Shield Thoughts

Maybe I'm a bit late to the party, but on the Force & Element shield overlap... I'unno, seems like they're both getting the short end off each other.

Force's whole deal is to just tank an extra hit, which really overshadows the other effect of stopping on a dime midair. Granted, these both make the thing feel sturdy - Mighty Glacier trope, kinda - but most of the time you'll just forget you have it. Perhaps to double down on the defensive aspect, the stop could apply some measure of knockback to anything near it? The activation already looks like the barrier is pushing outwards, and pushing away players and/or rings in Ringslinger could lead to opportunities to make use of stage hazards with good baiting and timing.

With the Element shield, I think someone already mentioned the shield & ability revision mod. Honestly, I prefer its change to the shield letting you chain a stomp into an immediate roll - its environment immunities already encourage players to boost forwards where they'd normally need to wait (either on safe ground or on air bubbles), so being able to keep momentum just feels natural along with making further use of the spin trail. This could also open up chances to stomp onto a slope and just blast ahead.

....but I'm no game dev, so what do I know? Besides, they all work nicely enough as is - definitely on the "Element is really strong" team for it showing up in the most convenient places all the time in comparison to all the other shields.
 
Mystic said:
The reason it does not do this is because if you walk off a ledge and press jump too late, trying to jump, jump is the key that the player would expect to use. If the player walks off a ledge and hits spin too late, they probably were trying to roll into something and don't want to jump unintentionally.

I just wanted to add onto your comments about Amy's problematic design around shield with this: Because Amy's fall and spring frames are the same as her jump frames, it is not always visually clear what state Amy is, and this makes it even less clear which button will trigger the whirlwind jump.

Consider what happens to button inputs in each situation
On ground: S = Hammer, J = Jump
Jumping*: S = Hammer, J = Hammer
With whirlwind*: S = Jump, J = Hammer
With whirlwind, fall state*: S = Nothing, J = Jump
* All share the same sprite animation

This is part of the reason why I was advocating during beta that Amy's aerial button inputs are straight-up inverted from most other characters. While I realize the obvious inconsistency this would create between Amy and the rest of the cast, I think internal inconsistencies, especially those that aren't visually indicated, have a worse impact on the player's intuition. At the very least, hammer = hammer = hammer and jump = jump = jump means that the player never has to guess what their button is going to do so long as they keep in mind what character they're playing.
 
Gonna weigh in my thoughts on this. Probable overlap? Definitely. Do I care? Nope.

Whirlwind Shield: The ol' trusty. Double Jump is nice and this shield gives just that. I think the only thing I'd change about this shield is to have the fall-state require [Spin] to Whirlwind Jump instead of [Jump]. Keeping the Whirlwind Jump on one button helps with consistency, and it always confused me as a kid that sometimes I'd Whirlwind Jump when I didn't expect to.

Otherwise, the shield's pretty perfect.

Elemental Shield: Another nice shield in the arsenal. Resisting fire-based and water-based hazards makes it seem a little overpowered, but it's not like the shields are designed to be even in power. The fire-trail is nice for dealing with ground-based enemies (especially those turtle-bots), though the Stomp feels a little lacklustre - but that may be because I'm already very used to the game's physics and don't need any extra aid landing on platforms. I could see new players using it well. Overall, one of the better shields.

I always found it odd that the old Fire and Water shields were merged however, and when I was streaming 2.2 with a friend watching who'd never even seen the game, he instantly thought it was just a fire shield. Didn't even see the water element within it. There's gotta be a better way to indicate it has the elements of both...

Armageddon Shield: Eh, I'm honestly middling on this one. It's a good shield, don't get me wrong - having a barrier which eliminates all enemies around you when you take damage is extremely nice, as it often ensures they won't hit you again. However, I can't help but feel like this shield is more fragile than the others, especially when a single accidental air-spin can break the entire shield.

I kinda wish that it would turn into a Pity shield upon manual use, so that you'd still get the protective properties.

