Why is Sonic Heroes unpopular?

[Plasme]

When I say unpopular, I don't mean everyone hates it, but that there's a general feeling of 'meh' and apathy with it. In many ways, it's a superior game than both Adventure 1 and 2. It focuses on Sonic's gameplay style from Adventure, has more open level design than both Adventure titles, has a classic art style which doesn't just emulate the classic games and invents new interesting level themes, has a serious story without going overboard and has a large focus on Sonic's friends. If Sonic Heroes was announced now, I reckon people would go crazy for it.

It has a lot of flaws obviously. You have to play game four times to unlock the final boss, the controls are terrible, it focuses too much on knocking down health bars and there's a lot of trial and error and bottomless pits. I certainly don't think the game is great.

I dunno, I'm just kind of surprised that it doesn't have more of a cult following.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I mean, to be absolutely frank, this was my very first Sonic game. It's one of my first video games period (at least one of the first games I can remember playing, at least) and yet when I tried to go back to it, I couldn't get on board with it. And honestly, you said it right there and then above:

11 minutes ago, Plasme said:

It has a lot of flaws obviously. You have to play game four times to unlock the final boss, the controls are terrible, it focuses too much on knocking down health bars and there's a lot of trial and error and bottomless pits.

These problems right here are far far far too negative compared to the positives. Sure, it focuses on Sonic's gameplay from Adventure...except the controls is about fifty times more slippery, causing you to feel like you're practically running on ice. The level design itself isn't incredibly good. I can remember a lot of the level layouts, but only because I played the game so often when I was younger. The art-style is nice, but really hit hard by the early PS2 era graphics, especially in terms of the models that would later carry over into other games like Shadow and Riders. The point here is that Heroes does several things decently, but the other elements are done so downright awfully that they're counteracted into an unenjoyable experience.

It also doesn't help that this was very clearly the beginning of SEGA's rushed development and lack of quality control. Originally, Heroes was meant to only release on GameCube and Xbox IIRC, but of course SEGA needed to have it all, so they slapped together a broken PS2 port which led to many framerate issues and bugs with the game. But even then I'd argue that with the GameCube port, it's just so an insane chore to finish the game. Between the bad and slippery controls, the need to finish the game four times, The Chaotix's lackluster missions, the godawful Special Stages needed to finish the game and get the final story, etc. There's too many downsides to a game with only a few upsides. In the end, you've really answered your own question.

[TheOcelot]

Quote

It has a lot of flaws obviously. You have to play game four times to unlock the final boss, the controls are terrible, it focuses too much on knocking down health bars and there's a lot of trial and error and bottomless pits. I certainly don't think the game is great.

Bingo.

THIS is why the game isn't popular. The idea of playing as a team and using different characters to progress was a good concept for Sonic Team to try, but there are just too many flaws which have left a sour taste for a lot of the fanbase. The level design is arguably worse than the Adventure games, aside from the occasional multiple-route, the stages still have a very linear-narrow progression feel to them, and the stages & bosses go on way-too-long.

The graphics aren't that impressive either and the slippery controls are a nightmare. I find Heroes very boring. Even the soundtrack is average. I guess the story is passable but the dialogue at times is embarrassingly poor.

I own the rubbish PS2 port, not that the other versions are much better. It's just a chore to play through.

Also, there's the development hell it went through. Staff were taken ill due to being overworked. Iizuka-san had to design the last few stages all by himself etc.

 

The fact that Heroes hasn't been re-released in the last 10 years (the EU PSN release of the PS2 version doesn't count) unlike the Adventure games pretty much confirms SEGA have little faith in releasing it again.

[DabigRG]

Is it really unpopular?

35 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I mean, to be absolutely frank, this was my very first Sonic game. It's one of my first video games period (at least one of the first games I can remember playing, at least)

Same here. And think I remember reading that that was the intent.

[NegaMix]

On top of the flaws already noted, there's at least one more that I think severely impacts the game's replayability value: The various levels of "difficulty" for each team.

Having Team Rose go through an arguably manageable 3-5 minute long version of a stage, only for Team Sonic and Team Dark to be stuck going through extended versions that can take anywhere between 6-10 minutes (if you're good) is ridiculous! And then there's Team Chaotix's glorified Mission Mode, which has its own share of tedious stages.

