the accelerator sometimes with this sort of build - not just in the 200cc equivalent but 150cc too. More things for me to think about pressing, just how i like it. My second go-to is a build that i initially only tried because it seemed funny. Car instead, royal chariot to be exact since it has the highest combined speed and boost, with the speed vehicle kit, among smaller gadgets. This lets you reach the top speed stat of 100 which sounded ridiculous at first, but ive gotten used to the handling of it pretty quickly. This is what i use when i dont want to think and dont want to press buttons for whatever reason because in some races if you get ahead and dont get hit for about a lap you are so far ahead and nothing matters anymore. Gotta go fast etc.. Look how far ahead you can get.

items

As with many kart racers, this is where the balance begins to crumble, but only slightly here. In general there is a good variety of items, and the balancing issues mostly come down to the potential of being spammed with lots of them at the last minute while youre in 1st place. Theres a mix of clear sonic references, with many wisps making a return, and generic items like you would see in the all stars racing games. Many clearly have the function of items from a certain other kart racing game, such as yellow drill (bullet bill), white wisp (mushroom), and the various punches (shells). If it aint broke dont fix it. They do each have their own quirks though. Sometimes you can get a king white wisp which gives you a faster, longer boost, more in line with a gold mushroom without the mashing. I like how the punches are handled. The red ones home in as youd expect, and the greens rely on good aim. However, if youre good at aiming, you can lock on with the green punches too. One of my favourite items is the dark chao, which removes everyones current items and provides them with two more at random. It is chaos. And it stops people trying to hold things until the end. good.

Each item has a category (attack, defense, speed and hazard) which you can increase the chance of receiving with gadgets. I like the gadget system did you know. Theres a large handful of both attack and speed, and little of the others, which aligns with this being quite an aggressive kart racer. This is perhaps where it feels the most different from the other sonic racing games; the riders series items werent very impactful until free riders and a lot of sega all stars items were more about defending yourself. You get bullied by items so much more in crossworlds.

The one item i wish were brought back however, is the all-star item. It was already replaced in team sonic racing by the team ultimate, so i wasnt particularly hopeful for it, but it was nice for most characters to bring something unique to the table. Not the end of the world though, making characters more similar means that people can play their favourites without worrying about whats good or not. Something they do retain on the other hand are the super items. There are less unique items to the super capsule pool this time, I think its only the 100 ring item and then a mix of good normal items. Theyre there to appear in third laps and give people a final boost, which it does.

grand prix

At a glance, grand prix seems pretty standard, but you soon realise theyve added a few things to spice it up. Each grand prix contains 4 races, with the final being a mishmash of the 3 that come before it. Of course an extra original track in each cup instead would be preferred, but with the crossworlds gimmick already making the normal courses feel different each time, it doesnt feel awfully repetitive. There are the racing speeds youd come to expect, just named in sonic fashion: normal speed (50cc), high speed (100cc), sonic speed (150cc) and super sonic speed (200cc), along with mirror sonic speed.

What hits you in the face first is the rival popup. For each grand prix, you have a designated rival character from the base roster, who is generally more competent than the other cpu racers. They have their own difficulty level between 1-10, with them not putting up a proper fight until at least level 7. You get a fully voiced rival interaction between them and your chosen character at the start of the race, which is charming and has done an excellent job at painting several characters we rarely see outside of these spinoffs in a good light. The chaotix have it the best in this regard i like them. Its also interesting to see how sage specifically interacts with others, considering her only game has been frontiers and therefore has had no chance to interact with the majority of the roster. Defeating every character as a rival is the main end goal of the grand prix mode, and beating them at any difficulty level counts. There are 23 characters in total, which seems like a lot at first, but with 8 grand prix currently, this means that you can do sonic speed, super sonic speed and mirror sonic speed and its just enough. Even better, it leaves the final grand prix for you to use the “secret” unlockable character you get from beating all the rivals (its super sonic and they spell that out for you very quickly). He can only be used in grand prix, so may as well give him a try this way. Theyve introduced a way to spend game currency to retry the race youve just done within a grand prix, which is a bit cheap but you do get an icon of shame next to your trophy if you use this. It still counts towards completion, including beating rivals like this.

