After the central lantern of Castle Town is lit during the Festival of the Sun, the kingdom’s bombarded with a missile strike. The, uh… less disturbing CG redesigned Eggman mannerly threatens Elise to come with him, namely for the Chaos Emerald in her possession. Sonic swarms the scene, and Elise confuses him for Silver as the first foreshadowing of the logical and temporal mess to come. He busts the Egg Gunners, scoops up Elise, and carries her away while Eggman retaliates with a second blitzkrieg. Meanwhile, Silver watches from a rooftop, having found the individual he’s looking for: the “Iblis Trigger”.

The initial dialogue is touched up, and Elise’s speech before lighting the lantern refers to the tragedies they’ve endured as a kingdom as well as citing fire as “Prometheus’s gift”. Eggman’s CG design is mostly unchanged, although the Chaos Emerald is not of interest to him or in Elise’s possession for reasons that will become clear. Sonic’s opening quip is less generic, and the first instance of witty banter between him and Elise occurs. The term “Iblis Trigger” also never factors into Silver’s analysis from afar or, as you’ll see, even exists at all.

The in-game models are revealed, namely the bizarre mouth placements for the animal characters and whatever in Jesus, Mary, and Joseph they were thinking with Eggman. Sonic lets Elise go to clobber a fresh batch of Egg Gunners, allowing her to be snatched up by the new Egg Mobile while his back is turned. Other than this beginning an exhausting trend throughout the story, she tosses him her Chaos Emerald, and he promises to rescue her. That’s it—she’s taken away, he doesn’t take a single immediate step to follow her, she doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest, and Eggman’s a-okay with leaving his objective behind.

The in-game models possess mouths higher up on their faces whereas Eggman’s appearance more closely matches his CG design. Sonic lets Elise go simply because the position he’s carrying her in is awkward. He keeps the pair of them behind cover, knowing Eggman will be scouring the whole square for them, which is when Tails calls them over. Sonic messes Elise’s name up, then corrects himself by getting it more wrong, and Tails leads her to safety while he hunts down the other invading units.

Come morning—yes, he waits until morning to do something—Sonic meets Tails, who joyfully promises to help track down Eggman, by the fountain. This happens in the middle of his search for the information he already has, which is where she’s being taken. Who cares about his greater plan? We also get introduced to his very awkward running animation and abnormally slow speed.

There’s no extra scene here—I just wanted to point out that Tails doesn’t seem too invested in helping Sonic anymore, and that factors into a bit of an arc for both of them throughout the story. Moreover, Sonic uses his more faithful mach speed running animation from the original game at all times, whereas his default speed matches the effect of the speed shoe powerup.

Sonic meets an old man by the network shop, who turns out to be a master shoemaker. Sonic agrees to give his custom shoes a test run across the square.

The same geezer stops Sonic by the bell tower the next morning, complaining that the new badniks are smashing up his shoe store in search of the princess. Sonic agrees to clear them out, for which he’s thanked with a demand to keep the volume down.

Sonic runs and jumps through a sequence of orange hoops Superman 64-style (not a tasteful comparison), then gets gifted with custom shoes. These shoes support gems that can be installed to unlock new abilities.

The layout of “Shadows of Eggman’s Mechs” is used here, starting at Robert’s shoe store. Said owner doesn’t have any custom shoes, but he does grant him an antigravity chip to use with his current shoes.

Sonic uses his new rings to buy a light chip, which is used to perform a light dash to the Wave Ocean gate in spite of this ability being available from the start since Sonic Heroes. I know he collected the light shoes in Sonic Adventure 2, but those were Soap shoe equivalents to the light speed shoes in Sonic Adventure, which functioned differently.

Sonic notices the new Egg Carrier flying toward Wave Ocean, then makes sure Tails is tracking its movements before crossing over. Also, the ring trail to Wave Ocean is no longer there, as he only needs to cross the water with an antigravity slide.

Sonic performs an antigravity slide across the water without having bought the chip for it, thus raising the question of why he didn’t do this to cross the water to the mirror gate. After Tails lowers the outer boundary gate to a level Sonic’s orca can easily swim under, Sonic decides at the last minute that perhaps he should pick up the pace and run so fast, he can lose his rings to a palm tree without making direct contact with it.

Sonic quotes Babe to thank Tails for closing the gate, which lowers all the way down to the seabed. He picks up the pace when the Egg Carrier does, at which point he spots the Tornado tailing it. Tails also utilizes his classic tail attack from Sonic Adventure and Project ’06 during his section.

Sonic and Tails stop at the shoreline, figuring they’ve lost the trail after the Egg Carrier passes over some rocks. Tails suggests that they return to civilization and ask random people random questions.

