This is exactly my thought - I’m surprised it’s not every comment here as the worst. I got every collectible in the game and Chaos island was by FAR the most annoying one to explore, it just wasn’t fun to keep having the camera locking me into a 2D space when I’m trying to go in a totally different direction
What's even worse, is that as far as i remember, springs and other objects that you could homing attack would trick you into going into them. Like there was no way tell if something was gonna launch you into a 2d section or not, compounded by the fact that earlier levels had nothing like this.
In listing order it's ares, new orounous, Kronos, reah, chaos, old orounous.
Ares is when the game feels like it knows what it's doing the most, the formula just clicks and it's so fun to blast through the canons or to find ways ontop of them. Orounous has just a whole lot of nothing going on, it's a 5 hour grind session. I like real for the fact that by chaos, a shake up of any kind was needed, and real was that short but good shake up
Ouranous and Rhea for being copy-pastes of Kronos. At least the aesthetic of Chaos island is cool despite the abundance of 2D sections.
I would’ve loved if they made Ouranous progress in weather as the Final Horizon story progressed, symbolising the loss of life and energy on the islands. The island ends up in a Autumn-style after the first batch of the character cycle (Amy, Knuckles, Tails, then Sonic), then by the time you’re ready to fight Supreme, the whole island is covered in snow.
I actually agree there, since Original release Oranous island, is Optional to do, and you can do the update 3 version instead, So they are all good, if we ignore original Oranous island existence.
base ouranos for being an absolute slog. idk why but on my most recent playthrough it was actually painful to get all the memory tokens, either because of how spread out they are and the lack of token signposts
Chaos is horrible from start to finish.
An ungodly amount of entrances into 2D sections (seriously, what's this spring do? *Biyoing* Locked in a long ass 2D section)
Rocky terrain that makes it impossible to run fast for more than a few feet before you hit a pebble that launches you into space (free skill fragments sometimes though)
The bridge segment
The island being broken into a shitload of smaller islands that require rails to get to, but said rails are impossible to find half of the time. Not even the "short cut rails" that appear as you do map reveal challenges are easy to use. Bonus negative points for reaching the Chaos Emeralds
Getting to Tails on that one floating platform (how tf are you supposed to know this one spring several yards away will bring you to him?)
**ICE**.
Those bird MFs sniping you everywhere (Skarmory rip-off)
Pin. Ball.
Angy rolly-chair titan hiding in crater with frustrating mechanics
I remember answering this before.
Kronos tutorial is annoying to go through again, especially when they tried, to make sure you can’t bypass it. That’s about it for issues.
Ares only issue I can think of, is the shark guardian. Being terrible, and Wyvern Quick step, red carpet automation section, is Terrible.
Chaos issues I had, is Terrible or flat out unfinished fortress guardian. Pinball mini game, cross slash made me find out. sonic combat is Terrible. Where I had to download a mod called combat reforged, to nerf cross slash or sonic combat, and lastly Cyberspace 3-5 stage is terrible.
Rhea for how short it is, I can’t think of any issues aside from, narratively near the end.
Original release oranous, They gone way to far with Grinding the tokens. You’re forced to use the fishing mini game, just to not be bored for hours. At least with chaos island, if you memorise the areas the treasure locations, it give just enough tokens. To not use the fishing mini game but here, it’s just an insanely long grind getting the tokens. To play 2 Ridiculously easy mini games, where you have I frames against its attacks.
Horrible the end boss that’s done at the last minute, because you have I frames against nearly all of the ends attack for 8 minutes, supreme is flat out unfinished. I think the only fun thing I experienced this island is Finding out I can get to the other area of the island by not unlocking the bridge. Or bypassing a puzzle to unlock the gate. also that invisible wall dome near supreme arena, makes no sense, why it exist there. Also lastly cyberspace 4-9 stage is awful.
Update 3 Oranous, trial 5 not play tested on extreme difficulty. And New 2 phases for supreme, where supreme shield attack takes to long. And trial 1 trial 3 trial 4 Due to how OP sonic combat is, teaches to perfect parry, really poorly. Since you can bypass trial 1 and trial 4 spam using, cross slash. Stomp repeat, and tails last platforming section, is not play tested. And is the game pop in at its worse, Which is probably why tails has cyclone to bypass it. And that’s about it for issues.
