Sonic CD review

Recommended

by Dima064

It started as a Sonic game, but as soon as I started to notice the music was a little iffy, things started to feel quite different.

I was looking forward to play Sonic CD, since is one of those games that have legendary status but the truth is, it was disappointing in several ways, not that I had a bad time, on the contrary I was having fun, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that a lot of stuff could be more polished. Starting with the stages layout, this time around the stages have some variability and openness that the past entries didn't have, they at times feel labyrinthic, which is a double edged sword since it spice things up but it also show how clumsy navigation can be, as always you have a lot of obstacles and unfair enemies that can hit you by just some frames after they appear on screen, and since the stages are designed with a lot of stuff and backgrounds, it was hard to tell apart which things were solid or not, again my issue with the past Sonic games was that they keep you from running and punish you hard for doing so, while a more passive and slow navigation is rewarded, but at least to me it feels wrong.

One thing that this game excels are the boss fights, they're simple but more creative and fun than the past games, a pretty neat feature and one of the highlights of this game, I loved the penultimate fight the most, although the last fight lacks the epicness of the other games, is still challenging and enjoyable.

Another key feature of this game is the "Time" mechanic, every stage has at least 4 versions of itself, present, past, good future and bad future, a neat feature in theory but in practice is messy and frankly confusing, I didn't understand till late in the game what was that about. This mechanic also alters the music from the stage and it also have 4 different versions, which takes us to one of my biggest issues, Sonic games always have had outstanding music, and it hit me hard when I wasn't digging any of the tunes of this game, they weren't bad but they didn't match neither the stage atmosphere or the Sonic musical style, to my surprise when I beat the game and did a little of research, it appears that SEGA US make an entire new soundtrack to "appeal" more its audience, it took me just 3 comparisons to feel like I was robbed from a great soundtrack, so if you can choose between the Japanese/European or US versions of this game, choose the JP/EU since it has the original superior soundtrack, although there's one track that I loved, and that one may be the boss fight theme, it's super dark and ominous, it feels also out of place but at least to one boss fight in particular fits perfectly.

I played the Gem's Collection for the Nintendo Gamecube version of this game, it seems that it has a continue feature that I ignore if the original had, I think is a good addition since you can pick up your game whenever you want, although, this game is rather easy compared to 1 and 2. As usual, you can have a "good ending" if you meet certain requirements, is harder to obtain it and to me it's not that worthy but if you like this kind of stuff from the past game, you'll feel right at home and because is fairly short (1:15 hours more or less) you can master the stages to try to get the good ending fast enough. I didn't hate this game but certainly didn't love it either, I can see how for someone that played it as its starting Sonic can overlook a lot of my issues, but being this the 3rd installment of this series a lot of tuning and refinement would benefit it a lot.