My Personal Ranking:
- Sonic Adventure 2
- Sonic Generations
- Sonic Colors
- Sonic Adventure
- Sonic Unleashed
- Sonic Heroes
- Sonic Lost World
Sonic Adventure 2 is the optimal Sonic experience for me. A ton of content, great cast of characters, engaging story that has actual consequences to the over all universe, great incentives to play after the main story, the most refined Chao raising experience, addictively fun multiplayer. It's just SO much that this game does right that it's flaws can be overlooked. It's definitely the Sonic game that I've played the most and I absolutely love every few years firing up a new save and playing through it all over again.
Sonic Generations is almost the perfect love letter to fans (Sonic Mania takes that mantle), and is basically the best parts of Sonic Colors and Sonic Unleashed. It is a complete rush to burn through the levels as modern Sonic. There's an amazing sense of accomplishment learning the optimal paths in each level and being able to have a perfect run. I love how power-ups are added distinctly change up the experience and of course being able to blaze through the levels with Super Sonic, which is still a feat that very little 3D Sonics do, was huge hit of nostalgia. And as I said in my thread, this game is extremely gorgeous. The art design and graphics holds up so well many years after release, truly one of the best looking Sonic games ever. While this game does so much good, it is very lacking in content, and the side missions can be down right awful at times. Still one of my favorite Sonic games to replay.
Sonic Colors feels like the safest modern Sonic game. Doesn't do anything wild like Unleashed, but at the same time doesn't have the finely tuned levels like Generations. The levels here are much shorter, contained ideas and constantly mixes 2D and 3D to try and find that middle ground with fans. The wisps are surprisingly not super gimmicky, but at the same time they don't add a whole lot to the overall experience. An issue that does pop up is the story however. This is the first game with Roger Craig, which I think he nails as Sonic, but god the writing and story brings this down so much. I like the idea of Sonic being a sarcastic character, but at the same time the story plays more like a Saturday Morning cartoon. It lacks any depth and coming off of Unleashed with these huge setpieces, grand world and great atmosphere, Sonic Colors feels like a huge step down narrative wise. Each cutscene seems to only be there for comic relief and the stakes never feel important. Again, safe, they don't try to do this complex story and instead side for a simple and completely inoffensive story.
Sonic Adventure is feel is high on this list due to nostalgia and it's importance to the franchise. It still blows my mind that this game and scope was released in 1998, when the last main line Sonic game at the time was Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Being as a soft-reboot of the franchise, they threw everything with the kitchen sink in there and it shows. There's a lot to love about this game. The overworld, seeing Sonic in 3D for the first time, actual character depth and voice acting, how Sonic feels. But at the same time, all of this is impressive from a late 90's perspective. The voice acting is laughably funny, the 3D models move and animate weird in cutscenes, the overworld is extremely confusing the first time you play and there's SO much padding in this game. I appreciate what this game did for the franchise and put forth a true AAA experience, but it has not aged well over the years. Still gets a replay from me every few years. Also Big the Cat is objectively the worse part of this game.
Sonic Unleashed of course is super conflicted. The art style is great, and honestly every Sonic game should have went with this design philosophy. Super cartoonish characters set in this gorgeous realistic world with ton of life and personality. That opening cutscene, my god what a joy that is. It's impressive and always set the standard of what Sonic should be like for a movie. The day time stages is a complete rush but as every one says, the nightime stages brings everything down so much. They are grindy, take forever to play (sometimes reaching almost half an hour for one stage) and it just doesn't feel good to play. I understand that the nightime stages serves to add more content/different playstyle, but it just doesn't work well. I feel if the Werehog was just completely replaced with Knuckles, had a combat system closer to Devil May Cry/Bayonetta then the experience would be completely different. It's a game that I'm constantly disappointed wasn't better because I want this game to be so good.
Sonic Heroes, admittingly has been a super long time since I played it, but I remember liking it at the time but as years went on, I found the experience to be just okay. It's the unofficial sequel to the adventure era, but gets none of the benefits from it. No exploration, no real distinct playstyles, no chao garden, and no large emphasis on story. The different teams don't feel distinct enough to justify wanting to play through the different teams. The problem is that you HAVE to play through the other teams for full completion and you end up playing the same levels 4 times with little to no variation between them. You come from Sonic Adventure 2's great story with world ending stakes, character development to Sonic Hero's plot, which literally just serves for the characters to get to the next level and that's it. The only notable thing from the plot is the Shadow clone reveal but it feels so unjustified because at that point of the story you just don't care. You have no investment in the story and if you skipped every cutscene in the game, you wouldn't be hard pressed for understanding the game at all. Stakes feel low and I understand it was supposed to be a no nonsense gameplay style like the classic games, but falls flat on it's face because even that doesn't work. Classic Sonic and multiple characters worked because they all had distinct roles and abilities. You can completely beat Sonic 3&K with Sonic and get the full experience. You don't HAVE to play Tails and Knuckles to get a completion. At the same time, Tails and Knuckles plays similar to Sonic, but distinct enough for them to feel like a different experience. I can't say the same here for the 4 teams. I also hate the requirements to get to the special stages. It feels completely unnecessary and is only there for you to have to grind out the stages over and over again to get the Chaos Emeralds.
Lastly Sonic Lost World. I wanted to like this game, I really did, but it's just not that good. It starts off promising by having a completely different feel for Sonic. A lot slower, more platform heavy 3D Sonic, which we really haven't had Since the Adventure games. But then it quickly goes down hill from there. The first few levels are genuinely good, but then get worse as the game goes on. Then you begin to feel the limitations of how Sonic controls and how unfun it is to play. Levels just becomes thing to do, rather than things you WANT to do or have fun doing. They eventually get frustratingly boring to complete or frustratingly awful to complete due to level design and feel of Sonic. Zavok and his crew are completely boring and feels useless to even have in the game. You could replace them with Eggman's robots and nothing of value would be lost. What I really felt like this game should have been, was like a spiritual succcessor to Sonic X-treme. Some what open world/sandbox level design in which a slower Sonic makes a lot of sense with elements of speed sprinkled through platforming segments and set pieces. But instead we get a Super Mario 3D Land/World approach to level design without the actual benefits to that style.