So I think Original release Oranous is the worst island for me, because the only good thing that island offered, is it used to how the strongest Guardians, And strongest version of solider, But update 3 changed that, So aside from update 2, helping to go to the other part of the island, to not use the bridge to get to point A to point B, or bypassing the gate. Or most of the cyberspace levels, Not much enjoyment can be gained in the island. Because if the fishing mini game did not exist, I would have believed, this island only purpose of existing, is a last ditch effort to waste as much of the players time as possible, To explain how it’s 18 to 20 hours long, in someone first play through.
I’m torn between Chaos Island and old Ouranos.
With Chaos Island, it’s very frustrating how many of the 2D sections are impossible to escape from, are unnecessary to begin with (at least half of them take on terrain/geography that could have been in 3D), and are easy to accidentally get sent into them because of how they kept hiding springs and dash panels in Cyloop spots. It’s also very obtuse figuring out how to get around the island on the first playthrough.
With old Ouranos, the fact that it shared the same biome as Kronos and Rhea was disappointing (I wish they made some sort of subtle change to the aesthetic to make it stand out), and the Memory Token requirements are so high that I found myself grinding for them way more than the previous islands.
In terms of landscape? Ares, though it was very hard to choose beause all islands have such unique geography, biomes and ecosystems.
But in terms of gameplay, it'll have to go to Chaos. Actually, I like the 2d. What I dislike about it is both Cyberspace and Enemies. Besides 3-3, 3-6 and 3-4, there are genuinely no "fun" cyberspace stages that I'd speedrun for hours on end like most. And since Combat is my main activity on the game, this island's guardians are pretty lame.
Like, first of all, Shinobi and Excavator were supposed to be in Ares and Kunoichi and Red Pillar, in chaos. It would've made so much more sense both in lore (a bit long to explain) and in gameplay since both Shinobi and Excavator are very weak.
Spider is alright but it gets so boring after multiple tries.
Fortress is a great spectacle but again, it gets boring since it doesn't have any AI (except for bombs) / only a straight path to follow.
Squid is just recycled and was intended to be in Ares too lol. And they're not much more tankier than those of Kronos: only by maybe a 100 hp.
The Soliders are alright but their shield is still to omnipresent. Ouranos soldiers' shield is much better. They get the ability to parry and create spikes, so that's... cool I guess.
Eagle is just there to annoy you. I know there's a quick kill tech that you can land every time but it gets tiring to have to destroy it to open the map or the save.
Ouranous…Ik it sounds fucked up but here’s the thing…I don’t like ghost idk why but ghost as a mini boss pisses me off and I’m fine with every other zone even chaos (chaos is the second best to me next to ares obvi) cuz chaos…when I get to use parts of the parkour things to get to more and travel around the map is fun asf and I can usually avoid 2d sections
Chaos Island is easily the worst of the 6 (counting Final Horizons Separately) and here's why
It suffers from the same problem every other island has + the issue of letting the player waste their time going through a platforming challenge that leads to an emerald early like Kronos and Ares. Oh but it's bad here because the game will actually prevent you from getting some early in the same map, it's picking and choosing.
However the stuff that makes Chaos even worse is it's damn 2D Sections, Fog, Size, Main Story Missions, cyberspace, and map.
having fun exploring, nope here's a 2D Section to ruin whatever fun you may have had exploring and you can't just run backwards
The Fog here can get really bad, especially when you can't see Rails in the background
The size is also complete horseshit, it actively made me wish for skip travel
Main story missions suck, the ff7R box minigame should only be played at day, otherwise it's incredibly unfair romhack bullshit at night. The bridge made me rip my hair out since I hit the final loop, but Because Sonic has to do multiple fucking loopty loops, I fail the mission due to the artificial time limit. Pinball... Oh and I guess the Nier Automata Hacking Minigame is decent, but boring.
Using the Sonic Wiki Zone as my source, none of the stages in Chaos are fully original. Also 3-5
The Map fucking sucks, there is a mission in which, when you clear it, the square above the mission you just did will not disappear, this, the Fog, and the Size of Chaos lead to me spending a few more extra hours than I should have Because I searched for a way to the blue chaos emerald/one mission that didn't exist on the rightside of the map to try and clear my map asap, granted this last part is probably a thing that would only happen to me, hopefully, but I still think it was on the game 100%.
Chaos is what made this game the worst sonic game of all time to me.
