Thoughts on Sonic Forces

I've never written a review for a non visual novel game before. Today I just felt like writing about something I played in February, Sonic Forces. 

Sonic Forces seems to have a bad reputation online. Even though I saw so many people online speak poorly of it, I still wanted to play it. In the past, negative reviews used to affect my enjoyment of things. I'd even stop liking something if I heard too many people criticise it. But now I seem to not care about them as much, which is good, right?

I traded in my copies of Animal Crossing and got four Switch games with the money. Sonic Forces was the only one I got a physical copy of. It was a used copy, so it was quite cheap. Even if it wasn't used, it's not that expensive anyways. 

I feel like writing about this game today because it doesn't seem to get much positive attention. While it's not perfect, I enjoyed it quite a lot. This isn't really a review, it's just more like a long ramble. There won't be many screenshots, sorry about that. 

Sonic Forces is my third Sonic game, but the only one I've been able to complete. Even though I found some stages difficult, it only took me a week to finish! Maybe I should've dragged it out a bit longer, cause I don't know what to do with it now. 

The first Sonic game was given to me for free when I was a kid. It was Sonic Rush. Somebody at my day care lost it, so they just gave it to me cause they knew I liked video games. They also gave me Zoo Tycoon DS, which probably belonged to the same person. It sucks for whoever originally owned those games, but as a kid I didn't really care cause they were free. But I found Sonic Rush extremely hard. To this day, I can't beat Sonic's second stage, and I can't even get past Blaze's first level. I got close to beating Blaze's stage recently, but I ran out of lives. Even the original owner didn't progress any further than me. It's just that I'm not very good at platforming games. I'm just not quick enough with the buttons, which is weird because I can be great at rhythm games which also require speed and precision. 

I also own Sonic Adventure on the Xbox. My lack of skill combined with the wonky camera makes this one really difficult for me, so I'm only halfway through it. I have to grind for lives using the Casinopolis stage to get through some of the levels. I think I'll be able to complete Sonic's part one day, but I don't know about the other characters. 

The reason why I completed this game in a week was because of the Easy Mode which gives you an infinite amount of lives. If that wasn't the case, I would probably still be stuck on it now. Yes, I know you may think I'm cheating, but I have a life and a job, I don't want to spend hours of my life struggling to finish one level. Actually, I did spend hours on the final boss fight because I forgot that you could use your Avatar's weapon to deal damage.

Some of the levels were super easy for me, while others took me ages to finish. The 2D stages were the most difficult. The jumping was sometimes a bit difficult. I had to make sure my timings and my position was correct, otherwise I'd fall. I'd probably have the same problem in other games too. 

The custom avatar feature was cool. I like games that let you make your own character. There were a lot of different clothing options, which was good. It would've been nice if you could customise the face and the hair a bit more though. 

This is the hedgehog girl I made. I've decided to call her Lavender. She looks like a cat from this angle.

I also wish that you could give the OC a name. Custom names never really matter much anyway because the voice actors never say it, but it's still a nice touch. I think this game was almost fully voice acted, so maybe they thought that a custom name would be a bit of a bother. So your character is just referred to as "Rookie" (I think it's "新入り" if you play with JP voices) for the whole game. You can pick a voice for the OC, but in the cutscenes they're mostly mute. Sometimes they make a few gasping noises, but that's it. 

The OC is a blank character so you can insert yourself onto them. If you've always wanted to self insert into the Sonic world, you probably really like this game. All of the characters automatically love you, and you somehow become really great friends with Sonic. There are some stages where you play both Sonic and your OC at the same time, which is fun. 

I'm usually one of those people who prefers Japanese voices over the English. But I actually prefer Sonic in English. The voice acting's pretty good, it reminds me of the cartoons I used to watch as a kid. I only played Shadow's part in Japanese cause I found out that Takashi Kondo played Infinite. 

The plot is really simple. I didn't expect it to be deep. It's lighthearted, which is sometimes all I want. I did think there were going to be more cutscenes, and I thought it was going to have a lot more drama. They tried to make Infinite have some kind of tragic backstory, but there wasn't really much to it. The only thing interesting about him was his design and his edgy theme tune. I think the plot was intended to be serious, but it's hard for me to take anything with talking animals seriously. 

They didn't spend time introducing the characters, cause they expect you to already know them. I only recognised some of them, but it's not really necessary to be familiar with anyone cause even your OC doesn't know anyone at first. At the end they made it seem like the OC was such good friends with Sonic and the gang, but there weren't really any scenes building up their relationships. 

I liked most of the stages. The secret stages were rubbish though. They were short and kind of just pointless, in my opinion. I didn't bother with the SOS missions cause I didn't want to play as someone else's avatar. I liked the boss fights with Infinite, it was cool when he hits you with that virtual reality thing and everything goes all red and confusing. The final boss fight was so hard, but it was at least fun. It was difficult for me when the Death Egg Robot started destroying the ground and I became cornered. Once you remember the patterns of the bosses, it's not really that hard. 

The extra bit with Shadow was OK, it was shorter than I expected. I dunno why you have to download it separately. Maybe it couldn't fit on the cartridge? At least it was free. There's surprisingly a lack of paid DLC for this game on the eShop, which is good. The only paid thing is just a Shadow costume, that's it. I expected it to have so many paid extras, so I'm pleasantly surprised. 

I actually like Shadow a lot. Usually I like these types of characters. I don't really know much about him, but his design is cool at least. He doesn't have that big of a role in the main story, but that's alright. One day I'll play Sonic Adventure 2, where it looks like he has a bigger role. 

One of the best things about Sonic Forces is the soundtrack. It'll probably be on my Spotify Wrapped this year cause I listened to it so much. The orchestral tracks are OK, but the EDM sounding stuff is so great. I also like the rock songs, they're quite catchy. My favourite songs were "Fighting Onward - Space Port", "Nowhere to Run - Prison Hall" and "Moonlight Battlefield - Aqua Road".  Infinite's theme is quite addictive, the lyrics are very funny though. I didn't care for the credits song, cause it just sounded like a crappy pop song I'd hear on the radio. This game's soundtrack is probably one of my all time favourites, which I did not expect at all.

I don't really have much else to say about the game, except that it was fun. It's good that I didn't listen to the negative reviews. Before I got Sonic Forces, I wasn't playing on my Switch much. All my other games I'd played to death, so I didn't use it properly for a few months. I didn't have any plans to write about it on the blog. This post just happened on a whim. Most people come here for my Ikemen Series content, so I don't expect many people to read this. 

That's it for today. If you've read this far, thank you very much! ★