Force Shield: Unironically my favourite shield. Resisting two hits instead of one is huge. The ability of this one is honestly really lame (stopping momentum, woo) and has overlap with the Elemental shield to boot, but honestly? You're not getting this shield for its ability. You're getting the shield for the ability to resist two hits. And that's really nice.

Kinda wish it had its old reflect-on-hit though, and it's almost impossible to tell a half-used Force shield from a fresh one. (Honestly, I just switch to first-person to check if the icon is flickering, if I've forgotten...)

Attraction Shield: A series staple, and for good measure. Being able to attract nearby rings is awesome! And it's balanced by shorting out underwater. The new ability - the Homing Attack from Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island - is also really cool. I'm a little sad that it can't be chained, but having it keep your momentum on boop honestly makes up for it. Plus, it gives characters like Amy and Fang the ability to spin-attack.

Pretty dang perfect.

(Not gonna mention the Sonic 3 shields as they're more a bonus used on secondary stages anyway, they aren't in the main campaign)
 
I like how SRB2 doesn't just use the same shields as 3&K, but all but one I have some problems with. Usually I can ignore this issue because I can just pick up a better shield if I don't find use in the one I have, but I'd still like to give my thoughts on each shield.

Whirlwind shield: Usually my number one choice shield, double jumping is a godsend when playing any Sonic game that gives a whole new layer of gameplay depth and additional paths. It's the only shield I don't have any issues with.
Attraction shield: Attracting rings is again a godsend in Sonic games, and objectively speaking it makes more sense for its additional ability to be magnetically attacking enemies rather than double jumping like in 3&K and Mania. This equivalent to the homing attack is very fun, but I feel it's a bit lacking compared to the Adventure games (ironically enough, because in almost all ways I find those lacking compared to SRB2). I wish the attraction shield would allow for chain attacks, rather than only attacking one enemy at a time; if this change was made, the attraction shield would be just as cool as the whirlwind shield. I'd also love it if the attraction shield let you home in on springs and item boxes, again like the Adventure games; it makes sense because both of those things are made of metal.
Elemental shield: Having a shield that allows protection from fire and water is a cool concept, but it only ever seems to appear in the water context rather than fire. I wish Red Volcano Zone had occasional access to elemental shields to bring out the fire access more (hope I'm not wrong in assuming there are none. I sure haven't found any). And as cool as the speed fall ability looks, I only ever find it useful when collecting goodies under goop in Techno Hill Zone, and only through reading forum threads did I learn that the fire trail left behind is apparently deadly to enemies. Maybe if I experiment more I'll be able to integrate that ability into regular gameplay.
Force shield: As far as I'm concerned, the only benefit to this shield is taking two hits instead of one, which is a good advantage for tricky levels and perhaps excuses the shield's basically useless special ability. I find falling in a 100% vertical direction inherently at odds with the nature of Sonic games, especially in three dimensions. I think allowing the force and elemental shields some freedom of movement would make them more redeemable, but still not as good as the other two shields I mentioned.
Armageddon shield: In theory, this shield is an excellent concept that invites players to think strategically: it can kill all enemies nearby, either on your own will or when getting hit by an enemy, but you can only use it once so you need to be careful where to use it. Unfortunately, this shield is found rarely enough that usually when I find it, I have a different shield that I'd rather be using, and if I do pick up that shield, I often don't find a good opportunity to use it before losing that shield, again either to getting hit or willfully taking a different one. Killing all enemies in an area is mostly useful for points (and indirectly extra lives), because once you use the shield to kill all enemies, you're vulnerable to lose your rings all over again once you get past the nearby area. I wouldn't mind if that shield was a bit easier to come by.

One thing I do like about the SRB2 shields is that every level has a variety of shields scattered throughout, which means if you know what you're doing you can pick up whichever shield you find most convenient for getting through a level. One of the problems I have with Mania is that a lot of levels only ever give access to one type of shield, maybe a second if you're lucky; makes sense because of the creative shield interactions, but only in Encore Mode can you enter bonus stages to take a shot at whichever shield you want like in 3&K. SRB2 has a worthy substitute for this freedom as a 3D game, because varied shields are one of the many rewards you get for exploring levels.

