General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

So, I tinkered around a little more with Metal Sonic's boss fight, and I think I figured out what the problem was with the first phase. It's positioning and vectors and geometry and stuff, mostly.

The Silver Sonics bounce faster and higher angle if you hit them faster, but the arena is designed that if you hit them when they're in the dead center - when they're revving, basically - they will (probably) hit Metal no matter what. After the the first few hits, they stop spinning from the center and do so from the edges.

This is where it gets tricky. The arena is such that if you bounce them while they're revving at the edges it should, but doesn't necessarily, get a hit on Metal. If you hit them too fast or from too close, they will bounce over Metal instead of into him, and though they might get a hit coming back down it's not guaranteed.

If you hit them on the ground anywhere but the center and the edges, it's anyone's guess how it will go, and I think that's what caused people the trouble. The inclination to hit them while they're in motion - either when speeding along the ground or when jumping - combined with the fact that you're not guaranteed to get a hit off of the edges, makes it easy for someone who doesn't already know the trick to assume there isn't one and keep throwing themselves at the Silver Sonics without rhyme. What's worse, the most obvious means of hitting them is when they're in midair, but that's actually the least effective way: they're hard to pinpoint with Sonic's slower midair mobility (which also makes it easier for Metal to hit you), it's very difficult to get a clean hit on Metal from it, and Tails can sabotage it, so you can consider that a Zonk.

That's why some people finished the fight in seconds and for some people it's tedious and takes forever - because it's just as easy to catch the trick as it is to miss it completely, and you're left shooting in the dark. I still think that adds up to it being poorly designed, though.

A bit like the Komodo Moe/Joe fight in Crash Bandicoot where a hit is a guaranteed hit would've been nice, I guess, but I actually think the best solution would've been to increase the number of Silver Sonic's on the screen, give Metal more hitpoints and have the Silvers react more strongly to Sonic's rebounding them, thus - while amping up the difficulty - making the player more able to deal damage and making the progress feel less tedious even if its harder.

edited 19th Aug '17 10:36:30 AM by KnownUnknown

So, quick question regarding endings so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time: I beat the game as Knux, first without having all Emeralds, and again after collecting them all. The ending didn't change at all (just no smug Robotnik at the end), so I'm guessing that there's a method I need to perform to get the "true" ending. But before I start working on that, I want to know one thing: Is Sonic the only one who can get the "All Chaos Emeralds" ending? Cause if he is, then I won't waste my time trying to try my method as Knuckles. A yes or no answer will suffice; I don't need any details.

Yes, Sonic is the only one who can fight the True Final Boss with all of the Emeralds unless you use the Level select Code.

edited 19th Aug '17 11:44:50 AM by BlackYakuzu94

Super Sonic is still the only one with a flying sprite...

Alright cool. I was hoping that wasn't the case, but at least Knuckles got a unique boss to fight.

Guess I'll be delaying Tails to play as the Blue Blur.

Knuckles technically has one, it's just his Glide Animation lol. Tails just uses his running animation weirdly.

yea, the ideal order to play is Sonic (& Tails) > Knuckles > Tails.

@Known Unknown

Lots of people just don't think to spindash the little guys and just tries to jump into them.

Everyone I watched that did think to spindash tends to win pretty quickly after and considered the boss fight to be quite awesome. Everyone that I have encountered that thought the boss fight was tedious just did not use the spindash.

As a kid I made up lyrics to the opening notes of the Sonic 3/Sonic and Knuckles boss theme. (All i had was Sonic and Knuckles at the time so I didn't know the tune was originally from 3.)

They went "Sonic and Sonic and Sonic and Knuckles, Sonic and Sonic and Sonic and Knuckles!"

Sorry Tails and Amy. XD

edited 19th Aug '17 2:31:48 PM by lalalei2001

So mania's final zone can be called the Eggmanland of classic sonic basically

Jumping is by far the worst way to do it (while simultaneously being the most obvious), though as I just explained even spindashing is only sure to work if you make contact with them at certain areas of the stage (and even then, after their movement patterns change with a couple hits, that becomes less certain).

It's important that you don't just spindash, but spindash them while they're revving as apposed to while they're in motion, otherwise they won't be in the positions that the stage is designed to be most optimal. And that's not something that immediately intuitive unless you're a very aggressive player, especially given that the last time we had a boss like that doing so was lethal.

edited 19th Aug '17 7:04:49 PM by KnownUnknown

It honestly does not matter when you spin dash them. If you did it as soon as they show up. You ether kill them, or knock them into Metal sonic.

Even if it does not hit Metal Sonic. You can just do it again. It does not hurt you or anything. While bouncing above stage they are likely to hit Metal sonic on the way down anyway. If you just spin dash them you will win quickly.

edited 19th Aug '17 7:11:54 PM by Envyus

Having spent a decent chunk of my afternoon replaying the fight to get a feel for how its physics work, I can safely say that yes, it does.

Also, given that the main criticism is that it's tedious and time consuming, not that that it's difficult, the fact that doing it over and over even when they fail to work doesn't cause you to lose rings isn't that much of a consolation.

edited 19th Aug '17 7:13:16 PM by KnownUnknown

No it does not. I have been doing it too and honestly just doing it whenever he spawns will likely beat him in 20 seconds or so.

If the Silver Sonics Rev up you get a hit on Metal sonic. If they do you kill them and another spawns. And this one may rev up.

Even if you don't do it as they spawn this part of the fight is easy if you spin dash into them. A weak spin dash seems to knock them almost always into Metal Sonic at the edges. While a stronger one hits him on the rebound half the time. So it still only takes about 30 or so seconds.