It can make players feel far less inclined to replay stages as certain teams, especially when you have to also collect the Chaos Emeralds in each "zone" to unlock the true final boss.

It makes me wish that they'd just made it one singular story, where certain teams go through certain stages (and all of them based on Team Rose's stage length, at the very least) with the option to revisit those stages as any Team later on.

[SaturnWolf]

1 hour ago, Plasme said:

It has a lot of flaws obviously. You have to play game four times to unlock the final boss, the controls are terrible, it focuses too much on knocking down health bars and there's a lot of trial and error and bottomless pits.

Well, there you go. The game isn't particularly popular because of bad parts far outweigh the good parts, as good as they may be. When you think of Sonic, gameplay that amounts to "Trapped in a room/hallway, and the door that leads to where you need to go won't open until you kill all the enemies in the room" isn't what you want to do.

The only story that actually matters at all is Team Dark's story, which establishes that 1) Shadow is still alive, 2) Eggman has Shadow Androids and a lot of them, 3) This Shadow could be an Android, and 4) Shadow has amnesia and can't remember anything. But none of these go anywhere at all in this story, the Shadow Android in the cutscene after Egg Albatross comes out of fucking nowhere and isn't anywhere to be seen in the actual fight. None of this actually even matters until the next game, which...yeah.

And at a certain point, replaying the game just gets monotonous, especially when the differences in stages is negligible. "Okay, imagine playing this stage again, but with TWO MORE Egg Pawns on that platform over there! And imagine if there was one less Item Bubble to give you Rings!" That's not fun. That's a tedious chore.

[Tori Himemiya]

Its a combination of a forced gimmick, odd controls, and repetition makes it not as popular as the Adventure series. I think everyone was hoping to play these characters solo, not as a big totem pole that slows down the game just to get past a big vertical ceiling.

I might as well add in a few points others haven't brought up yet. The story for one is scaled back pretty bit from the Adventure games. The story is more lighthearted where its just a typical Sonic vs Eggman conflict because the latter wants to take over the world, again. The other stories aren't as complicated either since they're motivated by one thing. However one of the big issues is that Shadow is back which some people feel like negated his big sacrifice in SA2 and didn't go well over them. Its just not as "epic" as those games to say the least.

Another issue I could think of that turns people off a lot is the Chaos Emeralds. The Chaos Emeralds are back and now you have to get them again to get the true ending. However the only way to get them is by grabbing a secret key and keeping it onto for the whole stage. If you get hit once, bye bye key! Nice knowing you! There are multiple keys but even then there's stretches of level between them, to the point where you can miss them. Not only that but the special stages aren't as good because its just grab balls to go fast to get the Emerald. It makes an already repetitive game more grindy.

And I guess the last thing related to the above point is that yes it is grindy as hell. Yes I keep mentioning the repetition but it is a major issue I think because you go through the same 12 stages or so 4 times with minor changes to them. I think the special mention is the Chaotix who are the most grindy of the teams since they have special missions to do that aren't "go to the goal ring" all the time. There are some levels that make you go "just why?" The biggest example is the haunted mansion level where you have to blow out all of the torches by using Espio's tornado move. Every.Single.TIME. Needless to say it gets very tedious at times. Not to say that the characters themselves are bad because they're pretty fun characters but its just there had to be some way to justify their gameplay by trying to make it "different" from the others and it doesn't work in this kind of game.

Heroes was just another game filled to the brim with experimentation and experimentation doesn't always mean success. Yes it has more consistent gameplay but it just doesn't do things different enough from itself to make it noteworthy and I think people wanted more from it. That's what I can understand for the most part.

[BlueFlare]

What @TheOcelot said. That sums it up really well.

I think I 100% completed Heroes for once and didn't want to go back to it ever again.

