sonic games tier list

I came here to see literally everyone underrate the only perfect videogame ever made, Sonic the Hedgehog (1) for Megadrive, and nobody's let me down. Okay, you may continue. ;)
I will always be shocked by how many people lie on that games name and claim it has “fundamental flaws”.

And then they’ll gas up Shadow the Hedgehog like we don’t see what they just did.
 
I'm still dumbfounded to see Sonic Colours in lower tiers.

I mean people have different tastes yet I feel that the game that was praised as being the Sonic game that "broke the infamous Sonic Cycle" is now considered to no longer be good...
People don't like the writing or the emphasis on 2D for the boost formula. I think a lot of the criticisms are overblown personally but it was mostly praised at the time by outsiders who already didn't really care that much for Sonic. Remember, within the Sonic fandom there are people who love games like Shadow, 06 and Unleashed which are pretty universally panned by the general audience. For us, Sonic wasn't in much of a rough spot, so Sonic Colors was more of a "return to form" for people who hasn't seemed to like a Sonic game in ages at that point.

Of course I do adore it. I think it's music is fantastic, it has 2 of the best vocal themes in a franchise full of S tier vocal themes. Its level design is really fun, with wisps having a ton of fun intended and unintended uses for skips and being largely ignorable if you aren't someone who really cares to stop playing as Sonic doing Sonic things. While the writing isn't great, I think it is easily the strongest of the Ken Pontac era (not saying much ig) and I love the theme park setting. Strong and unique level aesthetics and a shortish run time make it a real treat to replay for me. I also just have a very personal history with the game so it has a lot of sentimental value.
 
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Well, went ahead and did my own as well.
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The way I categorize them, to like vaguely explain, be like:
S is just almost perfect, pretty much, the "must play" when it comes to Sonic games.
A is the pretty good stuff that, while having some flaws, they're still pretty enjoyable titles and really worth checking out.
B is the the middle of the road, like, not bad, but could've been better as well.
C is where the games may have some good qualities to them, but are really hampered by various issues that can't really be ignored, or are hard to.
D is the just the worst, with little to nothing to redeem those games.
 
sonic riders just has bad controls and rush adventure has so much grinding for materials
plus the little boat sections are annoying
Bad controls for Riders is a new one. Fair enough on Rush Adventure, personally I kinda like the occasional grind because it convinces me to get better rankings on each level. The mandatory minigames not so much, the sailboat was annoying, the submarine was impossible if you didn’t have headphones in, and the water bike was so unmemorable I forgot what it was like. Do like the rest of the game though and it makes up for it imo.
I'm still dumbfounded to see Sonic Colours in lower tiers.

I mean people have different tastes yet I feel that the game that was praised as being the Sonic game that "broke the infamous Sonic Cycle" is now considered to no longer be good...
to be fair, Sonic fans BEEN switching up for a while. I still remember the period where people hated Adventure 1, not to mention Heroes used to be universally loved

While I love Freedom Planet, I will forever be bewildered at the popularity of Spark the Electric Jester. I've only played the first two, which are very impressive as a solo dev project, but I didn't find either to be particularly wonderful. The main impression they left on me was how I don't think I've understood the plot of a game less than the second one. It felt like it was made by someone from the moon.
Spark’s popularity 100% comes from the third game if we’re being honest. When the first game released, it didn’t really make any waves, the second game kinda came and went but got an extra boost due to 3D Sonic inspired games being literally non-existent, and then the third game came along and gave people the experience they had been wanting from Sonic the Hedgehog in YEARS. Compared to that, Freedom Planet is kinda just “another 2D Sonic inspired indie game.” Sad truth.
 
Well, went ahead and did my own as well.
View attachment 86534
The way I categorize them, to like vaguely explain, be like:
S is just almost perfect, pretty much, the "must play" when it comes to Sonic games.
A is the pretty good stuff that, while having some flaws, they're still pretty enjoyable titles and really worth checking out.
B is the the middle of the road, like, not bad, but could've been better as well.
C is where the games may have some good qualities to them, but are really hampered by various issues that can't really be ignored, or are hard to.
D is the just the worst, with little to nothing to redeem those games.
I find it fascinating that Sonic Colors and Sonic Colors Ultimate are so far apart. I didn't play Ultimate; what changed?
 
