Sonic Heroes (Xbox)

Note: This review contains spoilers for Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes.

Following the release of Sonic Adventure 2 (SA2), the previously unthinkable happened when Sega went third-party and started developing titles for non-Sega consoles and handhelds, including Sonic Advance, which officially ended the long-standing rivalry with Nintendo. When Sega showed interest in developing a multi-platform Sonic game, Sonic Team USA landed on a team-based concept to take advantage of the capabilities of newer hardware. Since the new title, Sonic Heroes (Heroes), would celebrate the series’ twelfth anniversary, they also decided that they would create a standalone experience closer to the Genesis games instead of a third Adventure entry, both due to the number of numbered sequels hitting the market and out of a desire for accessibility. The final game would launch in 2003 to mixed reception, but still sold very well and led to the development of 2005’s Shadow the Hedgehog.

Unlike some of the other Sonic games I’ve reviewed recently, I actually have more of a personal history with this one. When it first came out, it was one of the first Sonic console games I owned, so I played it obsessively, yet I couldn’t ever finish the game. At some point, I didn’t have my PS2 copy anymore, though an original Xbox that I bought still had a copy in the disc drive, so I ended up playing that copy for the purpose of this review (the disc had seen better days, but the data layer still looked fine). Fortunately, the disc held up well as I finally completed Heroes over twenty years later and concluded that it’s built around a neat idea with a tedious and frustrating execution.

Heroes features four storylines, each with a seemingly disparate premise. As with Sonic Adventure (SA1) and its sequel, I’ll cover each of the four stories on their own terms. First, however, I’d like to discuss the gameplay elements that they all share as a baseline.

The four storylines.

Although Heroes isn’t the only Sonic game with teams in some form or another, it’s the only one built around playing in teams of three consisting of Speed, Fly and Power type characters. Each of the characters can lead a respective formation at a time, with Speed, Fly and Power formations granting access to different attacks, abilities and traversal methods. For example, Speed formation includes the Homing Attack, as well as Light Speed Dash (mapped to B on Xbox). Different formations can also have their own limitations, like how Fly formation’s flight length is determined by a rechargeable gauge underneath the Fly leader’s portrait. You can boost each character’s abilities by collecting the appropriately-colored Power Cores from enemies or item boxes, but dying will remove all collected Power Cores when you respawn (for some reason). Through normal gameplay, including defeating enemies and collecting Rings, you can also build up a Team Blast meter that, when activated with the White button (on Xbox), defeats or greatly damages all enemies in the area, including bosses.

Where SA2 featured some rather “open” level design in places, Heroes explicitly features more linear design based on the original Genesis titles. Though the Stages can still evoke SA2 in places in the sense of offering multiple pathways, they’re still based around the Formation system to the point that the alternate paths not only rely on different Formations, but certain areas can either recommend certain Formations or just force you into a certain one through Formation Gates. Occasionally, a linear section may even feature an exclusive team-based bobsled mechanic where each member grants the bobsled an ability; each time the bobsled takes damage, a team member will get kicked off and weaken the bobsled. The design philosophy in Heroes, more than SA2 before it, clearly had a huge impact on level design for the rest of the franchise, establishing the blueprint, for better or worse, that would last until Frontiers once again shook things up.

Sonic Heroes features more linear design.

After a long absence from the series, Heroes also brings back Special Stages, where you race to the end of a tube while collecting points within a time limit. Here, you access one by finding a key within the Stage and carrying it with you to the end. Get hit once, however, and the key breaks, forcing you to find a new one; fortunately, some are pretty out in the open. If you access the Special Stage after certain Stages, you’ll also get the opportunity to chase down one of the seven Chaos Emeralds. These Special Stages are more important for the game completion, as you can’t access the Last Story unless you obtain all seven.