I also like that you can use shields in SRB2 to their fullest as all characters, not just Sonic, and that the shields never override existing abilities, except arguably in Amy's case where you can't use jump + spin for hammer while jumping anymore, only jump + jump which is a little awkward but not hard to get used to.
 
Last edited:
This equivalent to the homing attack is very fun, but I feel it's a bit lacking compared to the Adventure games (ironically enough, because in almost all ways I find those lacking compared to SRB2). I wish the attraction shield would allow for chain attacks, rather than only attacking one enemy at a time; if this change was made, the attraction shield would be just as cool as the whirlwind shield. I'd also love it if the attraction shield let you home in on springs and item boxes, again like the Adventure games; it makes sense because both of those things are made of metal.
So, since this keeps coming up, I figure it's probably worth explaining why we intentionally chose not to do this. The reason is to preserve our game feel. That's a hard thing to explain concisely, but the core concept is that we don't want to feel like modern Sonic. So why did we go with this specific answer to preserve game feel? There's unfortunately no easy answer to that but I'll give it my best shot.

First off: attraction preserves your horizontal momentum after usage. While a lot of people might not have noticed this, a common feature of movement-generating effects in SRB2 is that they do not reset anything that they do not need to. For instance, when you touch a vertical spring, it doesn't need to reset your horizontal momentum for it to work, so it doesn't. When you thok, your vertical momentum is also not reset. Diagonal springs need to reset your momentum entirely, though, so they do. Hence, when you use the attraction's ability, your momentum is reset to start the homing attack because that's necessary for the effect to work, but your horizontal momentum is not reset after hitting the enemy. Vertical momentum is fixed here because otherwise the effect turns every enemy into a stronger double jump than whirlwind.

This is also part of why it doesn't work on springs and monitors. You would end up gaining a huge amount of horizontal momentum and then have it reset upon hitting a diagonal spring, while not having it reset upon hitting a vertical one and suddenly you go flying, hopefully in a direction you had planned for. We actively want this ability to not encourage the same play pattern that the homing attack does, so just constantly activating it over and over again because it applies everywhere isn't the way to go. The intent is to emulate the gold shield from Sonic 3D Blast more than the modern homing attack, but add some of the parts of the homing attack that genuinely are important, such as the lock-on cursor apparently added to the ability in newer official games.

The other notable thing is that the ability cannot be chained, like Sonic 3D Blast, which is a common complaint in this thread. This also creates a very different feel from the official homing attack, primarily it means that horizontal momentum you just gained cannot be ignored. You're going to need to land on a platform with that momentum and then use the ability again if you want to use it to kill multiple enemies. Yes, this makes using it to kill multiple enemies significantly less efficient time-wise and if you're playing time attack you're likely better off not.

However, the most important reason it can't be chained is for game feel. The key point here is to avoid the "mash homing attack" feel from modern Sonic, and especially avoid homing attack chains in level design. Homing attack chain level design is an easy temptation in introducing the homing attack, and by explicitly forbidding it we're cutting that source of linear level design off at the source. We want to encourage players to approach the levels and hazards they encounter in their own way as much as possible. Stuff like homing attack chains force you to engage in them precisely as the level designer intended instead of letting you choose how you want to approach it, and thus I personally consider this to be the worst possible result from adding the ability to begin with and thus needed to be prevented at all costs. In fact I'm pretty sure the initial description of the ability when we were testing activated abilities for all the shields included the word "unchainable" for exactly this reason.

I want SRB2 to keep the unique feel that it has polished over the years. Thus it's really important to make sure that we stay away from certain parts of the homing attack that SEGA has embraced. If it helps, think of the attraction shield as a refinement of the gold shield from 3D Blast, because that's a lot closer to what the intent is.
 
