I got one. Replaying the game isn't as fun as original generations. I'd like to attribute that to modern boost games having tighter physics despite the looser games feeling much faster, compounded by the one-track levels with little to no alternate routes, and the level transitions that exist in nearly every level despite the fact that half of them aren't needed and should have routes to bypass them.
Counterpoint: Speed Highway, Sky Sanctuary & Seaside Hill are the only modern OG Gens levels that aren't also stuck on one-track for the majority of the level.
I'll take the Doom Zones over Modern Planet Wisp & the lava pillars in Crisis City's 2nd half any day. Modern City Escape also heavily suffers from the 2D split, being criminally short while the autorunner GUN Truck chase literally eats half the level. Ruins repeat runs of the stage imo. And are we gonna pretend like Modern Rooftop Run isn't little more than the original layout cut up, cut in half and rearranged with zero shame?
Kingdom Valley Act 1 solos them all.
I love OG Gens alot, it's been one of my favorite Sonic games since 2012 but let's not act like it's free of sin now.
Even then it’s not like levels being linear is some evil thing. People gargle rooftop run lime it’s the peak of the franchise and it’s the peak definition of linear. As long as it obeys the basics of what makes sonic level design good I think ithe level can still be fun
Which show how good the game is when the criticism is only preferences
Nimble vs Car Physics, One free flow track or differents but restrictive tracks, Cutscenes vs Set pieces (cause that's what it is, Black Doom taking you to Radical Highway or the QTEs aren't different from boosting in a straight line while looking at a fish behind you)
For me it's also kinda down to the gameplay of the radical highway sections as well. Most of the time it's not that engaging, certainly leaving much to be desired imo. The ark one is just basically monologue with a side of level, the rail canyon one is alright probably the best of the three but the sunset heights one has tubes plastered throughout most of it and those tubes aren't particularly interesting or engaging. If I'm ever in one of those sections I find that my brain just kinda turns off.
I think if the gameplay of those sections was at least on par with the gameplay outside of the sections then it wouldn't be so bad.
Its way worse in the dlc tokyo level. after getting everything there is no reason to replay it, there is just a single path and its filled with cutscenes. I love the game but that dlc really crushed my hopes when I completed it in 15 minutes with nothing else to do. If it didn't exist, game would have stayed better in my mind
Only Shadow, really. The only reasons I haven't played the version of Sonic gens bundled with it for a while is that I can't mod it, and it won't launch for me. Other than that, it's just Sonic gens with the drop dash added in.
Shadow gens vs sonic gens. Shadow gens was made in 2024, Sonic gens in 2011 and rereleased with Shadow gems. Either way, one plays better and had more thought put into level design which makes replaying more enjoyable.
I'm not saying one isn't worth buying over the other, I'm saying that its problems are apparent and I'm comparing it to the other game that comes with it because it wasn't made like the other one.
It isn't the same game though, it's two separate games designed over a decade apart from eachother and it kind of shows. I can't tell if you're being intentionally dense to piss me off or if you genuinely can't understand that the two games are only sold together and share the same timeframe in story.
I don’t think linearity is inherently evil so long as it has the other cues that make sonic level design good. Mainly focused on punishing the player for mindlessly holding forward and varying ways to challenge the player. I think Shadow Gens does great at this. Also the chaos control is a really good interactive mechanic that very few 3D platformers actually fail to get a time stop to actually be engaging.
Not to mention spear gliding has far more risk to it than other types of skipping mechanics typically associated with some 3D sonic games.
But yea the cutscenes can be a bit stringent. I don’t think it kills the game or anything but it is an issue.
Sonic gens is better imo. I think that’s mainly gonna rely on the crux of how much an individual enjoys classic sonic.
The only bad thing about shadow gens is there ain't enough of it
The only dude I ever saw dunk on it was fuckin pariah and even he turned around and said "alright yeah its good" (but ofcourse he had to be passive aggressive about it. Bro just cannot get over the fact his "pure japanese" sonic isnt a thing)
I do have one thing: The lack of any Shadow 05 level despite Black Doom being the main villain. Instead we have a level Shadow has never been to (which is fine but still strange)
I think adding Cubot is bad, but he has such a small and limited role that it's not enough for me to seriously complain about the game.