[Mr Loopone]

While I personally didn't like the game and nearly put me off the series so naturally it is going to sound negative, it does have a lot of issues. It was buggy with the special stages being a big point, it was glitchy so sometimes you died at no fault on your own, the controls especially the PAL versions were awful due to a bug where sometimes you did your homing attack instead of jumping, it had a lot of stop and start level design while you took out the Egg Pawns building up the meter then do your Team Attack to progress making the levels longer than they should. The team based gameplay had its restrictions where you had to switch character just to get through the level without much different paths, probably two or three at most alternative routes that are similar. So Tails can't always fly, Sonic doesn't get much use of his spin attack, Knuckles doesn't even glide and the same can be said for their other team counterparts. What people already mentioned of finishing the game 4 times to complete it all difficulty based.

When the game does get creative with its designs, it technically lets it down by those bugs and glitches looking outdated compared to its competition. Not due to the engine either because RenderWare was used in a lot of games (with the Burnout games being the highlight on what it can do). The difference between Heroes and 06 is that 06 was so buggy, glitchy and unfinished that it attracts people to the game as a bad game for some reason while with Heroes, it isn't enough to attract people.

Even when the game came out people complained about the glossy graphics, the obnoxious voice acting [that can be removed on the PC release but not the console versions], the lines that the characters said and compared to the Adventure games their characterisations became more flanderised such as Amy the stalker or too kool for skool Shadow as well as the handling of a certain Sonic rival. The large focus on Sonic's friends started that "Sonic's shitty friends" meme that people latched on to for years.

The plus points about the game aren't enough to offset the problems that the game has. It's just not fun to play or replay.

As for its unpopularity... Just because something sold a lot back in the day and got high scores doesn't mean that there are much memories looking back, it's like sports games they play them but don't look back to play them in the future. Sonic Heroes did sell pretty well on all 3 of the consoles and even made it to its budget range on all 3 too. Now there are going to be people who have played it as their first Sonic game (usually its rubbish PS2 port or the Gamecube version) so there are going to have some nostalgia of the game however there aren't enough people willing to say re-buy the game unlike a PC version of Unleashed.

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, Crow the BOOLET said:

. I think the special mention is the Chaotix who are the most grindy of the teams since they have special missions to do that aren't "go to the goal ring" all the time. There are some levels that make you "just why?" The biggest example is the haunted mansion level where you have to blow out all of the torches by using Espio's tornado move. Every.Single.TIME. Needless to say it gets very tedious at times.

Aaah man, I forgot about that SHIT!

What doesn't help is that Vector could actually relight the things if you attack near them.

18 minutes ago, Mr Loopone said:

Knuckles doesn't even glide 

Knuckles could glide, he just couldn't climb walls.

[MetalSkulkBane]

1) The controls. Games are made of many pieces, but controls are (arguably) the most important part, especially in fast 3D platformed.

2) I Remember playing it first time. I Went zone 1 as Team Sonic, then zone 1 as Dark, then 1 zone as Team Rose...boy that was a mistake.

[Celestia]

I like a lot of things about the game--aesthetics (character models aside), the team mechanic, even the level design for the most part, etc.--but actually playing it is a nightmare. For years I had fond memories of it. Went back to it this year and, I swear...after the first couple stages things went downhill immediately due to how inherently janky the game is. Around the halfway point of just playing Team Sonic's stages I realized I had started to skip each act because inevitably some bullshit would happen multiple times and I'd just give up. I expected to hate the casino levels because even as a kid I thought they were terrible but everything else surprised me.

Also this was the moment rolling / momentum physics were killed entirely so I mean it has that...fun little fact hanging over it.

So in response to the OP's assertion that Sonic Heroes isn't necessarily hated: it should be! Seriously though, it's just not that good. There's no mystery as to why it's unpopular.

[MegasonicZX]

Man even as a big fan of this game (probably my favorite one along with unleashed) I can't deny all the flaws the game has. If I wasn't such a big fan of the series and if I hadn't played it growing up I probably wouldn't be able to enjoy the game nearly as much if I played it today. I do wish, however, that sonic team would revisit the concept again since I think having the characters in groups is a cool idea, it just had poor execution this go round.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Heh, I remember being bored by the repetition even before I realized I have to replay the entire game with each team over and over.

