How would you rank the difficulty ?

[DaMan]

I always thought that sonic was sorta easy with some exceptions but how would you rank the mainline Sonic games difficultly ? This includes all eras.

P.S this doesn’t include any hard modes or stages like SA2 or something like that. Just the main stories.

[LunchPolice]

I personally had the most trouble with Sonic 1 & 2 - especially those ringless boss fights at the end of 2. No saving is pretty rough!

[batson]

2 hours ago, LunchPolice said:

I personally had the most trouble with Sonic 1 & 2 - especially those ringless boss fights at the end of 2. No saving is pretty rough!

I agree. The end of Sonic 2 is probably the most difficulty I've had with a Sonic game.

In general though, I find that Sonic games tend to not nearly be as difficult as many other platform games. Like, compare classic Sonic games with classic Mario games for instance.

[PaperSonic]

8-bit Sonic 2 is the hardest, if it counts.

[Korbit]

Sonic 2 has a ton of beginner's traps and generally unfair level design, like bottomless pits, checkpoints that lead to no rings, or bosses that don't have any rings at all. Definitely the hardest classic Sonic in terms of just beating it at all.

As for later games, they're all pretty easy. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 will waste your time, but nothing I'd consider difficult about them. Heroes can be tricky, and Shadow has some serious control problems and tedious, very long win conditions on some levels that it partially inherited from Heroes. Secret Rings and Black Knight have their difficult moments, and 06 and Unleashed can be unfair at times but overall pretty beatable, with 06 still quite a bit harder of the two.

In general the portable games tend to be hard, especially finding and beating special stages. Suffers from a ton of unfair level design, especially the Advance games.

 

In summary I'll go ahead and say that Sonic 2 is the hardest of any of the mainline, non portable Sonic games, followed by the more broken 06 and Shadow games in the modern era.

[PaperSonic]

I forgot to mention it, but of the mainline games I've played, Lost World is easily the hardest.

Edited June 18, 2020 by PaperSonic

[Wraith]

The games were hardest toward the beginning of their run but I consider Sonic pretty forgiving compared to his peers overall. You're likely to game over on your first couple of goes at any given classic game but getting better at the earlier levels means access to extra lives and continues is easy for you to not have to stress over the later, harder ones so much. The ring system means hits didn't have the permanent consequence it did in most games and checkpoints are very generous with the designers being very mindful of how lengthy the levels could get.

On top of that, Sonic CD and Sonic 3 introduced fairly forgiving save systems early into the series's run. The major setback that comes from dying late into a Sonic 2 run is already gone a year later. It might be a little unintuitive to learn how to play Sonic well, but I think anyone could stumble to the finish line if they put the time in.

They only ever got easier to me after that but I think some of that just comes from the nature of 3D space. It's hard to make enemies and obstacles as dangerous when you can just run around them. Almost every platformers has ran into issues dealing with it.

I think Sonic Adventure 2 is a little more difficult than SA1, but for both of those games I only ever got stuck on puzzles more than I did any of the platforming challenges. Those were pretty laid back. Sonic Unleashed is the most hardcore Sonic game in a while and that's largely due to the level design driving you directly into the paths of lethal obstacles. The intense linearity of Unleashed was at least taken advantage of in one really cool way. 

Colors, Generations and Forces are fairly laid back with Lost World demanding a little more from you. Difficulty is inconsistent but mostly trends downward.