One Hit Wonders

[Tornado]

I thought this topic was going to be about puzzle bosses a la Sonic CD.

[Vertekins]

Wait...this topic also goes for least favorite one-time characters?

 

Gotta bring up the most inept Sonic villain of them all then - Mephiles.

 

Oh good God... is there anything good about this character? I mean anything at all? As a villain or a character in general? Because I certain as hell can't see it.

 

I strongly dislike Mephiles because he’s a exceptionally bad portrayal of a manipulative type of villain who is neither clever nor characterized well in regards to what he does and who’s insanely stupid plan degenerates other characters into uncharacteristic dumbasses to get it to work. In addition, his design is extremely uninspired and his personality is pure generic evil guy. He is without a doubt in my mind the most overrated Sonic villain of them all as well.

 

It didn’t help that the writers were clearly fixated on making Mephiles an intelligent character who could wrap everyone around his finger and failed spectacularly because they didn’t have the actual writing/plotting ability to make it convincing in the least. The story and character actions revolve on being completely idiotic to cater to Mephiles’ fundamentally broken plan. And that’s not how a plot or characters work in a good narrative.

 

If I were to break-down what makes Mephiles’ plan so amazingly stupid and the character no way deserving of the praise often put upon him then it'd have to go like this...

 

Elise’s death would cause the release of Iblis as proven by the news report Tails finds 200 years later about the origin of the Flames of Disaster? Don’t mark her out for execution so you can make use of said sealed evil in a can with the click of a finger. Nooooo. Kill her friend instead!

Friend’s death would cause the above? Get a dumbass to attempt to do your dirty work for you! It’s how do you say….”Insidious” regardless of all rationality having to be thrown out the window in order to be as such.

Have the ability to warp every Chaos Emerald to your side immediately regardless of whether or not they ever factored into the story (I’m looking at you red Chaos Emerald!)? Go around looking for them instead! Convenient powers are sooo boring!

Finally transformed into Solaris with the Emeralds? Scatter those blasted rocks around Soleanna! That’s totally not going to come back and bite you in the ass!…Oh wait…. your enemies have the opportunity can collect them, resurrect your victim with them and hoist you by your own petard, even ultimately succeeding at utterly wiping you out of existence!

Truly the sign of a good, competent villain amirite guyz?[/sarcasm]

 

He’s “awesome” and “diabolical” because he’s been the only character who succeeded in killing Sonic? “Insidious” and “clever” because his plan somewhat worked?…No.

 

Anyone can distract someone long enough to shank them with a long pointy thing. It’s cowardly, underwhelming and completely needless in the first place when you consider that he never needed to murder Sonic to get access to Iblis in it’s flame form as death of it’s vessel leads to it’s release i.e He could’ve killed Elise at any point and voila! Instant flames of disaster to merge with in order to exact revenge.

 

Some have argued that he targeted Sonic specifically because he was sadistic and took glee in killing and basking in Elises’ sorrow but this is never even made explicitly so at any point, which utterly undermines it as one of Mephiles’ goals. And even if that was the case, it’s still no solid justification for not having took the more prudent course of action in the first place. Whatsmore, it was completely degrading to Sonic as well. I mean, this is a guy who escaped exploding space stations twice, saved the world from another space station that was otherwise destined to impact it, escaped a death trap by sheer determination when all other hope was lost, took out an enraged leviathan that had drowned an entire city and managed to restore it to it’s original benevolent form through sheer determination amongst many other instances of heroism and competence. And yet all you have to do to kill him is distract him with a shiny thing and then LAZOR? Just….no. They didn’t even do Sonic the dignity of even knowing his killer or giving him the opportunity to shine for once in this travesty by having him at least jump in Elise’s way or something if Mephiles aimed at her first knowing Sonic would do so. That’d give both him and Mephiles some actual dimension to an extent - Sonic being selfless and Mephiles being a bastard.