For the first time in any of the sonic-adjacent racing games, theyve introduced the main series staple collectible of red star rings. This is genuinely my favourite implementation of them in any sonic game, and its about time i have fun collecting them. In theory, they play the same role as in the main series, being a collectible that gets you to explore parts of the level you may not otherwise think of and learn new routes for future playthroughs. As interesting as this sounds, it rarely ends up being fun in normal sonic levels because potentially having to slow down and look around in a sonic game isnt a great match. Theyve struck a good balance by placing them in a racecourse; a lap is shorter than scouring an entire level, and you have to play each course multiple times during normal game completion regardless. However, saying that you have two laps per attempt for each red star ring wouldnt be totally correct. There are some rings that appear in both the first and third lap yes, but there are also plenty that are only obtainable once the layout changes in the third lap. Variety is good in this way though, and many of them are spawned in clear view during the first lap anyway to give you an idea on how to reach them. This leads back to the benefit of showing you multiple paths you may not have otherwise thought of. I would argue this has a much larger impact in a racing game. Shortcuts are much more useful in a competitive game against others. Placing a collectible in one allows the player to practice those shortcuts, which they are unlikely to get right the first time, with an added bonus. Knowledge is the main reward you get from collecting them all honestly, you get in-game currency and eventually a title for collecting them all otherwise. Super sonic is very handy for collecting the last few since he is invincible and you dont have to worry about winning or losing against rivals at this point.

With the first dlc track now released, theyve had to improvise with how they handle the dlc grand prix. As it stands, the first track plays normally, and then the second and third are picked randomly from all available tracks. It tells you this when selecting it, along with the fact that you will not be awarded a trophy upon winning. This is the logical way to go about it, so you can still collect red star rings in the new track, however it opens up the possibility of having a completely random grand prix selectable in the first place. I really dont know why this isnt an option, they could easily let you do this once youve beaten every main grand prix once. Especially because it lets you race on countless variations of the frankensteined fourth track. Maybe one day.

race park

The race park is advertised as the delegated local multiplayer mode, but there is quite a lot youll need to do whether you have friends with you or not. Its comprised of several racing modes, mostly focusing on team play. Other than quick match, which is just a normal 12 player race, each area has its own rules, with five other modes in total. Two modes are 4v4v4, two are 6v6, and the last is extreme match, which is a normal 12 player race but with exclusively super items. The main structure of these modes is to provide an overarching team goal on top of simply doing well in the race individually. These include collecting the most rings, tapping your teammates the most times, hitting the opposing teams with the most items and striking the most dash panels. Oh yeah, in team modes, if you tap your teammate you get a boost of speed. Sometimes its helpful, but other times your cpu teammates really want to push you off the track with it. Im not the biggest fan of this mode, partly because of it making you play in a specific way and partly because of how the achievements for the mode are handled. Namely, you get an achievement for winning 10 races of each mode, except for double team dash, which is my favourite one except maybe extreme match. Why would they do this. You can also do a custom match to change team size and goals, but i havent cared to do this at all.

The rival racers return in this mode, once again being the main sense of progression. This time, they challenge you in teams, and instead of being the actual characters, you race against ai versions of them. This is a win for the “i want to play the same character every single time” mindset (me) but its overall far less interesting due to them lacking any of the rival banter from the grand prix, and the fact that you might be relying on teammates in order to beat them. Aesthetics-wise, the ai racers are alright but nothing crazy. They just put one texture over the entire model and call it a day, with ai teams being set to a designated single colour. The voices are replaced with general robot noise with some pitch shifting to match the characters.

Although its not particularly exciting racing against the ai teams, many of the rewards are worth your time. Every time you beat a rival team 3 times, you get a new vehicle (or later on some tickets). A few of these are extreme gear, which are the most underrepresented in the game, so the more the better. If i recall correctly, theres 9 vehicles locked behind this mode, one being what you unlock for beating each rival team twice and claiming all the other rewards. You can tell i dont care much about this mode because i havent written very much.

time trials

What a surprise, there are time trials in my racing game. Ill start by saying the formula for them is good and on par with transformed. You have 39 overall, 24 normal tracks and 15 crossworlds, dlc not included, with a choice between sonic speed and super sonic speed. The time trial covers the entire three laps rather than only one, so the strategy is a bit different. The game expects you to get at least an a rank on all of them in both speeds, which i personally found easy, other than kraken bay on sonic speed for some reason. Theres maybe too much lenience in the a ranks, as i fell off multiple times during some and was still comfortably within the a rank range. A rank should not expect you to be perfect but you should not be able to fall off the track and get away with it. So what about the rank above it, s rank? Theyre actually quite insane and i have only gotten a few myself. I definitely appreciate the challenge and will be going back to them in the future though. Most sonic racing games have had at least one thing that provides some challenge, for example the expert time trials in transformed and the keys in team sonic racing, so its not unheard of. By the way if you get the exact time it says for a certain rank, it doesnt count because of the hidden milliseconds so you have to be below it. Cant believe this.