Darn shame. The idea of having a more light, more focused and clean game after the epic but very cluttered Sonic Adventures was a neat idea, but it seems Sonic Team had no idea how to fill their stages with anything interesting. Especially compared with SA1 that jampacked it's level with so many surprises and twists. The visuals are nice, tough. Altough used badly sometimes. I love how the city skyline of Metropolis looks like, but then most of the stage just takes place in endless boring green rooms all the time. Hmm.
But yeah, I mostly remember the game just being empty and very copy paste- ey.
 

8 minutes ago, MegasonicZX said:

 I do wish, however, that sonic team would revisit the concept again since I think having the characters in groups is a cool idea, it just had poor execution this go round.

They kinda did with Sonic advance 3 I guess, which was also received poorly (Tough not for the Teamwork aspect I think)
And Sonic Heroes' "Cast is constantly discussing the story/ level with each other during gameplay" schtick was revisited in Sonic Forces.
And I suppose Team Sonic racing it revisiting the concept to a degree again. We'll see how that ends. So at least Sonic Team's still experimenting with the idea from time to time.


One thing that surprised me about Sonic Heroes, I was checking wikipedia out of curiousity to see if it had considerable less development time then the Sonic Adventure games.
But they say it's the opposite.
SA1 had 10 months, SA2 had 18 months and Heroes had 20 months of development time according to Wikipedia...
Weird, you think with double the development time as Sonic Adventure and only one gameplay style to focus on, it should end up better.
Then again, looking at the endcredits, seems SA1 had 3 times more staff programming and designing the game then Heroes.
Altough SA2 seems roughly the same size team as Heroes.
And maybe Wikipedia is wrong. Can't find any other sources for development time.
There's more then 10 months between Sonic Jam and Sonic Adventure 1, so if Sonic Jam's 3d level was an early prototype, then it's been brewing way longer.

[Phos]

I remember Sonic Heroes being a combination of the more derisive descriptors of SA2 only you keep stopping to do really boring combat from the tutorial of a ratchet and clank game.  Then you fall off the level because they couldn't figure out how to make it hard otherwise.  It's kinda just boring.  

[Dr. Detective]

Yeah. I can't deny it's flaws even as someone who considers it in their top 3 favorite games of the franchise. It and SA2:B are the reason i'm a Sonic fan. And I grew up with the PS2 version. It wasn't until I was a teen with some money that I finally got my hands on the Gamecube one and the magic I felt witnessing the red water in the tubes of the Power Plant actually move was amazing. I didn't even know that it was supposed to be liquid. It just looked like a solid red texture in the PS2 version.

 I owe the game so much. It introduced me to Omega. It introduced me to the Chaotix. It was the first time I felt breath-taking excitement falling from great heights in Egg Fleet and immersive danger running through Hang Castle. The music enchanted me. I didn't mind playing through it four times because when I lost my lives as a team I moved over to a different one and picked up where I left off and every team me and my brother beat was a bit of a triumph. The final boss just ended up being a nice surprise for us. We were kids though.

Nowadays, I'm familiar with the controls so despite recognizing that they shouldn't be as bad as they are I'm able to move with it fine.

I wouldn't say it's outright unpopular. It seems to be the only 3D Sonic game I can bring up out in public where I live that'll have people reacting towards it with fondness as well. I've even caught a few of my co-workers singing the Heroes theme. Shocked the hell outta me. However, it's definitely not popular either. 

I don't expect it to be all-around well-loved the way it is. Even I had problems with the story as a kid. Contrary to popular belief, I don't agree that only one or two teams had things in it that mattered. I think all of them did. They just weren't all explored as well as they should have been, which points towards a drop in story-telling rather than it just being an empty story.

Hearing and seeing the hatred it has does make me feel sad, I'll admit that, but I don't have any desire to argue against it because I agree with a lot of the negative talking points even if I'm able to handle the game fine. I go back to Heroes so often it'd be disingenuous to say that I have any genuine dislike for it.

However, I'd be all for a remake. I'd be all over that shit. 

And to be honest, I don't feel like they've neglected Heroes either. They seem very comfortable bringing it up and re-using levels and music from it. The amount of times Seaside Hill has been used for something almost mirrors the amount of times Green Hill has. It doesn't get as much love as the first two Adventures but again, that's for a reason. It sold a lot too so that might be another reason they pay it a bit more attention than something like Unleashed, which, I think they've outright blacklisted. The jerks.