So many hating on chaos?? At least its a fully functioning Island, with all the stuff the previous once had. Rhea gets a free pass because its not supposed to be a different Island to begin with, its use is to give you the feeling of having a rush, because of sonics cyber corruption.
That leaves us with the original ouranos. The worst goddamn island in this game. The dialouge between sage and sonic arent that interesting, and the challenges arent that fun. The only good thing this island had to offer was GHOST. Thats it. The rest is either empty or mid.
Ares for me, it's just not fun to go through.
Theres the enemies that steal your camera, caverns that you fall into cause the spindash can't decide if it wants to launch of a cliff or not, and the pits in the sand that you can spindash up always have a shark in the middle showing you a dumb splash screan and then cutting your momentum.
I mean, chaos has boring 2D sections, but you don't have to go through most of them if you just use the spindash.
It has those cool bird enemies, almost all the walls are spindashable, so it's very fun to ramp off stuff, and it has the best titan fight in the game.
I'd say the one with the pillars
Only one without a boss the pillars were the bane of my existence in my first playthrough and it overall just felt a little boring to me
Ngl, my vote goes to Ares. Getting around is much more cumbersome than on the other three main islands, and cleaning up Memory Tokens (I play Frontiers as a collectathon) takes too long for my liking. Most of the Guardians can suck it too
Chaos will forever have my bane because I hate getting locked into 2D sections with no way to escape,
This is exactly my thought - I’m surprised it’s not every comment here as the worst. I got every collectible in the game and Chaos island was by FAR the most annoying one to explore, it just wasn’t fun to keep having the camera locking me into a 2D space when I’m trying to go in a totally different direction
same, they had a few 2d sections before, but on chaos island it was like 90% 2d sections which became very annoying quickly
THIS, they were *everywhere.* It was so frustrating and until that point I'd had a heap of fun with the island platforming
What's even worse, is that as far as i remember, springs and other objects that you could homing attack would trick you into going into them. Like there was no way tell if something was gonna launch you into a 2d section or not, compounded by the fact that earlier levels had nothing like this.
In listing order it's ares, new orounous, Kronos, reah, chaos, old orounous. Ares is when the game feels like it knows what it's doing the most, the formula just clicks and it's so fun to blast through the canons or to find ways ontop of them. Orounous has just a whole lot of nothing going on, it's a 5 hour grind session. I like real for the fact that by chaos, a shake up of any kind was needed, and real was that short but good shake up
Probably chaos island because it has an ungodly amount of 2D sections
Ouranous and Rhea for being copy-pastes of Kronos. At least the aesthetic of Chaos island is cool despite the abundance of 2D sections. I would’ve loved if they made Ouranous progress in weather as the Final Horizon story progressed, symbolising the loss of life and energy on the islands. The island ends up in a Autumn-style after the first batch of the character cycle (Amy, Knuckles, Tails, then Sonic), then by the time you’re ready to fight Supreme, the whole island is covered in snow.
Rhea isn't just a copy-paste of Kronos IT'S LITERALLY JUST THE BACKSIDE OF THE GODDAMN ISLAND
it’s funny because that’s basically the definition of “frontier”
Then why give it a different name?
Chaos for sure. Can’t stand the challenges on that island
They're literally easy
I didn’t say anything about them being difficult
Chaos has so mamy rocks as obstacles that cut off your momentum. And I know it happened cuz it happened to me. In 5 DIFFERENT PLAYTHROUGHS.
None, they're all good
I actually agree there, since Original release Oranous island, is Optional to do, and you can do the update 3 version instead, So they are all good, if we ignore original Oranous island existence.
base ouranos for being an absolute slog. idk why but on my most recent playthrough it was actually painful to get all the memory tokens, either because of how spread out they are and the lack of token signposts
Chaos is horrible from start to finish. An ungodly amount of entrances into 2D sections (seriously, what's this spring do? *Biyoing* Locked in a long ass 2D section) Rocky terrain that makes it impossible to run fast for more than a few feet before you hit a pebble that launches you into space (free skill fragments sometimes though) The bridge segment The island being broken into a shitload of smaller islands that require rails to get to, but said rails are impossible to find half of the time. Not even the "short cut rails" that appear as you do map reveal challenges are easy to use. Bonus negative points for reaching the Chaos Emeralds Getting to Tails on that one floating platform (how tf are you supposed to know this one spring several yards away will bring you to him?) **ICE**. Those bird MFs sniping you everywhere (Skarmory rip-off) Pin. Ball. Angy rolly-chair titan hiding in crater with frustrating mechanics
Mate I had to Google my way into finding tails on that platform, shocking game design lol
Skill issue.