Bad controls for Riders is a new one. Fair enough on Rush Adventure, personally I kinda like the occasional grind because it convinces me to get better rankings on each level. The mandatory minigames not so much, the sailboat was annoying, the submarine was impossible if you didn’t have headphones in, and the water bike was so unmemorable I forgot what it was like. Do like the rest of the game though and it makes up for it imo.

to be fair, Sonic fans BEEN switching up for a while. I still remember the period where people hated Adventure 1, not to mention Heroes used to be universally loved


Spark’s popularity 100% comes from the third game if we’re being honest. When the first game released, it didn’t really make any waves, the second game kinda came and went but got an extra boost due to 3D Sonic inspired games being literally non-existent, and then the third game came along and gave people the experience they had been wanting from Sonic the Hedgehog in YEARS. Compared to that, Freedom Planet is kinda just “another 2D Sonic inspired indie game.” Sad truth.
I think that a reason for why Freedom Planet got a boost in popularity was because it also released on the Wii U, a system that had the most uninspired Sonic slop to ever release, so having something good was like a oasis in a desert in there, but it also just plays too differently from the average sonic so there's also that, FP2 was barely known at launch so the console ports boosted it a lot.

Spark 3 also got a lot of light because of comparisons with 3D Sonic games in a bad way, that's just what happened. (I personally have played them all and in my opinion, all of them are pretty solid products that shine with their own ideas, but can't replace anything that Sega makes contrary to what a lot of people believe)
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I find it fascinating that Sonic Colors and Sonic Colors Ultimate are so far apart. I didn't play Ultimate; what changed?
Not much except making the game a broken mess and way more ugly than the original, the Wii style UIs weren't reworked in the slightest making it feel super obsolete as well.
 
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Sonic Shuffle is one of those games where it's decent with friends but absolutely miserable to play against the computer. They cheat. So. Much.

I really liked the fairy characters, too. Wished they showed up in other Sonic media.
You are not wrong at all. I think that's the main complaint with the game overall from what I've heard - and I believe it. It is one of those games where it's more fun with other human players to join you in the pain...

Lumina was a pretty character.

You guys are going to hate for this, but I did not enjoy "Sonic Adventure 2." The ONLY fun levels in that whole game are the Sonic/Shadow stages. They did a great job bringing the fast-paced action of the Genesis games into a 3D world and almost every stage introduced a new concept; like the Lightspeed Dash returning from "SA1" or grinding on rails.
[...]
The boss fights are a mixed bag. Some of them are fun to fight—like the pyramid golem and the final Sonic/Shadow boss on Space Colony ARK. But everything else ranges from tedious to just plain aggravating (looking at YOU, Tails/Eggman!).
No hate at all. As much as I enjoyed the bits of what SA2 had, the adult self preferred the SA1 stages a lot more. But yes, the speed stages for Sonic and Shadow are heck of a lot fun to play through. Homming attack I probably got a lot of enjoyment out of then I should. While omitted from the quote, I also have to agree on the feelings for the radar a bit. It doesn't become a pain when you're playing through the hard mode stages where you memorize the locations and could do them out of order if you wanted to. But for the other missions where it would've been nice, rather have that. Security Hall for Rouge used to get a family member stuck so bad they didn't get pass it. Although I would say that Mad Space takes the cake of the most frustrating Rouge Stage in the game.
I'm going to be odd in saying this but the issues with the Tails/Dr.R's stages didn't bug me as much... I guess the shooting at enemies was enough to distract me from the sound effects. But that was also when I was a youngster and disliked Tails' stages in SA1 since all of them involved racing a CPU to the end.
But at the end of the day, I still enjoyed what SA2 had even though the bosses can just bite the carrot stick in enjoyment... Took me years to finally beat Biolizard and another to beat Final Hazard. Would probably be fine replaying the game again if only someone else took care of the last two bosses and/or the difficulty was turned down a bit. Even when Perfect Chaos got annoying, I still felt that bit of accomplishment at the end because the ending of seeing them and Tikal leaving together is pretty cute. That and the fin screen with her and Chaos and the Chao.
 
I think your analysis of SA2 is spot on. I enjoyed it; the overall gameplay was fine aside from the issues you mentioned.

