Sonic Mania Plus

Note: This review contains spoilers for Sonic Forces.

After the original Sega Genesis titles, Sonic the Hedgehog went through endless experimentation, including the original jump to 3D with Sonic Adventure, but there didn’t exist a true follow-up to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. Dimps made an attempt to recapture the Genesis era with Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I & II in 2010 and 2012 respectively, but the project was cancelled before they could develop an Episode III. Then, in 2017, Sega would release Sonic Mania, a game that was widely considered a true follow-up to Sonic the Hedgehog due to its deliberately retro style that aimed to replicate everything about the classic games, down to the physics and gameplay. Now that I’ve finally had a chance to play Sonic Mania, thanks to a PlayStation Plus subscription, I can totally see the hype and how well it modernized this style of game, but some annoyances still popped up here and there.

Sonic and Tails fly their biplane, the Tornado, to track a mysterious signal. They arrive at Angel Island only to find that a group of EggRobos known as the Hard Boiled Heavies (HBH) have already reached the source of the signal. The HBH excavate the site and uncover a gemstone known as the Phantom Ruby. Suddenly, time and space warp around them, sending them all to Green Hill Zone and transforming the HBH into more powerful robots with free will. Sonic and Tails must now chase down the HBH and destroy them before they can deliver the Phantom Ruby to Dr. Eggman.

Sonic and Tails must stop the Hard Boiled Heavies and get the Phantom Ruby.

The story is presented in a fairly minimal way, which fits well with the game’s retro style. The cutscenes are quick and to the point, with enough information to move the story forward without any trace of dialogue. I appreciated this form of visual storytelling, as it kept the pace going at a good rate and felt different from other retro-style platformers I’ve played. I also liked the animated cutscenes by Tyson Hesse that play at the end of the story, as his art style is a perfect fit.

Tyson Hesse's artwork is a perfect fit; L-R: Knuckles, Sonic, Tails.

You can play as three different characters in Sonic Mania across four campaigns: Sonic & Tails, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. Notably, Knuckles’ campaign is a little different, with some original cutscenes and levels. Choosing a character also changes the way the game is played, as they each have their own special abilities. Sonic has the Drop Dash (start a Spin Dash in midair to perform it upon landing), Tails can fly, Sonic & Tails can work together with Buddy Flight and Knuckles can glide and climb. In a Sonic & Tails playthrough, a second player can take control of an invincible Tails.

The graphics are impressively accurate to the original Genesis titles, down to the color depth. Characters also move just like they did in that era and now have additional animations to help this incarnation of them stand out a bit. At times you can see a polygonal model used to achieve certain effects, but it only happens when appropriate and the models have the right resolution to fit in with the aesthetic. If you want to fully replicate the feeling of playing on a Genesis, you can also turn on CRT scan lines from the menu (though this is also useful for players who prefer to play on a CRT screen).

Everything looks just the way you'd expect it to.

As for the gameplay, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Genesis-era Sonic the Hedgehog title, down to the sound effects. Players try to get through 13 Zones of two Acts each as quickly as they can and fight a boss at the end of each Act. All of the familiar elements are scattered throughout the levels, including rings, item boxes, hazards and various Badniks, although new twists are introduced to help keep things fresh. Levels are typically designed around incorporating alternate routes, which operate on a risk vs reward system; running through a more difficult route gets you better rewards for your troubles. Star posts, which act as checkpoints, are placed at a generally good rate, but they do feel further apart the further into the game you are.

Also making a return are Bonus Stages and Special Stages. Bonus Stages, accessible by jumping into a ring of stars that spawn around a star post when you pass it while collecting 25+ rings, bring back the Blue Sphere stages from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles. You can get silver and gold medals for getting all of the blue spheres and rings, and yellow spheres bounce you past obstacles, but touching a single red sphere immediately ends the stage. There’s no way to try again without passing through another star post, and even then, it’s random which map of Blue Spheres you’ll play. The inclusion of Blue Spheres is more than just a nod, however, as collecting silver and gold medals also awards the player with special surprises.

Passing through a giant ring, typically hidden somewhere within each Act, takes the player to a Special Stage, where they have the opportunity to gain a Chaos Emerald. Unlike in previous games, however, the player now has to chase down a UFO carrying the Emerald through an infinite course. To catch up to the UFO, the player has to collect blue spheres to fill a Mach meter and increase their speed. However, the player is also timed and the only way to refill the depleting timer is to collect rings. As a note, blue spheres will respawn on every lap of each course, but rings are finite.

Catch the UFO before time runs out to get a Chaos Emerald.

Though the Special Stages are tough, there are benefits to collecting all seven Chaos Emeralds. The most obvious is that doing so unlocks a Super form for each of the characters that increases their speed and renders them completely invincible (though they can still die if they’re crushed between objects). The other benefit is that completing the final Zone with all seven Emeralds allows the player to access the true final boss and, by extension, the true ending of the game.

Sonic Mania’s end-of-Act bosses are a combination of original enemies and nostalgic ones ripped directly from past games. There’s a good amount of variety to them and they all present a unique challenge that’s usually not too difficult to overcome. However, the difficulty feels all over the place, especially the first time you face them. Sometimes the bosses are complete pushovers, like Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 and Metallic Madness Zone Act 2, but others can blow through your lives like they’re nothing until you manage to figure out how to cheese them. Case in point, the true final boss felt difficult until I realized that the boss always spawns in a predictable location. There have also been times where I think I accidentally beat them really quickly, specifically the Oil Ocean Zone Act 2 boss.

Oil Ocean Zone Act 2's boss was frustrating until I accidentally won.