The biggest benefit of time trials is that it allows you to play full race versions of all the crossworlds. You do start and end in a very generic stadium for all of them, but otherwise they feel enough like normal tracks. I say enough because, it took me until time trials to notice that a lot of the crossworlds laps are noticeably shorter than the normal tracks. I enjoy a lot of the crossworlds though so this is a nice way to go through them. Other than that, im still not sure how to feel about time trials covering the entire race rather than a single lap. Its nice for it to cover all the variants of the course this way, but it takes a lot more to practice them. Full track time averages about 2:10 so its not crazy long, but for the s ranks especially where one mistake will cost you it all adds up. This does explain why the a ranks are more lenient i suppose but i stand by the fact that they could be less so. Regardless the loop of trying different time trials and getting good continues to be satisfying.

Another feature you notice much more in time trials is the benefit of rings. Collecting rings speeds you up in whatever mode youre doing but naturally you will be keeping hold of your rings more when youre not being bombarded by items. There is such a difference in speed between 99 and 100 rings that your goal is to collect them as quickly as possible and hope that you have that 100 by the end of the first lap, and then focus on a tight racing line or collecting the white wisp capsules for boosts. The meta build for time trials is definitely boost with a shit ton of snaking, but ive been balanced between my boost and speed builds and done completely fine. I do not have the meta boost gadget build at all fyi. This is the one mode where handling cars have actually seen some decent use though, specifically for super sonic speed to try and get the perfect line, so thats cool. Acceleration continues to be the wholly bad stat. Power vehicles are quite good elsewhere we’ll get to those.

The unlockable for this mode is yet another cosmetic-adjacent thing in new music tracks. Theres a jukebox where you can set music for races by the numbered lap you want to hear it on. It contains all the normal game ost already but time trials unlocks a pretty good selection of songs from past sonic games. To have these songs play in races, you have to favourite them, which adds them to a custom album which you can then assign to whatever laps you want. Its a bit annoying that you can only have one of these custom albums, however every music track has a normal and final lap version. If you dont have solely normal or final lap tracks in the album, they will only play at their designated times, which works well for the final lap remixes that would be weird to have at the start of the race. When first trying this feature i put solely fist bump in the album for funnies, forgot to then change it for about 5 races and went insane. It really tickled me.

online

Online is an interesting conversation topic because its filled with weird ups and downs but generally, i have been having fun against other people. Ive rarely had connection issues and mostly have been racing actual real people.

The normal online races are pretty standard. You get a choice of three tracks and a random option for each race. Standard. Im still in the baby ranks due to it taking a while to rank up so ive been leading pretty easily, but im slowly starting to feel the standards rise. The rewards you get for ranking up are actually quite good, with there being a lot of gadgets only found here. This is a slight problem for platforms requiring a paid online subscription, but honestly its nice to be rewarded with more things that arent cosmetic, and you get such a good selection of gadgets normally, i dont think any of the meta gadgets are locked behind online. This isnt to say there arent cosmetic rewards, with some decals and auras thrown in there too. Perhaps the pace of ranking up early on could improve slightly but overall the pace seems good. Eventually, you reach legend rank, which has its own numbered ranks between them, so youll nearly always have some sense of progression. You also dont start losing points for doing badly until youve made it a substantial way up the ranks. Genuinely not sure where this starts happening, im currently b rank and i keep coming in top 3 anyway, but it sure does happen.

Unfortunately this is the mode where the item balancing gets a bit whack. People do try bagging and it does work because the final straight is utter chaos, but you have many tools to prepare for it if youre a frontrunner. Many gadgets can counter it, such as the ultimate drift charge due to a lv4 drift granting you invincibility for a short while. Its reasonably common to be able to keep 1 or 2 defensive item up until the end, despite the amount of items that remove the items of those who get hit by them. You can adjust your gadgets to obtain more defensive items if you really want to. While this is all pretty normal kart racer business, its quite new for sonic kart racers specifically. In team sonic racing you could dart ahead at the last minute by timing a team ultimate well, but in the earlier entries there were more leads lost due to lack of skill rather than item rng.