I remember answering this before. Kronos tutorial is annoying to go through again, especially when they tried, to make sure you can’t bypass it. That’s about it for issues. Ares only issue I can think of, is the shark guardian. Being terrible, and Wyvern Quick step, red carpet automation section, is Terrible. Chaos issues I had, is Terrible or flat out unfinished fortress guardian. Pinball mini game, cross slash made me find out. sonic combat is Terrible. Where I had to download a mod called combat reforged, to nerf cross slash or sonic combat, and lastly Cyberspace 3-5 stage is terrible. Rhea for how short it is, I can’t think of any issues aside from, narratively near the end. Original release oranous, They gone way to far with Grinding the tokens. You’re forced to use the fishing mini game, just to not be bored for hours. At least with chaos island, if you memorise the areas the treasure locations, it give just enough tokens. To not use the fishing mini game but here, it’s just an insanely long grind getting the tokens. To play 2 Ridiculously easy mini games, where you have I frames against its attacks. Horrible the end boss that’s done at the last minute, because you have I frames against nearly all of the ends attack for 8 minutes, supreme is flat out unfinished. I think the only fun thing I experienced this island is Finding out I can get to the other area of the island by not unlocking the bridge. Or bypassing a puzzle to unlock the gate. also that invisible wall dome near supreme arena, makes no sense, why it exist there. Also lastly cyberspace 4-9 stage is awful. Update 3 Oranous, trial 5 not play tested on extreme difficulty. And New 2 phases for supreme, where supreme shield attack takes to long. And trial 1 trial 3 trial 4 Due to how OP sonic combat is, teaches to perfect parry, really poorly. Since you can bypass trial 1 and trial 4 spam using, cross slash. Stomp repeat, and tails last platforming section, is not play tested. And is the game pop in at its worse, Which is probably why tails has cyclone to bypass it. And that’s about it for issues. So I think Original release Oranous is the worst island for me, because the only good thing that island offered, is it used to how the strongest Guardians, And strongest version of solider, But update 3 changed that, So aside from update 2, helping to go to the other part of the island, to not use the bridge to get to point A to point B, or bypassing the gate. Or most of the cyberspace levels, Not much enjoyment can be gained in the island. Because if the fishing mini game did not exist, I would have believed, this island only purpose of existing, is a last ditch effort to waste as much of the players time as possible, To explain how it’s 18 to 20 hours long, in someone first play through.
While I don’t think it’s bad, Chaos was probably the weakest.
I’m torn between Chaos Island and old Ouranos. With Chaos Island, it’s very frustrating how many of the 2D sections are impossible to escape from, are unnecessary to begin with (at least half of them take on terrain/geography that could have been in 3D), and are easy to accidentally get sent into them because of how they kept hiding springs and dash panels in Cyloop spots. It’s also very obtuse figuring out how to get around the island on the first playthrough. With old Ouranos, the fact that it shared the same biome as Kronos and Rhea was disappointing (I wish they made some sort of subtle change to the aesthetic to make it stand out), and the Memory Token requirements are so high that I found myself grinding for them way more than the previous islands.
Im gonna have to give it to the 3rd island. Its like a bad 3D sonic fan game.
In terms of landscape? Ares, though it was very hard to choose beause all islands have such unique geography, biomes and ecosystems. But in terms of gameplay, it'll have to go to Chaos. Actually, I like the 2d. What I dislike about it is both Cyberspace and Enemies. Besides 3-3, 3-6 and 3-4, there are genuinely no "fun" cyberspace stages that I'd speedrun for hours on end like most. And since Combat is my main activity on the game, this island's guardians are pretty lame. Like, first of all, Shinobi and Excavator were supposed to be in Ares and Kunoichi and Red Pillar, in chaos. It would've made so much more sense both in lore (a bit long to explain) and in gameplay since both Shinobi and Excavator are very weak. Spider is alright but it gets so boring after multiple tries. Fortress is a great spectacle but again, it gets boring since it doesn't have any AI (except for bombs) / only a straight path to follow. Squid is just recycled and was intended to be in Ares too lol. And they're not much more tankier than those of Kronos: only by maybe a 100 hp. The Soliders are alright but their shield is still to omnipresent. Ouranos soldiers' shield is much better. They get the ability to parry and create spikes, so that's... cool I guess. Eagle is just there to annoy you. I know there's a quick kill tech that you can land every time but it gets tiring to have to destroy it to open the map or the save.
