One Step Forward, Three Steps Back: Sonic Superstars Review
On the PlayStation 5 (Full Spoilers)
Classic Sonic is back with 3D graphics, new zones, and first time co-op gameplay. Fans will be pleased to hear Sonic Superstars is enjoyable from start to finish with challenging boss fights. However, while the game is attempting to introduce a lot of new and exciting ideas for the franchise, it sadly falls short in some of these ideas, especially in its later content. With a price tag of $60, is Sonic Superstars worth it?
The story is not the most shining aspect of Sonic Superstars. While Classic Sonic games have never been known for their storytelling, this game is trying to accomplish some new things for the franchise.
First, they bring back Fang the Sniper. Last seen in Sonic the Fighters in 1996, Fang has returned in Sonic Superstars. However, he’s not really utilized. How does Fang fit into the picture aside from some nostalgia fan service?
He’s hired by Dr. Eggman to distract Sonic and co. as he uses these large flickies to cause trouble. You only see Fang during later bosses in the game and that’s it. I would’ve been great to have him stop Sonic in the middle to the adventure every now and then as a mini boss but he’s almost an afterthought in Sonic Superstars.
We’re also introduced to a new character named Trip the Sungrazer. She’s with Eggman and Fang at the start of the adventure but switches sides by the end of the story. What cause this switch up other than Fang and Eggman are clearly the bad guys, I have no clue.
We get a whole Story Mode for Trip and yet, I still know nothing about her. She was heavily advertised for Sonic Superstars and nothing really becomes of her.
Eggman’s goals in Sonic Superstars are confusing to pin point as well. While he does cause trouble for Sonic and friends, what he’s trying to do by the end of it all is beyond me.
I have no idea what’s going on in the story either because I missed something or the game doesn’t explain it clearly. Stuff just happens and you sort of go along with it. There’s no clear narrative which makes Sonic Superstars confusing to follow story-wise. I may not remember much of Sonic Mania’s story but Sonic Superstars isn’t even trying here.
On the bright side, the story is told through these animated cutscenes. They’re only present in the beginning and the end of campaigns but I always love seeing animated Sonic stuff, especially if it’s Classic Sonic. Also, depending on who you choose to play as, the story will start off differently. A very small and subtle change but it’s quite charming.
For the gameplay of Sonic Superstars, it’s fine. There’s three campaigns; Story Mode, Trip’s Story, and Last Story. They unlocked one after the other. Story Mode lets you play as one of the four playable characters; Sonic, Tails, Amy, or Knuckles.
They all control how you would expect with Sonic being the basic character while his friends have special abilities. Tails can fly, Knuckles can glide and climb up walls, and Amy has her hammer. The physics are good enough. It’s not peak 2D Sonic gameplay but they are passable if you don’t pay attention to the physics too much.
I noticed the difference in the physics when the spin dash can’t take you up slops like in previous games. The spin dash is supposed to upstart your momentum and it’s somewhat lacking. Bouncing off of a spring will take you further than a spin dash ever will.
The Chaos Emeralds now grant Emerald Powers, a special ability the player can use during the level. Each color has their own unique ability such as turning into a fireball (Red/Bullet), swimming underwater better (Cyan/Water), or summoning clones of yourself (Blue/Avatar). I would say half of them are useful to take down enemies/bosses while the other half are useless and super situational.
Bosses will drop like a fly if you spam the Emerald Powers at the correct times. Avatar and Bullet are the most useful with the occasional Slow to get the hit in. The problem with Slow is there’s no way to cancel it early, meaning you have to sit around and wait for the Emerald Power to finish (that’s dumb).
Another thing about the Emerald Powers is you need them to advance Trip’s Story. If you don’t have Slow which is the 6th Chaos Emerald, you cannot get past Pinball Carnival Zone. I did not have all the Chaos Emeralds at that point because they got increasingly difficult to get after the 4th Emerald. I have no idea how to complete these Special Stages and it feels like a combination of luck and some momentum based physics.
You have to catch up to the Chaos Emerald as you swing across the floating rings with your tether. Dodging projectiles and collecting rings to stay in the stage as you swing towards the emerald. It feels completely random if I pass the stage by pure luck or I have to work my butt off to get it. There’s no method to the Special Stages’ madness, keep swinging towards it until you get close enough to collect it.
The Emerald Powers are underwhelming to use. The cooldown timer for each power is so long. It feels pointless to use them when it’s better to save it for the boss fight ahead.
