Freedom Planet

[Xeogred]

I guess I didn't mention in this thread awhile back that I stopped playing Freedom Planet and never beat it. Unlike Sonic, the levels in Freedom Planet frequently ran far too long for my liking and got boring... and the bosses were anything but fun. Beautiful game, but I didn't really like it ultimately in the end.

And now that Sonic Mania is out... um yeah. Maybe you guys will like it, but as someone that puts Mania as my #3 last year and loves those OG Sonic games, Freedom Planet didn't really scratch that itch for me.

[noiseredux]

I'm with Xeo on this one.

[Anayo]

I took Sonic Mania to my friend's house over the weekend, where we beat it together. What a delightful game. My favorite two things about it were:

1) the extra frames of animation. I've been playing a lot of Genesis games lately, so I was really perceptive of how they seemingly doubled the animation frames for Sonic, Tails, and special effects like water splashes, flames, smoke, etc. Genesis games generally didn't have animation that looked this smooth. Check out this fan artist who re-animates NES characters with triple the frames: https://omegachaino.deviantart.com/art/Duck-Tales-walk-upgrade-726411754. Basically they did that in the entire game and it looks great.

2) Subversive remixes of old bosses. In Sonic 3 & Knuckles the bosses began to feel as though they were running out of ideas. In this one they had crazy stuff like a role reversal where Sonic takes over Dr. Robotnic's hover craft while Dr. Robotnic runs around on the ground trying to avoid it.

I wonder if I'd still like Freedom Planet as much after playing this? I was really desperate for a good 2D Sonic game, so I accepted it, but I'm interested to boot it up again and see whether it's still as impressive to me after playing Sonic Mania.

[ZeroAX]

I guess I'm really in the minority with this one, but I really saw Freedom Planet as its own thing. I saw it as a game that's a combination of Sonic, megaman and a beat em up. That's why it didn't bother me that the enemies took so many hits to destroy, I thought of that as a natural part of this type of gameplay. That's also why I enjoyed the boss fights so much, because they gave me a feeling of playing against a very tough street fighter boss while having to platform at the same time.

The speed was thrilling, but again I found that a lot of the challenge/fun was learning how to control that speed, change directions when you need to, use your dragon boost (the game's most important move imo) to kill enemies, avoid traps and reach the next platform. (Mind you I still think this game should only be playable with Lyllac adn they should never have even bothered with the other characters...or the cringy story)

Anyway, thankfully we have both mania and this so I'm happy .

[Erik_Twice]

Freedom Planet is not so much a Sonic pastiche as it's a pastiche of several Mega Drive games. There's a fair amount of Rocket Knight and even Contra: Hard Corps in it.

[Anayo]

I watched a few minutes of Freedom Planet on YouTube instead of replaying it in my steam library, but I agree that it's trying to do it's own thing instead of just copying Sonic. It's as if it's from an alternate universe where 2D platformers with sprite graphics survived into the 32-bit era instead of getting steamrolled by 3D polygon games. While playing Sonic Mania I caught myself wishing more Genesis-era titles would get the "Sonic Mania" treatment. So, despite its flaws Freedom Planet's still cool in my book.

[Segata]

Last 2 posts. Yes that's what I was saying on the previous page. It's a 32-bit era 2D game being its own thing with some Rocket Knight in it. The comparisons to Sonic are a fallacy.

[Sarge]

A little Mega Man X in it, too. It really does feel like a long-lost 32-bit platformer. So good. I really hope the new one can hold up to that standard. I loved the first one enough to play through with all three characters!

The melee aspect is actually what elevated it in my book. You've got so many interesting attack options going on. In many ways, it almost feels like a Treasure game.