While Heroes does have a rather unique gameplay loop that opens up a lot of design space, it does have issues that hold it back from reaching its true potential. I’ll get into more detail soon, but on a base level, the camera still feels like the Dreamcast titles, as it’s mapped to the shoulder buttons and inverted while the right analog stick temporarily switches to a first-person view. You can get used to it if you’re approaching this as a modern gamer, but it will fight you sometimes and the points where there’s a fixed camera can obscure certain environmental traps (thankfully, the latter point is rare). Certain gimmicks like Speed formation poles also feel inconsistent or never come up, like Rocket Accel, and the game makes rail grinding sound like balance is a factor when it isn’t. Rail grinding, however, does have its own control issues, like the importance of maintaining speed and how you can sometimes end up going backwards for seemingly no reason.

The most frustrating issue during normal play, however, is navigating the Special Stages. Even though they’re just tubes with their own twists and turns, they have the worst controls of any Special Stage I’ve played up to this point and are so slippery that moving the stick just a little bit can send you flying all around or easily end up face-first in mines. Although I knew that Team Rose was the way to go for obtaining the Chaos Emeralds, it took me too long to realize that the best strategy was switching to Big the Cat right before you start collecting orbs and then never stop boosting (even then, Bingo Highway has the single most difficult Special Stage to deal with).

Different glyphs here, but the point still stands.

On a more meta level, the one thing that made finishing the game tedious is that all four Teams must go through the exact same fourteen stages and fight the exact same bosses in the exact same order, but with some variations depending on the Team. Although I appreciated the attempt at having some differences between each storyline, I didn’t find it enough and I missed how SA1 had more meaningful variety between the playable characters.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, since Sonic Heroes splits its story across four perspectives that occasionally cross paths with each other, I’ll discuss the remaining story and gameplay the same way in the order that the game lists them: Team Sonic, Team Dark, Team Rose and Team Chaotix.

In the Team Sonic story, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles receive a message from Dr. Eggman about a new “ultimate weapon” that will let him conquer the world in three days. The trio are determined to thwart his plans and run off to stop him.

Compared with the characters’ roles in SA1 or SA2, this campaign is a bit light on story. Not much happens and the three days pass in a blur, which can create a sense of tension, though the motivation still feels thin. Run-ins with other teams do help give a sense of a larger narrative, but Amy comes off a bit obsessive about Sonic compared to her depiction in SA2 and I found Sonic’s casual approach to Shadow’s return jarring considering how SA2 ended. The only intriguing part of the story was a twist that made it apparent that something more was going on behind the scenes.

As the first campaign listed, Team Sonic seems like a natural first stop for many players. However, while it does feel nice to play as Sonic, Tails and Knuckles at the same time, prospective players should know that this campaign represents the Normal difficulty, so the game doesn’t suggest them for beginner players. While this may sound rather innocuous, I would warn newcomers about starting here, as it may actually prove more difficult than they bargained for.

Since Team Sonic represents the Normal difficulty, it also represents the average or “vanilla” experience. In this case, that includes how Stages easily last at least ten minutes each on a first run. Additionally, the Team Blast provides no additional effects, unlike the other campaigns. On one hand, this does provide a very “pure” Sonic experience, as it includes three of the most iconic characters and doesn’t layer in any additional complexity. On the other hand, it felt like a trial by fire. Many Stages expose the limitations of the combat and traversal systems, often in an infuriating way, and forced me to adjust accordingly.

Power Plant, for instance, has a rising water section at the end that exposes the limitations of the auto targeting system for Homing Attacks, as Sonic doesn’t behave quite the way you’d want him to if you’re fresh off of SA2 (or even a modern game where the Homing Attack feels more consistent). As such, I needed Fly Formation to help get past that, but even then, there’s one final action that felt hard to coordinate because of the camera. While I generally like Casino-themed Sonic stages, BINGO Highway was when I noticed just how long and repetitive the Stages could get, not helped there by how often you can fall into a bottomless pit (I avoided them pretty well, but still). I felt mixed about the Stages in the middle of the campaign, as Rail Canyon, Bullet Station and Frog Forest came close to replicating the feeling of playing some SA2 Stages, including a rather creative transition between areas in Bullet Station, but even more issues cropped up here. A bigger one for me is how I kept failing a lengthy Orca-esque chase sequence in Frog Forest because the game kept slowing down and I had to perfect the timing of vine swings after multiple deaths and Stage restarts (stop even once and you’re dead).