Lives no longer exist in Sonic Superstars which is good for later parts of the game. If you do collect 100 rings, you receive a Medal which can be exchanged for really expensive cosmetics in Battle Mode. I mean seriously, it costs 10 Medals for a color and it’s only for one part. If you want your character to be all pink, it’s going to cost 40 Medals for the Head, Body, Arms, and Legs. Why?
Battle Mode itself is fine. It’s inoffensive but it’s not something I would go out of my way to play. This is the only mode that has online and for good reason because the local multiplayer is a mess.
For Sonic Team to make Sonic Superstars with the intent to add multiplayer 2D Sonic gameplay, they for sure screwed it up here. It’s kind of crazy how bad it is with only two players. The game has a hard time figuring out who to follow, whether it’s the player that’s ahead or the one who just fell down the level. There’s no clear indicator who the camera will follow.
And this is just two players. I’ve seen footage of four player multiplayer look outright unplayable with even more bugs and glitches infecting the experience. While you can play multiplayer in Sonic Superstars, don’t. Play the game by yourself first then torture yourself with the multiplayer.
This being a key reason to make Sonic Superstars and for the final multiplayer experience to be like this, my lord what the hell happened here? Hopping into Super Mario Bros. Wonder made me realize how much better the multiplayer experience is here because the crown player is the one the camera will follow at all times. But, I digress.
The bosses are manageable in Story Mode. I enjoyed the challenge they brought to the table because they’re not hair-pulling difficult but you’re not defeating them on your first encounter.
The zones are completely new naming wise but they share the same themes as before. From Bridge Island Zone to Pinball Carnival Zone, it’s places Sonic fans have seen before with new bells and whistles. 11 Zones in total with most having two Acts and a boss fight at the end. It’ll take you about 4 to 5 hours to finish Story Mode which isn’t too bad.
If Sonic Superstars was just Story Mode, I’d say the game is a 7/10 and well worth playing for Sonic fans. Maybe not at $60 but definitely at $30 at most. Welp, the game doesn’t finish here.
After the main adventure, you unlock Trip’s story. It’s pretty much New Game+ on a harder difficulty. Trip’s ability is a double jump and she can latch onto walls. It helps in her story mode as the level design is completely different for every single level. Because of this and the increased difficulty, Trip’s Story easily triples the play time of Sonic Superstars from 4 hours to 12 hours in total.
I kid you not, Trip’s Story is very hard because the level design adds bottomless pits, spikes, and a slew of other hazards to watch out for. I can see why they wanted you to collect all the Chaos Emeralds because Trip’s Final Boss against the Fang Mecha is stupid difficult.
I was literally stuck on this fight for over two hours because of how hard the fight is. The first phase is fine but the phase after is where it gets difficult. There’s so many projectiles and hazards that one-shot you and to do this for the FIRST time during the final boss of Trip’s Story? Absolutely insane. The Emerald Powers will help in getting free hits on Fang and they refresh after each phase.
I do like that it’s a brand new boss fight against Fang but the fight in itself shows the problems boss fights have in Sonic Superstars.
For one, there’s a lot of down time in between opportunities to hit the boss, so it becomes tiresome after many, many attempts. Two, the boss is just outright glitchy. When the ant badniks spawn, you have to hit them before they land to hit Fang’s robot.
However, sometimes the ants just don’t register. I hit them but it doesn’t count as damage to Fang. Or the ant badniks are glitchy and can’t be hit at all. This makes the boss fight last longer because this is one of your few opportunities to hit Fang before you have to dodge projectiles again.
Trip’s Story could’ve been better if it was shorter, only selecting a few zones/levels. Having the player essentially play the game all over again after just finishing it makes zero sense. The difficulty spike is fine until the final boss where its glitchy state makes it harder. If you choose to skip Trip’s Story, that’s fine. You will be missing out on the other half of the game that cost you $60.
When you finish Trip’s Story, that’s when you unlock Last Story. It’s the true final boss of the game which is just as stupid as the Fang Mecha. Its name is Black Dragon which is like…where did they come from? The story somewhere probably (HOPEFULLY) explained it but I don’t know where this Black Dragon came from.
The boss fight has you play as Super Sonic as you dodge his projectiles and landing hits when an opportunity opens. Getting hit by Black Dragon only dazes you for a few seconds and you only have to worry about your ring count being higher than zero. Black Dragon once again shows the issues with Boss Fights in Sonic Superstars by having the player sit around and wait for an opportunity to attack as you dodge projectiles and collect rings.
