My thoughts on Sonic as a series has always been a bit strange because I'm not someone who would call themselves ride-or-die for any one particular era of the series. I think the 2D Genesis games are still immensely iconic and replayable 2D momentum platformers, I love the Adventure era for its interconnected storytelling and cast along with its more free-form 3D gameplay, and I even have a real soft-spot for the infamously spotty late 2000s for its high production values, sheer variety and quantity of games, and the phenomenal boost trilogy of Unleashed, Colors, and Generations. I've even defended some of the more disliked entries in the series like Shadow 05, Black Knight, and Lost World, so needless to say, I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to Sonic.
But then there's Sonic & The Secret Rings, a game that has left me thoroughly conflicted unlike no other Sonic game out there. I had only ever played a small portion of Secret Rings just to see what it was actually like, and I felt pretty confident in unambiguously calling it one of the series' worst entries for the motion controls alone, just like everyone else. But I always had this desire to go back to Secret Rings, and give it a proper chance. So I did, and... I kinda enjoyed myself? A bit? I don't know.
I think the worst thing a Sonic game can do is make me feel nothing (that's part of why I'm always so harsh on Frontiers), and Secret Rings, for better or worse, made me feel pretty much everything. Where it was exhiliration at the game's fun setpieces, investment in the more personal story, exhaustion with the tedious menuing and tutorial system, frustrating with the wonky control scheme, awe at the gorgeous environments, or completely laughing my ass off at the game's ridiculous jank, Secret Rings had me thoroughly engrossed from start to finish. But does that make it a good game? I'm really not sure. I'm not someone who ever believed in guilty pleasures, my take was always that if you enjoy a piece of media, it's doing something right. But with Secret Rings, I wonder if maybe I'm being too charitable. Have my standards gotten too low? Am I only even thinking this because of how unanimously disliked this game seems to be?
With this review, I want to sift through my thoughts on Sonic & The Secret Rings, and also unpack how I personally think about games. So strap in, this is gonna be a long one.
So to start, I think I want to go over the elements of Secret Rings that I think are unambiguously great, and that's primarily the presentation. For a launch era Wii game, Secret Rings still looks pretty great. The art direction is some of the best in the entire franchise blending realism with surrealism is a really distinct way. Each and every location you visit is colorful, inventive, and memorable, from massive Arabian palaces, to tropical dinosaur-filled jungles, to a stormy shipwreck, to a colosseum covered in bone dust. The cutscenes are mostly hand-drawn but they look nice and expressive, and when we do get full CGI cutscenes, they're some of the coolest shit ever. And then, of course, there's the soundtrack which is almost entirely comprised of cheesy buttrock vocal tracks with an Arabic influence. It took a bit of time for them to grow on me, but I eventually grew to love these ridiculous lyrics and Runblebee's totally earnest delivery. Despite infamously being developed by a B-team split off from the Sonic 06 team and making some pretty notable concessions like Sonic's model not having a mouth, Secret Rings still feels like a high production value game between its stunning art direction and impressive soundscape. This was a time when even the smallest Sonic games felt like they had a lot of investment put into them.
I also really like the story of Secret Rings, despite the fact that it's almost exclusively focused on Sonic on his own. The actual plot of Sonic going into the Arabian Nights book to stop an evil genie named Erazor Djinn (eraser genie) from erasing all of its stories is admittedly kind of ridiculous, but the character work at its core is really good. Sonic spends most of the game with a genie named Shahra and their dynamic is great. I love hearing their banter throughout each stage, and Shahra panicking whenever Sonic does something reckless is always a joy. But beyond that, I also really like their arcs. Shahra's storyline deals with her abusive relationship with Erazor in a really tasteful way, and Sonic's arc about how he constantly pushes himself to help his friends even if his life is on the line is probably the best encapsulation of his character. Not to keep ragging on Frontiers, but I think Secret Rings is basically just a better version of Sonic's arc in that game. The final cutscene in particular is still up there with Unleashed's opening as one of my favorite Sonic cutscenes ever, Sonic trapping Erazor in his lamp is such a badass showing, and his infamous hankerchief wish is so charmingly corny that I can't help but love it. As far as the Storybook games go, Black Knight gets the bulk of the praise but I think Secret Rings' story deserves to be right up there with it. It's got stellar characterization for Sonic, one of my favorite companions in Shahra, and some strong personal character arcs that handled thoughtfully while still in keeping with that "rule of cool" vibe Sonic was taking on during this time.