Mystic Mansion was where I started disliking certain design decisions even more. Not only does the Stage last longer than it should, but even with the neat gravity switch gimmick, that doesn’t excuse the tram sections, where characters can sometimes tell you to jump just after the correct timing to dodge a laser. It only took me a few tries to get more consistent at the level, but it didn’t stop me from getting upset at a moment where you have to Triangle Jump toward a rail with deadly precision, though that pales in comparison to the part where you have to light up three altars with each of the three Formations. I kept dying at Sonic’s part until I realized you needed to actually “aim” the Homing Attack (something the game fails to disclose) and while Tails’ section wasn’t so bad, Knuckles’ Triangle Dive part not only requires a good running start, it ends with you praying that a badnik that takes up nearly the entire platform doesn’t knock you off, forcing you to restart the entire altar sequence. The worst part is that finally getting past this nerve-wracking section required completing the Stage over and over from the beginning to the point that I never wanted to touch it again. It might have felt more bearable if the altar portion had its own checkpoint.

One of the most painful sections in the entire game.

Then there’s Final Fortress, which had a number of moments that didn’t sit well with me, as getting past the Stage required a few attempts and started causing actual, physical pain. Certain sections required a bit too much precision or even a leap of faith, but the rail sections started getting to me after a while. For example, when Sonic leaps to a rail from a pole, there are moments where it looks off, but he makes it anyway. However, there’s one interaction in particular where he actually does miss the rail, which made me second-guess myself. I had the most issue with the laser section at the end, which required dodging lasers while constantly gaining speed by mashing X (on Xbox). Not as bad after a few attempts (if you don’t somehow accidentally make him go backwards), but the final laser blast, which takes up all three lanes you have, was unavoidable no matter how fast I thought I had gone (I don’t know if my own age was a factor or if I just sucked at mashing the button). The only way I could avoid it was jumping over it with Fly formation, but that still stalled my momentum and made me miss the final platform by a hair. When I did finally make it, allowing me to access the Egg Emperor fight, I started dreading how the Team Dark campaign would escalate it.

The only thing that made Team Sonic more bearable in the later Stages was learning the Team Blast glitch: in Flight Formation, hit the attack and Formation switch buttons at the same time (X and Y in my case). This will create an interaction that rapidly fills up the Team Blast gauge, allowing near-instant access to the attack again. Although the internet will tell you that you just need to do this three times in a row, I needed four times before it would fill all the way up (three times only almost filled it).

In the Team Dark story, Rouge the Bat uncovers a hidden room where she finds a previously unseen E-Series Eggman robot, E-123 Omega, and a pod containing Shadow the Hedgehog. As Omega shoots up the room, Rouge rescues Shadow. Outside, Omega reveals that he wants to destroy all Eggman robots, while Shadow indicates that he’s lost his memory. Rouge convinces the two of them to work together with her, as confronting Eggman will accomplish both of their goals.

While Team Sonic doesn’t have much going for it with story, Team Dark blindsides you with depth. Shadow and E-123 Omega have solid personal reasons for going after Eggman while Rouge still serves a purpose within the story. When they do accomplish their goal, it isn’t presented as completely positive, but rather revolves around the morality of a decision Rouge faces when she uncovers the truth that Shadow seeks. Its resolution still aligns perfectly with E-123 Omega’s goal while still leaving some ambiguity about whether the Shadow we play as is the same as the one from SA2 or a robotic clone. I might consider it the best in the game, though my only complaint would be that, as much as I like Shadow, his reintroduction at the beginning feels abrupt and done in a way that cheapens his sacrifice from the end of SA2. There’s also the fact that this story clearly takes place after SA2 despite Heroes prioritizing accessibility. For better or worse, this story also blatantly telegraphs the true final boss, though I’ll get to that later.