This brings me to an issue I have with the game’s seemingly random difficulty spikes. While the various Zones all have unique gimmicks and are often beautifully designed, some of these gimmicks aren’t entirely obvious, like the purple orbs in Titanic Monarch Zone, and the placement of items and Badniks can be frustrating to deal with. Back to Titanic Monarch Zone, it felt deliberately designed to make you feel safe, only to put you immediately in the path of an enemy attack and make you lose all your rings. Flying Battery Zone was also frustrating due to the increased emphasis on precision platforming while having to deal with wind.

The Special Stages also have their own difficulty spikes, which made farming Green Hill Zone for the Chaos Emeralds frustrating. Chasing the UFO down seems to get progressively more challenging at a great pace, then the fourth through sixth Emeralds felt nearly impossible until I increased my efficiency. I expected the final Emerald to increase the difficulty even higher, only to suddenly get it on the first try. The simulated low draw distance doesn’t help much, but at the very least you’re always able to see where the UFO is.

What didn’t help the frustrations I felt is the fact that if you lose all your lives, you have to restart the current Zone from the beginning, even if you had gotten to the Act 2 boss. Facing a particularly difficult Act 2 boss in an already difficult Zone made this process demoralizing at first, but my perseverance eventually won out. There’s also the ten-minute time limit, which doesn’t seem so bad at first, but feels cripplingly restrictive in later Zones, culminating in the labyrinthine Titanic Monarch Zone, where I lost a life to time for the first time. It was at this point I realized you can turn off the time limit in the options, which made getting through it easier.

Titanic Monarch Zone led to more than a few lost lives.

Of course, I have to acknowledge that Sonic Mania does make some improvements from the Genesis titles, like toning down the difficulty of some Zones from previous games and no longer requiring you to play the entire game again if you lose all your lives. Of course, you can enable this as a challenge with a No Save file. I’m also aware that by the time I played this, a patch released with the Encore DLC had toned down a chunk of Mania’s difficulty, most notably the Stardust Speedway Zone Act 2 boss, so my experience was comparatively easier than at launch.

A running theme I’ve noticed while typing this review is the power of perseverance. Sonic Mania is a difficult game for sure, especially for those who have less experience with the Genesis games, but I stuck with it and eventually beat it with all Seven Chaos Emeralds. If nothing else, this shows that the game isn’t insurmountable for anyone.

Naturally, Mania Mode (the main campaign) isn’t the only mode the game offers. There’s Time Attack, where you put yourself in any Act against the clock, and Competition, where two players compete against each other to complete Acts faster and/or better. Competition also has a number of settings, including item behavior, number of rounds and split screen display, to keep things interesting.

Whether you’re a veteran of Sonic the Hedgehog from the Genesis days or are more familiar with modern Sonic and want the old-school flavor, Sonic Mania is the game for you. While a good amount of the game is lifted directly from the classic games, there’s enough new content to at least keep players on their toes. The random difficulty spikes and somewhat rough level design towards the end don’t make for the smoothest experience, but if you have enough perseverance, you’ll eventually overcome it.

After I completed Sonic Mania, I immediately bought the $5 Encore DLC, which permanently turns Sonic Mania into Sonic Mania Plus and adds another campaign with two new playable characters, as well as a four-player version Competition Mode. Notably, these two characters, Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, had not appeared in any other Sonic the Hedgehog title for 23 and 25 years respectively.

The new campaign, Encore Mode, takes place after Classic Sonic’s involvement in Sonic Forces, where he returns to his own dimension (this was retconned from his original status in Sonic Generations as Modern Sonic’s past self). Upon his return on Angel Island, he rescues Mighty and Ray from Dr. Eggman, but must once again prevent the phantom Ruby from falling into his clutches.

Sonic, Tails and Knuckles are now joined by Mighty and Ray.

Aside from new scenes at the beginning and end, the story of Encore Mode is exactly the same as the base game’s Mania Mode. The cutscenes and Zone transitions are also exactly the same, with no visible tweaks outside of the fact that Mighty and Ray can now show up in them. As such, the only new Zone is Angel Island, which acts as an excuse to add Mighty and Ray to the story, and the rest are the first 12 Zones from Mania Mode, complete with the same bosses in the same order.

The experience is also nearly identical, but with some new twists. Zones are now remixed with new enemy and objects placements, which can keep even experienced players on their toes, and many things are recolored to give a semblance of a new look. Outside of that, you can now play as all five characters at once and swap between them easily, though you can only have two of them active at a time. When a character dies, the game rotates to the next one and respawns you at the nearest checkpoint, which replaces the traditional Lives system from Mania Mode. Mighty and Ray are also fun to play as, since the former’s ability to ignore damage and the latter’s take on gliding help immensely with traversing levels.

Bonus Stages have also been overhauled. Accessing them now requires the player to hold 50 rings when passing a star post and, when you do, you play a pinball-like game instead of Blue Spheres. Not only is this minigame easier and more enjoyable to play, it also allows you to rack up bonuses and obtain additional characters fairly quickly with enough skill. As for the Special Stages, you still have to catch a UFO for a Chaos Emerald, but the difficulty has been ramped up. The UFO now spawns further away from the player and the routes are now more twisty than before. In spite of this, perseverance, possibly while looking at a guide, can still win out.

The new Bonus Stages are easier than Blue Spheres.

In spite of the changes made to make Encore Mode more difficult, I actually found it easier than Mania Mode. I mainly attribute this to the close proximity to playing Mania Mode, so I was still familiar with the Zone layouts and techniques for beating the bosses.

While a lot of the Encore DLC is very similar to the base game, and the worth of the true ending you get for obtaining all the Chaos Emeralds is questionable, it’s still worth the price of admission. For a fairly low price, you get to play the equivalent of a Second Quest with new mechanics and characters. If you’re a fan of Sonic Mania, this is an easy recommendation.