Popular and unpopular Sonic opinions you agree and disagree with!

[Dr. Mechano]

While Eggman is my favorite Sonic character overall, Big is my favorite animal character specifically. He's just such a good-natured, positive guy.

The day he returns for a full-fledged speaking role will be cause for celebration.

[StaticMania]

As long as he's kept "simple" and not "stupid"...Big is a great goober.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Sonic Adventure 2's Chao Garden makes it the most complete and replayable Sonic game, even if it's far from the best. Chao Gardens aren't just filler. They're great side-games that add incentive to busting robots and purpose to the animals that come out of them. 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

A popular opinion of mine is that Mania is amazing.

An unpopular opinion of mine is that I actually prefer Sonic games to not be nonstop speed; I find the occasional slower platforming sections to give me a bit of a "breather" from the frenetic pace. As far as this applies to Mania, I do definitely enjoy its incredible sense of flow, but there were a few times when I actually got a little tired of the constant speed and kind of wanted it to be paced out with sections like I described, like the classics generally did it.

[expansivelovestories]

i just read this on Retro and i think it will fit in this thread

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Give me rave music. Give it to me now. America (admittedly 20 years late) has finally embraced dance music, so Sonic team there is no more excuse for your ballsack shredding. I don't care if people say they like it, they are wrong.
Give me more Classic give it to me now

I do think, to add my own perhaps unhinged opinion to this post, that the game that follows Sonic Forces is almost certain to be legendary.  It is hard to believe, yes, but the potential is there, hugely so! 

 

[Sgt Nate V]

The Mohawk design for classic is better than the Japanese spines.

[StaticMania]

2 hours ago, Sgt Jack V said:

The Mohawk design for classic is better than the Japanese spines.

Kind of, but it definitely wouldn't look good in 3D...I tell ya.

[Zippo]

Hmm..popular opinion, at the moment, at least: Mania may very well be the best Sonic game ever made. It's going to age beautifully.

Unpopular opinion: Sonic CD is not a good game, and it has some of the worst level design I have ever seen in a video game. You're actively punished for going fast, yet you're required to go fast to be able to time travel, which is frustrating to do because of how obtuse and shitty the level design is. Objects are just placed in random places for no reason, the super peel out is wasted because the level design isn't made for it, and the spin dash is laughably awful. Vertical level design in Sonic doesn't work for me, and the bosess are not fun to fight, at all. It really sucks, because I want so badly to like CD, but I just can't with all of it's glaring issues.

[superman43]

1 hour ago, Zippo said:

Hmm..popular opinion, at the moment, at least: Mania may very well be the best Sonic game ever made. It's going to age beautifully.

Unpopular opinion: Sonic CD is not a good game, and it has some of the worst level design I have ever seen in a video game. You're actively punished for going fast, yet you're required to go fast to be able to time travel, which is frustrating to do because of how obtuse and shitty the level design is. Objects are just placed in random places for no reason, the super peel out is wasted because the level design isn't made for it, and the spin dash is laughably awful. Vertical level design in Sonic doesn't work for me, and the bosess are not fun to fight, at all. It really sucks, because I want so badly to like CD, but I just can't with all of it's glaring issues.

Interesting. When I have free time and have my mobile only I play CD rather than 1 or 2. Anyway, have you seen that in Mania, there are few places with springs in very close distance ? Those would be ideal for Sonic CD time travel like... a lot. 

On the other way, I agree with you that the level design is quite shitty, but I would say it´s not as shitty as Marble Zone/Labyrinth Zone/Scrap Brain 3. The zones are much more straightforward, still less than Sonic 2 zones though.

[Almar]

None of the Freedom Fighters and associated characters besides maybe Nicole and Bunnie with Antoine should come back for IDW Sonic. They don't do anything that actually canon characters like Tails, Amy, Blaze, etc. don't or can't.

On the flip-side, they better put in the Egg Bosses since they fill a niche we haven't ever gotten in Sonic (Eggman having a capable and loyal enough team of characters who aren't robot slaves serving him). I could support villains like Naugus or Finitevus with another design maybe coming back too since they're distinct enough from Eggman without overshadowing him with their edginess (see Black Doom and Eggman Nega) and wouldn't be too hard to tweak for what I'm guessing is a comic that's more like the games.

 

[Austroid]

Popular: That SA2B is still a great game overall, despite the trend to hate it in recent times. I love all 3 gameplay styles, the story, the music, the multiplayer, the unlockable goodies, the Chao garden, and hey even the badly-synched dialogue!

Unpopular: I'm not sure if this counts or not, but I really don't like the meme-centric route the franchise has gone recently.