Of the four teams, Team Dark’s gameplay represents the “Hard” difficulty and is recommended for intermediate players. As much as I had dreaded playing it after Team Sonic’s unnecessarily difficult design, however, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, partly because I started playing more like a speedrunner to get through the Stage more efficiently. It does have the same flaws as Team Sonic, including lengthy, repetitive Stages that last an eternity and places where I had to fight the game’s camera, physics and rail placement, yet it somehow felt easier in several places. Two big ones were Mystic Mansion, where the altars just required defeating enemies in the same places without any fancy traversal, and Final Fortress, where I got past the laser cannons at the end in only a couple tries, but only after cheesing the final part with Rouge’s flight.

The biggest difference, however, was Team Dark’s Team Blast. Not only does it clear the immediate area of all enemies, it also freezes time, including the in-game timer. Additionally, any damage they inflict on any remaining enemies during the frozen time is applied once time resumes. The only downside is that anything that requires movement like a fan won’t work within the frozen time, but that’s a small trade-off considering how utterly busted the Team Blast move itself is. In a pinch, you can use it to freeze certain obstacles in place and if you manage to pull off the Team Blast glitch enough times during frozen time, the gauge will be completely refilled once time resumes, allowing you to pull it off again in a row.

Understanding how this Team Blast really works breaks the game in half. Difficult sections like the ending of Power Plant suddenly feel easier and most boss fights are an absolute breeze once you charge up the Team Blast just once thanks to how easily you can loop it. Even the final boss, Egg Emperor, is a total cakewalk and you can beat it with the timer registering less than two minutes. I didn’t think I would say it before starting Heroes, but Team Dark turned out better than Team Sonic where it really counted.

In the Team Rose story, Amy, Cream and Big are searching for their friends; Amy is looking for Sonic so that she can marry him, Cream and Cheese are searching for their missing Chao friend Chocola and Big wants to find his best friend Froggy.

Even compared with Team Sonic, Team Rose has easily the thinnest plot in the game. While they didn’t necessarily need to have the deepest motivation, there isn’t much in the way of stakes apart from the trio encountering the same bosses as Team Sonic and Team Dark. It doesn’t help that Amy doesn’t really have much of a personality in this game aside from her infatuation with Sonic, which feels like a big step down from her role in SA2. Interestingly, Cream was originally meant to debut in this game but was instead introduced in Sonic Advance 2 so that players would have more of a history with her going in. Based on this storyline, perhaps that move was for the best, as she wouldn’t have made a good first impression debuting here. Their interactions with the other Teams leave something to be desired and I couldn’t help finding it odd that the trio seemed completely unconcerned by Eggman melting into liquid metal right in front of them after beating him. In the context of the full game, this is a setup for an overarching story, but in isolation, the fact that they don’t comment on it at all feels bizarre.

On the flip side, the gameplay feels like a breath of fresh air, as Team Rose is by far the easiest Team in the game. Their Stages are much shorter, rarely going over five minutes, enemies are much easier to defeat and their Team Blast is the most beneficial to the player, granting an Invincible Barrier and three Power Cores (one for each member). Sure, Amy can’t use the Light Dash, but the core gameplay elements are still there, save for some minor differences like Big’s Body Slam, and players still have to make similar decisions with Formations. There may be some mild frustration here and there, but nothing on the same level as the more difficult teams. They also have the easiest Special Stages, making them the perfect team to obtain the Chaos Emeralds with. Team Rose truly is the most beginner-friendly team to start with.