Elemental shield: Having a shield that allows protection from fire and water is a cool concept, but it only ever seems to appear in the water context rather than fire. I wish Red Volcano Zone had occasional access to elemental shields to bring out the fire access more (hope I'm not wrong in assuming there are none. I sure haven't found any). And as cool as the speed fall ability looks, I only ever find it useful when collecting goodies under goop in Techno Hill Zone, and only through reading forum threads did I learn that the fire trail left behind is apparently deadly to enemies. Maybe if I experiment more I'll be able to integrate that ability into regular gameplay.

There's one Elemental Shield in RVZ that I know of, which is the one by the diamond emblem. The way it trivializes the entire rest of the stage is amazing. I love it.
 
I'm still not sure what I think about the attraction shield's momentum. I'm okay with the fact that it's kind of a double-edged sword, but the momentum after attacking feels a little extreme at the moment, if only from a game feel standpoint. I think it would feel a little more comfortable if momentum at the end of the homing attack was halved, that way players aren't as forced to commit to their trajectory and can reasonably move forward or apply the breaks.
 
I think it would feel a little more comfortable if momentum at the end of the homing attack was halved, that way players aren't as forced to commit to their trajectory and can reasonably move forward or apply the breaks.
I agree this would be a good change and my shield mod already does this if you want to see how it feels in practice. It also makes the ability chainable as long as you don't whiff the attack, similar to how the Twinspin works in vanilla. That's mostly for the sake of fun though, since chaining is not very useful outside of crawla hordes.
 
Maybe it's just me, but I find the abilities of most of the SRB2-exclusive shields pretty underwhelming.

Elemental Shield: Gives you a stomp that cancels your momentum. In other words, it's the Bubble Shield's ability without the bounce. Why not just give it the bounce?

Force Shield: Cancels your momentum, making it pretty much a gimped version of the Elemental Shield's ability.

Whirlwind Shield: Gives you a double jump like the Lightning Shield, except more gimpy, and cancels your spin. Again, a shield that just recycled the Lightning Shield's ability would have been better.

Honestly, I'd rather they replaced them with the Sonic 3 shields in the regular levels, and made the SRB2 shields exclusive to challenge and bonus levels. The SRB2 shields' extra field effects don't make up for their gimpy abilities in my book. Or just remove the S3 shields altogether and map their abilities to the SRB2 shields. I find these abilities infinitely more fun to use and think it's a huge pity they can't be used in the campaign, as they would make it far more enjoyable IMHO.

I'm still not sure what I think about the attraction shield's momentum. I'm okay with the fact that it's kind of a double-edged sword, but the momentum after attacking feels a little extreme at the moment, if only from a game feel standpoint. I think it would feel a little more comfortable if momentum at the end of the homing attack was halved, that way players aren't as forced to commit to their trajectory and can reasonably move forward or apply the breaks.
I agree with this.
 
Last edited:
Honestly, I'd rather they replaced them with the Sonic 3 shields in the regular levels, and made the SRB2 shields exclusive to challenge and bonus levels. Or just remove the S3 shields altogether and map their abilities to the SRB2 shields. I find these abilities infinitely more fun to use and think it's a huge pity they can't be used in the campaign, as they would make it far more enjoyable IMHO.

I agree. Mania had the right approach -- start with the known S3K shields, and build on top of it from there.

Fire, Bubble, Lightning is better than Elemental and Magnet/Attraction. It's definitely more intuitive, and the Bubble Bounce and Lightning Skip are more fun than the downward-stomp and limited-homing.*

I love the Whirlwind shield, and I like the Nuke Shield's one moment of glory, and the Force Shield is okay but I'd be fine if it were just the "basic" Sonic 2 shield without any extra abilities.

*Homing attack should be a (toggle-able) vanilla ability for Sonic, whether it's the 3D Blast gold shield version or ideally the Modern mod version, in addition to Thok.
 
I agree. Mania had the right approach -- start with the known S3K shields, and build on top of it from there.