Sure memes can (occasionally) be funny, but when even official stuff is using/acknowledging "Sanic", Snooping as usual (ugh...), the Mania face, Original the character, "& Knuckles", etc. it kinda rubs me the wrong way; like the whole series just a joke now. Add nearly everything the Boom show puts out that pokes at these existing jokes as well as the fanbase, and it just gets a bit irritating after awhile.

Sonic fans get a bad enough rep as it is, we don't need dozens of "lulz internet jokez!" added on top of that.

[Almar]

They've been overcompensating for the backlash against the series that cemented itself in Shadow the Hedgehog. They've reached the point where the characters are self-aware of what they do.

Anyway, the first Sonic Adventure had the tone the series should have stuck with for the most part. For one thing Eggman's a goofball, but nowhere near as pathetic as he is in ShTH or Sonic Heroes.

 

[Zippo]

9 hours ago, PanicPuppet388 said:

Popular: That SA2B is still a great game overall, despite the trend to hate it in recent times. 

This really isn't a "trend", though. The Adventure games have always been criticized and disliked by many gamers, just because content creators weren't around back in the early 2000s doesn't mean people didn't dislike them then. I have not been an Adventure fan since '99, and I know many other people that haven't been either. People like to come up with this absurd theory that people only started to hate the Adventure games when Johnny, Projared, SuperBunnyHop, Jimmy Whetsel and many others gave their critical reviews of them, when it's pure nonsense, and the truth is just that YouTube made it much easier for people to get their opinions out there. Regardless of what some Adventure fans like to tell themselves, the many detractors of the games have been there since day one. People don't criticise the Adventure games because "it's popular or "cool" to do.", people do it because they flat out, aren't good games, at least in our eyes.

[Natie]

Unpopular opinions:

The OVA english dub voices are the best english voices the classic characters have ever had. 

Sonic Adventure 2 is an incredibly badly focused game and I don't know how anyone with a lick of knowledge about game design can defend it.

SatAM Robotnik is generic, uninteresting, and my least favorite portrayal of Eggman.

 

[Ultimate Victory 64]

Popular: Sonic Mania is great

Unpopular: I don't mind linear level design. The only time it every bothered me was in Colors. CD is an example of bad open level design, especially in levels like Wacky Workbench.

Unpopular: I still love SA2 story. Sure people hate it for it being "too" dark and edgy but its so damn memorable. Also because of the characters. None of them are overly serious and boring like they were in 06.

[RedFox99]

Popular: I hope some of the Archie characters now into the new comics. 

Unpopular: I hope the Boom franchise becomes a bit more serious and less meme and meta jokes centric.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 hours ago, Natie said:

 

Sonic Adventure 2 is an incredibly badly focused game and I don't know how anyone with a lick of knowledge about game design can defend it.

Because for starters, a lot of the so called "criticisms" of said game hare vastly overblown to trivial degree, and a lot of its problems in game design are so easy to fix that those who rant on it very easily come off as spiteful.

The game is essentially half of SA1's "genres"-Speed sections, Treasure Hunting, and Shooting, minus the Adventure stage hub zones. And it's "lack of focus" is nothing but a mere switch of said genres per level that can easily be solved by organizing them back to individual characters even within the Hero/Dark story format they went with instead of switching you to a different style of play after you completed a level. Nevermind that whatever problems with the Treasure Hunting and Shooting stages can easily be dealt with by returning whatever lines of code they took out that kept players from finding the closest emerald shards in any order instead of restricting it to the first shard in order, or to make the mechs in the Shooting Stages more lighter and nimble like Gamma in SA1 as opposed to handling like a wonky tank.

If anything, I don't see how anyone with a lick of knowledge about game design would have such a difficult time coming up with such solutions like these if they had such problems with SA2 given that, as much as the impact the experience, they're still simple as fuck to solve generally speaking whenever people lay them out--even with its nuances, the game plays no different from SA1 mechanically speaking, so it shouldn't be that difficult to look compare the coding and design between the games to fix whatever problems there are barring the level design, which is a different matter.

[RedFox99]

I don't enjoy playing SA2B on the PS3 because the controllers are too wanky and slippery for me.

[Zippo]

48 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Because for starters, a lot of the so called "criticisms" of said game hare vastly overblown to trivial degree, and a lot of its problems in game design are so easy to fix that those who rant on it very easily come off as spiteful.

 

No they are not "overblown", at all. Adventure 2 is poorly designed in nearly every aspect. The treasure hunting stages alone are absolutely terrible. They're entirely luck based, the stages are far too big, and are a complete step back from Adventure 1's. The radar system is irritating and awful, and it just screams of Sonic Team wanting to artificially lengthen the game. 