But whatever. We can't change the past. The game is what it is and it's been what it is for 15 years now. 

REMAKE.

REEEEEEMAKE!

[Plasme]

It's been really interesting reading your responses! I actually don't really like the game myself, I just wanted to see what everyone's opinion would be.

[DabigRG]

13 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It sold a lot too so that might be another reason they pay it a bit more attention than something like Unleashed, which, I think they've outright blacklisted.

...Wait, what?!

 

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

...Wait, what?!

Actually nevermind.

Back in October 2010, the news came out that they were delisting Sonic games that didn't have good enough scores for their liking as a way to "increase the value of the brand" as though that would somehow erase people's memories of their recent output. However, Unleashed came back on X-BOX on demand back in 2013. And Sonic 06 didn't really end up "delisted"  either. 

It might just be one of those things they said they were gonna do but didn't. 

[DabigRG]

1 minute ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Actually nevermind.

Back in October 2010, the news came out that they were delisting Sonic games that didn't have good enough scores for their liking as a way to "increase the value of the brand" as though that would somehow erase people's memories of their recent output. However, Unleashed came back on X-BOX on demand back in 2013. And Sonic 06 didn't really end up "delisted"  either. 

It might just be one of those things they said they were gonna do but didn't. 

That'd be the easiest way of going about it.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

That'd be the easiest way of going about it.

It'd be completely useless though. Especially nowadays. 

I wish the games I liked were better than they are.

I hate having to talk about my love for Heroes (and Unleashed) by clarifying it with flavor text about how I'm very aware of their flaws.

 

 

 

[Wraith]

I think it's one of the games that get hit the hardest once you experience a wider range of games and start really think about what you're playing. 

Imagine treading the dangerous but kind of interesting idea of letting the player switch between Sonic Tails and Knuckles on the fly but falling into every game design pitfall imaginable. Linear level design combines with shallow abilities that have been nerfed from the Adventure games into the ground to create the ultimate case of linear square block in square hole obstacle design. You use the same abilities in the same way over and over again across the entire game because they aren't built with the range of anything else. The game's idea of taking the training wheels off is putting in less of those switch gates that literally press the button to switch characters for you.  The spindash from Sonic Adventure has been replaced by the rocket accel ability which combines the worst of the SA1 spindash with the SA2 one. It's flimsy, slow to charge and underwhelming when it finally let it loose like my personality. Knuckles's glide and wall climb have had their wings clipped so aggressively that glide is used to take advantage of wind currents and only that. It's use to cross horizontal gaps has been gutted so you use the more context sensitive triangle jump instead and climbing walls has been removed entirely because straying from the path Omochao intended is a terrible thing, my child. These abilities don't change at all over the course of the game unlike the level up items in the Adventure games. Instead, you "level up" your characters in a stage to access some basic quality of life stuff like the homing attack one shotting enemies like it's supposed to and an area-of-effect attack for your power character that helps you deal with the robots that surround you. You'll be doing the same shit again though because it doesn't stick stage to stage.

The controls have lost all sense of friction and physics and now feel like trying to play Sonic R with boxing gloves on. This combines with the fact that the hallway level design comes with the asterisk that the hallways don't have walls and are suspended thousands of feet in the air. The type of level design that only Sonic Adventure 2's more questionable levels had is now the name of the game, and even the likes of Final Rush and Chase use vertical space and cluster objects together more to give you opportunities to make decisions and take shortcuts. Sonic Heroes dripfeeds you obstacle after obstacle that you're supposed to have a mostly binary response to. You can mismatch abilities with obstacles to take cheeky shortcuts or abuse checkpoints to level up Sonic and clean out the badnik mobs with ease, but this isn't actually all that fun. It's more like when your math teacher teaches you a "fun" short cut and math is interesting for like 3 minutes before the shortcut gets boring.

