Sonic Superstars - SPOILER Thread

[Iko]

22 minutes ago, Ming Ming Hatsune said:

 

  Hide contents

Wait until you play Trip's final boss. It is the one of the worst Sonic bosses I've played. First of all, before you get to the final boss - you have complete the whole of Act 2. So do NOT exit the game, otherwise you'll have to replay Act 2 all over again.

Then you have to complete TWO phases, without dying. No checkpoints. First phase, Fang is just chilling from the background firing rockets most of the time, you'll spend 5 minutes minimum beating the first phase.

The 2nd phase has now trial and error. There are may encounter some glitches too that DON'T work in your favor. The small window of opportunity to hit the Fangbot can be wasted if the badnik doesn't hit it.

And you will have a surprise attack at the end that will catch you off guard and you need to be in the right area at the right time otherwise instant death.

In fact, there are way more opportunities for instant death on you, more than hitting the final boss. It's pathetic.

 

 

Spoiler

The surprise attack is crap. It didn't take me too many attempts to figure out and defeat the robot, though the attack is bad designed regardless. On my first attempt I decided to stay at the corner of the screen because I've seen the nose of the robot glowing... I thought "he's definitely hitting me with the head, or shoot me a laser from the nose, or something... it's going to be an attack that starts from the center". You know what happens when you stay at the corner in that phase, right? Second attempt, logically, "the corner is dangerous, let's stay at the perfect middle of the screen!" and you know, 10 more minutes wasted.

[Razule]

5 hours ago, Ducktor Naldush said:

Or maybe, and it's crazy, I know, because Sonic has never done this before, surely, it's madman talk all the way through but maybe just maybe, hear me out

  Hide contents

It's just a cameo or a reference. 

 

Yeah, but it's still dumb..

Spoiler

It'd be like if Shadow was running around in the background, or Chip

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Big tip for Phase 1 of the final fight, I figured out how to manipulate the missile spawns: 

Spoiler

For the last two hits, instead of rushing to the mech’s back, you can guarantee a hit by instead going slightly left of the mech’s arm/side. When you get there, wait out the second wave, and if done correctly, the third wave will have a missile on the far right, and since you’re skirting the line of the far left, you can immediately rush and bop the missile without worrying about it being within the mech’s back, it’ll always hit.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I'm personally leaving full thoughts until I finish the unlockable story, but I have to be honest, I loathe the boss design in this game. I hate how every single fight is considerably drawn out, overtly long, can only be damaged at very specific points, renders most powers completely pointless, other than Avatar for the occasional attack, and worse of all - especially towards the end of the game - forcing you to outright repeat 2-3 minute sections repeatedly if you get OHKO'd.

I really think the boss design squanders the potential of the powers too. It feels like they could've really leaned into like a Mega Man esque design where bosses can be weaker to certain powers, like a boss where Vine could get you high enough to land a few hits on it, or a fast boss where slow could let you skip phases and go right for a attack. Some bosses let you do that, like Lagoon Valley's water boss, but most are just drawn out with no room for anything beyond again - Avatar guaranteeing a hit.

The game gets really irritating later on too with the scrolling bosses, which frankly, I think the physics are not good for. If Sonic loses speed on any auto-scroller, it is almost always a instant kill and you're sent right back to the beginning of the fight. It's really not good.

[Sonicka]

Been playing this all evening, and had to palette cleanse myself on Sonic Mania to double check I wasn't just being harsh with how I felt. 

Something is... off for me about Superstars. It's not another "Sonic 4" - no way. But it almost flirts between wanting to be very cheap like that series whilst pining for the greatness of Sonic Mania.

There are some proper solid ideas in here and often I've found myself smiling at things... but the other 75% of the time I find myself sighing at what could have been.

• The physics are ALMOST there - but sometimes I feel I'm fighting the controls to get my character to do what I want and they are too slow, scripted sections for bosses or gimmicks are especially painful to muster though. 
   
• The level design / zones vary from excellent to painfully mediocre. Also, Pinball Carnival and Golden Capital essentially double as two pinball style stages for some reason.
   
• You get goosebumps with musical tracks like Bridge Island Act 2 or Lagoon City Act 2, but then in comes Jun's painful pieces that accompany the bosses or most of the other zones.
   