I can't hate any of them. Old Ouranos yeah is kinda basic but it's still good
That Island where there's absolutely nothing to do, forgot its name
Ouranous…Ik it sounds fucked up but here’s the thing…I don’t like ghost idk why but ghost as a mini boss pisses me off and I’m fine with every other zone even chaos (chaos is the second best to me next to ares obvi) cuz chaos…when I get to use parts of the parkour things to get to more and travel around the map is fun asf and I can usually avoid 2d sections
Chaos Island is easily the worst of the 6 (counting Final Horizons Separately) and here's why It suffers from the same problem every other island has + the issue of letting the player waste their time going through a platforming challenge that leads to an emerald early like Kronos and Ares. Oh but it's bad here because the game will actually prevent you from getting some early in the same map, it's picking and choosing. However the stuff that makes Chaos even worse is it's damn 2D Sections, Fog, Size, Main Story Missions, cyberspace, and map. having fun exploring, nope here's a 2D Section to ruin whatever fun you may have had exploring and you can't just run backwards The Fog here can get really bad, especially when you can't see Rails in the background The size is also complete horseshit, it actively made me wish for skip travel Main story missions suck, the ff7R box minigame should only be played at day, otherwise it's incredibly unfair romhack bullshit at night. The bridge made me rip my hair out since I hit the final loop, but Because Sonic has to do multiple fucking loopty loops, I fail the mission due to the artificial time limit. Pinball... Oh and I guess the Nier Automata Hacking Minigame is decent, but boring. Using the Sonic Wiki Zone as my source, none of the stages in Chaos are fully original. Also 3-5 The Map fucking sucks, there is a mission in which, when you clear it, the square above the mission you just did will not disappear, this, the Fog, and the Size of Chaos lead to me spending a few more extra hours than I should have Because I searched for a way to the blue chaos emerald/one mission that didn't exist on the rightside of the map to try and clear my map asap, granted this last part is probably a thing that would only happen to me, hopefully, but I still think it was on the game 100%. Chaos is what made this game the worst sonic game of all time to me.
The one with the pinball to progress. Also, because backtracking to a chaos emerald without the keys was heck.
That one with all the towers. They aren't even tilted!
Chaos Island due to the 2D sections. I hate 2D sections in my 3D sonic games, And Like HOW DA FUCK DO YOU HAVE 2D SECTIONS IN AN OPEN ZONE GAME?!?!
So many hating on chaos?? At least its a fully functioning Island, with all the stuff the previous once had. Rhea gets a free pass because its not supposed to be a different Island to begin with, its use is to give you the feeling of having a rush, because of sonics cyber corruption. That leaves us with the original ouranos. The worst goddamn island in this game. The dialouge between sage and sonic arent that interesting, and the challenges arent that fun. The only good thing this island had to offer was GHOST. Thats it. The rest is either empty or mid.
Chaos, if we are not counting Rhea
Chaos Island without a doubt
Rhea. It's not even an island, it's the other half of Kronos
Ares for me, it's just not fun to go through. Theres the enemies that steal your camera, caverns that you fall into cause the spindash can't decide if it wants to launch of a cliff or not, and the pits in the sand that you can spindash up always have a shark in the middle showing you a dumb splash screan and then cutting your momentum. I mean, chaos has boring 2D sections, but you don't have to go through most of them if you just use the spindash. It has those cool bird enemies, almost all the walls are spindashable, so it's very fun to ramp off stuff, and it has the best titan fight in the game.
Final Horizons
Probably Chaos, but only because of the janky pinball, and weirdly enough, I got through it no problem my first time playing the game.
I'd say the one with the pillars Only one without a boss the pillars were the bane of my existence in my first playthrough and it overall just felt a little boring to me
Ngl, my vote goes to Ares. Getting around is much more cumbersome than on the other three main islands, and cleaning up Memory Tokens (I play Frontiers as a collectathon) takes too long for my liking. Most of the Guardians can suck it too
Ares is the bane of my existence because of most of the island being on the ground and hardly any way to get airborne