This is the mode where power vehicles get to shine in my opinion. While i dont use them (i like going fast), bumping real players about can make a huge difference, especially to all the extreme gear boost sneakers. Recovery time is also super important in the mode where you will get battered at every corner. On top of that, they can still keep up well due to their relatively high boost stat.

The other main mode of online are the festivals, aka. The limited time events. I find this mode has more downs than the regular online; its basically a slightly better version of the race park. I say its slightly better because i find the exclusive team goals more exciting. I will sound like a hypocrite, but i really enjoy the most air tricks and most spin drifts goals, despite these being restrictive ways of playing. There are three goals tied to a specific festival, rotating every half an hour. Each festival is held over a long weekend, and currently they have only been tied to the dlc and extra free characters. You get exclusive cosmetics based on the character/dlc in a small battle pass which should only take you a few hours to complete, even if youre a loser (they are actually improving the amount of points you get to make this even shorter, which is cool). So far the most impactful rewards have been gadgets which boost the capabilities of each type of character, as there were only gadgets dependent on the type of machine before. Outside of the mode itself, the biggest downside is that normal online play is unavailable during the festival period. The majority of people only want to play until they get all the pass rewards so this is a pretty substantial flaw. The other biggest flaw, discovered through the minecraft festival, is that one of the three tracks you can select will always be the dlc course if applicable. It has made me dislike the minecraft track for now despite it having one of the most in depth course layouts of all the tracks. At its core, festivals are fun enough, so long as you dont expect to play them for hours straight.

tracks

The tracks are solid, although theres a part of me that wishes there were more, or that some of the crossworlds were main tracks to flesh them out better. Team sonic racings track themes were relatively bland, despite my hopes being up from it being a purely sonic racing game with no guest characters, with my favourite track from that game returning as a crossworld here (sky road. By the way, why did they call this track sky road when theres a completely separate zone in sonic lost world called that, which this track is not based on? Its yet another rooftop run track instead. Being in the sky makes it much more unique though and i like the shortcuts you can take with the balloons). Therefore im very happy to see some deeper cuts here that i didnt expect. When they teased dinosaur jungle as one of the first crossworlds i was certainly shocked that they were referencing sonic and the secret rings out of everything. Very happy to see shadow the hedgehog and sonic rush representation too. At the other end, theres a “secret” grand prix that features tracks based on the most recent sonic games (frontiers, superstars and shadow generations) and theyre some of the best tracks in the game (one of two glitches i came across did occur in northstar islands where i used a drill and got stuck in the ground, with it resolving to push me back several places, but i wont hold it against the track itself). Shadow generations white space is especially perfect, having one of the most drastic changes from first to third lap due to it taking the appearance of endgame, black doom infested white space. Other notable tracks based on pre-existing zones are metal harbor, radical highway and apotos. I like sonic adventure 2. Id say the original themed tracks are a bit more hit and miss, but none are outright bad, theres just a few that i wouldnt choose over the rest. Wonder museum and colorful mall are both wonderful, i like the references to old games as museum exhibits, as well as all the dinosaur skeletons, and the alternate pathways on different floors in the mall are fun. My distinct least favourite track, normal or crossworld, is magma planet. I better not catch your ass choosing that one if youre in first place. Its just a lot of flying, and the layout feels pretty straight.

