Sonic Mania Review

Despite growing up with Sonic Advanced and Shadow the Hedgehog, I was never much of a fan of the series as I probably could have been. I've attempted to get into the series before by playing the older games, but those times ended in frustration at the hands of the level design. All to frequently, I'd run into traps or enemies that are seemingly only placed there to slap you in the face for trying to go any faster than a snail's pace. One day, I bought Freedom Planet, which had clear Sonic influence, and I enjoyed that game quite a lot. I felt that the game did everything Sonic tried to do but better. It made me think, "Why doesn't Sega just higher a team of Sonic fans to make an official Sonic game themselves?" As luck would have it, exactly that happened.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series, Sega planned to release two brand new Sonic games: Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania, developed by a new portion of the Sonic Team mostly consisting of fans who worked on Sonic romhacks, was intended to be a smaller-scale release to help fans wait for the release of Sonic Forces, which itself was intended to be the hard-hitting release. However, the exact opposite happened; Sonic Mania was a smash-hit, while Sonic Forces fell by the wayside.

By this point, my grievances with Sonic's level design had mostly dissipated. Something I never knew about the series is that levels are most often designed with multiple paths; an upper path and a lower path, with the former being intended as the faster route and the latter being intended as a slower and more difficult route. Having this in mind made Sonic games more fun for me, but it didn't stop me from initially disliking Sonic Mania. The game features a mix of completely new stages and ones from previous games - fitting for a game celebrating the series' 25th anniversary - which didn't matter to me how it should've. Rather than playing on my nostalgia for previous Sonic games like they were meant to, they made me think back to the parts of the series that originally put me off of the series. I never played any of these returning stages in their original games, so they blended in with the new stages, save for anything that felt like a blatant relic of archaic game design. At least, that's how I felt initially.

Once I had beaten the game, I started to play the game from the very beginning anytime I felt like playing, since I found the earlier stages more fun than the later ones. This resulted in a sort of epiphany: Sonic is a game you're meant to play through multiple times to memorize the stage layouts. Sure, you first time through might be rough, but memorization will make things easier. For example, I once spent about a minute stuck in one place because it wasn't clear where I was supposed to go, and I only continued when I accidentally found the part of the area the game wanted me to break through, which was not clearly indicated by anything. However, because this happened, I always remembered that part and how to get past it.

Upon having this realization, the Sonic formula made a lot more sense to me; everything seemed to connect. Levels are open to encourage replaying them. The more you play them, the better you remember the stage layout, and the better you can anticipate and avoid traps and enemies. In turn, this makes it easier to save up 100 rings to gain an extra life, which helps you stack them up for any boss fight that may give you trouble - who you'll likely start to learn as well the more you play through the game, so you may get to the point where you can easily take out a boss that previously gave you trouble. After making all these connections, I gained a newfound appreciation not just for Sonic Mania, but for the entire series.

Sonic Mania really is the ultimate Sonic fan game. Not only is there a mix of old and new stages for fans to appreciate, but the whole game is done in a Genesis/Saturn graphical aesthetic that it completely nails - at least, I assume it does, since I've never played one before. Furthermore, there are collectibles that can be found through familiar minigames that unlock rewards some of the more hardcore fans can appreciate, such as abilities from previous Sonic games. I may not be the Completionist, but even I can appreciate when games make completionism worth your time, and I'd say that Sonic Mania absolutely does - especially if you're a huge Sonic fan.

Green Hill Zone

Speed Trap

Blue Spheres

This Boss Sucks

Knuckles

This Boss Is Garbage

That said, I don't think Sonic Mania is a perfect game. To start, the physics are about as awkward as they've always been. Slopes have always been a weird problem in Sonic; they're programmed with gaining momentum by running down them, so anytime you need to go up one, you'll need to already have momentum built up or else you'll slowly walk up it before being forced back down again. This isn't a huge issue, but it certainly can cause problems. For example, jumping off of a slope will often carry your momentum away from the slope, which is often the opposite of where you're trying to go. In addition, some of the bosses are absolutely tedious to fight, even after learning their patterns. Heck, one boss entirely boils down to a rinse-and-repeat pattern of hitting its weakpoint and avoiding it's attack. That's literally it. Attack and dodge. The most basic and lazy boss formula possible.

Further still, in addition to being able to play as Sonic (with or without an AI/player 2 controlled Tails), you can also play as Knuckles and Tails, but they're not as satisfying to play as Sonic is. Knuckles retains his gliding and wall-climbing abilities for games past, but both absolutely kill the flow of the game. I can tolerate that with the wall-climbing, since that ability is rather broken, but gliding it not nearly as broken, yet it ends with a momentum-killing landing animation that completely discourages me from gliding in favor of treating Knuckles like a version of Sonic that can climb walls. Tails is not nearly as bad, also retaining his flying ability, but the fact that there is no manual way to fly downward is irksome enough to also somewhat discourage me from using this ability.

Despite these grievances, however, I think Sonic Mania is an excellent game. Daresay, it's the best 2D game in the series. I give Sonic Mania a 4 out of 5. This game made me realized what is perhaps the biggest reason why Sonic fans love the games for: Sonic is one of the few platforming series with considerably open levels. That alone makes the existing flaws forgivable, let alone the game design elements that mesh together to make learning stages more rewarding.

(Screenshots were capture in the Switch's Handheld mode and thus may not represent the quality of the game's graphics while Docked.)

Box Art Source - Unofficial Sonic Wiki: http://sonic.wikia.com/wiki/Sonic_Mania