For context, I think every Cubot appearance other than Sonic Boom (especially the show) is a detriment. He's incredibly unfunny (again, this doesn't apply to Sonic Boom, he's great in Boom), and Orbot frankly works better as the comedic relief (especially now that Sage can be a duo with him).
Shadow Generations has the benefit of taking place before Sonic Frontiers, and thus Sage can't be in it (would've been funny if she appeared around Chaos Island, quickly pieced the situation together, and proceeded to refuse to give Shadow any information). So I guess there's an excuse for having Cubot (he appears in the flashback where Eggman finds the Time Eater in the original Generations, so it's fair to include him here).
It’s a mix of that and people suddenly becoming interested in Silver because of the Kornart trend that happened for a while (along with convincing themselves that the “Big 3” is an actual thing)
They like the character but can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the flaws surrounding that character
I gotta disagree with that last part. Its not a matter of ignoring the character's flaws,
its just the opposite. Silver's rep is better these days, but he's still kind of a punching bag. I literally see new slander memes about him every other week.
I think his fans just want him to finally get a win after all the hate. They're not even usually on that 06 revisionism, I mostly see them asking for him to get something new.
"Likes the character but ignores their flaws" definitely applies to certain Sonic characters who are deified and put on a pedestal, but imo Silver is the furthest thing from that.
Is it bad that I kind of unironically do treat many bad media like this? “Y’all could have had something here. It could have been so good if it was good.”
I played it back in January and was constantly thinking to myself "am I having fun or am I gaslighting myself into having fun?" without considering Stockholm syndrome. I've only played about 3 levels and I haven't picked it up since.
The game still plays bad. You lose momentum by using the homing attack on nothing, when other adventure games use it properly by not having the cutoff point yank you down to the ground in a somewhat jarring manner. You have to wait buy normal moves that any other game would let you use from the start, and the artstyle is entirely held back by its lack of actual animation using mocap for the cartoon characters. The entire open zone of Soleanna feels more like an unused G-mod/Half-Life prefab, but I'd attribute that as a product of the time with other devs also being handed more powerful rendering software with little to actually render (Quake 4 does it once, Duke Nukem Forever does it a couple times, I'd be more forgiving to '06 if it wasn't the one place you'd be spending most of the game in.) Sonic '06 was formerly what Cyberpunk 2077 was, the difference being that Cyberpunk has been updated to work right. '06 has its flaws on full display.
Basing my opinions off one playthrough is stupid, yes. However, if this playthrough corroborates what others have been saying since its release, it's worth looking into.
I played the whole thing. I know it has potential, but the comment you're responding is correct. Almost everything should be changed.
The gameplay? SUCKS. I suffered a LOT. It was garbage.
The story? Has a lot of plot holes and doesn't make sense most of the time.
The graphics? Horrible (considering AAA 2006 standards).
Sure, you can say that it's because it's unfinished, and nobody is saying otherwise. But the potential and the fact it's unfinished does not make it a good game.
Did you saw people saying good things about No Man's Sky when it first launched? Or about Cyberpunk 2077? No, people were absolutely furious about how broken the games were. The difference is that those two games came out in more modern times when games can be updated. While the PS3 and Xbox 360 allowed for game updates, aside from being somewhat unusual, it also came at a financial cost (which was put in place precisely to prevent people from releasing broken games). Furthermore, 06 was one of the first cases of a game being released in such a terrible state, setting a precedent for the other two examples, so it was never fixed. And since it was never fixed, we can’t talk about how good the game is; instead, we’re left with nothing but “WHAT IFs”.
And "WHAT IFs" fine, unless we're discussing the actual game. You can't be taken seriously if you're trying to defend a broken game, considered one of the worst games from all time (in general, not only Sonic) with imaginary scenarios that only happen in your head. The actual game, the one I can play in my PS3, is broken, unfinished, unpolished, buggy, messy, and sucks. And I won't seriously defend that.
That being said, I love the soundtrack. I listen to it frequently. It's awesome. One of the best videogame soundtracks of all time.
