Is Jirard (The Completionist) right about Forces’ endgame?

[Whatever the WhoCares]

For those who don’t know, The Completionist made a Sonic Forces episode, where he basically echoed this forum’s consensus regarding level design, story, and (lack of) gameplay. However, one thing got me intrigued: he insisted that going back for the collectables breathes life into stages and makes them more engaging than they were the first time through. 

What are your thoughts on this take? I really hadn’t considered the possibility, but on the other hand I find some of those red rings more frustrating than anything. 

[Blue Wisp]

The Red Rings, Numbers and Silver Medals? 

I mean. I guess. I 100% Forces back when it released and the hunt for those things was refreshing a bit. Mostly to explore the levels, especially Classic and the Avatar stages which had quite some alternate paths. 

But fuck those Ring achievements. God that was grindy as shit.

[Diogenes]

I haven't played the game so I can only speak secondhand on this but from what I've seen the collectables look boring as fuck, the rewards seem lame, and it reeks of the cheapest padding. If I don't enjoy running through the game the first time, I can't imagine enjoying it much more looking for 5 special rings 3 different times per level.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

As someone who did 100% Forces and has the platinum to prove it. Dear lord no. 

S-Ranking the missions and getting the collectables, I'll admit was fun. I liked exploring the levels as limited as they were with exception to Classic Sonic's gameplay. However, the missions are absolute shit and some of the downright most frustrating parts of Sonic Forces. The speed-run missions are badly timed and have literally no room for error, especially with Classic's janky physics and speed being complete trash, and it doesn't take into account QTEs, which means your time is going to be further screwed over by the likes of the QTE at the end of Egg Gate and Luminous Forest unless you just spam X so it ends ASAP. 

The ring and enemy grinding missions were absolute shit as well.  

[Indigo Rush]

It sounds like a matter of taste. Jirard's whole schtick is completing games to the absolute limit, so that might factor into his enjoyment. In fairness, the game does keep giving you incentives for completing missions, and that may be enough to drive someone to keep playing. I personally wouldn't bother. Then again, I haven't even bothered to play it at all. 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

"Is this guy's opinion wrong?"

Personally, it's not really worth it, but I'd hardly call it any worse than just playing the stage again. Forces in general is a pretty average game, but the bite-sized stages actually work to the benefit of completionism, as it's never much pain to replay them to find stuff you missed. All the extra rings seem pretty easy to get, and the game showers you with collectibles as-is, so it's not much of a challenge even if it is a bit time-consuming. It seems like the same sort of principle as MMORPGs to me, where the satisfaction is in seeing numbers go up and requirements being met. That doesn't appeal to me, but I know it does to plenty. Whether it's a good use of the system...I dunno, not sure what else they could have done given the game's relatively narrow scope of different gameplay mechanics. It's not like doing any of it is actually required to see all the content in the game, so I never really understood the idea of complaining about it. I'm used to seeing sarcastic steam games all the time that have achievements like leaving the game running for eight hours, or hell, not playing it for five years.

The rest of Jirard's video is pretty great, though. 

[Sega DogTagz]

I felt like some of the "do this X number of times" missions were a bit buggy, but the vast majority of the missions and extra content do add a little bit of enjoyment.

 

Those of us in the camp that disliked the low difficulty threshold that the game rolls at your feet would find the time trail missions a godsend. Some of them can be downright brutal in what they ask you to clock in. It takes a fair amount of skill to whittle down your runs to that perfect flow and while it never reaches Unleashed's level of speedrunning bliss, it does give you that twinge of satisfaction.

The extra medals are also well implemented. While the red star rings are more of an easter egg hunt, encouraging you to branch out on each path to find them, the number rings are aligned to give you a short platforming challenge mid level and the moon medals are essentially micro-challenges that push you to preform some of the stages more technical areas while at top speed. That's from someone actually sitting down and getting creative about how they were placed.

 

Sonic games are all too often starved of content. Forces post game at least helps to extend it out a bit.

 

As someone who is very down on Forces gameplay, Speed-running Mortar Canyon is a total blast.