music

The musics a bit hit or miss but overall quite good, some of it simply not being my cup of tea. The third lap of each track gets a remix thats a bit more than just a sped up version, which team sonic racing did a bit, but theres a bigger change with these. Even the crossworlds get this specifically for time trials, albeit theyre a bit more basic. a lot of these third lap remixes have added vocals which feel similar to the pokemon sword/shield gym theme chanting. im not completely sold on it, mostly because it feels strange to hear vocals in tracks im not used to them being in. the 4th race in the grand prix also gives each track a slightly different remix. They really love their lap remixes. the majority of tracks based on zones have remixes of the themes youd expect, but some are weird. I do not hear digital circuit in digital circuit at all. Water palace has a completely different music track, probably because they keep struggling with licensing issues. Galactic parades music kind of sucks too, it sounds off from the start and then by the time you get to the part youd recognise youve finished the lap and are exiting the crossworld. As always with sonic games you cant ignore the good music though. Magma planet has one of my top tracks in the game despite my disliking of the course layout, has a cool guitar riff. Some other good original track themes are wonder museum, e-stadium and chao park, with egg expo, radical highway and dragon road containing good remixes of previously established songs. The final lap versions of non-track songs in the jukebox just cut further into the song, but they get the same energy across. Some of the cuts they choose are too early in the song however, so youd hear a bit of them in the main version of the song. The main vocal theme is one of the cheesiest songs ive ever heard lyrically with bangers such as “Here we go, fast like woah”, “With a stroke of luck, you might become a monster truck” and “So hit that power up, dont miss that power up”. Im glad it tells me about all the mechanics in this song because i wouldnt know otherwise. Way too on the nose however im crazy so its still pretty catchy and its sonic so it does something to me. Not like they havent done this before (songs like sonic heroes exist). Sung by the vocalist of Busted by the way. Theres an ending theme done by Creepy Nuts, sure why not. I dont like it. Moving on.

donpa tickets

Yes the in-game currency gets its own section. I need to talk about this. My one major gripe is with these tickets. I keep calling them danganronpa tickets in my head because of a post i saw. That is not the gripe its just funny.

Ill go over how to get them quick because ive only ominously alluded to their existence throughout the ramble. You get them from basically every race you do in some fashion, whether its directly from how you position or as an event reward. You get a couple extra for shit like “number 1 item user” and other exciting conditions. Collecting all the red star rings in a track nets you an extra 25. And you get some periodically in the challenges menu every few challenges. Id say you average about 25 a race until you run out of red star rings and challenges to feasibly do.

The developers are genuinely insane for how much some things cost with these tickets. Sure, they wanted you to never run out of things to do, but you would have to use an inhumane number of your hours to get everything. I would say the only reasonably priced things are the vehicle parts, which are the most important to be fair so ill give them that one. Everything else is ridiculous though. You first see the signs through the other pages in the vehicle customisation tab. Mid vehicle decals that cost 200 each. 500 just for a new horn (of which there are maybe 30). Two thousand to get an aura effect around your vehicle (luckily you do unlock a few after hours of playing online). You have to buy all the decals and horns for 100% but thankfully not the auras. But this is only the surface of donpa ticket spending. Theres a section you unlock after beating all the grand prix once called the friendship section. How nice youre thinking. Youre wrong. I still cannot believe the amount of tickets you have to spend to get everything in here. So there are 23 main roster characters right, and you can give each character tickets in order to receive items themed after them. This is cool as an endgame collectible. The rewards include unique titles, decals and a skin so you can play as their ai racer variant from the race park. Sounds pretty cool as far as cosmetics go. This is where the cool ends. Do you know how many tickets you need to max out one character? Fifty thousand. Are we for real. Ive seen someone who has spent 110 hours on the game and has only just maxed out one character. You are never getting all these things. This does not respect your time at all, even though it is only cosmetic and doesnt follow the same rules as something mandatory would. Luckily, you only need to give 3000 to one character to get the ai skin, which is all you need achievements-wise. And realistically, people will only want things of their few favourite characters at the very least. But youve seen how long it takes just for one character. It will always be crazy to me. To make matters worse specifically for me, the best mode to grind tickets is the race park. Fantastic.

final thoughts

Even after spending so many hours with this game now, its difficult for me to decide whether this or transformed is my favourite sonic racer. They both get things so right but feel so different from each other. Regardless, crossworlds is a blast and is more approachable to the casual kart racer fan so i would recommend it to everyone. Maybe not at full price unless you love sonic though. But i think any game above about £50 is expensive. Its been out for several weeks now and ive still been playing a few races every day which says a lot. There are so many little things i could continue to talk about but this needs to come to an end eventually. I will keep yearning for the return of single player mission mode but maybe in the next installment …….