• The character design is freakin' excellent and expressive - the models have never looked so good... but the art style for some of the zones don't match this quality and come across as very "mobile phone" esque. I actually wondered on golden capital if assets had loaded in at times and this wasn't just beta structures without textures... but nope, it's simply a choice of Zone design. 
   
• The games Acts are all designed around multiplayer, but multiplayer just isn't that fun in the main campaign (I've found anyway) so Single Player is the way to go. However this means you are running around stages that often feel very open and empty with large gimmicks that often feel shoehorned in because they are the "uncanny wildcard element" to make the multiplayer fun. 
   

I think this game is very at odds with itself. I actually don't think Superstars is bad, I think its good, it gets a passing mark. But it is shame that it misses by "almost" nailing it like Sonic Mania did. I think that's what's hitting me so hard here. If SEGA want to continue the 2D franchise in this style they need to knock it out of the park, and it feels like we have a game that probably needed another year in the oven. 

Also, (not a game criticism) - but my game box came with the reversible cover... with no console logo at the top. This feels wrong and looks out of place on my shelf. I LOVE the artwork but without the labelling it makes the front cover feel like I've got a bootleg copy. XD

[Jango]

Guess we really are in the Mania sequel if it was made by Sonic Team timeline now, which most people feared back then. It's an honest attempt at least, possibly the best this team could do right now.

 

 

So how about a Superstars sequel made by Evening Star, huh? 

[Red Hot Jack]

I would honestly keep Arzest, if this is their come back, they managed well and hopefully they could improve. They made a game that is on par with Dimps's best attempts. It's not like Evening Star doesn't make games anymore. 

There is also the idea floating around of a 2D modern game done by Arzest as a mix of Superstars and Advance, which I would welcome.

By the way, I'm not sure what the method for unlocking extra parts for mechs is exactly, but here's how to unlock NiGHTS parts plus how they look:

Spoiler

You need to score a "perfect" in a bonus stage checkpoint, probably by collecting rings.

 

[Sonicka]

23 hours ago, Jango said:

Guess we really are in the Mania sequel if it was made by Sonic Team timeline now, which most people feared back then. It's an honest attempt at least, possibly the best this team could do right now.

So how about a Superstars sequel made by Evening Star, huh? 

Would soooo welcome that, it continually feels like they are the only ones that really know how these 2D titles tick - and a follow up to Mania would have allowed them to to take their skills to further heights. But, I appreciate that they've moved onto other projects and thus act as more of a support / consultant team on these projects. 

Genuinely though, I would agree that this is an honest to goodness attempt by Arzest, and I think with even more time and polish this could have been a very worthy Mania follow-up. As it is it just falls short (for me) for a number of reasons, but by no means is it spectacularly bad. I would still welcome Arzest being given a second go.

I'd almost be tempted to compare Superstars to Forces in that both games are just perfectly ok and inoffensive, yet don't push any new boundaries. (Don't get me wrong, Superstars is still probably the better game of the two). However while the presentation and production looks great, there are other areas which feel either unfinished or just slapdashed into the game - and this is what brings the overall quality down and it hinders my enjoyment for those areas.

It's a shame as I can see the package they almost had here. But it is the lack of coherency in the presentation of visuals, music and storytelling that  puts me off. I've finished the first main campaign now (and am excited by the newer second one which I just started - ups and down I go!) - but I actually don't really understand what the story of this game was, nor did the journey taken to get there make a lot of sense to me.

As such, unless someone can help with my understanding - here is my takeaway from the story (caution story spoilers):
 

Spoiler

Trip is the protector of Northstar, I think she maybe joined Eggman and Nack either out of curiosity or as a way of scouting out their goals? Eggman has found a Temple with a drawing of the purple dragon in it and wants this power for his own means. He begins capturing animals and converting the island into his designs as per his usual means. Sonic and Co come crashing down on his parade which is where the adventure begins.

From here they navigate through each zone, a somewhat (important?) plot point is that there is a Sky Temple with Robot constructs and Eggman takes a few of these, then Trip befriends Amy after she falls into a hole and cries, Amy rescues her from the pit of fruit.

There is a giant sand snake in a desert after waterworld, then we go to a factory which for some reason is set to self destruct in Act 2 after we beat the boss. The drone sent to blow the factory up has convenient switches to stop it from exploding all over Act 2, I didn't click into c=what was going on during my first few attempts.