Fire, Bubble, Lightning is better than Elemental and Magnet/Attraction. It's definitely more intuitive, and the Bubble Bounce and Lightning Skip are more fun than the downward-stomp and limited-homing.*

I love the Whirlwind shield, and I like the Nuke Shield's one moment of glory, and the Force Shield is okay but I'd be fine if it were just the "basic" Sonic 2 shield without any extra abilities.

*Homing attack should be a (toggle-able) vanilla ability for Sonic, whether it's the 3D Blast gold shield version or ideally the Modern mod version, in addition to Thok.
A few things to say in response:

(1) I still stand that being able to pseudo-homing attack enemies makes more logical sense for a coin magnet shield than the ability to double-jump; you're probably just used to how the lightning shield works in 3&K and Mania (not that I can blame you, those games both do shields perfectly for 2D). I won't pretend the attraction shield's attack ability couldn't afford some revisions though.

(2) The force shield is actually useful for tricky platforming sections (or at least, ones where platforms don't crumble). I certainly don't find as much use in that shield's ability compared to other shields, but tanking two hits gives that shield a distinct advantage no less.

(3) (not so much in response to you but more general thoughts) The whirlwind shield distinguishes itself from the lightning shield in several ways, where both have advantages and disadvantages. The lightning shield attracts coins and keeps you in a spin state while double-jumping (at least if you're playing as a character that can spin); while the whirlwind shield doesn't have those abilities, it can be used after falling without the need to jump, as well as after jumping from a spring which is especially powerful if you're playing as Amy.
 
Although I already put some of my thoughts in this thread the first time around, I figured I should maybe reply with a more elaborate opinion. I've had some time now to reflect on the shields' overall usage in the game, so let's see...

Pity Shield (and, to an extent, Amy's Pity Shield): Fine for what it is
Whirlwind Shield: I cannot understand why some people don't like this shield. It's, well... really good? It gives you plenty of air time in its active ability, you can use it in your spring/fall frames to help with slippery platforming or missed jumps, and to counterbalance that you become vulnerable. Which is a pretty reasonable tradeoff considering you'll be using this shield during platforming and not combat. It's great and I much prefer this over the Electric Barrier.
Force Shield: I recently had a discussion with some people in the Discord OS on the force shield's ablility, and we came to a conclusion that giving it the insta-shield is a very interesting option. Since SRB2 is a Sonic fangame, and most people that play fangames have already experienced official Sonic games in one way or another, the functionality of the insta-shield is clear to a very big portion of the fanbase. Plus it'd just add to the idea that the force shield in particular is a defensive shield, with it having 2 uses.
Elemental Shield: I feel like this'd be my favorite one in the game if it didn't have the same ability concept as 2 other shields... I say that because the Elemental Stomp is surprisingly useful. It's the best way to get those monitors under the goo in Techno Hill, you can easily smash Crushstaceans with it in Deep Sea, and it gives you water/fire immunity making the second half of Red Volcano a fucking joke once you know where the shield is located. It's great and doesn't get enough credit.
Attraction Shield: It's a ring magnet shield so it's okay for it to have a weird ability. I don't really use it often (because these things can get messy when trying to Perfect Bonus a stage) but I will say that the water levels give the Attraction Shield some extremely creative uses and I love them for that. My only problem with the Attraction Shot is that its speed is really high. I don't mind and don't want it to be chainable, but I wish it was a tad bit slower.
Armageddon Shield: This and the Force Shield feel like rewards, man. It's really satisfying to get to a hidden room and find an Armageddon Shield lying around, because it's sorta marketed as one of the "big rewards" for finding a secret alongside the 1-up and the Emerald Token.
...that said, it doesn't really live up to that status. I've said this before on this thread, but I like Katmint's idea better.

S3K Shields:
....pfft, seriously?
Yeah I don't like them at all
Flame Shield has a nice ability but Haunted Heights's design actually goes against the properties of the shield so you can only have fun with it outside of vanilla levels;
Thunder Double Jump is basically a double-jump. While theoretically it has more stuff going for it than the Whirlwind Shield, the latter is just way more unique and there's no way I'll actually use these outside of Aerial Garden. It fits pretty well with the zone it's in though;
Bubble Shield has a terrible ability but since it's in Azure Temple of all stages it's a fucking lifesaver. I still hate the bounce.
 
