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Sonic Mania Game Review

Sonic Mania is a 2017 platform game published by Sega for multiple systems including Windows. It’s an often problematic, but mostly excellent homage to classic games in the series.

When this game was released, it was critically acclaimed and hailed as a return to form for this classic Sega franchise. While I personally find it a bit overrated, I do agree that this game is pretty strong at what it does right. It’s just a shame that it sometimes missed the mark, but at least most of the game was excellent.

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The plot is rather simple, but it works in the context of the series. The game was made by a team of programmers who are genuine Sega and Sonic fans, which can be seen in the way the game looks and feels. It pretty much resembles a traditional Sonic game from the early nineties, mostly focusing on honoring the first four entries in the classic series. The story happens right before the third game, thus making this entry the fourth one in the timeline.

My main issue with Sonic Mania is its overreliance on recycling the gameplay elements from the past without ever actually improving upon them. It might be blasphemous to some fans to say this, but even the original couple of games had some issues, in particular the unfair enemy placement, and that element being brought back here was very problematic for me.

Way too often playing the game you die in such an unfair manner that makes the experience quite frustrating to go through. I do realize that the platforming genre usually requires from you to go back to the level after you memorize it and then finish it off properly, but here that happened way too much and at the points where you cannot control the outcome of your death given that the enemies are placed off-screen. I never liked this in platform games and I certainly did not appreciate it here.

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The whole difficulty curve is simply off here. The first half of Sonic Mania is simply put charmingly old-fashioned and just a breeze to go through. It’s fun and so cool in its retro vibes. But then suddenly the hard levels come in and the result is this very odd shift in difficulty that requires a lot of acclimation from the player.

But with the intention not to complain too much, let’s just say that I still really enjoyed playing the majority of this game. The collecting in the game is very well done. The game rewards you with extra lives when you go off the beaten path and stumble upon one, which was wonderful to witness and highly needed for me as I played it on Steam where I could not use save states. The use of rings was superbly done and the player can play as either Sonic or Tails or Knuckles, which made the game rich in choice. I played as Sonic with Tails helping me out, which is always the winning formula for me personally.

There is a co-op mode, but otherwise not a lot of additional modes are present here, making the game not really rich in extra gameplay options and replay value. I finished it at around ten hours, which is not a lot, but that is the length of those classic games in the early nineties, so that choice was understandable. Each world has two acts, at the end of each a boss awaits you. These bosses can actually become quite hard with the final one being ridiculously difficult and making you rely too much on pure luck and getting back your rings once you lose them.

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Mania has 12 zones, of which only four are wholly original unfortunately. The eight that are repeated from the first four entries are actually pretty solid and some are inspired in the new additions that make these levels much vaster, but still the lack of originality was evident in these levels. Of the four new zones, Mirage Saloon is solid and Press Garden is the most visually gorgeous of the bunch. Studiopolis was my personal favorite as it is not too hard, but just satisfying enough and it looked beautiful. The level design was great there.

As for the final stage named Titanic Monarch, let’s just say that it took me almost half of the entire game’s playtime to properly finish it. These two levels are the vastest in the entire 2D Sonic output and some mechanics are just wildly inventive and brilliant, but the difficulty level was too staggering for me personally, which made me enjoy the levels less than I would have otherwise.

Sonic Mania controls well, there were no bugs during my playtime and the score is fantastic. It is beautifully pulpy and retro with such a cool, timeless vibe to it. The same goes for the character animation, which is awesome, and the overall graphics. The visuals are reminiscent of the Sega Genesis graphics, which made the game super nostalgic for me, though that reliance on nostalgia can become excessive here, but they did try to honor the best of the best, so they mostly get a pass from me.

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