Then we go to the Golden Capital which is some wacky Pinball land place where an civilisation used to live. Knuckles finds a temple opening with some drawings inscribed inside... any remaining emeralds you have not collected are also here for some reason... then Nack nicks them from Sonic in another cutscene, then you get them back when you beat his lengthy boss encounter. Trip shows up at the end and uses all the emeralds to become a dragon and betrays Nack and joins your team... I think? Thankfully now we have all the emeralds... except no we don't, from the next stage you will continue with however many you had before and still need to find them in special stages because why?

After Golden Capital it cuts to a Cyberstation Zone... but I don't know how or why we got here. Did we get uploaded to a computer? Is this Cyberspace? What's going on? Regardless, the level is very fun. Then we fight Eggman's robot constructs he stole earlier in Cyberspace. After this we end up at his frozen spaceship base. This takes off and Tails builds some Eggmobiles because sure why not. We chase the space station into space and when we arrive it is falling and crumbling apart... but again, I don't really know why? What did I miss? Is it just an old space station? This level is very long, repetitive and arduous, and then when we get to the end Eggman has a Time Reverse device because... reasons? was there context for this being built somewhere else that I missed? what is this about? He activates time reverse and now we have to go back through the same damn level for Act 2 but this time all the baddies and objects are acting in reverse as the ship "undestroys itself", this is a clever idea... but not executed very well. The End (purple moon) is also in the background because it's a fun Easter egg? Is this tied to the story? Who knows!

Then we have the final Eggman Fight, we beat him and he uses his time reverse thing to rebuild his broken robot for a second final boss round. This reverse mechanic is not used in any clever way apart from prolonging this boss fight and making it last longer than it should. We beat Eggman and everyone flys out of the Spacestation in an eggmobile and they celebrate on the island. 

Either I am dumb as heck, or this was very poorly conveyed to the player. Have I understood the narrative?



 

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

15 minutes ago, Sonicka said:

curiosity or as a way of scouting out their goals?

Spoiler

I'm thinking trip was forced into helping fang and eggman navigate through the island because they threatened her animal friends. They try to convey her as a pushover and being afraid to stand up for herself until she meets amy.

In the golden capital cutscene, she tries to stop fang from getting the emeralds but he kicks her away, and that's when she's had enough of his crap and decides to betray the eggman empire. 

 

[Strickerx5]

I just finished the main story, figured I'd post my thoughts here now as I have no clue when I'll finish the rest of it proper with Spidey mere hours away... nor may I even want to honestly. Just going to make a list cause, again, Spidey and I'll be damned if some cheaply made classic game is going to get in the way of that lmao

Pros:

-Hey look, proper classic physics in a game that wasn't made by fans! Who would've thought we'd ever see the day. They ain't perfect (spin dash feels a bit gimped but I here there's a bug on PC for that so idk) but hey, they're close.

-Trip is neat. Like her design both with and without the helmet. Hope we see more of her and in a format that actually allows for her to get some form of depth beyond "lol, clumsy"

-The other characters aren't perfect in their gameplay (they all feel like they have a lot of lag behind their movesets) but it is nice to get decent playable versions of them all again after the jank that was the Frontiers DLC.

-The 2D animations, while not as nice as a lot of the other recent animations we've been getting nor as plentiful, are nice to have nonetheless

-Most of the first half stages are legitimately fun

-Original ideas and zones

-No life system is a big win for this game. Some of these levels would've been unbearable with it.

 

Mehs:

-Some of the soundtrack is good, some of it not so much. Kind of a disappointment coming from a Sonic title. I'm not going to sit here and shit on Jun like a lot of the base seems to be doing but yeah, he obviously excels more with rock than chiptunes. He's great there and I would strongly recommend just sticking to it for now.

-Special stages are a mixed bag. They're kind of a mess in their layout and the actual act of getting the emeralds is often inconsistent in their required distance. That being said, they're still like top 3 best special stages in the series for me. Probably says less about them and more about how bad these things usually are as a whole but hey

 

Cons:

-This story is light even for a classic game. Eggman's goals are never really explained/showed beyond that little picture, things always just sort of happen, there's very little in the way of suspense that even 3&K in 93' was able to accomplish. I get the entire point of the classic brand is to be simple but this is far below what even the original games were doing.

Spoiler

Like seriously, wtf is that final boss? A dragon? How did that portal even show up? I know Trip's super form is one but how on earth do the two relate? Is it ever explained? I don't think it is but please correct me if I'm wrong.