The most grating things for me were the extra characters and the story; at least in SA1, the narrative was fairly simple—get all the Chaos Emeralds before Eggman or else the ancient goo monster destroys the city—but in SA2, the writers are trying to get me to care about characters I just don't give a damn about.

Maria is an important part of Shadow's story but she only shows up in cutscenes and then dies, they introduced a discount Catwoman in the form of Rouge because Knuckles apparently needed a romance (bleh ::sickening), Shadow and the Bio-Lizard are somehow different results from the same experiment, and Amy is still useless and annoying despite her character arc in the previous game developing her to the point where she's somewhat self-sufficient and willing to pull her own weight.
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Sonic Spinball?! We got a man of culture over here ::handshake
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Shadow has the best drip. That's all the credit I'm willing to give.
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Sonic Shuffle is one of those games where it's decent with friends but absolutely miserable to play against the computer. They cheat. So. Much.

I really liked the fairy characters, too. Wished they showed up in other Sonic media.
Yeah, I've never understood why people loved Shadow and Rouge. They just kind of... exist.

And you actually brought up a good point about Amy. She contributed so little to SA2's plot that practically nothing would change if she was removed entirely.
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Well, went ahead and did my own as well.
View attachment 86534
The way I categorize them, to like vaguely explain, be like:
S is just almost perfect, pretty much, the "must play" when it comes to Sonic games.
A is the pretty good stuff that, while having some flaws, they're still pretty enjoyable titles and really worth checking out.
B is the the middle of the road, like, not bad, but could've been better as well.
C is where the games may have some good qualities to them, but are really hampered by various issues that can't really be ignored, or are hard to.
D is the just the worst, with little to nothing to redeem those games.
At first, I was like "Damn, the DX port of "Adventure 1" in "C tier?" But then, I realized... You're actually right. That's the perfect spot for it lol.

It's definitely inferior to the original Dreamcast version—lots of bugs that were introduced like the infamous "phase through the wall" on Emerald Coast's loop de loop, some graphical details were changed for no reason or straight up removed (Angel Island's trees), and (probably my least favorite aspect of SADX) the lighting effects that made every character look so... plasticky, for lack of a better term. It's not the worst port ever made, but it is not the ideal way to experience SA1.
 
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For my own sanity I'm limiting this to the more notable entries I've played. And no fangames. Except for one case where I'm totally cheating, but I think it's valid. A year's passed and I still firmly believe it's the best thing we've ever gotten from Sonic as a series.
my-image.png

I still consider myself a fan, somehow. ::eggmanlaugh
 
Spark’s popularity 100% comes from the third game if we’re being honest. When the first game released, it didn’t really make any waves, the second game kinda came and went but got an extra boost due to 3D Sonic inspired games being literally non-existent, and then the third game came along and gave people the experience they had been wanting from Sonic the Hedgehog in YEARS.
Maybe I should get around to playing the third one then... I'm going to be honest, I didn't even know it was out, I feel like I heard a lot more about the first two when they released, but if it's that much better I might check it out.

Although I would say that Mad Space takes the cake of the most frustrating Rouge Stage in the game.
Mad Space is an interesting stage for me, where I think 100% of the discussion online for it revolves around how much people dislike it. Everyone seems to think it's the worst stage in the whole game... except my friends and I growing up. It was, and still is for me, one of our absolute favorite stages. It was huge and expansive, with nooks and crannies on different planets to explore. Whenever we would play MP, it was almost universally the stage we would play the most.
 
I find it fascinating that Sonic Colors and Sonic Colors Ultimate are so far apart. I didn't play Ultimate; what changed?
The launch. Sonic Colors Ultimate had a DISASTROUS launch
(Seizure warning of course but glitches in this game genuinely were this bad before they patched it.)
 
Everything up to 3 and Sonic and Knuckles = good

When the characters started talking = bad
 
You know what, being a pretty big Sonic fan, this thread made me realize something: there is altogether too much damn Sonic.

For real, I've not played a whole chunk of the games on this list and I really don't care too.

Sonic 2 is peak Sonic to me and always will be.

If we're doing Sonic hot takes (again?) here's mine:

I enjoy Sonic Heroes more than SA1 & 2 put together.
 

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