![]() ![]() It's more intense, less forgiving of mistakes plus zones are tweaked with new perks to accommodate the new characters Mighty and Ray and their unique abilities. I reviewed the original Sonic Mania last summer, so the levels still feel vaguely familiar-I even got tripped up on the same sections of levels-but the experience itself felt different from the main game. Often, I would make it relatively unscathed to the Act 2 boss, only to meet my demise and be sent back to Act 1 all over again. Just the other night, I spent well over an hour trying to get past a zone because I kept having poor luck in not having enough rings when I sped through checkpoints to unlock bonus stages, and not lucking out with a box for a new character. If you lose, it's back to the start again with just one character, hoping you'll collect and retain 50 rings along the way so you can hop into a bonus stage and stock up on what's basically Encore Mode's version of "lives." For the tougher boss battles, such as Metal Sonic (who was retuned in a patch earlier this year, in addition to new zone transitions), if you mess up enough times you can watch that five character team dwindle real quick, and it can be a struggle to get back to that comfortable point. And if you mess up during a boss fight and lose a character, that leaves you with zero rings and just however many characters that take one hit kills to try and weather the battle. It's hard to retain those rings too, with the ferocious enemies facing you at every spindash. Ray flips across rails, sometimes hanging upside down. ![]() The problem is: you need at least 50 rings to unlock the special stage at checkpoints, contrary to the base game's 25. The bonus stage, too, has been updated to a new pinball game, and it's the best chance to stock up on your five characters should you be missing some. You're more likely to come by the new question mark or switch boxes (the former jumbles up who your player character is and the second-in-command, while the switch just changes the player character to another who's on retainer) than the boxes that net you a character you're missing. In Encore Mode, it's not just a new hue over the familiar levels, but the enemies are in new, unexpected places and rings are far harder to come by. The problem is, it's hard to come back from having only one character. (Unless you've lucked out with some hard to come by Continues.) If you don't have that third character, then it's bad news because if you die, you're dead- dead and have to restart the whole zone over. When one character dies, whoever your second in command is takes their place, and if you have a third character in your arsenal, they sub in as your second. ![]() In its stead, there are item boxes which net you whichever characters you don't have by your side (the five are Tails, Sonic, Knuckles, Mighty, and Ray). Whoever you choose becomes your immediate partner.īut don't worry, you don't lose the other character forever. At the start it drops you off in Angel Island Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but only a sliver of it, as you're quickly urged to choose between two obscure characters from Sonic's past, Ray and Mighty, to save. It seemingly takes place after the base game's campaign, with new cutscenes (though as someone who didn't play Sonic Forces, I'm not sure if it takes place before or after the events of that). Some swapped Encore color palettes are more pleasant than others, and you can see that rare character box my team is eyeballing in the right.Įncore Mode is more than just a palette swap for Sonic Mania's zones. I lost all my rings, got hit by another foe before I could get more rings, and that was the end for Ray. I had breezed through multiple zones with nothing more than a single ally by my side (Sonic the Hedgehog, as I was Ray the Flying Squirrel), and then by one silly mistake, I lost Ray. It took me far too long to figure out the logistics of Sonic Mania Plus' new Encore Mode.
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