 

In addition, his plan is not as insidious and clever as it’s made out to be when, as stated, characters act like utter idiots to facilitate it and when that level of complexity was never required in the first place if Mephiles was truly intelligent and diabolical. Intelligence and evilness is not just measured by the actions you take to get to your goals, it can also be measured by your determination, efficiency and what the ultimate goal actually is. Mephiles doesn’t do anything of particular noteworthiness in the evil stakes other than try to rally Shadow to his side through lies. And even there he still fails and is continuously rendered as Shadow’s whipping boy.

 

Speaking of goal, destroying the fabric of existence in revenge always came off to me as a ridiculous one. This is something I'd expect from a generic mindless eldritch abomination, not a sadistic and intelligent villain.

 

[LewiisD]

Mephiles is my favourite villain besides eggman(gotta love the big egg), simply because, he's the most demonic and creepiest villain in the sonic series, and hello!? HE IS THE ONLY VILLAIN WHO KILLS SONIC ever!!

He is surely one of the best villains

I like his personality and I think he is quite smart as he manages to manipulate silver.

I also like how he has no trouble killing sonic unlike every other villain. He just blast him, pretty much just gets shit done.

Eh Tikal is ok-ish, not really interesting, I only like how she tells what happened to the echidnas.

Chip is ok- ish too but his voice got annoying.

[Amomynous]

When it comes to my favorite "One Hit Wonder" character in the Sonic series, Caliburn comes to mind.

Caliburn is a really unique Sonic character, full of personality. As much as I love Sonic, he is really a sarcastic and snarky somebody at times, and Caliburn basically gave him a taste of his own medicine having no tolerance for Sonic's carefree attitude and nonsense, which I loved to see. Caliburn's insults are "Fool", "Knave", "Squire" and that he lacks PROPER fighting skills towards Sonic was just a sample of Caliburn dishing the snark back at Sonic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSJMwGW4QM4

Sonic and Caliburn's dynamics and banter toward one another were pure gold, full of entertainment. From the cutscenes to the in-level dialogue, they go from butting heads in the beginning of Sonic and the Black Knight constantly to warming up to each other, seeing eye to eye and working together; it was great to see their rapport progress to the point that it was amicable between Sonic and Caliburn and they gradually became friends.

 

My favourite is Caliburn, he's a sword that talks and has quite the mouth, him and Sonic bounce of each other fantastically with their verbal battles even as they become firm friends, they both have quite the egos and it was fun seeing them trying to know the other down a peg.

[Adorkable]

I think a lot of those are self explanatory as to why they haven't returned. I would love to see Tikal make a return though!

However, Mephiles is a character I would really like to see make a return. Mephiles was really the only villain to ever actually kill Sonic, and I think that's about as badass as it can get. Since '06 was erased at the end, that gives SEGA room to give him a second shot, right? I mean, they could really make a monster out of him, even more than he was in '06. Hey, that could be a boss powerful enough to require a re-birth of Hyper Sonic, eh? I think it would be an interesting idea.

[Splash the Otter]

I think a lot of those are self explanatory as to why they haven't returned. I would love to see Tikal make a return though!

However, Mephiles is a character I would really like to see make a return. Mephiles was really the only villain to ever actually kill Sonic, and I think that's about as badass as it can get. Since '06 was erased at the end, that gives SEGA room to give him a second shot, right? I mean, they could really make a monster out of him, even more than he was in '06. Hey, that could be a boss powerful enough to require a re-birth of Hyper Sonic, eh? I think it would be an interesting idea.

I'm not sure how that would work though, since Mephiles can only exist in a timeline where Solaris' sacred flame wasn't put out. Then again, maybe they could retcon his origin...

[Adorkable]

I'm not sure how that would work though, since Mephiles can only exist in a timeline where Solaris' sacred flame wasn't put out. Then again, maybe they could retcon his origin...

Ah, I never thought of that, but I guess it's the same thing.

 

EDIT: Oh, but I guess they could always do that thing with being born from the negative energy of the Chaos Emeralds, huh?

[Letters From Sonic]

I thought Chip from the game Sonic Unleashed was a very good sidekick for sonic cause he was very charming and sweet & Elise wasn't that bad for me either, I like all of the Sonic characters & even the one hit wonders too.

[Guest]

The talking sword from Sonic and the black knight was my favorite. He almost had the same personality as Sonic did.