But even in the gameplay side of things, there are elements about Secret Rings that I really like. Most notably, I think the level design is genuinely really good. The Storybook games tend to get a bad rap for being on-rails which restricts your level of movement, but I don't think that necessarily has to be a bad thing as long as the setpieces you're put through are fun and Secret Rings totally understands this. From running from dinosaurs in Dinosaur Jungle, to blasting yourself out of a cannon and riding waves in Pirate Storm, to flying on a magic carpet in Night Palace, each stage has you constantly doing varied things and never lets you get bored with any one setpiece. The main acts almost feel like a rollercoaster, rapidly flinging you from setpiece to the next and it's just plain fun to experience. But even outside of those setpieces, I was surprised at how Secret Rings' level design is still able to implement platforming, branching paths, collectibles, higher routes, and even a few open areas in stages like Pirate Storm and Skeleton Dome. So despite being on rails, I found Secret Rings' stages to be consistently engaging in their own way. As a matter of fact, I'd even argue think the level design in Secret Rings is more involved than the levels in Black Knight which admittedly feel more barren to compensate for the extra focus on combat.
I also have to mention just how much content Secret Rings has. The main campaign is filled with stuff to do from a leveling up and upgrade system that allows for a deeper level of customization of what you want Sonic to specialize in, to the collectible Fire Souls that can force you to fully explore each of the stages, to a variety of missions that I actually quite enjoyed doing, to a special book filled with extras ranging from concept art to a travel diary for Big The Cat. But most impressively, Sonic & The Secret Rings has a full-on multiplayer party mode with 40 minigames and a variety of game-modes. It's not the greatest thing out there, it's very Mario Party 8-core in that most of the minigames are focused around motion controls, but it can be pretty good fun with friends and offers a lot of extra value to this overall package. While I think Sonic Shuffle probably has the better roster of minigames, I'd still rather play Secret Rings' party mode with friends since it lacks Shuffle's awful board gameplay.
So yeah, that's all the stuff I think is unambiguously good, and from the way I've been putting it, it seems like Secret Rings should've been an absolutely stellar game. Great visuals and music, a well-written story, solid level design, and tons to keep you coming back, what else could the game need? Well... good controls. Sonic & The Secret Rings was an early Wii game after all, so it was designed entirely with motion controls in mind. The control scheme is as follows: Sonic runs forward automatically. You tilt left and right to steer left and right, and tilt back to slowly back step. Holding down the 2 button will allow you to slide and charge a jump, and letting go will allow you to jump. Shaking the Wii remote in midair allows you to either air dash or do a homing attack, and pressing 1 will let you brake in place. It's a pretty cumbersome control scheme, but not for the reasons you might expect.
If you asked most Sonic fans what the main problem is with the controls in Secret Rings, they would say it's the motion controls. I was inclined to believe them, but upon playing Secret Rings myself, I don't actually agree. Granted, I grew up with this console, I'm a sucker for that waggle bullshit. Give me a menial task like pulling a lever and tell me I need to physically swing the controller, and I will get stars in my eyes. I think tilting left and right to move actually feels pretty accurate and responsive, and shaking to attack never bothers me even in games like Mario Galaxy or Black Knight because you never need to shake forcefully, just lightly will usually do the trick. Do I think the game would control better with buttons? Sure. But the motion controls aren't the deal-breaker for me, and I don't think they're as finicky as many make them out to be. The real issue is pretty much everything else.
The fact that the Wii Remote on its own has so few buttons really shows in Secret Rings, a game that feels like it was begging to be played with a nunchuck. As I said, I love how Secret Rings despite being an on-rails game is still able to cram a lot of platforming and exploration into its levels. Unfortunately, this doesn't complement a control scheme where you run automatically. Most stages will require you to stop and fight enemies, which I almost always tend to overshoot and have to awkwardly shamble backwards to hit. None of this would be an issue if you could just run around freely, the forced auto-running only makes it easier to accidentally slip off platforms or miss important objectives. And it certainly doesn't help that you can't jump just by tapping the button, you have to charge it which halts the pace of the game every time you even want to do some platforming. And since jump is on the same button as slide, you often need to start charging several seconds in advance lest you, once again, slip off a platform or overshoot your objective. Having to deal with so many different actions on so few buttons is just too overwhelming and never feels natural no matter how long you keep playing the game, even in-game Sonic looks pretty awkward in how he's jankily hopping around the stage.
Only enhancing the control issues is the very messy upgrade system. While I praised Secret Rings for even having an upgrade system to begin with, the execution is flawed since Sonic Team decided to pad out the upgrade list with basic qualities like good handling, instant homing attack, and your speed. In the first hour of Secret Rings, you will be having to grapple with a sluggish Sonic with purposefully delayed movements and it feels bad. While the game does feel better the more you level up, that's not really an excuse for how bad it initially feels. And as a matter of fact, if you upgrade your speed too much, Sonic will start moving uncontrollably fast and start outrunning the stage hazards. So not only does a low-level Sonic feel bad to play as, but a high-level Sonic can almost feel too unwieldly. It's a total lose-lose!
