The Thrilling Evolution of Sonic: Exploring the Exciting Future of Sonic Games

Highlights

Sonic Superstars introduces additional content after completing the game, maintaining the same level of high difficulty as observed in Sonic Frontiers. This poses a significant challenge for players who seek to achieve the true ending.

The latest downloadable content pack for Sonic Frontiers, titled "Another Story," presents players with an alternative route to explore. However, it has been noted that this expansion poses a significant challenge akin to Dark Souls, leading to frustration among certain fans.

In Sonic Superstars, the inclusion of Trip's Story takes the game's difficulty up a notch. This mode includes an arduous final battle against Fang the Hunter, further intensifying the already demanding gameplay experience.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers regarding the post-game content of Sonic Superstars. Readers who wish to avoid spoilers should exercise caution when continuing. With Sonic Superstars hitting store shelves shortly after the conclusion of Sonic Frontiers' post-launch support, it seems that Sonic fans are constantly embarking on new adventures. Despite strong competition from Super Mario Bros. Wonder in terms of sales, it is an exciting time to be a Sonic fan. However, this excitement is reserved for those who possess the patience to navigate the challenges presented by Sonic Frontiers' DLC and the latest 2D Sonic game.

Fans were understandably thrilled when it was announced that Sonic Frontiers' DLC would introduce a new story and playable characters as part of its third wave. However, it was later revealed that this update, titled "Another Story," offers an alternate path for fans to follow once they reach Ouranos Island, the final island in Frontiers' storyline. Successfully completing the challenges in Another Story rewards fans with a fresh ending to the game, which provides a satisfying resolution after the events of the main game. Acquiring this new ending is no simple feat, as it requires overcoming a level of difficulty rarely seen in other Sonic games. Sonic Superstars continues this trend by offering its own technically "post-game" content, which may cause concern for some players.

Sonic Frontiers The Final Horizon's Demanding Master King Koco Trial

In Sonic Frontiers, players have the option to play as Amy, Knuckles, and Tails at their own pace, progressing through the story in Another Story mode. However, eventually, the story will shift back to playing as Sonic. In this part of the game, Sonic's objective is to conquer the trial towers, overcoming his cyber corruption and harnessing its power. The final trial involves intense battles against titan bosses in a challenging boss rush scenario. Sonic is limited to 400 rings, his stats are reset to level 1, and he can only deflect attacks through perfect parrying.

While Sonic Frontiers has always offered adjustable difficulty, the trial led by Master King Koco stands out as one of the toughest challenges in Sonic games. Fans have criticized this particular trial for its perplexing perfect parry timing, which feels out of place in a game that wasn't originally designed around timed parry attacks. This, along with other challenging aspects of the update, has led fans to compare The Final Horizon DLC to notoriously difficult games like Dark Souls. Some players have consequently chosen to wait for a patch, as even on Easy mode, the game proves demanding.

How Sonic Superstars Irritates the Problem Sonic Frontiers Started

Similar to Sonic Frontiers' Another Story, players who successfully complete Sonic Superstars' Story Mode are rewarded with a special story featuring Trip the Sungazer, a new lizard character with a powerful golden dragon Super form. Trip's Story serves as Sonic Superstars' challenging mode, introducing additional enemies in the previous stages and requiring fans to navigate through all eleven zones once again. While it bears some resemblance to Knuckles' campaign in Sonic 3 and Knuckles, it surprises fans with an exclusive final boss fight for Trip, pitting him against Fang the Hunter and his Eggman tech.

Regrettably, akin to Frontiers' The Final Horizon DLC, Fang's boss battle with Trip presents a significant spike in difficulty. The fight disregards players' ring count and relies heavily on instant death attacks, featuring two distinct phases with different patterns. Mastering and defeating Fang the Hunter requires patience, but it offers a vastly different experience from the rest of the game. Unfortunately, without the ability to adjust the game's difficulty like in Sonic Frontiers, fans are left to face Fang as he is. This becomes even more challenging considering that the final boss fight in Story Mode already posed its own difficulty spike. As a result, players who have played both titles have commented that Fang proves to be even harder than Master King Koco's boss rush.

The problem lies in the lack of communication regarding these sudden difficulty spikes, which result in locked content and true endings for the games. Sonic Frontiers attempts to address its difficulty through a cutscene with Sage, but it is easily mistaken as part of the exposition and storyline rather than a clear warning. The consecutive back-to-back increase in challenges, which are not entirely optional, calls for a necessary conversation on the future difficulty levels in Sonic games.

Sonic Superstars is currently accessible on various platforms including PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.