Last edited:
A few things to say in response:

(1) I still stand that being able to pseudo-homing attack enemies makes more logical sense for a coin magnet shield than the ability to double-jump; you're probably just used to how the lightning shield works in 3&K and Mania (not that I can blame you, those games both do shields perfectly for 2D). I won't pretend the attraction shield's attack ability couldn't afford some revisions though.

(2) The force shield is actually useful for tricky platforming sections (or at least, ones where platforms don't crumble). I certainly don't find as much use in that shield's ability compared to other shields, but tanking two hits gives that shield a distinct advantage no less.

(3) (not so much in response to you but more general thoughts) The whirlwind shield distinguishes itself from the lightning shield in several ways, where both have advantages and disadvantages. The lightning shield attracts coins and keeps you in a spin state while double-jumping (at least if you're playing as a character that can spin); while the whirlwind shield doesn't have those abilities, it can be used after falling without the need to jump, as well as after jumping from a spring which is especially powerful if you're playing as Amy.

1) Yeah, logically it makes perfect sense... it's attracted to electronics, like Badniks and Monitors. Actually, what might be cool is if the Attraction/Magnet shield incorporated the Nuke shield's ability, instead of homing... so it is a magnet that has an EMP Blast.

Helps to cut down on the amount of different shields which feel like they could be strengthened with revisions like that.

2) I personally haven't found the force shield useful in platforming, though I know it's intended for that... I more so like it for being able to take two hits.

I think it could stand to look a bit sexier. The purple bubblewrap ball is okay but I think it'd be easier/more iconic if it were simpler. Maybe just the Sonic 2 shield that changed color from HP2 to HP1 -- from blue to gray, maybe.

3) Yeah I love the whirlwind shield, and it's interesting to contrast it's jump with Lightning.

Mostly I like shields for how they change your extra jump ability. Whirlwind and Attraction/Magnet are the most fun in that regard, and Lightning, Bubble, and Fire (which could be the Elemental Stomp) just as much, in different ways.

Bubble bouncing rules.

The Force shield seems fun to play with as a jump ability in theory but in practice, for me anyway, I just haven't vibed with it and rarely use it for that.
 
If I have no comment about a particular shield, read into that as I feel that it needs to changes!

---------

Fire/Water Shield: This one confuses me a bit, as its entire theming seems to imply protection from both properties, yet it only technically protects you from water while giving you a vague fire ability. Can this shield gain an added purpose of protection of fire ala Sonic 3?

Radiation Shield: I like the shield conceptually, but my one hangup with it is kinda stupid, lol. Somebody mentioned how eco-conscious Sonic should be as a character, yet he's blowing off nuclear radiation all around forests and animals and stuff!? No way. Maybe theme it differently, somehow?

----------

Literally nothing else to say. I can't think of any criticism towards any other newly implemented shields.
 
Fire/Water Shield: This one confuses me a bit, as its entire theming seems to imply protection from both properties, yet it only technically protects you from water while giving you a vague fire ability. Can this shield gain an added purpose of protection of fire ala Sonic 3?

What do you mean? The elemental shield protects you from all fire/lava hazards. If you nab the one in Red Volcano, it's essentially permanent invincibility for the rest of the level.
 
What do you mean? The elemental shield protects you from all fire/lava hazards. If you nab the one in Red Volcano, it's essentially permanent invincibility for the rest of the level.

..somehow I did not realize this. Must've been bad luck or something, haha
 
In order of utility...

Whirlwind Shield: Best shield in the game, hands-down. It gives Sonic some much-needed mobility for skips, it gives Amy some really good jump control, Fang can get height without waiting on his bounce, Metal has the closest thing he has to a weakness shored up, Tails can reverse his falls faster than flight can, and Knuckles gets to jump as high as everyone else.

