When did I make this post on the Sonic world DX Anniversary Demo? I made that post in 2019. It is crazy how time flies. But the blog post was my first impression of Sonic World DX in 2019. Safe to say, my first impressions were anything but great. After I made that post, I stopped playing it.
I saw that the Sonic World DX team released a Sonic Amateur Games Expo demo or sage demo, but after the sonic world dx anniversary, I got to the point where I ignored the game. And there is their Sonic World DX Q and A video, and that is something else.
With a bad experience with Sonic World DX, I want to see if the Sonic World DX sage demo fixed some problems I held. And what other changes got made. And since they made a post saying they are cutting some characters. May as well try it out, and I might be impressed.
Enough stalling. I’m going into this sage demo with a bit of bias and a bad experience. If I start sounding mean towards the game, you know why. And I think it is time I made a real impression post here.
Sonic World DX is a 3D platformer where you have a stage selection like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle. There is no story, no main battle guy. Just run and play, which is good.
Ok, the game is now downloaded. But the title screen is loud, but it’s not a sonic fan game if you don’t get hit with loud sound effects and music. If you play Sonic World DX sage demo, lower your volume, for your sake.
I picked the first level: Love Garden. I will say this, the game runs well and looks good. Other than that, the game feels the same, with a new coat of paint. Even Love Garden was a stage from Sonic World R9? It seems to be unchanged, but I enjoyed the level and mission 1.
I started Love Garden’s second mission, which is to bring the flickies to the goal. And this stage was in 3D. Not top-down. And the moment that a flicky, I needed to save to complete the level, flew into the sea, I knew this was going to be trouble, but for the wrong reasons. When a flicky spawn, after destroying a robot, it will go to you or fly away.
And in my case, Love Garden is bottomless. So if a flicky flies out of my range. I am out of luck and have to get to the end to retry the stage. And hope I can find the last flicky without getting hit or dying. In short, I played and beaten Love garden’s second mission. It was anything but fun. I am not a fan of that mission.
The third mission is to kill a set number of enemies on the stage.
It was not bad. It was a real short mission, under a minute. I did have fun, but there are several enemies at the start of love garden, and I don’t need to go out my way to look for them. Still, I had fun.
And the “last mission” for ring attack but with a time limit. And need to be a perfect run.
Get a set amount of rings, and clear the stage with the fixed amount to win. This being in Love Garden, I hope it is continuing to be fun, but I have doubts here.
I was wrong about my doubts. It was hard, given the case, that you get a minute to get 100 rings and can’t die. And pretty much, can’t get hit, as that may make it impossible to clear this mission.
I went back to get the red rings in Love Garden. And by getting five red rings within a level. It unlocks a “harder” version of the stage.
I tried the encore mode of Love garden. It’s not so much harder but smells of cheap enemy placement, fewer rings, and falling platforms that have enemies that can knock you back. It is “interesting.” But I can’t say it is “harder.”
And the other levels are more or less the same, with a few edits to the stage in question or a minor change. The new changes for stage layouts come up when you play a different mission on the zone.
I was not going to play all the levels. As I wanted to play enough to get a fresh impression of the new build, to at least see if it is better or worst, and for the most part, is better. I did have a lot more fun playing the sage build than the first demo. But some issues bugged me or tainted my experience slightly.
Problems I have or found.
(1) But it is where the game started to show one issue with the game I dislike. So, who was the person that added a “camera to mouse”? Like, that is fine, but when you are using a gamepad, your mouse snaps back to the center of the game.
And for someone who was writing this post, my mouse would snap back to the center of my LibreOffice Writer, thinking that was the game. I am not sure when it got added, but this was not in the first demo, and this was never in Sonic World R8 or Sonic World R9.
Should you continue keeping this new feature in the game. At least disable that when the user is using a gamepad. I rather not have my mouse snap to the center of an app because Sonic World DX is running.
(2) And seems Sonic World DX is not free from crashes. I had my first crash after an hour+ of playing. I say the game crash, but it was more of a freeze/lock up. I want to get back into Sonic World, I did enjoy it, but the game crashing kept me away whenever I started to have fun.
For reference, the freeze happened in the test zone, mission: Find the emerald shards. I hit restart, and the game gave out a freeze. Maybe this is a known bug, but I might as well mention it.
(3) This issue bugged me a little more than the others. It’s inconsistent with a few groups of enemies.
Some enemies, you can homing attack, and be fine, without harm. And the same enemies can harm you if you try to homing attack them. It is an issue that needs to get fixed, I would say.
So, to give an idea of what I am talking about here. So in Love Garden, there are these mushroom enemies that take two hits to kill. After the mushroom is gone, you can kill the robot. But should you homing attack the robot, you take damage. And sometimes you are fine and take no damage.
It seems to be the small enemies that have this issue, And one moment you are fine, and the next you are not. It is an annoying thing for me. If these issue gets fixed or not, is non of my concern. Up to the Sonic World dev team to see what is worth fixing.
(4) Some enemies have fast homing shots. And before someone lets me know, I know Sonic World R8 and up had homing shots, but here it is annoying. The mechs from sonic 06 and the sea horses from sonic 2 have fast homing shots that honing in on the player
That’s all the issues I have that bugged me.
Also, I feel this has to be on purpose, right? On its own, it’s a minor nitpick, but for those who want to run the game on Speedrun.com. The mods have to deal with this timer that does not work right. There was a post about the timer bug on speedrun.com for Sonic World R8. Post #1
My final thoughts
I went into this believing I would still feel negative towards Sonic World DX, and while some things rubbed me the wrong way. I say this experience was better than the first Sonic World DX demo. I was hoping to see new changes. But those different changes come in the form of several missions, but that depends on the stage.
When I was playing, it felt like a better version of Sonic World R8 / R9. For the most part, the new stuff is encore mode (unlocked by getting five red rings.), new animations, better-looking models, and new skills. The game still feels like you are running on butter, games like Sonic Heroes or shadow the hedgehog come to mind.
The game is fun to play with all the issues I had. I will say I am not a fan of the camera, but eh, it probably won’t get changed. I got off-topic. Other than new missions, encore mode, and new skills, there is not much “new” here in my opinion, and going off my impressions here. Having played Sonic World R8/R9 before. I pretty much know what I was getting into
And I can say at least the game is slightly more stable? And that is a plus, but that was an hour into the game without crashing. But it seems like it is better. I think if you want to see what Sonic World DX has to offer, you can try the sage demo. My experience was slightly better, and I was shocked about that. As someone who used to Livestream Sonic World R8, it is good to see progress, although some things I have mentioned bugged me.
Well, I said everything that I wanted to say, and if you need to try the Sage build of Sonic World DX, I will leave a link below to the Sonic World dev blog.
https://sonicworldfangame.com/downloads/
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