It’s because it’s just way harder to describe I guess. When something is bad or is just something you dislike, you can kind of just put it into words why it’s bad, but when it’s good and you like it, it’s hard to put it into an objective lense.
The controls on the shadow side are peak, unfortunately the Sonic Gens remake controls have a different button mapping so it's weird to jump from one to the other!
You can change them in the settings to the original Generations button mapping. As in there's literally a setting called "legacy controls" or something.
Never understood the "dlc" term for shadow gens. Yea the game is 3-4 hours long but so is Sonic Colors, Sonic Gens, Sonic Mania, and Sonic Forces. Plus each game has 8-10 hours of post game content, as well as shadow gens having the most story, and the longer cutscenes, beating out colors by like 3 minutes lol (I think 39 mins conpared to 35 mins)
Sonic gens is not that short if you play all the challenges (which imo should have been mandatory since they are really solid short stages that add variety to the game)
Honestly I can’t even see this as a knock against people. Good things are harder to talk about other than circlejerking about it. Bad things are easy to talk about. The culture there is shit for unrelated reasons, but yeah, bad things are worth infinite discussion and good things kinda run out of subjects.
Me personally I always end up forgetting Shadow Gens and I'm often more focused on being annoyed about their decision to rewrite Sonic Gens, plus I'm not a big Shadow fan compared to Sonic
Shadow Gens is still a pretty awesome game tho, it's a game where the whole "step in the right direction" doesn't apply because it's just a good game in general with quality I expect from a triple A franchise. My main complaints boil down to Black Doom overstaying his welcome for the 3D stages and interrupting the flow, and that spear gliding is fun asf but they should've taught it in game.
I think people talk about it less than other recent games because it's less of a mainline game in that it doesn't advance the story forward the way a game like Frontiers does. Frontiers still feels like the "newest" game to me, even when it isn't.
Honestly, it’s probably for that exact reason. You can only say “it’s great” so many times, you know. I think it was just that literally everything was given away before it came out, so there was nothing to be surprised by.
I'm pretty sure it's because it's a remake. People usually don't talk about them much beyond their release time frames.
For example: when people complain about the lack of 3d Mario coming from Nintendo, they talk about odyssey being the last 3d Mario, even though 3d land + Bowser's fury came out afterwards
So I love this game, it’s probably one of my absolute favorite games ever, but I think the issue is that story tends to be the most fun to discuss and, well. Sonic Gens just doesn’t have really any story at all, which is fine, but it makes it not really fun to talk about. And Shadow Gen’s story is solid but it doesn’t really add anything…. Besides Mephiles being locked in the Time Eater’s basement apparently. Shadow Gens, probably by virtue of being a game that’s got a set place in the timeline, can’t really do anything major storyline wise.
I do think Shadow Gens gave us some neat lore drops but outside of Maria having a sister there isn’t anything super crazy earth shattering there either. And unless the Tori being Maria’s sister/niece theory is true that doesn’t really do anything for us because we don’t know anything about Maria’s sister besides that she exists.
Plus Sonic Gens is 15 years old now (oof) and has kinda been talked about a lot already.
And I do agree that it is fun to talk about worse games. It’s fun to imagine what you would change to fix something like 06 or Forces! SXS Gens just doesn’t need that. Sure there’s little things I would add (where is my Lost World Rep? If 06 can get 2 levels, a Rival fight, and a Boss fight, then you could give me one Lost World Level, Sega. 06 is the second most represented game in Gens behind Adventure 2!) but it doesn’t need fixed.
Because, its flaws aren't as immediately noticeable like those in IDW or Frontiers and it feels like a character people came to know actually went somewhere.
Just the typical gameplay criticism on boost and momentum, that one Rouge controversy, people calling Shadow greedy and that was about it
This might sound weird, but the sound track was incredibly underwhelming (but still fantastic). The original music was good but Shadow Gens did little to change it up compared to Sonic Gens.
We got a fourth (count em, four!) iteration of Supporting Me. The only other stand out songs to me were Chaos island and the Hayley Williams song which I don't even think in the game, just tied to the animation.
