zephie's game journals
i set the boss rush to easy and beat it. i forgot i was on hard and that i could do that. it made the parry window way more forgiving whereas before it was ridiculously narrow, also because it doesn't even show the parry, it like freezes in the middle of the animation? and i have no idea if things are good until a couple seconds later. even on easy it took me a few tries to complete the thing. god
then i could play as the other characters again before the final boss! weirdly one of the things that excited me most about this update was all the new unlockable interactions on the map, and there were a ton of them for each character. i like my little critters just hanging out together. but also the other characters start suffering Sonic's patented cyber ouchies too, and Amy's voice actress was slightly too good in that regard? it was actually a little upsetting to listen to
although before in the base game when it was still very much about the discovery and characters were still in their arcs, they would actually talk about things; little lore tidbits, or how they were doing. but now there's the big looming moonthreat everyone's currently working against so all anyone says is either "let's work hard to find the big jewels!" or "WHY are you TALKING to me the WORLD is ENDING". Sage and Eggman are the only interesting ones to talk to because they actually know things
they changed the final boss from just uninteresting to legitimately bad, like approaching Generations levels of terrible final boss. first off it looks like this most of the time because apparently nobody working on it said "maybe the camera shouldn't go right behind the trees while there are on-screen hazards to avoid"
after ten minutes of doing the same things over and over, hitting QTEs that showed cutscenes of Sonic doing things that absolutely looked like they were doing something, i gave in and looked up why the hell the boss's health wasn't going down. apparently! the way to figure out what to even do in this fight is through map completion, which after certain milestones an overworld NPC will then provide hints
even knowing what to do, there is then the matter of wrestling with the controls and arbitrary targeting system. spectacle salvages the day again, eventually i just wanted it to be over so i could see the new ending and watch it all potentially return to nothing, tumble down, etc.
any sane person would probably read through my journal and be surprised at me mentioning how much of a Sonic mood i'm now in, after constantly ripping into every inch of this game. honestly nowadays i'm a lot more into the characters than the games themselves; the comics are my favorite facet of Sonic media at the moment. so i was a little disappointed with how after almost a year of looking forward to the "new story!" update, it ended up being this
but oh well. another new Sonic game is coming out in a couple weeks so i'm not getting a break from caring about nothing other than Sonic anytime soon. and a trailer for the new season of the TV show just dropped? and those comics are still coming out every month oh my god please i have other things i need to do
yesterday after finishing it i closed the game down then realized i hadn't played any of the new levels yet. oops! immediately i wasn't into them because i couldn't play as Amy. i tried out a few of them today then turned it off again after deciding i'd already been soured enough on this game for now. ah well