Heres my current race stats. I like when it tells you numbers you dont need to know i get very nosey about shit like this. Very balanced as you can see.

i recently found a document i thought was long lost from 2016 where i planned to extensively analyse every single version of every single sonic adventure level, along with summaries of each playstyle and story. i only managed some of sonics and the super sonic story and its nearly 3000 words long. my opinions and experiences have changed a lot since then (ive 100%d the game three times now including the different versions) so i do not believe all of this now, but its mildly interesting. maybe i will approach this again from the beginning, taking it one character at a time, but who knows. i have many things to talk about already. i did not proofread this but can you blame me.

overview of playstyle: sonic

Sonic is Sonic. He plays just as you'd expect him to play. The early 3D Sonic playstyle is easily the most fun out of all the Sonic styles and I will stand by that. His acceleration feels natural, he's fast enough and the jumping is reasonably responsive. Building up his speed instead of having the option to boost feels so much more satisfying. The main problem I have with the boost system is that you fly through half the level without really taking it all in. Sonic is still fast here and flies past a decent amount, but the overall pacing feels so much better. However if you do like blasting through the levels really fast, you can abuse the spin dash well and I have to admit its fun playing the levels like that. The fact that you have to do this to get some A rank emblems is pretty interesting. Its far more risky doing this, but the reward of a higher speed outweighs it on most occasions. If you're not used to it, it is pretty easy to clip through things or fall off loops, but knowing when you should and shouldn't use it is part of the challenge. Overall I think its more fun playing the levels normally, but I love the challenge of doing this. Sometimes it does create the same problem as boosting would do. However you're most likely using this tactic after you've already beaten a level at least once so I don't see much of a problem. I like how even though there is some precise platforming, you can still go through it at a decently fast pace if you want to. The platforming sections in modern 3D Sonic games feel too slow, possibly because of the contrast with the boosting you're doing the rest of the time. And although the platforming is often more complicated in the modern games, I'm not bothered by having simpler platforming. I play Sonic to go fast, and I'm not much of an explorer in Sonic games (unless its something like the Werehog, which was made to be slower paced and it feels right to have smaller paths to explore with this playstyle). Jumping in Adventure can be a bit temperamental, which I especially notice in areas like Twinkle Park. Sometimes I press the button and nothing happens. But except from that its precise enough. You get used to it. More often than not the camera is what stops you from making jumps though. It … could be worse, but when you're trying to move the camera around to make a jump and it suddenly snaps to a predetermined angle, its kind of annoying. The camera doesn't like it very much if you backtrack either, and its got stuck inside a wall or something several times. Although I never really backtrack in Sonic's stages so its barely a problem, I just wanted to investigate how the camera fared in different situations.

windy valley

Here we go. My favourite Adventure level tied with Speed Highway. Something about this level just makes it so fun every time. Most of the time I am speeding through this level now because I've played it so often, but playing it normally is still great fun. While some of the aspects to this level are more for show (e.g. walking on air), I think the different ways they've incorporated wind into this level are pretty creative. You literally get sucked into a tornado and have to climb your way out on the rubble that's been sucked in with you. That's pretty cool. How do the parts stay in there as a fully functioning platforming section? No clue. It makes zero sense but hey, we're walking on air here. It doesn't need to make sense if its cool.

All three music tracks used in this level are amazing and do a really good job at showing the atmosphere of the different sections. When you first enter the level, despite hearing the heavy wind, it seems pretty calm, you're just taking a run through a nice valley. The closer you get to the tornado, the darker the sky gets, the wind gets slightly louder, and the controller vibrates like crazy, so you know something big is coming. Unfortunately its not Big the Cat and you're suddenly being sucked into that tornado. And the music again, suits this very well. In some ways, the music played here is more dramatic than the phase two Perfect Chaos music, because of its faster pace and uh … I cannot speak about music in this way well but it just feels more threatening to me. Perfect Chaos phase 2 music is great and showing you that there's a formidable beast waiting for you, while the tornado music feels more life threatening and is telling you to hurry up. And then you're out of the tornado. The skies are blue. The sun is shining. Then the music starts and wow. This has to be one of my favourite non vocal Sonic tracks. Even if its mostly a remix of Green Grove Zone 1 from Sonic 3D Blast, they did it so much justice. I definitely don't mind that they used a remix instead of an original song. The Genesis sounds did the song well, but the guitar in this remix … so good. I associate the song a lot more with Windy Valley rather than Green Grove (not just because Adventure is a far superior game compared to 3D Blast) because the remix is just that good. It fits perfectly too.