[McGroose]

Not at all. If the level design itself is too mediocre to warrant me coming back and playing the game again in the first place, combined with all of the other various problems the game has, why would I bother wasting my time doing what is essentially a scavenger hunt through an already unenjoyable experience?

[blueblur98]

6 minutes ago, McGroose said:

the level design itself is too mediocre

 

6 minutes ago, McGroose said:

all of the other various problems the game has

 

7 minutes ago, McGroose said:

an already enjoyable experience

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was that a typo?

[McGroose]

11 minutes ago, blueblur98 said:

 

 

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was that a typo?

Whoops. Thanks for catching that.

[Korke]

I had no will nor feeling to revisit levels once I finished. Just uninstalled when I was done.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Probably depends on your state of mind. I wanted to like Forces and those hunts were kinda fun for me. Some read rings were well hidden, some Moon Rings were finally a challenge (of course few were a complete pain) and I wanted to unlock all the gear for Avatar.

I am kinda annoyed that daily bonus ruined any challenge in getting S-ranks. Only Shadow stages forced me to play them perfectly. And with their 2-minute length, getting S-ranks was hard, but actually do-able and satisfying. (Then again, F%@# Classic Sonic's last mission and few bosses battles)

So I'll say cautiously yes. But if you didn't like the game, this won't change your mind. May event cement your negative opinion.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Yeah, I tried going back to get more red rings, and I actually found the shorter length to make collecting things HARDER. Every hundred feet is another red ring, making them much easier to miss by not seeing them or just happening to choose the wrong path. 

[MetalSkulkBane]

6 minutes ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

Yeah, I tried going back to get more red rings, and I actually found the shorter length to make collecting things HARDER. Every hundred feet is another red ring, making them much easier to miss by not seeing them or just happening to choose the wrong path. 

What stops you from replaying the 2-minute long level? It's definitely easier than looking for Sun Medals in Unleashed.

[JezMM]

As someone who tolerated Forces, I found myself very much relating to Jirard's experience actually.  While I enjoyed my first playthrough due to the aesthetic, music and story content, I could FEEL how easy and bland the stages were in my bones and how they weren't going to make me want to come back to them.

But... I 100%'d the game regardless.  I love Sonic but 100%ing titles isn't always a sure thing I'll do.  Have never bothered to do SA1, Heroes or Lost World for example (out of the titles that are generally percieved as being fun enough to play, obviously have never done 2006 etc lol).  I'd say the Red Rings were probably the most annoying part since they could be anywhere, I'm sure I needed to look up a video or two at some point.

I also found the time attacks to be mostly fine, with a few bosses being cruelly perfection requiring (and making you experiment to find out which wispon cheeses the boss in seconds rather than just letting you use the one you like most).  The stage ones are fairly reasonable once you have learned the fastest route through the stage.

Some of the grindy missions that Jirard complained about, like maxing out all seven avatar species, are a non-issue.  If you're going for 100% completion, as long as you make the next avatar as soon as you've maxed the current one, you'll max out seven on your journey to 100% no problem.

Only the ring-collecting one required actual real grinding to get done.  I had to put in about 2 hours of repeatedly playing Prison Hall as a Wolf to top myself up towards the end of my 100% run.

 

My only HUGE gripe with the experience was regarding the collectable rings - they should've just all been accessible from the start.  Having to play scavenger hunt three times over on every stage did get a bit annoying after a while just due to how unnecessary it was.  If the red, number and silver moon rings were all on every stage to begin with, it'd increase the odds of you finding them through natural exploration, rather than having to remember which routes you've already searched for which ring-type over and over ("wait did I check the upper-middle route for moon rings or was that during my search for number rings... uhh..." etc).

It'd also have made the first runthrough of the stages more fun since if you came across the number/moon rings you'd slow down and get to enjoy a little extra challenge as part of the main experience.

[Red Hot Jack]

I thought the real endgame of Forces was the Sonic X Avatar ship?

[RedFox99]

I liked his analysis of the story as too me it felt fair as he pointed the good idea behind it, but how the execution was lacking. 

Was surprised to find that he ended up liking the game.