4/5 ★ – SoftLockJake's review of Sonic Mania Plus.

Who knew all we had to do to get a good Sonic game was not let Sega develop it? Sonic Mania is the best Sonic game I've played by a wide gulf, and I've played a lot of Sonic games over the years. Sonic Mania is the only time I've played a Sonic game and thought "this is good" and not "I am enjoying content." This review is certainly a little extra biased because I played Sonic Mania for the first time during formative high school years when the Switch was still novel. But I have to say, replaying it in 2024 had me feeling the EXACT same feelings I had in 2017. Somehow against all odds, Sonic Mania strikes a perfect balance between old and new; challenging and rewarding, fast and methodical. They chose all the right classic levels to include and all the new or re-mixed levels are some of my favorites. I'll always be impressed with how the game constantly one-ups itself from zone to zone, with stages getting bigger, more complex, and more intimately and intricately designed as the game goes on. Sonic is about going fast, and most of the game can be played at Mach 10. But, if you play more methodically or love to craft routes through levels, there are multiple paths through almost every obstacle that can entertain big brainers and brain off-ers alike. Even boss fights, which in platformers are very hard to get right, hit (for the most part). We even get a mean bean machine moment! The overall presentation of Sonic Mania is near-perfect. Hell, I think it is perfect. I wouldn't change a single thing about the game's art style, music, cutscenes, sound effects, character-design. It's all just so... Sonic. It's a love letter to the whole series, and it just fits the tone of the classic Sonic games so well while also feeling new and clean. It's undeniably excellent. In the base Sonic Mania, there were some frustrating boss fights and one level in particular that was never very fun. And, bonus stages were crushingly difficult, meaning getting the chaos emeralds and achieving the game's true ending was really a grind. Sonic Mania Plus, however, adds some small tweaks that alleviate some of this. Some of the bosses have been reworked or changed entirely, making them much more fun, or at least on par with other ones. The change-up of the saloon level's Act 1 is a huge benefit to the game, making it feel consistent with the rest of the levels. Finally there's the subject of Encore mode, the main draw to the Plus version of the game. This mode adds a few minor changes, like color-palette swapping for some stages, a new 'story' which takes place after the events of Sonic Forces 🤢, the ability to swap between multiple characters on the fly, and most notably, the addition of Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel. Ray is very fun to play as because it gives you the freedom of flying as Tails and the precision of gliding as Knuckles without making it too game-breaking or easy. Mighty has a ground pound... Yep. None of these change amount to much other than a bit of a fresh take on a great game. But some of the other changes trivialize the game, like essentially no game overs and the removal of the level timer. I don't know, I think encore is fun as a new game plus of sorts, but I would rather just play the base game again. Play Sonic Mania if you haven't, it's one of the great 2D platformers of the last decade, and we need Sega to greenlight another one!