I do like J Review's retrospective on this game Sonic 06, it highlights the complete debacle the game was and what happens when a video game franchise isn't used to its fullest potential. There are lots of other franchises that have had similar problems over the years, back in the late 90's Superman 64 was an awful game and did nothing to help DC in general.
I do respect what ChaosX is doing, but unless the story gets rewritten I do not see how this game could be fixed in any meaningful way.
Let's start with the whole "Flames of Disaster" gimmick, how does this even work? as J Review's stated if somebody chopped onions near Elise's eyes does it mean it's now time for the apocalypse? that's just the beginning of the mess that is in this games story, and I don't believe I have the patience to give a full essay here what should be done to address this, how could anyone? and when you're dealing with complicated storylines about time travel it's probably something that needs a team of people to share their ideas no matter how skilled you are at storyboarding.
That's not what ChaosX is trying to do at this moment, he is fixing each of the characters so their gameplay isn't as broken as it was in the original game.
For example, the purple gem can no longer be abused in Project 06, last I checked it now makes you invisible to enemies, temporarily, you can't use it to skip large sections of a stage risk free by constantly jump dashing over them, and Sonic now runs faster and his homing attack is greatly improved.
Shadow got some upgrades to his gameplay too, unfortunately the addition of the inhibitor ring removal gameplay makes it too easy, and in some cases you can keep the transformation for over 2 minutes, even worse is it doesn't require you to have any rings, just defeat enough enemies and fill your chaos gauge and then you become invincible for a large portion of a stage. Chaos Boost level 3 w/o inhibitor ring removal is more balanced, because while you do have powerful abilities, you can also take damage so you're rewarded for avoiding being hit, or else, Shadow dies and loses his chaos energy on respawn.
At least with Super Sonic with the rainbow gem you actually have to avoid getting hit before you can transform, which does add some kind of balance.
It's a fan game though, given away for free so I'm not that bothered.
But if this were an official remake of the game by Sega, it would be something worth discussing with them.
I'm not saying characters shouldn't have powerful abilities in video games, but I do believe the inhibitor ring removal for Shadow could've been handled in a different way, either cut the maximum amount of time down to 1 minute, or make the transformation require 50+ rings, so players are rewarded for skillful play as opposed to haphazardly smashing enemies while not caring about whether or not they take a hit.
I don't have ChaosX's email address, so I cannot ask him to make the rebalancing decision.
Either way, it's good that dedicated fans out there are reworking mechanics in botched games because the official company and copyright holder was too incompetent or unwilling to put out a quality game.
Some of the best video games, or ideas for them, came from fans.
And I'd definitely take a remake of something like this, over the boost to win nonsense Sega feeds people in
their post 2010 Sonic games, and I'm certain I'm not alone with that one, being rewarded for keeping your momentum,
as well as exploration and taking different paths through stages and finding or unlocking unique power ups, is what Sonic games should be about.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade - make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your lemons, what am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life's manager."
I didn't like how they handled the story arcs of other games not just 06. It took Sega two story arcs to resolve Shadow's amnesia problem and you're made to play through ten times in his own spinoff just to get to the final ending, only to find out only one storyline is canon, and the rest are useless, it would've been better if the alternate stories were non canon and non mandatory, serving only as what if scenarios for this character, and the hero storyline obviously being the main one but also the most difficult or the hard mode of the game, and of course removing the bad acting, also removing guns and vehicle gameplay would be appropriate.
It's not just 06, the entire franchise could do with a retcon although the sad thing here is Sega probably won't, I'm not that lucky and I know bad things do tend to happen more often than good things in life, but it would be awesome to have writers who actually know what they're doing like Ian Flynn. Will it happen? probably not, but if all else fails we've got fan fictions I guess. ChaosX and Yuji Naka for the game design and Ian Flynn as well as the writers from Adventure era for the storyboarding would be the ideal situation in my opinion, with Jun Senoue doing the soundtrack. Jason Griffith and Dan Green returning for their character role reprisals could work, I don't know about the rest. Mike Pollock is still doing Dr Eggman, so if it's any consolation we've got one talented voice actor still working for the franchise.
A definitive reboot of Adventure 1 to 06 would only be successful in my opinion if all this were to happen
and without the corporate pressure placed on them by Sega, they need to give those people time to work on a quality product,
and not something that generates Sega extra income.
