I'm sorry to admit I feel it's a superior game concept (although Sonic 3 & Knuckles will always be my favourite game ever), in the sense that anyone, even newbies, could easily enjoy it. Both games were interesting from beginning to end, giving many different challenges in short levels. This weekend I took a train and played Rocketknight Adventures and Dynamite Headdy in my tablet from beginning to end. I love that, but I start to understand that it's not the formula that has remained as a standard to present day, as a friend of mine told me last week. It's all built around speed and designed for speed to make sense.
Classic Sonic formula involves large stages, exploration, certain semi-automated segments (the ones in which you run at top speed). But for me it wasn't difficult.īy the way, I must admit something: Sonic formula was fresh and great back in the day, compared to other platformers based on small stages with one or several well designed challenges. Don't know about the difficulty for those who haven't played any Classic game (or even any Sonic game for that matter) tho. There is a spike in difficulty starting from Lava Reef tho, but even then it wasn't that bad for me. The only things that gave me actual trouble was Special Stage 5, perfecting Blue Spheres and the OOZ act 2 boss. That said, I wouldn't consider Mania too difficult if you played the classics. It's mostly pure luck, sure, and Eggman sucked hard on the second attempt, but because of this randomness I consider that boss to be a very poor game design - too drastic of a genre change AND there's a randomisation chance. You say that, but I got triple-chained by Eggman on my FIRST playthrough and I lost a life because of that. And I'm sure the developers made Eggman so easy in that fight because they knew not everyone has played Mean Bean or Puyo Puyo. The intricate combos of Puyo Puyo are completely unnecessary. Once you figure out the basic concept of "match four", then bam, you've won. With the Mean Bean boss though, I thought they did a good job with it because Eggman is such an awful Mean Bean player (even worse than me, and that's saying something). I found the challenge to lie in mastering each stage instead of actually completing them which is great. I can't recall any instances where the game tried to kill me simply because I've never played the stage before. Mania was smart by creating a game that challenged your ability to move fast and traverse stages quickly whilst simultaneously making the game easily accessible. Children were surprisingly more competent than what you would see in this generation. What may be brutally unforgiving now was perfectly acceptable back in the day. That was a bit weird if you think about it. There's not even a tutorial on how to play it. So it's understandable that many newbies don't enjoy Mania.ĮDIT: I mean, Chemical Plant Act 2 boss is something you would only beat on first attempt if you played Mean Bean Machine. On the other hand, I saw my cousin having problems with it, to the point he asked me to play for him on certain parts. I had difficulty with blue spheres, special stages and many acts, and I loved that. I personally found those games to be much harder with more jerkish enemy and trap placements (especially crushers, which ZackScott HATED in Mania).Īs a Sonic veteran, I found Mania to be pretty easy, but to the average gamer, is it actually really hard? And what would that make the other classics? Brutally unforgiving?Īs a Sonic veteran, I found the game pretty well designed not to be easy for veterans. Okay, let's try that again." but rather a "Oh come on!! What was that!?" But I'm thinking if he and others had so much trouble with Mania, then games like Sonic 1, 2, and 3&K would eat them alive. When they get hit or die, it's rarely a "Oops. Are classic Sonic's mechanics something that's difficult for newcomers to wrap their heads around? Because frustration is something I've been seeing a lot with newcomers.
But I can't tell if he just sucks or if I'm just seeing it that way because I'm a Sonic veteran while he and others like him are newcomers. The only times he was having fun were the speedy sections when he didn't have to actually do much. He tried keeping a positive attitude, but I could tell he was losing his patience with the game and not having that much fun. Personally, I found it to be the easiest and most forgiving game in the classic series, but I've watched several playthroughs of Mania where people were having so much trouble with it and getting super frustrated.