Also the people who are calling it tedious or time consuming are people that don't think to use the Spindash on the silver sonic. As for the people who only spend 30-40 seconds on it when using the spin dash, I have not seen complain. And instead just think the fight is awesome.

edited 19th Aug '17 7:19:47 PM by Envyus

You're missing my point if you think you need to explain that. I've literally explained that twice now.

Doing it right when they're first vulnerable (I assume you mean when they start revving, because you can't attack them when they spawn as you keep saying throughout the entire fight, only at the beginning. They spawn in neutral and thus will be destroyed, not rebounded, and after the first two or three hits they stop revving when they spawn and instead start moving around the stage and attacking before revving instead) is legitimately the way to beat the boss most quickly. Hitting the minis from the center is a guaranteed hit because the dimensions of the stage keep the variance that comes from hitting them faster or slower from causing them to miss. Though this isn't quite the case for the edges (they can still miss) it's still such a sweet spot that you'll most likely hit more times than you miss.

The problem is that this isn't the intuitive way of doing it. It's not counter intuitive, but in a boss that gives you every indication that there are many ways to do it, there being a trick to doing it quickly that wouldn't be what the player would think of immediately isn't a good idea, especially when the game gives no indication that you have to do it in that specific way. Playing extremely aggressively will cause you to find this trick quickly, but playing cautiously or even normally will result in the player wasting a lot of time trying and failing to test the boss' waters, getting lucky occasionally, which is what results in the complaints.

Heck, the fact that whether they jump or not (they don't only jump - half the time they also spindash along the ground. Later parts of the fight have them rebound into the air after a missed ground spindash), rebounding them while they're in motion as apposed to when they're charging up their attack is significantly less effective is likely not something a person playing the boss for the first time is going to cotton onto immediately, and it's also something that would cause a player to generalize about the attack's effectiveness in general. That your vectors have to start from the right position is something that's obvious in retrospect, but not something that a player isn't going to generally assume the game will require of you the first time through.

edited 19th Aug '17 7:30:39 PM by KnownUnknown

Anyone who thinks to use the spin dash tends to have an easy time with the fight. That has been true of everything I have seen. I don't have much respect for people who don't think to use all of their tools when they only have a few of them.

You can do the spindash all day and still not get anywhere, because you have to use the spindash at specific times and positions and not at all times the boss is vulnerable for best effectiveness.

If your opinion is really "I did it quickly right away, so anyone who didn't is just not a good player and doesn't deserve respect," then I guess that's your right. But given the responses the fight has gotten and the observations I've made of how the fight works, so far it seems likelier that you fell into the trick to beating one of the game's less well designed bosses quickly. As I mentioned before, playing aggressively would make someone very likely to figure it out fast, but that doesn't make it intuitive, especially in a game that errs this much on caution.

edited 19th Aug '17 8:14:30 PM by KnownUnknown

Honestly, the biggest criticism I have for the fight is how... I guess maybe how unintuitive it is? Not sure that's the right word.

Yeah, sure, it's not hard, and once you know what you do to beat it, it's not even confusing. But every other boss at least makes it obvious when you're meant to go on the offensive, or when they're vulnerable to being attacked. And when you LAND a hit you get the rebound and boss hit noise instantly, to tell you you actually hit. Waiting for Silver Sonics to bounce takes time, and it's not immediately clear if you hit or miss- Which, unfortunately, happens decently often, with the Silver Sonic just bouncing back to the ground harmlessly. Which is frustrating.

I've been going with "not intuitive" rather than "unintuitive," because... yeah, unintuitive doesn't seem like quite the right word, but I guess that's a little pedantic.

It's not a move that doesn't make sense, and in retrospect its obvious, but it's not something the average player is likely to think of first, or even second. And as you said, it's very possible to both think you're doing it right but not quite hit it, and also to not succeed at first when you do do it right. There isn't much to let the player know the difference between a random failure of the right way and a certain failure of the wrong way, so it's also not hard to assume the right way isn't working either and waste time doing it inefficiently.

And so... confusion.

edited 19th Aug '17 8:22:27 PM by KnownUnknown

"Unintuitive" and "not intuitive" mean the exact same thing. There's absolutely no difference in definition or connotation.

<shrug> I suppose they don't, not really.

My reasoning is that if something is "not intuitive" that has a more simple connotation of being something that isn't an instinctive option, whereas unintuitive has a connotation more akin to counterintuitive: as in, something that's against instinct.

But that's admittedly more perceptive than literal - one of those knee jerk responses that comes from whether a term "feels" right or not, not whether it's "actually" right. Though some words/jargons do have differences like that literally, intuitive is not one of the words that uses it.

edited 19th Aug '17 8:59:48 PM by KnownUnknown

Unintuitive does not mean counterintuitive and I've never seen anyone use it in a way to suggest such. If something's unintuitive, that just means it's not easy to figure out. If something's counterintuitive, that means it's the exact opposite of what intuition tells you it should be. Unintuitive would be a puzzle boss where you have to do something odd to defeat it. Counterintuitive would be a boss where you see something that looks like an obvious weak point but hitting it does nothing and, instead, you have to hit some seemingly random part.

Unintuitive is a weird snake monster that's weak to lightning because reasons. Counterintuitive is a red snake monster that spits fire and is also weak to fire.

Yeah, I know. I'm admitting fault here.

edited 19th Aug '17 9:05:00 PM by KnownUnknown

OK, so I did finish the last zone. Not quite as bad the second time, but I still put forth that it's a tad more complicated than it needs to be. The second zone is better than the first, because the gimmick is better.

As to the Metal Sonic fight, I'm glad I saw the trick here first. It still took me a long time to do it right though.

It's one of the best zones in the game IMO. Better than Hydrocity easily.

Also it's not as hard once you practice it more. Act 2 is long but it goes faster the more you do it. I wouldn't say it's too long either, so long as you avoid the loop sections.