Lets talk some Heroes

Since I haven't seen any game discussion threads about Sonic Heroes yet, lets make it and give it a try!

Mostly tackling this game cause it's one of the first games in the Sonic franchise I actually still sometimes replay.

I personally do love the team set up idea as it can allow you to play the game your way, rather speed past everything, fly over absolutely over everything or just pound your enemies into the ground.
I just love that team mechanic in general dammit, it's a cool idea.

Though one thing I personally never liked was how difficult the team Dark missions tended to be as well as the clunky controls sometimes,

Well, you do have to recall that the teams actually each represented different difficulty modes. Team Rose were Easy, Team Sonic was Normal, Team Dark was Hard, Team Chaotic was 'We wanted to be different'.
Though the thing which gets me, is how much of a hilarious ego trip the game must be for Sonic. Just like;
"Hey Tails, hey Knuckles, this time we're all playing equal part in a team!"
"Cool! What are we calling our team?"
"Team Sonic!"
"But I thought we were all equal parts in a tea-"
"Team Sonic."


Or alternatively...
"But why can't I defeat you...?"
"Because we're Sonic Heroes!"
"Nobody here agreed to that na-"
"Shut up Shadow you're a Sonic Hero!"

I will admit however, my brain blanked when I first read the topic title, and I thought...

Oh believe me I know that team Dark was meant as the big Hard mode, but it was a case of, too hard in my opinion. Mostly since if you wanted the end you would need to beat the game with all teams.

And oh god you are right with that that it is shitty that it's all named after Sonic omg. Just makes him seem even more egocentrically ;D

NoNotThoseHeroesDre,Why

I haven't played Sonic Heroes in a long time, but I still remember it was a fun experience for the most part. There was a good amount of variety in the way you could deal with enemies and some parts of the stages using the different formations. But there are points where it feels like the game wants to hold your hand a bit too much.

In hindsight, I do think the characters are a bit too chatty in this game, busting out quotes throughout the levels. Some of the missions also push away from being fun and become more tedious as well for Teams Dark and Chaotix. And I think they missed an opportunity in the last story as well. Team Super is what they were aiming for but it was one super character with two shield characters. I was so disappointed with that when I first played the game and still am today.

All in all though, pretty good game. I sunk in the time to A rank the whole game and then powered through super hard mode on a couple of occasions. I definitely found the game enjoyable. 

Heroes holds my favourite final level of any Sonic game period (Final Fortress, because nghhh the atmosphere and music is perfect there) and in general it's a really cool concept I wish they'd bring back.

One of the things I loved (even if they were short a lot of the time, cri) were the TEAM battles. They were freaking sweet, and my favourite was fighting Team Chaotix because of their theme loop. Like hnnngh it was such an epic battle the first time I fought them as a kid.

There are so many golden moments in heroes. Ranging from the terrors of the gigantic monument chase to the alligator, or the health based boss battles.

Heck, Egg Emperor still remains to be the hardest boss fight I've ever seen in a Sonic game (at least at the time; note I managed to beat the Biolizard at this point in time too) so it's so weird to me. I like the fight though, it's really cleverly done.

Team Dark missions were pretty lengthy, however. I'll agree with that much. Buuuuut they weren't any less awesome in my eyes.

Also special stages. God damn the special stages in that game and the requirements to get into them. It was so tough to get into one at all for me as a kid, nevermind beat them. Luckily I replayed Heroes relatively recently and 100%'d it.

That was fun.

Sonic Heroes is a mixed bag for me.

On one hand, the game does NOT take itself seriously at all, the scenery is vibrant and bright just like the classic games, and the, OH MY GOD DAT MUSIC, I'd argue Heroes has one of the best soundtracks in the whole franchise, every stage having a memorable tune. PlusWhatI'MMadeOfIsTheBestCrush40SongShutUp.

And I usually hate the "monster of the month" set up that Sonic games got into a habit of using, but this game is a big exception, Eggman remains the villain for 90% of the game until metal overthrows him, and honestly, Metal is one character id take over Eggman as a main villain. But seriously they really couldn't let go of using elements of chaos could they?

