Silverhorn v1

I was feeling the the characters and the tutorial/hangout zone was cute, but once I got into Mindscape it became fantastic. God what a cool as hell level. I'm pretty distant from the scene these days so I don't know if there's anything else like it out there, but the effects used here are groundbreaking. The effects used to stretch the door away from you and to fade in parts of the level are so, so incredbily cool. And then a boss fight straight out of a Sonic Final Boss sequence? Whew! This whole place is legitimately, super inspiring. Makes me dream about making my own character and giving them a super level designed around their kit to go through, with LORE INCLUDED (even if I have no real intention of doing so). It's...maybe not the best idea to put secret hell levels in every character pack, that could get in the way of stuff for Coop servers and whatnot, but it's still really fun to think about.

I do agree with most of the critisicms I've read about it. I didn't even find the place until after I looked online for what people were saying, because I was stumped after beating the game with the emeralds and not being able to find anything in Aether's Castle. The inclusion of Sol Emeralds confused the heck out of me too, I thought those might've been required but I never played Rush Chars so I spent a lot of time trying to research those. I felt a little burned only being able to bring 3 lives in there too, especially after I had like at least 15 in the bank from my playthrough. Was that a conscious decision or is there some engine quirk I don't know about that necessitated that? If it was conscious, I think it was really unnecessary. Not even Prismatic Angel did that and it's way harder (also like 15 years old but that's besides the point). I fell out a couple of times and it was frustrating trying to get back in because I didn't even realize what got me in there after a couple of more tries (someone made a post about needing to do the tutorial again to get back in that confused me for a while). There was like, one life in the beginning area I guess, and being able to play as Aether helped balance it out if you had the option. It felt way more fun to do it as Inazuma though, so I'd really prefer if your lives could just carry over, or if the life count was upped at the very least. Like, I dunno, 10ish?

I'm a little torn on Phase 2 of Facciolo. On one hand it's mind boggling to me that a boss cam even exists in SRB2, and I definitely appreciated having it. On the other hand I do feel like I'm playing against the Biolizard sometimes, and I can't see my goddamn rings after he hits me. Inazuma's shield definitely helped out with that but I still feel like I have to make note of it. Speaking of Inazuma, I ended up getting used to it but being forced to only airdash towards the boss does feel a little bad. It's an unfortunate circumstance but it kinda hurts the mobility a bit, you know?

I really do wish his vulnerable frames were a biiiit longer too. There's one move he does late where he slams the ground and causes geysers to spread out everywhere, but even if you're Aether you have to know he's already vulnerable or else once the danger clears he's already invulnerable and going to his next attack. It's just a bit of a slow fight, and you're waiting for him a lot to be hittable, which I dunno if that's something you want in Sonic. I still rather enjoyed the fight, but I feel like either he needs a couple more openings or his health needs to be cut slightly. Phase 1's pretty great though, no complaints there.

The Ultimate Inazuma sequence put a dumb smile on my face. I figured out the meditate thing pretty fast, but I kinda floundered around after that trying to figure out the eyes and just how to move in general. Those eyes' health bars don't seem to, like, react? I guess you want us to laser them and kill them in one shot, but I was trying to do normal projectiles at first (since that's all I knew about) and getting no reaction. Then when I figured out the laser I kinda missed and hit other parts of the eye first, so I was floundering around for like a minute or two trying to figure out what the hell I was doing.

What I'm saying is that it was pretty in line with a Super Sonic sequence and felt pretty nostalgic. So great job really.

I didn't see any kind of track list for the music used in Mindscape in the credits, so I'm curious where they came from. Is there going to be one put in the thread at some point, or were they original tracks?

edit: OH that's a Sonic Frontiers song at the end there, i still haven't played that. no wonder it sounds so good.

ONE MORE THING BEOFRE I LEAVE SPOILER ZONE BUT HAVING ILLEGAL CHARACTERS GET DIALOGUE IN MINDSCAPE IS SUCH A BIG BRAINED MOVE. It like, unlocked the part of me that enjoyed breaking Team Rose out of their sections in Sonic Heroes and into other parts of the level. Part of me was disapointed that the unique dialgoue ended after reaching Facciolo, but there's an appeal to doing the boss fights, then swapping to Inazuma with devmode to get the invisible wall out of the way, then beating the rest of the level with the illegal character anyway. Did you know that Surge is, like, really great at ths level? Freaking Poetic.

I tried dying at different phases of Facciolo but it just sends me back to the campaign levels. I even tried to die as Ultimate Inazuma but letting the rings run out and falling makes you return to the beginning with all the rings needed to transform again. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but I'm kind of running out of ideas.