I had originally bought Sonic 4 episodes 1 and 2 and this one on a Steam sale back in February. Unfortunately Sonic 4 episode 1 made me want to puke from the camera and I couldn’t be bothered to deal with episode 2 but it was too late to refund. I decided to give Sonic Forces a shot since I couldn’t get it refunded anyway…but I’m kinda glad I did. It was short but kinda enjoyable with some cool bgms.

Unlike most sonic games that are just run a level and fight a boss, this one actually has some rpg-esque cut scenes and voice acting. It also had voice acting in various languages so I just went with Japanese since I watched the Sonic X anime years ago and they actually used the exact same voices. The story begins with Sonic getting attacked by all the “bad” sonics from previous games and abducted by Eggman aka Dr. Robotnik. Fortunately Sonic from the original Sonic games shows up (the one I am most familiar with!) and helps fight along with everyone. Additionally, this is a DeviantArt dream come true for all those people who made “Myself the Hedgehog” because now you get to create your own avatar and join Sonic & Co. on their adventure! 😂

I ended up creating a bunny that looks kinda like my FFXIV character lol. Now while you create your avatar, you do have a variety of levels where you either play as your avatar, sonic, or old-sonic and there’s even episode shadow which gives you 3 levels where you play as Shadow the Hedgehog.

The combat is actually really easy that even if you’ve never played a sonic game in your life as long as you can press WASD and space bar you basically know how to do everything. Once in a while you press K or L depending on your weapon/skill but overall it was really easy. If you can get the weapon that lets you fly you can easily cheat one of the later levels in the game that’s got a lot of places you can fall through.

Ultimately you have to fight all the evil sonics including Infinite who has some kind of weird inferiority complex to Shadow the Hedgehog which is, very briefly, explained when you play episode Shadow. I swear the dude just needs a chill pill 😂 I also liked how your avatar ends up being shown up in cut scenes wearing whatever you put on it, so if you wanna look good in your cut scenes make sure to dress up often! You pretty much get new clothes every time you complete a level/do a challenge etc.

Ultimately the game took me about 11 hours and I even sidetracked to do some optional stages and help “people in need” that happened to be online and couldn’t clear a level. Some people on steam claim they finish it 3 hours but maybe they just zoomed through the story or skipped cut scenes I dunno lol. I liked all the cut scenes and dress up 😎 so I spent a little longer! On sale the game is $10 which I think is pretty decent for the content you get. That said I wouldn’t buy this full price because I don’t feel like it has a full price worth of content in it. You can make the game last longer if you like making multiple race avatars or completing the steam achievements but I think I’ve had my fill so I’ll be moving on to other games.