Now, on the other hand, the gameplay. Oh. My. Lord. In terms of gameplay this is up there with some of the worst 3D sonic games. The control is slippery and hard to control, often causing you to fly off the edge every two seconds, the pacing is all wrong, rather than "Blasting through with sonic speed" you often find yourself stoping to repeatedly bash the A button on an enemy until thier health bar goes down. That's another thing, health bars? Why? Was one homing attack no enough? You managed to get by without doing it perfectly fine before (Yes Sonic Adventure 1 had some health bars but Sssh.) . The boss battles are horrible, most of them consisting of "CHASE THE BAD GUY TILL HE STOPS THEN MASH A" which becomes incredibly boring when you have to fight all the bosses multiple times. 

It's a big shame that such a visually and musically pleasing game with a light hearted storyline was dragged down by awkward gameplay and poor stage design.

As odd as it sounds, I kind of liked the repeated jabbing of the A button to attack the enemies, it was a good way to let off steam when frustrated. And being frustrated did happen a lot due to the slippery as butter controls you mentioned. Mostly with how bad I am at games like this in general, the slipperiness really just made it worse dangit.

Seems to be a bit of a theme in 3D Sonic games. Slippery controls and cheap unexpected deaths.

Heroes does enjoy giving you sections of platforming where you can risk crossing them with speed or power, but you might be better off going with flying just in case the controls mess you up.

I didn't view the multi hit enemies as much of a negative in the game. It wasn't much fun for the bosses to have to score 100+ damage, but for the regular enemies it wasn't too bad. Power characters did multiple points of damage with their attacks, so enemies were made for them to deal with, and also you'd power up your characters in the levels to get little perks and increase their damage. So in that regard, I thought it was well implemented.

I do kind of wish they'd make a sequel of it at some point.
Like I'd love to see them tackle this again and adjust the mistakes with the first one and give it new teams with characters that weren't in the first one such as Silver and Blaze and all.

It would be interesting actually to see who they jammed the newer characters with. For example, you'd expect Silver and Blaze to have a team together, but who would you jam in there as their third party member?
Assuming Blaze could fit the Speed role, Silver could potentially go Flight if they played with his whole 'levitation' power a bit, or Power considering how destructive his powers could allow him to be.

As far as gameplay goes, at least for the speed character, I actually think some improvements were made in Shadow the Hedgehog. The guns(although completely ridiculous) made the life bar system easier and the controls were slightly better.

This shows that the concept isn't a complete bomb and it's very possible to resurrect the idea. Also it would be good to see some new character interactions.

I actually really enjoyed Sonic Heroes, of course it wasn't any where near perfection but it certainly had an interesting concept as far as having the 3 different character types to get through the levels. I'd love to maybe see that taken further? Or even experimented with a bit more as to controlling 3 characters at once.

I feel like the Sonic Fanbase however is really just sent on having just the Speed character type deal? But at the same time, I remember when the game was out and everyone loved it, a few years passed everyone hated it, and another few years have went by and I'm seeing people giving it all this praise again? It's such a messed up place to be in tbh, but I'm sure we're all aware of that

I enjoyed it however, I wouldn't call it one of my favourite games or even a good game necessarily but I feel a game doesn't need to be a good game for you to have fun with it, heck I'd happily sit through a few levels right now!

The thing is, a lot of the reason people said it was 'bad' was a few finicky controls - which is often the case with a lot of Sonic games of that era. Basically every Sonic game was bad because people kept perofrming homing attacks into the void. And dying a lot is frustrating and makes people hate things, unless the game is highlighted where dying a lot is a feature.

Still, the game itself, it's core concept and mechanics were great. And it really baffles me that they just... dropped it after the one game. Like, they could've done so much more with the team idea - yet they never did. I'd really love for another game - not even neccesarily a Sonic game, just any game - to use that concept again. I think the closest I can think of is Trine, with it's 3 characters you can swap between and such, but it's not quite the same.