And no, just because you don't agree with people's criticism doesn't mean the game's flaws are "overblown". There are many videos that give fair, constructive criticism of Adventure 2, people have picked the game apart in every aspect and are well within their right to do so.

Also, for someone who has the nerve to call critics of the game "spiteful", condescendingly downplaying people's criticism is not helping your case, at all.

[Dr. Detective]

I still love Adventure 2 and all but its useless getting heated about what people think about it nowadays for me. I've heard all the complaints and even agree with a number of them nowadays but the game is so fucking old.

Constant back and forth anger and sadness over the same stuff people have said about the gaame for over ten years at this point just feels futile.

Perhaps if the conversation were about how its elements could be talked about in a manner that's relevant for what to do going forward, like what going back to the Adventure formula would mean for the series nowadays.Or perhaps a discussion on the evolution of its earlier elements and how things stand today. This goes for both of the Adventure games since in my opinion they're both pretty much on the same level for different reasons, both positive and negative.

But just a conversation on how good or bad it is? I can't be fucked to bother with that anymore.

That might count as an unpopular opinion.

[Wraith]

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Perhaps if the conversation were about how its elements could be talked about in a manner that's relevant for what to do going forward, like what going back to the Adventure formula would mean for the series nowadays.Or perhaps a discussion on the evolution of its earlier elements and how things stand today. This goes for both of the Adventure games since in my opinion they're both pretty much on the same level for different reasons, both positive and negative.

 

 

This got my gears turning for a topic idea. Might be too close to an SA3 topic to be allowed though.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 hours ago, Zippo said:

No they are not "overblown", at all. Adventure 2 is poorly designed in nearly every aspect. The treasure hunting stages alone are absolutely terrible. They're entirely luck based, the stages are far too big, and are a complete step back from Adventure 1's. The radar system is irritating and awful, and it just screams of Sonic Team wanting to artificially lengthen the game. 

And no, just because you don't agree with people's criticism doesn't mean the game's flaws are "overblown". There are many videos that give fair, constructive criticism of Adventure 2, people have picked the game apart in every aspect and are well within their right to do so.

Yes, they are pretty overblown. Primarily through the degree in which those issues regarding things like the treasure hunting radar can be easily be fixed in the way I just explained how in the parts of my post you convieniently omitted whenever these things are pointed out

Even more ironic when I actually agree with the criticisms and flaws presented for the same reasons--I flat out explained some of the same things in the next paragraph.  

But the degree in which a number of people express them to be exaggerated to the extent that they ignore how simple these things can be fixed. The ones that are constructive about it? Good for them--they're not the ones I'm referring too, but the ones that just bash the game to extreme degrees than they actually are.

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Also, for someone who has the nerve to call critics of the game "spiteful", condescendingly downplaying people's criticism is not helping your case, at all.

This actually sounds more like you're trying to make a personal attack out of what I'm saying. I call them "spiteful" mainly for the degree in which some protray SA2 problems in general to the extent they make it sound unplayable, because again I actually pointed out the same problems in my previous post.

 

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This got my gears turning for a topic idea. Might be too close to an SA3 topic to be allowed though.

Sa1/2 Remake/Remaster/Mania?

Not exactly SA3, but I'm just throwing out ideas here.

[MegasonicZX]

SA2 is great but I can see why a lot of people would dislike it. The obvious big one is the genre roulette which (unpopular opinion time) I actually think is worse than the first games because everybody controls noticeably worse than the first game except for sonic/shadow and while you do get used to it I can't deny just how much of a downgrade it is, also even with sonic being the only real "speed" character in SA1, characters like tails, gamma, even amy (when you get her movement down and when to make use of hammer jumps) were all more fun to play as, knuckles is inoffensive and big is the only one that I can definitively say is just bad in the game.

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

This has been said before somewhere by someone, but reiterate it, it really needs to be kept in mind that the Adventures were a product of their time. Few people will argue that they've aged well given the playstyles between the characters can feel like they're a bit too apart from each other, but often I feel like people disregard that more than they should.

Granted, some things like Big's fishing levels were hated from the get go. It'd be a different matter if something like that were more along the lines of a side game than part of the main game.

[Diogenes]

3 hours ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

... and a lot of its problems in game design are so easy to fix that those who rant on it very easily come off as spiteful.

Does that actually matter when it comes to the quality of SA2 itself.

Personally I'm not big on the idea of judging games by what they could have been, but in reality are not.