Probably the most fun thing about this level as someone who has played this level countless times now is, as I've mentioned being able to speed through this level so easily. Its pretty standard until you get out of the tornado. But oh this final section is great for this. You can skip large chunks of the running sections by just jumping down, and if you time it right so you land on a boost pad it feels pretty satisfying. This section was made for the abuse of spin dashes too. As long as you time it so you aren't dashing right before a loop, you will blast through these parts, only occasionally getting stuck. You can also avoid the first trampoline by spin dashing right before the first walking on air section, which is great. I hope I get under 2 minutes one day.

casinopolis

Hm. Yeah I'm not much of a fan of Casinopolis in Sonic's story. Pinball is ok but there's only so much fun I can have with it. The boards look nice though. I can get behind the Nights cameo. There could've maybe been a third one at least but they look nice. Both pinball machines have a slightly different gimmick (one slots, one cards) so thats something. And at least we got Robotnik sticking his tongue out on the slots.

Aesthetically the casino is bang on. They added a lot of details within the actual casino and I like that. Too bad that because of the way most people play Sonic levels, not a lot of that gets explored (although it does later on). The main thing I like about the level isn't the casino itself though, despite liking the aesthetic. Its the sewers. Honestly I didn't even know that I could access the sewers in Sonic's story as a kid. I would simply read the first monitor, see that I needed 400 rings and jump right into the pinball machines. And even if I did read the monitor saying that if I had less than 100 rings I'd be dropped into the sewers, I'd probably think that that was a bad thing. In a way, thats kind of clever of them. Because each trip there you can get about 200 rings. And the rings do regenerate each time you enter. When you come out, the machines that drop rings when you homing attack them regenerate too if you happened to miss a few. Hiding a much better way to get rings like that is nice I guess. Despite being kind of short, its still much more fun than playing pinball and I go straight there now. I honestly love the contrast between the casino and the sewers too. You wouldn't usually associate anything like that with a vibrant, colourful casino. The shower area is … something. I bet some people are overly happy about seeing Sonic take a shower. But its a cute little touch.

I really like the music that plays in the main area of the casino. Too bad it doesn't play too often. The music inside the machines is fine (I prefer the Sonic one), but considering I've had to listen to it so much its not as exciting anymore. Music in the sewers is funky too, but again you don't hear it for very long at a time.

I need to talk about the emblems in this stage. C one is fine obviously but the B mission in this stage? Annoying. As I said, you get around 200 rings per trip to the sewers. So you have to hunt around for 50 more. And you can't get 50 extra in the sewers because it'll deposit them too. Going into the pinball machine again to grab 50 doesn't really work since if you only get 50, you go into the sewer, and getting 100 obviously takes a bit longer. Thats one annoying thing actually. Why doesn't the ring deposit just stop at 400? That would make sense in terms of the level. The A mission actually isn't as annoying (although I haven't done it yet at the time of writing this. 5:11 right now) but you have to hope that you don't get stuck in a machine for too long otherwise you're screwed.

twinkle park

Sonic explodes along with the car if you get hit in Twinkle Park. Where did he go. Anyway the racing section controls fine. About what you'd except from a karting minigame in a platformer. Its definitely easier to turn corners after mastering the camera though. One thing I don't really get is how damaging the enemies works. I think its to do with how many rings you have; I thought it was related to speed at first but sometimes even when I was going fast I'd take damage. I also somehow didn't make the first large jump even though I was travelling at top speed … weird. Sonic's "Woohoo!" is priceless and I love it for some reason.

I clipped through the fence at one point after falling off the final platforming section. Nice.

super sonics story

First thing I have to say is I like how the final story isn't just 'heres a bit of story, now go fight the bad guy the end'. Adding a few more sections of the hub world in there flesh it out a bit more than that. Also I like how there are small things that connect the ends of each of the other stories here. And how most of the characters are still in similar places as they were before. I can't believe that Big actually managed to fly the Tornado 2 down back to his home with it still being in the same condition as it was on the Egg Carrier, but I'll let that slide. But the fact that that emerald has been on that plane for a lot of the story and it ends up being the last emerald needed is something because that emerald has been places, and has also been in plain sight for a while yet Eggman didn't consider stealing it at any point? Even when it was just sitting on the Egg Carrier for ages? I'd never really thought about that before. Anyway the final Echidna tribe flashback was a good one. Although I think that the Echidna stuff could've been explained a bit better overall as i said before, this one clears it up well and does a good job at setting up Perfect Chaos as a 'terrifying monster' ready for the final boss. Tikal finally being featured more in this final story was great too. Talking properly face to face with her had to happen eventually, but saving this for the end when shes been giving you advice the whole time is the way to do it.

