Sonic Superstars was released on October 17th 2023. I was late to the party, seeing as how my first time playing the game was roughly six days ago. And my late reception was not disappointed. This game has been absolutely everything I wanted in a 2d Sonic title. Thirty minutes into my first playthrough I found myself asking the question "Where has this game been all my life!".

This game has so much meat on its bones for a side scrolling platformer. Chaos Emeralds have abilities now, that makes collecting them actually feel rewarding. Characters have skins now so you can customize your experience to a small degree, granted that at the moment most characters only have one skin, Trip having none, and Sonic being the only one to have multiple other than Amy with her classic and Lego skin(Assuming that you didn't miss out on obtaining the classic skin from the sonic newsletter). Hopefully there will be more added in the near future. I luckily was able to obtain both my Classic Amy, and Lego Eggman skins from Ebay.

On top of cosmetic changes there is a lengthy campaign with ELEVEN zones. Each level has either a boss or some sort of challenge at the end of each, seeing as the first level has you running from a giant robo fish that you don't actually fight. It brought me back to the Sonic Adventure days of running from the orca. There are three bonus stages. Spiderman esque levels that have you swinging after either emeralds or coins that are the in game currency. The second type of bonus stage are portals that hurdle you either vertically or diagonally as you try to collect as many rings as you can. This reminded me of the end level-bonus mini game in Sonic Runners. Although I wouldn't guess this is enough to consider it a bonus stage. And the third bonus stage is basically a reinvented mini game from the first Sonic the Hedgehog game on Genesis, except these stages are broke into three sections and have you collecting coins.

 As far as the story goes, Eggman is up to no good and it is up to you to stop him. The formula is exactly the same as it has always been. Simple and unscripted outside of the brief and voiceless monologue scattered throughout. That is exactly what I come to expect from a 2d Sonic game, and I don't want anything else. This time Eggman is accompanied by the severely overpowered Fang the Hunter, and the new and mysterious Trip. We don't know much about this character, or even have any idea what her name is until completing the story mode and unlocking her character and own story mode. This game is also difficult. Being unforgiving at times, and Trips story dials it up to ten. There is no lives in this game, so no game-over screens. Don't mistake this as the game being easy either. Because you are going to die(alot), and Sonic Superstars wants to torment and troll you over, and over again.

Bosses can often be excruciating. Not necessarily due to difficulty, but as to how long they drag out. One boss has you fighting your own battle mode robot, which was a shocking yet welcoming surprise. But in my situation I ended up just fighting metal sonic because he just happened to be the first robo I created, so I didn't even notice it was a battle mode bot my first playthrough. But just because most of the boss fights can drag out does not mean that there aren't some that are painstakingly difficult. I won't dive too much into the bosses because either you already know, or you don't know and I want to avoid spoilers. But that being said, one boss in particular (you know who you are) has an arsenal of attacks where nine tenths of them can one shot you. Being eight minutes into a boss just to get sapped and sent back to the beginning of the fight can be unforgivable.

  After taking a moment to talk about the campaign, I now would like to briefly touch on the multiplayer mode, in this case being Battle Mode. You can play co-op with up to three other players in story mode(Although I highly recommend that you avoid playing with more than two players simultaneously), but that is a nest of hornets all on its own so for now I just want to focus on the battle mode. Battle Mode is exactly what it sounds like. A small gauntlet of random mini games to try and come out on top. There are races, star catcher, survival, and zap scrap.

Races are simple, gotta go fast, point A to point B races. Star Catcher has you frantically running about trying to gather more stars than your opponents. Survival pits you off on multiple crumbling platforms, all the while having cannons firing at you from the background of the stage. And lastly, zap scrap has players shooting balls of electricity at one another to accumulate points. You can also collect power up boxes which boost the strength of your attack up to three times. Winning these bite sized gauntlets determines your place on the leader board, and the higher you rank the more coins you receive at the end.

Now I know that battle mode has a pretty poor reception, and with good reason. As it stands it does feel hollow, and almost like an unfinished product. In this mode you can build your own robo's. This is were the in game currency comes in. One of the biggest complaints I see is that you can only have a maximum of five bots to create and customize. And initially you only start out with one, having to buy the others for a hefty 50 coins each. This isn't too much of a deal breaker for me, but it did leave a bitter taste in the mouths of most. The battle mode itself can and will be buggy alot of the times, and the AI opponents are dimwitted at best. Oh, and get very comfortable with the AI's programming because even if you play online they will be your main source of opponents because lobbies are often a ghost town as of the time of me posting this retrospective review.

The one good aspect of facing primarily bots is that ranking up can be relatively easy. But what would make this mode better is also the main aspect of what this entire mode intended for, active lobbies. I do occasionally come across one, two, or rarely three players when starting a game. And when I do the atmosphere of battle mode goes from being primarily boring to surprisingly engaging. But sadly, there just isn't enough here to keep most players coming back. Hopefully as time passes this will change and Sega will continue to improve this game mode, because I honestly feel like if handled properly, this can be a positive step forward for Sonic multiplayer. We need a larger variety of levels, more robo's to make(increase the cap to 10), and a plethora of unlocks to make playing more enticing.

I love being able to build my own robo in Eggman's lab and showing off my creation to spectator's other than bots. This is the only Sonic game to ever exist where I can finally play as Super Metal Sonic, and that fact alone is more than enough for this biased Sonic fan. But even being one of the few people that like battle mode, I still find myself with the rest of the demographic of people that are left wanting more. 

With all of criticism this game has received over the past few months, Sonic Superstars has definitely seen an impact reflected on its sales due to this. So much to the point that Sega themselves has made a public statement saying that another flagship video game being released at the same time(three days after) as Superstars was the reason for the low sales during the holiday season of 2023. I don't personally agree with this statement, because I bought both games and enjoy each of them respectively. To put it simply, I just don't think this was the home run Sega expected. That doesn't mean Sonic Superstars is ready to put the final nail in the coffin just yet. Only time will tell. Good or bad, I can strongly say that this game is securely sitting in my top five Sonic games of all time(Origins Plus, Superstars, SA2, Mania, & Heroes)!

So that about wraps up this retrospective review! And with all that being said, I would like to add, at the time of uploading this I am currently devoted thoroughly to maxing my rank to try and unlock everything battle mode has to offer. So if you find yourself inclined on giving it another go, or even if this is your first time trying it out, come find me! And if you are on Switch, my friend code is SW-1222-0112-0075.

And regardless of what you or anyone else may think of this or any other Sonic game for that matter, at the end of the day, and to put it simply, the one thing that makes us relatable is that we are all Sonic fans. And that makes you pretty cool in my book.