The poor controls and abilities are disguised somewhat by the fact that there isn't much in the way of actual platforming in this game. Sonic Team seemed to have sensed on some level that the controls don't work and chose to lean on straightaways, rail grindings, "obstacles" and level gimmicks where you just toss out the right ability to progress, and  pseudo beat em up stages where you mash the B button to clear out waves of robots so the door in front of you opens. Almost everything in the game deliberately feels like it's here to drag out play-time rather than be interesting or fun. Fuck the rolling physics being gone: we've reached the antithesis of what Classic Sonic is all about at this point. It's a far cry from the Adventure games which are already a far cry from the classic games in terms of sheer game design. 

Now I'll fully admit that some Sonic games will survive incompetence like this by how much fun the "ride" is for me. The story and the aesthetic in the game can take you on a journey all on their own. The Adventure games aren't particularly amazing stories but they're interesting enough to want to see through. Sonic Heroes pretty much has nothing going on. Each team is given a simple, almost classic-esqe goal but the game cares even less than those do about contextualizing what's going on There's an initial attempt to bridge two level sets together that they kind of say "fuck it" on later on. There are barely any cutscenes so the conversations have moved to the gameplay instead. I've gone back and forth on this but I've decided this is a bad call since if I don't feel like watching Sonic and Shadow flirt this time I can just skip it. If you happen to be annoyed by Sonic and friends you are absolutely shit out of luck this time, and the narrative has no merits or interesting ideas to make me want to back it up on any level. You just have the dialogue and voice direction to work with. Everyone's favorite parts of the Sonic series. 

It's a mess. I revisited it earlier this year because I was in a Sonic mood and my SA2 disc was missing. I wasn't even really expecting much: I replayed Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Adventure  last year and enjoyed myself, so I was low-balling it so hard that i was rolling it across the floor to begin with. It might be the more "consistent" game but it's worse in pretty much every way that actually counts. I walked away almost convinced it was the worst mainline Sonic released. 

 

Spoiler

 

....Almost. Sorry Lost World and Forces but this soundtrack Fucking SLAPS.
 

 

I don't know why Sound Jesus blessed the team for this piece of shit specifically but gah damn. Gah damn. I don't even mind when Heroes shit comes back like most people because I'll be damned if these melodies ever go away forever. I don't even care that Jun reheated this shit for Generations. Give me my 10 year old leftovers please. Why isn't Ocean Palace the National Anthem? FUCK TRUMP NAOFUMI HAYATA 2020 

 

cough. 

it's unpopular because it kinda sucks

[DabigRG]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

It'd be completely useless though. Especially nowadays. 

 

 

I know. It's basically just saying whatever they think will make people feel better. Even if the subject is generally irrelevant or not that big a deal anyway.

7 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 I wish the games I liked were better than they are.

I hate having to talk about my love for Heroes (and Unleashed) by clarifying it with flavor text about how I'm very aware of their flaws.

 

 

 

I think many could say something somethin

[Indigo Rush]

My take. Heroes has a lot of charm and it's simple presentation is absolutely a strength, it's general aesthetic; colorful, energetic and light-hearted; is what I love about Sonic, so I commend it for that. Focusing on one core gameplay style is also a positive, and less emphasis on story helps things a lot. 

But it's absolutely a nightmare to actively play. It's simply not fun. The controls are awkward, ubreliable and slippery, the pacing is frustratingly uneven, and it doesn't have that sense of flow that makes Sonic gameplay shine. It's just not my jam, and I feel like it was a huge step down from Adventures 1 and 2, and despite the whole genre-roulette argument, I'd rather play those since I can depend on the collision detection. It's predictable, it can be mastered and it's generally easier to control. Not Heroes. 

I simply don't love Heroes as a game, which is a big problem for a... game.

[Scar]

In the same way that SA1 and SA2, it captured the imagination of a bunch of young kids who were experiencing Sonic for the first time. The Gamecube editions of SA1 and SA2 came out not long before Heroes, so people I guess were hyped for the next game to come off the press. And when it did, it had some cool level tropes (Grand Metropolis, Rail Canyon, Hang Castle, Egg Fleet), but it never lived up to the potential of those concepts.

While I played it endlessly as it was one of the very few PS2 (pray4me) games I owned, I think I must have recognised how bad it was cause the later levels frustrated the fuck out of me with their length and endless bottomless pits. The special stages were so bad, that I basically gave up all pretences of actually trying to complete the game.