What’s baffling, then, is how despite the game recommending Team Rose for beginners, they are listed third in the Story Select. On top of that, when you begin this storyline for the first time, you’re forced to go through the tutorial even though it’s available separately and you might have already played it beforehand (the only difference being that you play as Team Rose instead of Team Sonic). Since this is the worst thing about Team Rose, however, you can easily play through this story and walk away if you just want to say that you “played” Heroes without actually completing it.

In the Team Chaotix story, Vector, Espio and Charmy are contacted by a mysterious client who promises to pay them handsomely. Since the Chaotix Detective Agency never turns down a paying job, they do as the client says.

In many ways, Team Chaotix has the most unique campaign. One meta reason is that, at the time, Vector, Espio and Charmy hadn’t appeared in a Sonic game for over eight years at the time, not since their original appearance in Knuckles’ Chaotix, which released in 1995 for the failed 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis (hence the name Team Chaotix). Someone playing the game now likely wouldn’t appreciate the novelty that came from their reappearance in 2003, but they could more easily understand the other in-game factors at play, as their gameplay is rather nonstandard by comparison. On an individual level, Espio can turn invisible, granting him some stealth capability when going through a Stage (he can even pass through lasers); Vector has a ground pound, which acts like a more aggressive version of Big’s Body Slam; and Charmy can open special warp flowers. As a group, their Team Blast only provides extra Rings based on the enemies defeated this way, which doesn’t sound that beneficial on-paper, but fits flavor-wise with them seeking payment for their detective services and can actually break the game under the right circumstances (I’ll explain in a bit).

While the Stages in the other campaigns are mostly linear races to the finish, Team Chaotix has a mission-based approach, often asking the player to complete tasks like “Find 10 Hermit Crabs” or “Rescue the captured Chao”. When they are asked to reach the end of the level, there’s usually some caveat like remaining undetected, which gives Espio’s invisibility more of a purpose. On one hand, this introduces a lot more variety for those playing every campaign and incentivizes trying different playstyles. On the other hand, some of these missions, like “Blow out 60 red torches”, are tedious when you don’t know where to go and have to loop back to the beginning. The only saving grace in this case is that dying without losing all of your lives doesn’t reset your mission progress in any way when you respawn, but this doesn’t make up for the uneven difficulty. Some Stages are a breeze, but others, like their version of Rail Canyon and Bullet Station, are borderline unfair in places, forcing you to adjust to their unique quirks to survive.

One particular Stage, their version of the Robot Storm boss fight, caused some trouble during one wave due to some physics issues with the intended solution (Pro Tip: Just fly over and use Thunder Shoot for an easier victory). However, this Stage does expose just how game breaking Team Chaotix’s Team Blast truly is under the right circumstances. It only takes 100 Rings to fill the Team Blast gauge, the same amount that grants an extra Life. While it usually takes a bit of effort to fulfill either condition in any other Stage (if you include abusing the Team Blast glitch as effort), many waves in Robot Storm grant Team Chaotix extra rings in the hundreds, meaning that as soon as their Team Blast cooldown finishes, they’ll be ready to fire off another one and repeat the cycle. This also makes Robot Storm a perfect Stage to farm extra Lives in case the player is really struggling.

As for their story, although Team Chaotix has a thin motivation, the plot still has some semblance of depth, especially if you play it right after Team Rose. There’s also a more conclusive ending and the trio actually acknowledge the fake Eggman that melts into liquid metal. The members of Team Chaotix have some charm to them and their interactions with other teams have more logic behind them than you would expect. Overall, they at least have the honor of having some decent writing behind them.

Once you’ve beaten all four stories, you’ll see a screen telling you “Get 7 Chaos Emeralds!” if you haven’t already done so. This is because, as I previously mentioned, obtaining all seven is required to unlock the Last Story, which SA1 inadvertently turned into a tradition. The Challenge mode is key for this, as, on top of giving you alternate Stage missions, you can see which Emeralds you still haven’t obtained. When you fulfill this condition, however, you actually won’t know that you’ve unlocked Last Story at first, as there’s no fanfare. You just have to know that once you have all seven Chaos Emeralds, which the game will show you as you progress, you have to go back to the Story screen and press right one more time after Team Chaotix.