-Visually, this game is bland. Shit looks like it'd have no issue running on a 3DS most of the time. While certain areas work with lack of HD textures and FOD cranked up to mask the barren backgrounds, a lot of them don't (especially in the late game). Again, understand that this isn't what he classic side of things is about. But I'll argue that a 2D game releasing on modern hardware should not look this budgeted. Shit should be taking advantage of how little it actually has to render. There wasn't a single cent extra spent here. Hell, even some of the few in-game cutscenes managed to have characters clipping into their models somehow.

We're such a long fucking way off from Unleashed man... Wonder is running circles around this game's visuals and that shit only has the Switch; not the gd Series X, PC and PS5 lmao. It's kind of getting embarrassing now.

-The bosses suck. In the beginning I thought the worst they'd be is a simple waiting game but the further I got into the game the more wrong I became in that initial take. Some of these later battles as actual trash. Not only do you have to often wait an absurd amount of time to actually hit them, but a lot of them start to use insta-death hits. All without any checkpoints for the multi-phased ones. They're annoying and not fun at all.

-fuck, crushing, deaths

I won't even get into the usual complaints I have with this version of gameplay like all of the stop and go shit as, at this point, I go into these games knowing what to expect there. Game did very little to alleviate any of my gripes there but hey, probably what the people who like this style prefer so whatever.

 

Overall... eh what can I say? At the moment I probably had a better time with it than CD and maybe 1 but otherwise, the other classics sort of clear this easily even with its few improvements to the gameplay loop and systems. I don't hate the game, especially its first half, but it really isn't something I'm looking to pick up again soon (even if SP2 wasn't coming out this close to it).

Honestly, I just hope Sega actually does what they said they'd do earlier in the year and starts to invest more into this series on every front. I feel like, deep down, maybe there's a stellar 2D platformer in there but it simply did not have the budget to get there, even if its entire design goal was to keep things simple.

There's a difference between simple and dull and I think this game, for a large part at least, falls squarely in the latter.

[StaticMania]

51 minutes ago, Sonicka said:

Ether I am dumb as heck, or this was very poorly conveyed to the player. Have I understood the narrative?

Nah, the story isn't clear at all...

There's no real connective element between levels and nothing connecting the levels to whatever the "plot" of the game is.

[Red Hot Jack]

The only thing clear from the game is that Fang and Trip hate each other at this point. They did a bad job explaining everything else, especially, final boss spoilers

Spoiler

The dragon. You would know Eggman probably gets it out because of the drawing he makes in the prologue, that returns at the end, but otherwise how would we know what the hell happened?

 

[Shiny Gems]

So, I already asked this in a status update, but which do you think is better? Sonic Superstars or the Final Horizon update of Sonic Frontiers? I am curious to know.

[Sonicka]

17 minutes ago, Spooky Gems said:

So, I already asked this in a status update, but which do you think is better? Sonic Superstars or the Final Horizon update of Sonic Frontiers? I am curious to know.

Tricky one, as one is a full game and the other is a DLC update. 

But for my money's worth... it's definitely the Final Horizon update (and it was free). Personally, Frontiers gave me more out of their update than what Superstars has to offer overall - which was not at all what I expected. Superstars is still solid though. 

[Red Hot Jack]

While Superstars may be higher quality and full of features compared to Frontiers, it costs 60 plus the digital deluxe content price, Frontiers update 3 alone is free and has more (frustrating) playtime content, it lasts more than Superstars at least.

[Coz483]

This game was super boring and bland. The only good parts were some of the bosses and some of the last 3-4 acts, everything else was either mediocre or boring. Need a refund.

[StaticMania]

The bosses?

You need a refund really quick.

[Dreadknux]

4 hours ago, Red Hot Jack said:

While Superstars may be higher quality and full of features compared to Frontiers, it costs 60 plus the digital deluxe content price, Frontiers update 3 alone is free and has more (frustrating) playtime content, it lasts more than Superstars at least.

I think it's fair if you're comparing the base Frontiers experience in terms of value for money / hours per dollar, but speaking about Final Horizon specifically is a false economy.

That DLC may have been free, but we all certainly paid a price for it.

(Superstars' higher difficulty is also much better balanced than the outrageous wonkiness of Frontiers DLC3)

But yeah generally, it's a much shorter experience. I was trying to weigh that up when I was reviewing it; for less than what the RRP for Superstars is I clocked in some three-four times as many hours before I completed the base game of Frontiers.