Elise is onboard the Tornado when it lands, though she’s not all that happy about it. As soon as Sonic’s loaded on himself, Tails takes off in the Egg Carrier’s path.

Seeing as the townspeople back in Castle Town aren’t receptive to their request, thus wasting their time further, Sonic buys his antigravity ability to slide under the wall of town hall and rescue a little girl from the roof. She tells Sonic of Eggman’s route to the desert, so he joins Tails at the mirror gate to Dusty Desert.

On their flight over the desert, Elise answers Sonic’s rhetorical question on the ruins’ purpose, resulting in an awkward moment. A missile smacks the Tornado square in its exhaust jet, thus spinning them out to the dunes below.

The very unwise advice of Elise’s father echoes between her ears, that being to never cry no matter what. She gives Sonic a bear hug instead of a smack in the face like she should, after which Eggman greets them and reveals his mechanical pet behind a black bar gate.

Sonic wakes Tails up after drifting in and out of consciousness with Adventure series lines. Elise is not in their cell—in fact, they find her in the bleachers of the colosseum outside, so Tails frees her while Sonic plays a game of fetch.

Sonic goes through the process of grinding up the rail on the dog’s back and using its horn to drive it into the wall of the arena.

Sonic tries training Egg Cerberus to hop down from an upper ledge and figures he’ll need a cone after the battle, as though the dog belongs to him all of a sudden.

Outside, Sonic seems discouraged by the incoming swarm of Egg Gunners until Tails offers to cause a distraction. Sonic scoops up Elise once more and takes to the dunes.

Tails is quick to seek out the Tornado’s crash site. Helpful but dismissive, he leaves Sonic to carry a very reluctant Elise across the sand.

The first Sonic and Elise stage, which isn’t any more or less frustrating than default Sonic. Other than the creepy zoolover thing between them.

As a considerable overhaul, this is now the one amigo-only Tails stage in Sonic’s story, based on the original version of Sonic and Elise’s as well as his custom layout from the Legacy of Solaris mod. It ends with him finding the Tornado and repairing it while the rest of the group converges with him.

Sonic and Elise scramble across the Windows XP wallpaper—a nice setting, all things considered. Elise wraps up Sonic’s nonexistent arm injury, for which she apologizes like it’s her fault. It’s after she elaborates on the background of Solaris and the death of her father that, not only does the creep factor of their romance become apparent, but also the sappy melodrama behind it. It’s a Jenga pile of “ewww”.

The Tornado gives out again onto the same field, so he suggests that Sonic and Elise return to Castle Town on foot after rudely refusing the former’s help. Elise still acts ungrateful, only this time, she stumbles through a vague explanation. Sonic learns she can’t get close to people or express emotions of any kind, falls glum knowing Tails has become his own person and outgrown him, and welcomes her to open up.

Sonic and Elise are ambushed in Castle Town by Silver, who identifies Sonic as the Iblis Trigger and declares that, “For the future of the world, I will DESTROY you!” through a voice actor who probably wasn’t entirely comfortable delivering it.

Flattered, Silver’s inner dork comes out when Sonic compliments his gear, but he puts on a serious face and warns Sonic against defending his target… Elise?! Sonic tells the princess to book it before the fight gets off the ground.

Ummm… uhhh… “IT’S NO USE!”

The dialogue has been swapped out for something less repetitive and obnoxiously delivered, as genuinely liking it comes from a place of distilled nostalgia.

Silver gains the upper hand while Elise watches and does nothing, most likely to show Sonic how it feels. Sonic’s confused about why Silver is after him, and when he tries running after Elise amidst her second kidnapping of many, Silver stops him and talks in a way that makes me loath him with a passion. Amy gets in his way so Sonic can flee, and for how much her voice from this era irritates me, this is a very Dreamcast-era move for her.

Because he’s not after Sonic, Silver turns to face Elise but finds her being snatched up. Sonic’s struck down with rewritten dialogue, only Amy gets in the way to confirm that she knew Silver prior. A shamed Silver wanders off after being shut down, and Sonic admits that he misses the bond he used to have with Tails and… her? Both are put-off by this second part, and Sonic flees to chase down Eggman.

To get into New City and stop a slew of badniks, Sonic chit-chats with royal guard after royal guard until he knows which one is the captain. He learns Knuckles is waiting for him in New City, so he heads over to take at least one layer off this convoluted meetup .

Knuckles has been called over to Eggman’s base in White Acropolis. Finding the Master Emerald in his possession doesn’t discourage him, considering Chaos hasn’t been held within since the end of Sonic Adventure, but Eggman tells him his latest invention brought it back from the past. This proves enough to heighten Knuckles’s paranoia.

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Sonic and Tails follow Eggman’s trail through New City before noticing the badnik deployment in the warehouse district.