Although Last Story does incorporate the four Teams and the real Doctor Eggman, which is neat, the true villain, Neo Metal Sonic, doesn’t really have much depth apart from wanting to take over the world in Eggman’s stead. The buildup to the final fight also feels rushed and Eggman doesn’t really do much, begging for Sonic’s help in taking down his own creation.

As for the fight itself, it’s pretty underwhelming. I did like that you took turns playing as all four teams so that they contribute to helping take down the first boss form, Metal Madness, who repeatedly attacks the stage with spikes and crystalline traps that can force a Game Over if the player doesn’t maneuver well enough. There’s also a gimmick where a colored indicator shows which Formation can’t damage it, which adds some variety by forcing players to use all three Formations. However, this fight feels significantly easier once you start abusing the Team Blast glitch and known when to unleash your strongest attack. At that point, the only tension comes from how your Lives for each Team carry over from their respective Story modes. Fortunately, this phase has checkpoints.

When you get to the Team Sonic portion, which lets the player control Super Sonic complete with ring drain, the player now faces the more powerful Metal Overlord, which can utilize different attacks, including Chaos Control. I did struggle with this fight while getting the attack patterns down until I noticed that the Team Blast glitch works here as well, at which point the fight went by in a breeze. The final cutscene does tie up any loose ends from the other storylines, but I didn’t feel the same satisfaction that I did with some other games in the series, especially SA1 and SA2.

If you’ve had enough of Story, you can also try to the 2P mode, which has seven modes of its own that unlock based on how many Emblems you’ve collected out of 120 (completing Story normally gets you 64). Since I wasn’t going for 100% completion, I tried out the Action Race, Ring Race, Battle and Special Stage modes, each of which had three maps and had their own challenges between them (I didn’t unlock Bobsled Race, Quick Race or Expert Race). They mostly didn’t have much substance to them, though it’s neat that they included these modes anyway. I did, however, notice an interesting interaction with the Team Blast glitch: If you activate a Team Blast and your opponent is in the middle of attempting the Team Blast glitch themselves, they will continue building up their Team Blast gauge during the Team Blast animation, giving them access to their own Team Blast once they can control their chosen Team again.

As with other Sonic games from this era, the graphics can look dated now, though it doesn’t help that Heroes doesn’t look that much better than SA2. However, it still holds up fairly well and the FMV models are expressive. This game also represents the final entry with the Adventure cast and I think they did a good job despite the material they had to work with, though I wasn’t sure how well Neo Metal Sonic’s voice fit him. At this point, I also realized just how much I grew to like Deem Bristow’s interpretation of Eggman and I now wish we could have heard more of it before his untimely death in 2005.

There were still technical issues here, but they’re more nitpicky. I did spot some grammar errors in the subtitles, including the infamous “Look at all those Eggman’s robots!” Due to some horrible sound mixing in places, however, I still relied on the subtitles for some of the dialogue and would take their word for it. Certain interactions also had weird sound effects, like a bouncing noise of unknown origin when attacking with Fly Formation under certain circumstances like frozen time. I also spotted framerate hitches during the FMV replays in the end credits and although this did make the timing work out in the end, I had no idea if I saw that because I played on Xbox or if the game was just like that.

Playing Sonic Heroes feels tedious and frustrating, especially if you’re following Shadow the Hedgehog’s story, thanks to how it handles multiple storylines without understanding why it worked so well in Sonic Adventure. However, the Team-based design philosophy isn’t without merit and it’s interesting looking back on it knowing that several years would pass by before a mainline entry once again allowed more than just Sonic (and Super Sonic) as a playable character. I wouldn’t not recommend it, but you’d really have to know what you’re getting yourself into first.