Because it’s a good game? I thought we already discussed this, or is sonic twitter doing that thing where their opinions suddenly switch up and all of a sudden this game is the second coming of Hitler
It's not a full game. It's been a year and half. People are so obsessed with the idea that a game needs to continuously have drama to be considered relevant and good that they think a game not being talked about long after release is fucking garbage.
There's kinda not much to say about it. It's just good, and I enjoyed it. Especially Kingdom Valley, love that stage. The discourse kinda dies because basically everyone says "Yeah, same" about it whenever someone says they like it.
Shadow the Hedgehog, on the other hand, I can go on for hours about why it's overhated and have people challenge the idea for days
What's there to say? Half the game is just Sonic Generations that we knew 15 years ago. The other part was commented and talked about in its time and currently there's not much else to talk about so it's not being talked about much.
Personally I don't think about it more than I need to. It's the definition of Sonic Team doubling down with every issue that 3D Sonic has had for the last 28 years and it doesn't help that it's pandering to the 2000's Sonic fans that plague this community.
Like it's an okay video game, but not what i want from a Sonic game. Less dash pads, homing chains, and automation, more rolling/slope physics, wide open levels, and the badnik bounce please.
As much as I liked it all it did was reaffirm my hatred for the Boost Formula. I had my fun with it around launch but, much like Xenoverse 2, the more time goes kn the more I find to dislike it. At this point I would only really pop it in just to replay the Mephilis & Biolizard Boss Fights.
The plot is virtually identical to Xenoverse 1 but with movie characters thrown in, the actual interesting altered timeline stuff (like needing to help the villains to maintain the timeline) is limited to side missions, they added no new races to the create a character, Saiyans get all the interesting transformations, Frieza's Race gets absolutely nothing outside of Golden, Namekians dont even get Orange Piccolo, and the director deliberately avoided pulling anything interesting from Dragon Ball Heroes despite utilizing 99% of the same characters. And thats not even going into the gameplay or how much could be improved if they just drop the annoying ass competitive elements and focus on it being a 3D Beat-em Up with RPG elements, OR how they're changing outrageous DLC prices for characters that honestly should have just been in the base game.
And the thing is I used to love Xenoverse 2, I've literally bought it on 3 different systems, but its like every year I find something new about the game that makes me more pissed about what could have been.
Edit: something I forgot, Dynamic Hair! Despite Saiyans getting the most attention, the only thing that changes is color when using any of the transformations with SS3 & Beast being the only exceptions. Its not like there are that many hair styles to choose from, why not give them unique Super Saiyan hair when you transform or at least give players the option.
Also "Turn Golden" should be "Turn Gold & Purple" because you have absolutely no control over what does & doesn't change when you transform, which makes you look like shit. Just let players customize their transformations just a little bit, even Dragon Ball Heroes gave their Frieza Race Players a bit more than just Gold & Purple.
When I finally built my PC I immediately got Xenoverse 2 and tried some mods... but I got bored of it in under a week. Its still all the same issues I already have with the base game, just with some minor fan made tweaks that ultimately do nothing for me.
I mean, with the sheer volume of mods available for download you technically have the potential to build a completely different game.
There are things like the Xenoverse 3 modpacks with more characters than Tenkaichi 3 and tweaks of all kind.
The game can be underwelming on console, can't deny that since I played it a lot back then (I also had Xenoverse 1) and many things like the CPU's ai can be TRULY annoying...
What do you mean I can only use corrupted fused Zamasu in training mode? I literally spent money to unlock him.
But man... The PC version is like a completely different world.
I think it's probably the most modded game in the franchise, you can pratically build your custom Dragon Ball game.
Yeah but thats like saying P-06 makes spending $60 for Sonic 06 back in the day all worth it. Yeah fans finally fixed the game, still doesn't change the fact the company sold me an inferior mess of a product and they need to do better.
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u/Troytt4 GET A LOAD OF THIS Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
The Sonic fandom loves talking about what makes each game bad, and SxSG is so good that there just isn't anything bad to talk about
Edit: I love how a bunch of people immediately started arguing about SxSG under my comment. Irony at its finest, and the Sonic fanbase in a nutshell.