[Shiny Gems]

34 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

I think it's fair if you're comparing the base Frontiers experience in terms of value for money / hours per dollar, but speaking about Final Horizon specifically is a false economy.

That DLC may have been free, but we all certainly paid a price for it.

(Superstars' higher difficulty is also much better balanced than the outrageous wonkiness of Frontiers DLC3)

But yeah generally, it's a much shorter experience. I was trying to weigh that up when I was reviewing it; for less than what the RRP for Superstars is I clocked in some three-four times as many hours before I completed the base game of Frontiers.

For the record, there was no need to respond to him, but to me. I was the one who asked the question he was probably responding to.

I know The Final Horizon was shorter, but both that and Superstars seemed very difficult. I should have made it more clear, but I wanted to learn which was better in terms of difficulty; maybe in terms of trial and error, too.

[Dreadknux]

52 minutes ago, Spooky Gems said:

For the record, there was no need to respond to him, but to me. I was the one who asked the question he was probably responding to.

Yeah fair enough, I didn't work my way up far up the page to see the context of that last post. Sorry!

[Ratchet25tx]

I just made it to Pinball Carnival Act 1 with 4 emeralds. Where are the next one's located so I know where to go from now on?

[Shiny Gems]

36 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

Yeah fair enough, I didn't work my way up far up the page to see the context of that last post. Sorry!

Don’t worry about it. It’s all good!

[Tenko]

Random musing, but did anyone else make a connection between the Egg Fortress Final Boss and the Christian Whitehead scrapped Sonic CD Final Fever boss?

The picture that's used for posts about Final Fever, as well as some of the description, running around the boss on a looping track to damage it, as well as time being involved made me wonder if any of that material was used as a starting point for ideas when designing the boss. The level it's in uses a couple Sonic CD enemies too.

On a side note it surprises me people are having issues with difficulty, half the bosses are far too short, only three hits, and super simple with highly telegraphed repetitive moves. It does suck that they aren't open to multiple hits and it breaks that Sonic tradition. But even the harder six hit ones like the Egg Fortress boss can be cheesed using Avatar or Bullet after their easier first phases making them incredibly trivial. (That arm swing during the last two hits is pretty ass to dodge if your trying to do it without powers I admit)

The hardest part is remembering you have the powers hahaha.

[Shiny Gems]

20 minutes ago, Tenko said:

Random musing, but did anyone else make a connection between the Egg Fortress Final Boss and the Christian Whitehead scrapped Sonic CD Final Fever boss?

The picture that's used for posts about Final Fever, as well as some of the description, running around the boss on a looping track to damage it, as well as time being involved made me wonder if any of that material was used as a starting point for ideas when designing the boss. The level it's in uses a couple Sonic CD enemies too.

On a side note it surprises me people are having issues with difficulty, half the bosses are far too short, only three hits, and super simple with highly telegraphed repetitive moves. It does suck that they aren't open to multiple hits and it breaks that Sonic tradition. But even the harder six hit ones like the Egg Fortress boss can be cheesed using Avatar or Bullet after their easier first phases making them incredibly trivial. (That arm swing during the last two hits is pretty ass to dodge if your trying to do it without powers I admit)

The hardest part is remembering you have the powers hahaha.

I was thinking the same thing on the scrapped Sonic CD boss you mentioned, actually.

[Sonicka]

@Tenkothat’s a good shout on the boss, I never considered that scrapped idea. 

It’s actually funny you being up the difficultly and powers. I completely forgot about the emerald powers being available until the final boss - I never used them up until this point and Avatar safely saw me get past him after my 5th fail.

The powers sort of feel like a cheat code TBH… buuuuuut there are so many cheap deaths and OHKO’s in this game so on reflection this does balance that out. 

Additionally, I think it’s also just a habit of never having to activate these sorts of things before in a 2D / classic style adventure. The rotation wheel of choice feels really at odds with this kind design philosophy to me and I don’t think this really works. Usually a choice wheel feels better suited to 3D / open world games when you are pausing for thought instead of a speedy left to right reactionary platform game. 

That being said - I think it is actually a credit to the level designers that they crafted levels around optionally using these powers (in that you don’t have to use them, ever) whilst making them useful for exploration and secrets, or getting past tough bosses. It’s like having all of the wisp powers available at your disposal, but they are no longer situation specific to a level.