The way you get rings is poorly designed as well. You have Tails or Knuckles fly across your screen, dropping rings behind them. If you touch them, they give you bonus rings which is like 10 rings or so.
A good way to keep the fight going but at times when they come in to assist, a scripted cutscene will pull you into a new view as you dodge Black Dragon projectiles, canceling the ring help and you missing out on getting more rings. This is extremely frustrating because you can do everything right but have a low ring count by the second or third phase because the game cuts the ring help too soon.
You don’t know exactly when Tails or Knuckles will appear on screen. I do like that Tails’ tornado engine goes off when he’s on screen as an additional audio indicator that he’s here to help. Knuckles has no audio indicator, so you’ll likely miss his appearance if you’re not going back and forth across the screen constantly.
Stupid design all around when you can just reward the player with rings each time you hit the boss. It is nice to see Tails and Knuckles help with the final boss but the way it’s implemented is not functional.
Also, the boss fight’s design is just perplexing. Like, why does he throw all these projectiles but the ones you can hit are not on your screen at all times because of the open area. Then, the way the black holes work is if you’re at the center, you die instantly. If the black hole spawns on you, you’re dead. This can create some really unlucky scenarios where you have +60 rings but die because a black hole happened to spawn directly on you.
I’m already under pressure from the ring count. Forcing the player to have near perfect inputs against Black Dragon is frustrating. You cannot mess up during any of your opportunities to hit. Otherwise, you’re wasting time and rings to finish the fight.
The final phase (if you can even call it that) switches Sonic from sideways to a frontal position. You have to press these quick time events correctly to block the meteors. Otherwise, the cycle restarts and you lose more rings as time goes on.
No random rings in sight and Tails/Knuckles might swing by but it’s very unlikely. Having like 10–20 rings during this part is near impossible because he throws like five or six boulders at you. I only got past this part because I was already going at it for over three hours at this point.
At this point, I wasn’t even that mad because of how stupid the Fang Mecha was. I’m kind of numb to Sonic Superstars’ absurd post-game modes because they really padded this game out to charge $60. I would much rather have Sonic Team polish the physics out and fix the multiplayer than re-design every level for Trip and cook up these two final bosses. Sonic Superstars quickly became a bad Sonic game because of the unneeded padding from Trip’s Story and Last Story.
On the presentation side, it’s actually not that bad. The game looks pretty good and I did not run into many glitches during Story Mode. The multiplayer breaks the game and the final bosses are glitchy at times, making them harder to complete. Fans have been comparing Sonic Superstars’ soundtrack to Sonic the Hedgehog 4 which I honestly don’t see. I kind of liked the music when I was playing Sonic Superstars.
Maybe some tracks weren’t as great as others but it’s still Sonic music. The game runs at 60fps on the PlayStation 5 which is nice. The character models and the environments all look good. I really like the 3D character model style, even though I still like the classic retro look of Sonic Mania. The further you get into Sonic Superstars, the more glitchy the game gets. But for the Story Mode and the overall presentation, no complaints here.
Sonic Superstars tried to introduce multiplayer, 3 different story modes, and new characters but a lot of it feels incomplete. I really wish Sonic Superstars took its time to flesh out Trip and the return of Fang. They’re in the story but I don’t know how or why they’re here. Padding the game out with Trip’s Story is ridiculous. They really wanted to charge fans $60 and the extra content here is not fun and most certainly not worth your time.
The difficulty spike experienced in the final bosses are not anything I recommend players try out because they are not designed well and have glitches making the fights even more difficult. They could have easily dropped this game at $20 to $30 without Trip’s Story and polished out the multiplayer. Instead, we have a $60 mess that has no clear narrative, a worthless multiplayer mode, and final bosses that will take you 6 hours to complete both of them. That’s longer than finishing Story Mode by the way.
I hope Sonic Team takes notes from Sonic Superstars’ shortcomings and learns what to do in the future for Classic Sonic. We had a lot of great ideas here with Trip, Fang, and the multiplayer but all of them were poorly executed. I cannot recommend Sonic Superstars at $60. If you find it for $30 at most and you’re curious how the game is, go for it. Otherwise, you can skip this title and play Sonic Mania again. It is not worth your time and not worth your money.
Travis “tvsonic” Vuong
Business e-mail: travisvuong56@gmail.com
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