The progression is also pretty flawed. Many fans will criticize the fact that, like many 3D Sonic games around this time, Secret Rings forces you to do missions in between the main acts to pad out the game, but I honestly don't hate that. As I said, I like doing most of the missions and I've always preferred having to do some bite-sized challenges rather than beating the game X amount of times like in Heroes or Shadow 05. Most of the time, I was going to do the missions anyway so it never really affects me. But what Secret Rings does bungle is the conveyance aspect. The game never tells you what missions you need to do, so if you want to run through the game quick and only do the important missions, you'd have to either memorize or look up the route. This is objectively a pretty stupid idea and I do concede that it makes the prospect of replaying Secret Rings from the start even less enticing. I also have to criticize just how much menuing there is! To enter a single stage, you need to enter a world, click on a mission, click on a skill ring, start the stage, wait for a loading screen, and then you can start the level. It can really take a bit too long, and that's especially an issue in the tutorial section where each tutorial is like 5 seconds long so you have to spend a lot of time in menus going from level to level.
Ultimately, that's the bulk of my issues with Secret Rings, but they're some pretty big issues, aren't they? I've always thought that gameplay should be prioritized over everything else, so even if most of Secret Rings is good, if the mechanics are this messy and subfunctioning, that shouldn't really matter, right? Well, the thing is that's not the full story because sometimes, Secret Rings does click. When you're running through hallways quickly dodging obstacles, or engaging with one of the game's many aforementioned setpieces, or experimenting with the various upgrades just to see what they can do, Secret Rings can be occasionally really fun. In its best stages, Pirate Storm and Night Palace, I was even experiencing some pure joy just from how cool these stages were and how fun they were to traverse. These moments of fun of course became more frequent as the game went on, as the tighter control of a fully-upgraded Sonic simply feels better to play. While I do think Black Knight is the more polished package and the better game overall, it didn't have anywhere near the same level of dynamism as Secret Rings at a high level. If it did control better, I'd even say Secret Rings was the better game without question.
But even when Secret Rings wasn't fun, when I was having to deal with some shoddy platforming or fighting the controls, it was never frustrating. Part of this is due to the fact that Secret Rings has infinite lives and generous checkpoints, call it a bandaid, but I'll take what I can get. But I also think the sheer jank of Secret Rings is just kinda funny sometimes. This is the only Sonic game I know of where you can just make him uncontrollably fast by giving him the right upgrades, and I find that so much fun. It's funny to take a fully leveled-up Sonic into one of the earlier stages and just completely break it, it's funny to use speed break in the wrong spot and cause some bizarre bug, and it's funny to pull off some of the crazy tech the game has like sliding across ledges. For me, Secret Rings is probably the most "so bad it's good" Sonic game, it actually reminds me a lot of Mega Man X6. The sheer freedom you have to break the game combined with its many bizarre game design decisions make for this truly mesmerizing experience unlike anything else in the franchise (outside of maybe 06, but idk I need to play more of that one).
And yet, at the same time, playing Secret Rings also kinda makes me sad. There are several Sonic games where I can just see the potential it had to be something truly special, and Secret Rings especially feels that way. This game would go so hard, if it had a traditional control scheme. As I said, I don't even mind the motion controls, but simply giving the player full 360 movement and more buttons to use alone would bring this game up like 2-3 points at least. When I reviewed Sonic Frontiers, I said that when it comes to 3D Sonic, "I want a more action-packed narrative, more naturalistic and original level design, tighter platforming, a more cohesive and stylish sense of art direction, and most importantly, I want a game that's just plain good". Outside of that last one, Secret Rings actually checks out most of these boxes, it has a lot of what I love about the series, but you have to deal with so much nonsense to experience those highs.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm too charitable with games like Secret Rings or Mario Pinball Land or Mega Man X6 or Harmony Of Dissonance. I know how important good gameplay can be, and I'm aware of how much games like those drop the ball in this aspect. Sometimes, I even try to play some of the most hated games out there just to make sure I know how bad it can truly get. But maybe that's also why I appreciate Secret Rings. Games are the sum of their parts, and the fact that I had at least four paragraphs worth of purely good things to say about this time shows that Secret Rings can't be some atrocious low point within the series, especially not when there are games like Sonic 4, or Tails' Skypatrol, or Sonic Boom that I truly struggle to find enjoyment in. Hell, even some of the "objectively better" Sonic games like 3D Blast or Frontiers don't quite resonate with me like Secret Rings is able to at its best. Not that I'm obligated to list out games I genuinely don't like just to show I have standards, it's more to show that I don't really think of Secret Rings as one of the flat-out worst Sonic games, there are other games that I think actually take that spot.
So you know what? Screw the consensus. I like Sonic & The Secret Rings, it's cute. It's by no means a good game and there is a lot that I wish it did differently, but even in its current state, it has a lot to love and I had a pretty fun time with it. The story was engaging, the art direction was gorgeous, the stages were thrilling, the RPG mechanics were fun to mess around with, and the waggle elements scratched that part of my brain that loves swinging around my controller like a madman. Secret Rings has a lot of what I want in a Sonic game crossed with the early Wii motion control gimmickry that I grew up with, maybe I was destined to find something to enjoy about it. And that makes me happy, it's fun to enjoy games and find the good in them. No reason to feel guilty about that.
2.5/5 Stars
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