Knuckles tosses Sonic a red tarot card, which doubles as a hologram projector, given to him by Eggman. The message it delivers tells Sonic to bring his Chaos Emerald to White Acropolis in exchange for Elise. Hey, worse ideas have and will be hatched.

Left among the scrap at the end, Knuckles offers to take Sonic and Tails to White Acropolis and save Elise.

The badniks are rid from the entrance to a cave in New City, which leads to the gate for White Acropolis.

Other than the comedic dialogue at the end and Sonic’s pals taking on more helpful roles, not much has changed.

Sonic infiltrates Eggman’s base, Tails takes out the watchtowers, and Sonic returns to storm the reinforced entrance.

Sonic receives his snowboard from Tails without prompting (played up as a joke), and he proceeds to throw it back to him without prompting. Also, when they join in the snowy courtyard after the watchtower section, the sequence in which Sonic returns is handled by Knuckles.

Sonic inserts his Emerald into Eggman’s new device, which traps him and his team in a cylindrical forcefield. Eggman unveils his time machine, the “Solaris Prototype”, and lets it whisk all three heroes away. He explains to Elise that he has no idea where they’ll end up, but that he’ll need all the Chaos Emeralds to reach the machine’s full potential because the same applied to the Eclipse Cannon. What does he need the Emeralds and the flames inside Elise for? In his words, he’ll be able to “control everything and rule the world”. I can’t imagine why anyone would think this stuff could use a rewrite. It ends with Elise sitting in complete silence for fifteen seconds too long.

Other than there being no Emeralds to deliver, Eggman reveals his plan to be bringing his past inventions back through time, exactly the first thing he would do if he had a time machine. He also gloats to Elise that Team Sonic had just been transferred to the most catastrophic future branching off from their timeline. Although he can send things off through time thanks to her father’s research documents, he’ll only need Iblis—no longer referred to as the “Flames of Disaster” because it complicates things—in combination with Mephiles in order to bring things back. Elise’s more assertive nature here rears its head, and he threatens her with torture.

Team Sonic falls in a slapstick way that’s never played up as a joke. They’re greeted by Shadow and Rouge, who—by some magic, fantastic, and just plain deranged happenstance—happen to be in the same random time and place.

When Tails’s voice is muffled by the floor after the fall, Sonic tells him to keep it up if he thinks Knuckles is a moron. Knuckles expresses guilt over selling his friends out, and Rouge greets them with an allusion to the similar way they met up in Heroes.

Outside, Shadow lets the team know this future is far removed from their time, and Tails realizes Eggman’s machine can control time despite having already been told as such. Shadow goes on to say they’ll need a space-time rift (not proper science) to return home, Sonic knows he’s talking about Chaos Control when it’s never been established that it’s capable of time travel, and right after Shadow says Chaos Control won’t be enough, the scene ends with Sonic agreeing to teamwork and the rest of the situation unresolved. Someone got real tired of writing this…

Shadow describes this future as a “what if?” scenario and poses the idea that, should Chaos Control be performed with more than one Emerald, they could achieve time travel. Yes, the origin of this notion will be provided in his story. They agree to split up and find one Emerald each, with some much-missed bitching between Knuckles and Rouge starting to emerge.

Other than obvious assertions from Sonic like the city being on fire, very little of the writing here is bothersome.

More sarcasm is added on, as is his annoyance by the cars being hurled by the fire devil in the final stretch like a toddler’s throwing plastic toys at his head. He also gets the cue from Knuckles to join him and Tails in a tower to the east.

Knuckles and Tails grieve over their future when Shadow already said it wasn’t their future. They peek through the open door to an old lab and find Silver and Blaze conversing with Mephiles in his Shadow form, who discusses the “Day of Disaster” when Iblis took over the world. He hands Silver a Chaos Emerald, which—as another power we never knew they had—gives him a premonition that Sonic is the Iblis Trigger. After they travel to the present, Tails instantly finds out about Elise’s death on the computer and really spells out with Sonic that Elise will die in an Egg Carrier crash two days after the current time in the present.

Sonic makes another joke about Eggman’s paunch, and it’s revealed that Tails has located the lab himself. The computer is how he finds out about the volcanic field in Flame Core, as well as how he learns of Elise’s death in one line. Most importantly, they never witness Silver and Blaze’s rendezvous with Mephiles because it does not fit into the narrative at all—that happens at the start of Silver’s story, in which Silver’s first encounter with Sonic happens later whereas it happens earlier in Sonic’s story.

Shadow and Rouge have beaten Team Sonic to the volcano, as well as to the first Emerald. Tails brings up a second Emerald in the distance without letting us know where he got this info. Sonic gives Shadow a rude attitude and Shadow shows him lifeless bitterness because this is who they are now.