I do like J Review's retrospective on this game Sonic 06, it highlights the complete debacle the game was and what happens when a video game franchise isn't used to its fullest potential. There are lots of other franchises that have had similar problems over the years, back in the late 90's Superman 64 was an awful game and did nothing to help DC in general.
I do respect what ChaosX is doing, but unless the story gets rewritten I do not see how this game could be fixed in any meaningful way.
Let's start with the whole "Flames of Disaster" gimmick, how does this even work? as J Review's stated if somebody chopped onions near Elise's eyes does it mean it's now time for the apocalypse? that's just the beginning of the mess that is in this games story, and I don't believe I have the patience to give a full essay here what should be done to address this, how could anyone? and when you're dealing with complicated storylines about time travel it's probably something that needs a team of people to share their ideas no matter how skilled you are at storyboarding.
That's not what ChaosX is trying to do at this moment, he is fixing each of the characters so their gameplay isn't as broken as it was in the original game.
For example, the purple gem can no longer be abused in Project 06, last I checked it now makes you invisible to enemies, temporarily, you can't use it to skip large sections of a stage risk free by constantly jump dashing over them, and Sonic now runs faster and his homing attack is greatly improved.
Shadow got some upgrades to his gameplay too, unfortunately the addition of the inhibitor ring removal gameplay makes it too easy, and in some cases you can keep the transformation for over 2 minutes, even worse is it doesn't require you to have any rings, just defeat enough enemies and fill your chaos gauge and then you become invincible for a large portion of a stage. Chaos Boost level 3 w/o inhibitor ring removal is more balanced, because while you do have powerful abilities, you can also take damage so you're rewarded for avoiding being hit, or else, Shadow dies and loses his chaos energy on respawn.
At least with Super Sonic with the rainbow gem you actually have to avoid getting hit before you can transform, which does add some kind of balance.
It's a fan game though, given away for free so I'm not that bothered.
But if this were an official remake of the game by Sega, it would be something worth discussing with them.
I'm not saying characters shouldn't have powerful abilities in video games, but I do believe the inhibitor ring removal for Shadow could've been handled in a different way, either cut the maximum amount of time down to 1 minute, or make the transformation require 50+ rings, so players are rewarded for skillful play as opposed to haphazardly smashing enemies while not caring about whether or not they take a hit.
I don't have ChaosX's email address, so I cannot ask him to make the rebalancing decision.
Either way, it's good that dedicated fans out there are reworking mechanics in botched games because the official company and copyright holder was too incompetent or unwilling to put out a quality game.
Some of the best video games, or ideas for them, came from fans.
And I'd definitely take a remake of something like this, over the boost to win nonsense Sega feeds people in
their post 2010 Sonic games, and I'm certain I'm not alone with that one, being rewarded for keeping your momentum,
as well as exploration and taking different paths through stages and finding or unlocking unique power ups, is what Sonic games should be about.
Tbh i still dont like sonic 06
I didn't like how they handled the story arcs of other games not just 06. It took Sega two story arcs to resolve Shadow's amnesia problem and you're made to play through ten times in his own spinoff just to get to the final ending, only to find out only one storyline is canon, and the rest are useless, it would've been better if the alternate stories were non canon and non mandatory, serving only as what if scenarios for this character, and the hero storyline obviously being the main one but also the most difficult or the hard mode of the game, and of course removing the bad acting, also removing guns and vehicle gameplay would be appropriate.
It's not just 06, the entire franchise could do with a retcon although the sad thing here is Sega probably won't, I'm not that lucky and I know bad things do tend to happen more often than good things in life, but it would be awesome to have writers who actually know what they're doing like Ian Flynn. Will it happen? probably not, but if all else fails we've got fan fictions I guess. ChaosX and Yuji Naka for the game design and Ian Flynn as well as the writers from Adventure era for the storyboarding would be the ideal situation in my opinion, with Jun Senoue doing the soundtrack. Jason Griffith and Dan Green returning for their character role reprisals could work, I don't know about the rest. Mike Pollock is still doing Dr Eggman, so if it's any consolation we've got one talented voice actor still working for the franchise.
A definitive reboot of Adventure 1 to 06 would only be successful in my opinion if all this were to happen
and without the corporate pressure placed on them by Sega, they need to give those people time to work on a quality product,
and not something that generates Sega extra income.