Worse than Infinite? Your thoughs about End The Evil Moon

[MetalSkulkBane]

I'm just curious: does anyone like The End? Because I kinda feel like no one talks about him.

Personally, I (almost) feel like apologizing to Infinite. The End is disappointing in almost every way. Which wouldn't annoy me so much, if he wasn't considered THE largest and scariest villain of the franchise now, something beyond Dark Gaia or Metal Overlord. And it's... a purple moon. Stupid purple moon.

Thinking about Kirby and Zelda villains, make me wonder if all he needed was a better design (and boss battle). IDK, I find it so annoying that the game with the most spectacular boss battles in the whole franchise failed so badly at the final step.

In my heart, it's Mephiles/Solaris who will always be the "Biggest Bad" of this franchise.

[FlameStream]

Character appeal plays a big role in its likability after all.

Sonic series has notoriously been consistent in trying to make antagonists as unappealing as possible in the past decade, with the exception of Merlina and yes, Infinite. I suppose it has to do with ensuring anything created is to elevate Sonic, and only him.

That said, past the very vocal voices that repeatedly ridiculise him, Infinite does/did have a sizable fanbase that went on and built on the idea of this old squad and old self (which has collectively named him after his draft name, Zero). I can't help but feel that the involvement and development I've seen was very similar to Silver.

[Indigo Rush]

The End gets a fairly adequate build-up, and the reveal that it was the voice guiding Sonic the entire time was pretty obvious from the start; though the problem is they don't have much of a personality at all. At the very least Infinite was an unintentionally funny tryhard who was given actual power before repeatedly getting his teeth kicked in. The End doesn't have much going for it besides intimidation and elder god vibes. 

Ultimately just another god to kill. More character than Dark Gaia or Solaris (sans Mephiles) at least.  

[Diogenes]

Nobody talks about the end because there's nothing to say about it. It gets maybe a dozen lines before the final boss and they're mostly just terse instructions, its final boss monologue is just generic edgelord ultravillain rambling, the game never sells the impact of it wiping out the ancients, and it's not even interesting to look at. It's kind of the ultimate failure as a character/narrative element because, aside from being baffled that the final boss of the game really is just that lame, it doesn't even provoke a response, positive or negative. Whatever main villians in the series you hate, at least hate is a response; I can talk about how Metal Overlord ignores everything about Metal as a character, or how Mephiles' plans make no sense given the powers he has, or how Infinite is all cringe edgelord lines and no substance, and they all fucking suck, but at least you can talk about how they suck and how they could've sucked less.

The end is nothing. It sucks in a way that isn't even interesting to be mad about.

[Darth InVaders]

The End was disappointing, but you have to have sympathy: I can't think of any way The End could have been anything but disappointing.

The Titans were all big Final Boss spectaculars - how do you top that? 

Admittedly, something as ridiculous and uncanny as Starro (The Suicide Squad) might have done it, but still... I'm sure the Team was on a time crunch and had all this other shit to worry about

I'm serious btw, it seems like the true final boss was Supreme and The End was just finish the story. It doesn't even get a true boss battle in any mode under Hard Mode anyway - and even in Hard Mode it was just a mini-game.

[ZinogreVolt]

Despite having a speaking role, The End works more as a force of nature. This is something that's evidenced more in the Japanese version, where it posits itself as something that works mostly to keep a form of universal order - rather than the more blatantly malicious and self-satisfied entity it is in Flynn's script. As a symbolic enemy of Sonic, I think it's very good and the story prior to that point sets it up well as the final enemy. The problem more so with The End is its complete lack of a felt presence despite that. Chaos is also an antagonist who was a force of nature, but everybody remembers him well because you interact with him constantly throughout Sonic Adventure. This may have been avoided to preserve The End's twist villain status, but even characters like Merlina are far more memorable because they're pretty much always present. Making The End a top tier villain wouldn't even be that hard imo, since all the pieces for it are in place. But right now I think they make for a good climax, but not a compelling villain. Update 3 could potentially change things, but as it is now I'm not going to say that they were handled super well as a whole.

As for how they compare to Infinite, it's a bit complicated. Infinite has a great design that even communicates some symbolism about his backstory, and he casts a pretty good shadow over the story of Forces by being a constant and active presence. If he's onscreen, shit goes down and something about the story's status does change definitively. That said, he doesn't really work as an antithesis to anything or draw out meaningful symbolism/themes/development for just about anyone. The closest you get to that is the Avatar overcoming their fear of him, which is something, I guess. Infinite is memorable, and I still enjoy him if only for how much Liam O Brien owns his role as him, but he doesn't really linger in ways that improve the story at all. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

The End is just...bland.

I could see the appeal of even the Deadly Six compared to The End. I see the point of The End as a character and a force in the series, but the way it was shown was perhaps the single most anticlimactic thing to have come out of the franchise. You have a force that's more lethal than that of the Titans that require Super Sonic at the bare minimum to stand a chance against, but the Titans come off as the more exciting bosses.

What really doesn't help was the straight up genre change in order to fight The End. We fight the Titans similar to how we would fight enemies as regular Sonic in an action-adventure game, but The End is fought in a Ikaruga-style Bullet Hell game...make that make sense? It feels like it was just rushed, or their trying to hide more to the story behind it and had to make something for it, but either case didn't benefit the end result that came of it. I don't want to say we've seen the last of it, however, but time will only tell if that even becomes the case or not.

[Wraith]

It's such a hilarious mix of obvious creative compromise and incompetence that I think it's interesting to think about what circumstances lead to to it's inclusion. The fact that it pulls me out of the experience to that degree in a game that's supposed to be more narrative driven proves that it's a definitive failure though. Hardcore Sonic fans are usually down to rehabilitate anything so I think the fact that most people just want to be rid of this whole thing says it all.