Last time, we discovered that our trip to the beach was useless as far as rescuing the princess is concerned. Hopefully the next level will be more productive.
Anyway, people are saying that Eggman was seen in the desert, so naturally it's our next destination. There's just one problem: the way into the desert is closed off, and the soldiers aren't about to let me in even though I'm widely known as the one person anywhere most qualified to foil Eggman's schemes. So I need to get permission from the creatively-named Lord Regis.
Unfortunately, Lord Regis is a bit preoccupied at the moment, and he is apparently physically incapable of multitasking even to save his own ruler. The problem is that a little girl has gotten stuck on a rooftop (seems there's no fire department, power company, or other organization with access to long ladders in Soleanna).
I need to save the girl to proceed, but the only spring up to the rooftops is behind a wall with a short gap in it. The gap can't be passed with the spin dash, despite the fact that SA2 used a gap even shorter than this one to teach players about spin dashing, so I need to buy another upgrade.
The Antigravity unlocks the slide technique for only 500 rings. Sliding is accomplished by holding Square for a bit while running, then releasing it. The move itself basically defies all known laws of physics to have Sonic slide around on one heel while leaning back. It can also get under the gap, allowing me to take the spring up to where the girl is, finishing up this pointless side sequence.
Once the game is finished reloading the entire town and repositioning every single NPC in it, I can get to the mirror that leads to the desert.
Actually entering the mirror immediately throws me into a cutscene of Elise imprisoned in some ruin. She remembers the words of someone who I'm going to immediately tell you is her father, telling her not to cry no matter what happens. Sonic almost immediately breaks through the wall to save her, though.
Unfortunately for us, Eggman shows up to hinder our escape. He apparently teleports into Elise's cell, then sics one of his robots on us.
This leads into the first boss battle of the game: the Egg-Cerberus. Despite the name it only has one head.
Egg-Fido's primary means of attack is to charge haphazardly around the battle arena, aiming at wherever Sonic was when he started the attack. After a few charges, he runs out of breath, allowing Sonic to grind up his tail, across his spine, and onto the laser horn on his nose. Sonic can then steer Egg-Rover into the walls (or into the conveniently-placed statues that do extra damage).
Once Egg-Cerberus loses half his health (2 regular hits or 1 statue), he mixes things up by adding a leaping attack. This attack can either be done in an overly-telegraphed manner that involves jumping up on top of the walls of the arena, or pulled completely out of nowhere with no warning whatsoever. Either way, Sonic can gain control of him after he uses this one.
There's one more trick to this fight, though: starting at half health, Egg-Cerberus will steer away from the wall once while Sonic's riding him (twice once he's one hit away from defeat). It's just prolonging the inevitable, though: he goes down easily enough even with that trick.
I only got a C-rank, which I'm going to attribute to the game repeatedly refusing to register Sonic as having grabbed onto the laser horn, causing him to fall off in front of the Egg-Cerberus.
After the battle, we're shown a cutscene with the gang in the desert, pursued by a swarm of robots. Tails offers to act as a decoy, allowing Sonic and Elise to continue into the second zone of the game: Dusty Desert.
This level is one of two where Sonic carries Elise. In this state, the regular Square actions outside of the Light Dash are unavailable (yes, they did just give me a new power and then deactivate it for the first level after getting it), but Sonic and Elise do have a unique ability together. By pressing R1, they can somehow combine their power to generate a force field that damages enemies that come into contact with it and lets them walk on water (or quicksand, which is coded the same as water in this game).
This level also introduces the first large enemy type in the game: big, top-heavy robots that fire their arms to attack. When Sonic attacks them, they fall over and their generators open up. I don't think Eggman thought the design of these things through entirely.
Oddly enough, this level isn't too bad. There aren't too many stretches of quicksand, the enemies aren't too poorly placed, and there are quite a few shortcuts (of which I only took one in this run). I walked out of the zone with an S-rank and a large stack of rings.
After the stage is done, there's a cutscene with Sonic and Elise in a field that looks like it was taken straight out of the default Windows XP wallpaper. They stop for a bit, and Elise notices that Sonic's hurt, apologizes for causing him to get hurt, and dear lord, we're starting that subplot now, aren't we?
Anyway, after a "romantic" moment between Sonic and Elise, Sonic asks about the Flames of Disaster. Elise explains that the Flames of Disaster are the wrath of Solaris, the sun god that Soleanna worships for no adequately explored reason despite the fact that the most common legends about Him have Him destroying the world with his rage. She also explains that Solaris was almost released ten years ago, and starts worrying about what might happen if Eggman is able to release the Flames of Disaster.
Sonic then tells Elise not to worry, saying that "nothing starts until you take action" and "if you have time to worry, then run". I cannot even begin to say how much I disagree with these bits of advice.
At any rate, we return to Soleanna, where Sonic is immediately attacked by Silver the Hedgehog. Silver intends to kill Sonic due to his status as the Iblis Trigger. Cue boss fight!
Silver's only attack is to psychically grab things and throw them. Unfortunately, he can grab Sonic and throw him, and the delay between when he grabs and when he throws is enough for Sonic's mercy invincibility to wear off. Many a fight with this guy ends when he screams "IT'S NO USE!" and tosses Sonic into the invisible ceiling, then does so again once Sonic falls downward.
The way to defeat Silver is to run away until he's got something grabbed (he'll yell "HOW ABOUT THIS?" to signify that he's grabbed something), then attack him and quickly run away. Attempting to use the homing attack to escape only got me killed when Sonic kept attacking Silver, so it's probably a good idea to avoid that.
Anyway, Silver doesn't mix up his attacks at all, so the same strategy will work throughout the entire battle. I died once, then beat him on my second attempt for an A-rank.
Defeating Silver here also unlocks his story, but that will have to wait.
After the battle, After the battle, Sonic checks to make sure Silver's all right, and Silver responds by slamming him into a pillar. While he's talking down to Sonic, Eggman shows up out of fucking nowhere to kidnap Elise again.
Elise Kidnapping Count: 2
Silver then prepares to finish Sonic off, but before he can, Amy shows up to stop him. Apparently they know each other, but the important thing right now is that Amy stands in Silver's way long enough for Sonic to escape.
Next time, we'll go try to rescue the princess again.
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