Chaos destroying Eggman is so funny I must mention that. I'm not sure if its meant to be funny on purpose or not, but god Eggman flying into the air like that is great. I like how little things like this can happen, and it doesnt really detract from the more serious tone at this moment in time. The early 3D Sonic games are all pretty good at this balance, although I think I find it more funny in Sonic Adventure simply because its more dated and the animations look funnier. Goodbye Eggman.

The whole 'oh the bad guys used the negative energy, but with the power of your friends you can use the positive energy' thing is pretty cliche, but this sort of stuff works well for Sonic. We never needed a deep reason as to why anything happened in Sonic really, up to this point at least. Even if it is cliche, seeing everyone you've played as throughout the game come together finally to defeat the bad guy is pretty nice (although its nicer when they all have a more valuable role, like in Sonic Heroes to an extent).

To me, the boss battle in general is a little on the easy side. I got pushed back by one or two projectiles, but I managed to reach Chaos every time. I didn't feel in danger in the difficulty aspect, but oh the overall atmosphere helped. Seeing the place you have spent a decent amount of time walking around in destroyed and flooded like that does make the point that this is the big fight. Sonic Adventure having an overworld definitely helped in building familiarity with these places throughout the story. One thing I'd like to point out though is how the previous Chaos battles make Perfect Chaos seem both more and less intimidating than he could be. The sheer change between Chaos 6 and Perfect Chaos certainly shows the player that this is one powerful form. However the amount of times you've had to battle Chaos before is quite a lot, and because of this the final fight can seem a little underwhelming. Even if its easy, its a cool final boss fight. Super Sonic always feels cool to control, and theres something about the novelty of flying along the broken roads that I like. Its not that easy to get stuck underneath them too, which is a plus … always helps. There aren't many ways to increase the difficulty without changing the boss too much, but maybe some of the projectiles Chaos fires could be more threatening, or perhaps there could be more to the pieces of road so its a bit more of a challenge from a platforming perspective, as long as it wasn't too similar to something like Speed Highway. Other than that, its a nice ending.

Graphically I think they did pretty well for the time. I have only played DX this far, but I've seen footage of the original and they did pretty good before as well, despite the limitations of the Dreamcast. I think I remember seeing an interview of them mentioning that because of the graphical limitations, they were focusing more on Perfect Chaos looking menacing rather than trying to include tons of detail, which is fair enough. He looks a little goofy by today's standards, but he holds up ok. They did pretty well with the background though, I have to say the buildings look nice and the water isn't bad.

The music should be swapped really ... while the second phase music is pretty dramatic its darker and i feel like it would suit the first phase much better than Open Your Heart. Open Your Heart playing closer to the end when you're that much closer to defeating Perfect Chaos works much better in terms of tone. Looking at the lyrics though, I think that Open Your Heart should simply play throughout the entire battle instead. The lyrics all have relevance to whats going on and by only having it at the start, you don't get to hear all of this during the fight. The song during the initial phase should be played at the build-up before the fight starts, and thats it. I suppose that the change in music could show that Chaos is now getting serious and is trying to overpower Super Sonic, but I still think it'd be more effective the other way around.

Open Your Heart as a track overall is so fucking good though. I'd say its my favourite in the series after Live & Learn, its that good. The guitar and drums at the beginning are fantastic and this continues throughout the track. I don't know how to speak about music all that well but … its my cup of tea. And as I mentioned previously, the lyrics fit the final battle well without simply listing what's going on, so its an easier listen outside of the game. Not to be like this but, it makes me pretty happy everytime I listen to it. Good shit.

present day thoughts

i think its funny looking back on how you played a game years ago, seeing yourself have a skill issue. skimming through i can avoid a lot of the issues i was having by now, partly through learning glitches and level skips but when youve played a game a lot thats a good way to squeeze more fun out of it. i truly dont know how i ever expected myself to do all of the levels and characters in one go. as i said in the intro it would be interesting to visit this premise again, but one section at a time. its a lot for one big ass section. i can see why i wanted to say so much though, this has been my second favourite game of all time since before this.