Well, we'd better get moving and find Eggman. Elise isn't going to rescue herself, after all.
Now, talking to the people who actually have important information (indicated by a red speech balloon over their heads instead of a yellow one) suggests that I should head to the New City. Unfortunately, I can't actually get to the new city without permission from the guards. The captain actually explicitly demanded that Sonic not be let through.
Anyway, to get through I need to talk to a guard near the gate. However, he claims that he's a mere lieutenant and thus unable to actually give me permission. He then sends me on a side mission to find the actual captain to open the gate for me.
I'm told that I should talk to every soldier in town to get hints, then identify the actual captain from those.
Unfortunately for him, it's blindingly obvious that he's the captain I'm looking for considering that one of the guards at the gate actually directed me right to him when I asked for the captain. He claims that he didn't want anyone meddling in Soleanna's business, which would be a better excuse if the guards, you know, actually did anything.
Easiest. S-rank. Ever.
Anyway, Tails promptly calls saying that Knuckles wants to meet me at the warehouse district. Conveniently enough, that's in the new city.
So, after heading to the warehouse district (and getting past the laughably low gate), I'm thrown into a battle with some robots. It isn't especially difficult (I got a B-rank), but it does introduce two new enemy types:
- Flying, futuristic-looking things that didn't actually do anything beyond taking too many homing attacks to kill here)
- Green wheeled mechs that can do a charge that leaves them invincible until it ends, but aren't otherwise threatening
After that's taken care of, I can speak with Knuckles. He has a message for Sonic from Eggman. Eggman's inviting Sonic to his base at White Acropolis, claiming that he'll release Elise if Sonic gives up his Chaos Emerald. Despite knowing that this is a trap, Sonic decides to go anyway.
Conveniently enough, the mirror to White Acropolis is also in the new city. I don't even need to buy a new upgrade to get there, either. I just need to obliterate a few robots, which are so non-threatening that I got the S-rank on time bonus alone. Once that's done the mirror is right there.
So, White Acropolis. This level starts out with a snowboarding section, and I'll tell you right now that it is the absolute worst snowboarding section imaginable. The thing about this section, you see, is that the board doesn't follow Newtonian physics. It can and will stop entirely if you don't keep pressing forward. A setpiece where Sonic is chased by a giant snowball illustrates this, because the camera faces behind Sonic to show the snowball off and the controls aren't properly reversed (so you'll likely stop dead in your tracks the moment the camera switches).
The snowboarding section also has ramps to jump of of, but unfortunately the jumping wasn't very well thought out. You have to charge the jump before releasing it, and the window to actually jump really is quite small. To make matters worse, the final obstacle is a jump over a bottomless pit.
Anyway, once you've survived that, you get to the stage proper. The first part as sonic is pretty short, and it features ice walls to break down, a track filled with dash pads for some reason, and a bit where you need to hit a switch to disable a laser fence.
After that there's a section as Tails where you're expected to sneak past searchlights and find switches to disable laser fences. To which I reply, "Really, Sonic Team? You really expect me to disable laser fences that aren't even high enough to stop me from flying over them?" At least the last one got me.
The final part of the stage is a wide open area with laser fences I can't deactivate, and thus have to navigate past. There's a homing attack chain to get over one, a spring leading to a rail to pass another, and so forth. I was cheated out of an S-rank by a rather evil trick, though.
The final path leading to the goal ring can be accessed from two areas: a spring off an upper rail and a lower path designed for those who jumped off the rail for the extra life hidden nearby. The lower path contains a bottomless pit to jump over. The bottomless pit is placed in such a way that you won't actually be able to see it unless you're explicitly looking for it.
That there is simply inexcusable. I don't care what you think. It's a trap that is almost guaranteed to get you on your first time through without you being able to do anything about it. Suffice to say, it sucks.
So, cue post-stage cutscene. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles show up at Eggman's base. Eggman tells Sonic to place the Chaos Emerald on a pedestal he sets up, then dramatically presses a button to activate his obvious trap: the Solaris prototype, a time machine. Sonic and friends can do nothing as they're warped to another time. Eggman then tells Elise that her power is needed to complete the machine that will let him take over the world (no M. Bison for you!)
So, what happened to our heroes? Well, they land in a ruined version of the room they were in to start, where they encounter Shadow and Rouge of all people.
As the team surveys the ruined landscape, Shadow explains that they're trapped in the distant future. They'll need a space-time rift to go home, it seems. Sonic suggests using Chaos Control, but according to Shadow, "That alone is insufficient."
You can probably guess that we'll need Chaos Emeralds to get back to the present. We'll get on that next time.
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