ash's stash

as with 1 and cd, played through origins ultrafix.

okay, you know, it did at least fare mildly better in my estimations this time! i do still think, to clarify right out of the gate, that i enjoy sonic 1 and cd more than this game, but sonic 2 was genuinely pretty alright this time around.

my qualms of last time are mostly diminished; this time, i actively found myself at least somewhat enjoying oil ocean, the zone itself, although, the boss was just kinda too similar to hilltop, arguably with less danger? which itself is saying something, because hilltop was already just sort of like inverse marble zone, but again, less immediately imposed danger?

yes, my bone to pick this time is with the boss fights in this game. whilst some of them are your typical 8-hit fodder, such as emerald hill, chemical plant, and mystic cave, with very little challenge to offer, there are likewise just as many, such as the aforementioned hilltop, oil ocean, as well as wing fortress, the death egg robot (to some extent. we'll cycle around) and that new boss for the hidden palace zone. honestly speaking? i did not understand how the explosions worked, because i thought it was gonna be like the one boss from sonic 3, and i tried playing it as such, but the bombs just seemed to not send me up? i just ended up sending tails to smack himself into eggman until he died, i was not having it. there is a rather damning issue in this game that the bosses run the "why is this here" spectrum of laughably boring and easy to - i dare say - superstars-tier waiting simulators, at points. of course, im sure that much like most things in these games, i can tighten that up with skill and practice, but like... im not coming to these classic games for the bosses, man. i want to run fast and do cool jumps and tricks and shit dawg.

and that's why i want to cycle back around to the death egg robot - genuinely, the game cemented itself in my mind during this fight as being pretty alright this time, because i genuinely enjoyed trying to tighten up this fight, go in for risky hits whenever i could, and to just beat the shit out of eggman. its a pretty cool fight once you get a hang of it! just wish that it was a bit more conducive to that experimentation; its a pain in the tits having to sit around with silver sonic for like 20 seconds every time you die to the actual boss fight.

but, speaking of getting a hang of things, the level design really did not irritate me nearly as much this time. similar story to the prior two games, i just sort of took different routes from what i usually would, and it turned out to be a rather fun time, it was refreshing and it opened my eyes to how much sonic 2 just breathes this explorative, fun nature once you get to grips, even if i do still believe that it somewhat lacks the incentive to explore as in cd, or the fun of launching yourself off shit to get rewards in 1, or the true scope and breadth of sonic 3. this game feels like a stepping stone to making sonic take the form that his 2d outings from here on out would have; rather than the mildly slower-paced 1 and cd approach, sonic 2 instead opts to go largely for speed setpieces predominantly, with minor (and in this game, i really do mean MINOR) sprinkles of exploration.

one of the reasons you might explore is to find starposts, which have retired the end-level giant ring approach to special stages. yes, all you do now is hit a checkpoint with 50 rings, and as much as i did enjoy sonic 1 and cd, i cannot lie, that shit was often a bit of a pain in the tits, hence why i'd do that shit as tails. in this game, though, i had all the emeralds by the end of emerald hill, as sonic. really fun! being super fast and invincible certainly helps mitigate what few grievances i do have with the level design, and certainly allows you to get used to them before running them again without super sonic as a crutch. which i did! just by virtue of me second-guessing my enjoyment, i thought to myself "did i like that because i was super sonic for most of it?" and on a quick, snacky second playthrough, yeah, no, turns out that the game's just better on replays. who would have thunk it, almost as though that's the exact point i came to with the other two games haha

all in all, though, whilst a great foundational step for sonic, introducing many crucial elements that would go on to shape this franchise, and being no doubt heavily influential and important to its trajectory and planting the seeds for some of his greatest games, it lacks in a few areas that were done better in games both prior and later, but what is done well here is done excellently. in conversation for better than sonic 3 though? i will hold my tongue until i do my replay of that game, but uh... methinks not, off the top of my head.

this game starts so, so strong. all of the best components of what made sonic fun in his first outing are present; speed, colorful and interesting level design, multiple routes, kickass music, and lots of fun and replayability to be had in speedrunning, from the first run through to your hundredth.

but then, the game shits the fucking bed.

the second half of this game - oil ocean onwards - is such drivel that i half-expect it to be from a fucking rom hack. so many layers of bullshit, unfair enemy placement, confusing and slow level design, and outright poor game design across several slogging zones that would make sonic 1 blush. oh, and speaking of which, for one of those zones - inarguably the worst of these terrible zones, metropolis - why not bring back the act structure that we got rid of in sonic 1 because it was slow as fuck, back? it's just such a genius play!

sky chase is just boring as hell. the music's a banger, yeah, but god, just set your controller down and it'll sort itself out, really.

conversely, wing fortress is an arbitrarily difficult stage by virtue of it being laid out by throwing pasta shapes at a wall and calling it a level map. seriously, whoever the fuck designed this stage needs their neck wringing something fierce, what a maze of convoluted malarkey.

the death egg robot can go fuck itself with that one-hit waiting around simulator bullshit. cool fight aesthetically and conceptually but in practice is equatable to pulling teeth in a dense field of neurotoxin where breathing once will kill you.

if this game was just everything up to and including mystic cave, it would be a masterpiece. but the entire back half of the game is genuinely miserable, even after the countless years of experience i have amassed with it. in theory and in moment-to-moment gameplay feel, it is a step-up over sonic 1, especially with the removal of the speedcap killing you, and the addition of the spindash, but whilst they thrive in the best stages of the game, they are actively punished and neutered in the last half.

i find myself enjoying sonic 2 less on a full revisit. perhaps i should stick to the first half of the game next time.