The game has so many issues, too many to count. First of all, it has a ridiculous amount of glitches. The game gets nearly unplayable at times. the boss battles are horrid, some becoming infamous in the gaming community. (I'm looking at you Silver!) The story is a mess of plot holes, ridiculously complicated and poorly explained time-travel, alternate dimensions, bizarre re-designs, and a creepy love story between a cartoon hedgehog and a realistic human princess.
Let's start with the mess of a story, shall we? Like Sonic Adventure, Adventure 2 and Heroes, the game is split into multiple stories, each with a main playable character and a couple other characters you play as from time to time.
There is Sonic's Story, the one you start with where you mainly play as Sonic and occasionally play as Tails or Knuckles in certain levels. There is Shadow's Story, which you unlock after beating Sonic's Story in which you mainly play as Shadow, but can also occasionally play as Rouge or Omega. Finally, there is Silver's Story, which unlocks alongside Shadow's Story in which you play as the new characters Silver the Hedgehog and Blaze the Cat. Let's start with talking about Sonic's Story.
The game starts with a parade in the city of Soliana featuring Princess Elise as it's main attraction. However, Eggman comes in with his robot army, and he looks absolutely bizarre. What's with the nipple buttons and the realistic looking face? He looks disgusting! Anyways, Sonic tries to stop him, but Eggman is able to kidnap Elise anyways. He wants Elise as not only she holds multiple chaos emeralds, but she also has a demon named Iblis sealed within her which can only be freed if she shows extreme negitive emotion.
Eggman plans to have Sonic and Elise fall in love so that when he kills Sonic using his new chaos emerald powered weapons Iblis will be freed and he would be able to build Eggman Land on Soliana's ruins. After kidnapping Elise multiple times, Sonic saving her multiple times, and Sonic and Elise sharing some moments together, Eggman kidnaps Elise for the final time and plans to kill Sonic using his super-weapon powered by 5 out of the 7 chaos emeralds. Sonic defeats the super weapon and escapes with Elise. The end!
Wait, it's not over yet. There are still 2 more stories to go other and then the final story. Next is Shadow's story, so hang tight! Shadow now works for GUN alongside Rouge, and it's unclear which ending is canon in Shadow the Hedgehog which would lead to these events. Also we still don't know if the Shadow in this game and later the rest of the series is the original Shadow as seen in the "True Ending" of Shadow the Hedgehog or an android as seen in Sonic Heroes. If he is the original Shadow, then what happened to the Android Shadow in Heroes? We may never know, as that plot element is never brought up again after Shadow.
Basically, Shadow and Rouge find a chaos emerald, which sends them on a time traveling trip across the multiverse. I forgot the mention this, but in Sonic's Story Sonic runs into another hedgehog named Silver who claims that Sonic is the "endbringer" who will cause the world to be destroyed. Silver's reasoning for this comes up in Shadow's Story, where he discovers that Silver is from a future where Iblis was released and destroyed the world. He also discovers a shadowy being known as Mephilis, who wants to awaken Iblis to fuse with it, becoming a god in the process.
Silver and Shadow eventually team up, figuring out the dark past of Soliana. In the past, there were experiments done in order to create a new energy source for the kingdom. These experiments were done on an ancient artifact known as the eternal flame, which served as a gateway to other worlds. However, the experiment went horribly wrong, bringing fourth a demon, Iblis, and corrupting a scientist named Mephilis, who went insane and planned to re-create the world in his image by becoming a god.
Iblis was then sealed within the princess, who's innocence was the only thing able to seal away Iblis. If she ever showed any negitive emotion, the spell would be broken and Iblis would be released. Mephilis appears and says that he is going to kill Sonic, and traps both Shadow and Silver in the bad future. Silver than uses the last of the power of the chaos emerald to send Shadow, Rouge, and Omega back to the present, and Silver and Blaze go on to defeat Iblis. Iblis is too strong, and Blaze uses a special attack that will kill Iblis for good but would also kill her as well. Blaze dies, and Silver hopes that Shadow made it in time.
Now for the final story, as Shadow and Silver's stories basically go over the same events but from different perspectives. Mephilis arrives in the present and kills Sonic, causing Elise to cry and release Iblis. Mephilis immediately fuses with Iblis, becoming a all-powerful being known as Solaris and proceeds in re-making the world.
The dead body of Sonic and all his friends arrive in a dark world made up of every area of the game, and proceed to collect the 7 chaos emeralds to revive Sonic. Once they collect all 7, it's not enough, and Elise kisses him (Eww! Gross!) reviving Sonic. The chaos emeralds cause Sonic, Shadow, and Silver to go super and they head off to kill Solaris.
They end of killing him, but the world is already destroyed. Elise and Sonic somehow end up in the distant past right before the eternal flame was found, and decide to blow it out, erasing the events of this game from existence and ending Sonic 06, although it's hinted that some lingering memories of Sonic and Elise's time together may still exist. (Kingdom Hearts anyone?)
The game's plot to put it bluntly is not a Sonic plot. Sonic plots are about sonic and his friends going on silly adventures with maybe a few mild twists and a cool final villain at the end which isn't just Eggman in the same mech suit, like, three times in a row. Sonic 06's plot sounds like a scrapped plot for Final Fantasy XIII, who's plot was already very messy to begin with.
I have a theory that Sonic Team wanted a more gripping, engaging story for their "epic reboot," so they went to Tetsuya Numora, director at Square Enix who was currently working on Final Fantasy XIII at the time. They asked him for story ideas and in response Numora gave SEGA a early plot build for FFXIII, which he 100% scrapped since it was obviously crap.
Sonic 06's problems not only lie in it's story, but also in it's gameplay. They game is slippery, glitchy, and frankly completely broken. It is very common for you to just randomly fall though the ground, run though walls, and completely freeze in place at completely random times. Also, the character exclusive abilities are broken. Silver can eventually hover an infinite amount of time, and Sonic can get infinite jumps, completely breaking an already broken game.
But that doesn't even come close to Sonic 06's biggest problem. The AWFUL loading screens. There is literally a 2-4 minute loading screen every time you do anything. Talk to an NPC? Loading screen. Finish talking to an NPC? Loading screen. Enter a level? Loading screen. Enter a new room? Loading screen. There is literally a loading screen after every possible thing you do, and it's not like a 3 second loading screen like in games now or even games back then like the original Skyrim. It's a LOOOOONG loading screen that takes a seemingly infinite amount of time to load.
This along with many other issues like the game soft resetting after getting a game over, the game crashing on multiple occasions, the awful HD character models, and many more things, this game basically killed the Sonic series. Every game after this has either been mediocre, below average, or just plain awful, and that's a real shame. Sonic these days Sonic is just a living joke, especially with that God-forsaken movie coming out this fall possibly doing Sonic 06 all over again.
The only redeeming things about this game are the amazing OST and the really good FMVs. Tracks like "His World," "Solaris Phase 2", and "Crisis City Act 2" have become legendary in gaming, despite the game's poor quality. Also, the game is fun to rag on with friends or mess around in, so there's that.
Overall, there is no way in heck that I would ever recomend Sonic 06. Is is a terrible piece of garbage that deserves to burn in the eternal pit, and should never be played by any sane human being. This game is like torture to play, not because of the glitches, the awful story, or the bad gameplay, but because of those stupid freaking loading screens! Good day! 0.4/10!
Good
- The music is awesome.
- The FMVs are really pretty.
- The game is fun to rag on with friends, I guess.
Bad
- Everything else.
0.4/10
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