Not the best for course correction, though; it's fairly rare for me to be in a situation where I'm flying off in the wrong direction and can fix my trajectory in the time the Whirlwind Shield gives me. It makes platforming easier because I can do premeditated skips; it doesn't do much for mistakes.

I don't like how the Whirlwind Shield can activate while falling by pressing jump again, particularly since other shields don't seem to have this ability. I had no idea this was even possible until the Red Volcano path that requires it, and I got dumped in the lava the first time, having instinctively pressed spin to activate it.

It's a bit weird that it's the only shield without a 'passive', but the active is so powerful that it feels like its passive is explicitly and uniquely "doesn't have a passive". Mildly balances things.

Magnetic Shield: The second-best shield. More rings = more lives = more checkpoint uses in Egg Rock. I don't understand how collecting rings stays satisfying after playing Sonic for decades, but it is. I can't say I've gotten too much use out of the active ability, but I will admit to not trying it all that much. I generally don't trust the trajectory Sonic ends up in after the bounce, especially if the enemy was moving.

Elemental Shield: It's context...sensitive. Bit of an odd one out of the shields for having three different passive abilities (fire immunity, drowning immunity, fire trail on spin). I don't think I've ever used the fire trail to defeat an enemy intentionally. The passives usually make it better than the above two shields in Deep Sea or Red Volcano, and noticeably worse outside of those levels.

I think the active is understandably weak to balance how good the passives are in the right context, but I really don't like that little bounce the character does after they hit the floor. If I'm using the drop to do precision platforming, I want to return control to my character as quickly as possible, and if I'm trying to go fast, I want to spindash right after the drop.

I really think the ability should behave similarly to Knuckles's drop-into-a-crouch after a glide; the player might not be able to walk for a half-second, but they can immediately cancel the animation with a jump or spindash.

As it is, I only ever use the active to dig through the slime in THZ.

Force Shield: Significantly worse than Whirlwind/Magnet/Elemental-With-Context, on par with Elemental-Without-Context. Taking an extra hit is somewhat useful, and two hits is usually enough to last until I can reach a better shield monitor. It feels downright unpleasant to use the active ability, as I can't use any of my tools to regain speed until I'm done slowly falling back onto the ground. Usually can't accelerate in the air fast enough to save myself after stopping, either.

Armageddon Shield: This is noticeably worse than the Force Shield, which is completely counterintuitive to how the shield is placed. This shield is usually placed in difficult to reach or secretive locations, implying that it's precious. It's not valuable. The only situation where I'd consider using the shield's active ability is when enemies are flying dangerously close to a bottomless pit and taking damage would involve landing in the pit and dying; otherwise, I would rather have a chance at defeating the enemies normally and keeping the shield.

An enemy in a Sonic game reeaaally shouldn't be hitting the player more than once; there's barely any reward for defeating enemies in SRB2 or most classic Sonic games (outside of points, which is used in the one tutorialization point for the shield in GF1, and nowhere else?), so the player should either be jumping/rolling through them and continuing, or taking a hit, shrugging it off, and skipping past them. If the player had a Force Shield, they would at least have an extra shield to take a hit from a future enemy; the Armageddon Shield is useless after using its skill once.

This shield reminds me of the design philosophies one would see in Sonic Advance and a lot of the fangames that came out during that era, where some fans mistakenly believed that the Sonic franchise had anything to do with combat, and that, by extension, Sonic characters should have dedicated attacks for defeating enemies. In my mind, the Armageddon Shield is an artifact of the Crawla Army design philosophy from the oldest releases. Really think it's due for a rework, especially if it continues to be placed as a special reward.
 
Rather than invert Amy's buttons and make her play weirdly differently from everyone else or give her a new button just for her (mods aside), I'd like to see Amy's hammer always be on spin and have a new button for shield actions (whirlwind's accidental jump feature being retained) That does create a slightly inelegant situation where you have a button that does absolutely nothing most of the time, but I'm sure with effective tutorialising that won't be a major issue.
 
Last edited:

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Back
Top