Tails uses his Miles Electric to track the next Emerald’s signal, and Sonic jokes about Shadow’s tardiness until the comedic realization that he’s been here with Rouge the whole time. When Rouge acts sarcastic about having to search the highest peak, she gets into a pointless argument with Knuckles. Sonic and Shadow exchange “can you believe these morons?” looks before getting the team back on track. Sonic has the same dickish line, albeit delivered jokingly, and gets an equally friendly tease back.

Other than generic quips, there’s not much wrong with this stage specifically.

Sonic’s quips are swapped out for sarcasm, like his “excitement” about hopping through an active crater and his “gratitude” for a cost-effective welcome party.

Shadow and Rouge have joined Team Sonic deep inside the mountain, but just as Rouge flutters over to the Emerald in the middle, Shadow somehow has the foresight to call her off—sure enough, it turns out to be bait set up by Iblis.

Shadow and Rouge are absent. Tails flies over to collect the Emerald, but Knuckles gets a bad feeling based on his instinctive nature. Sonic tells him off, saying it’s only a conveniently placed gemstone smack dab in the center of an oversized cavern, only to look like a fool when it turns out they’ve been baited. Tails also hypothesizes about this being the creature behind the apocalypse.

Sonic uses the light rocks to bait Iblis back and deliver each blow.

Other than Knuckles landing the final blow, not much has changed.

After lots of silence and pulling out their respective Emeralds, Sonic and Shadow lift their Emeralds up to one another’s and generate a rift as intended.

There’s some minor back-and-forth before Chaos Control is performed, just to keep up the energy of and chemistry between the characters.

Back in present-day New City, they find a newspaper lying nearby, and although the headline is never shown, a man on the street corner lets them know Elise is trapped on Eggman’s train.

Since this is their first time travel with Chaos Control, they hope nothing happened to Shadow and Rouge as a result.

Sonic buys the bounce bracelet—again, what happened to the one he had?—uses it to stomp his way through a ventilation grate, and bypasses station security.

The same man lets them in on the secret way through the station, acting paranoid as he does so. After Sonic makes it to the mirror gate alone, Knuckles asks Tails about his attitude lately. He tells him he’s lucky to have Sonic watching his back, but Tails is insistent on going his own way.

Sonic starts by keeping up with one train from which he hears Eggman and Elise calling out, only to chase after another in the mach speed section.

The first train turns out to be a train of civilians as a distraction from Elise’s.

Silver stops Sonic again after Elise’s rescue. Although she’s kidnapped again, Shadow drops in to back Sonic up so he can stay on Eggman’s trail. Initially, Silver confuses Shadow for Mephiles.

An added sequence shows Sonic pulling Elise out from inside her car. Silver’s insecurities bubble over again, or at least until he puts his war face back on and finds Elise being taken again. He doesn’t confuse Shadow for Mephiles right off the bat, however, and soon, you’ll understand why.

Elise decides to fall off the Egg Genesis, deciding she’d rather die than be his captive in a brazen move I can’t help but applaud. Sonic catches her before engaging with the new machine.

Eggman’s desperate to keep Elise from falling, given his plan hinges on her survival. Before her fall, she also sees when Sonic’s hurrying to catch her down below.

Sonic defeats the boss. Again, nothing really to complain about.

Not much has changed other than added dialogue between Sonic and Eggman.

Sonic applauds her choice too, only it’s still played up like this is a relationship for the player to get invested in. He then hurries to carry her out of the forest when more badniks are deployed.

Sonic finds her choice to die for Eggman insane before learning she knew he’d catch her in time.

Elise turns on her Iblis shield, which allows Sonic to carry her across the lake and into the next mirror gate.

Elise requests to be taken to a place of reflection for her. With this being the first Sonic and Elise sequence, he discovers her Iblis shield after getting brought down over his terrible pun.

Still fairly acceptable other than the horrid romance between the characters.

Any of the occasional dialogue is replaced with witty banter, including a line that definitely didn’t originate from Bill Murray in What About Bob?

Once in the clear, Sonic lets her go at a lake being rained on with dogwood petals. We get more backstory that’s supposed to make her sympathetic, and she expresses her concern that Sonic will simply move on after this whole mess is over.

Elise reveals that her mother died of a plague, her father lost his mind, and her home became a setting in which emotions were forbidden. After she explains the splitting of Solaris and her father sealing Iblis inside of her, she shows her first touch of concern about where Sonic will go after this.

The Egg Carrier converges on Castle Town as well as Elise’s castle, with Eggman threatening her to join him at a very specific time and place or the whole kingdom will be leveled. In spite of her recent suicide attempt to avoid being kidnapped, she allows herself to be taken again.

Although Elise announces a lockdown on the entire kingdom, Eggman threatens to turn his aggression toward her people, and she only leaves knowing, as she puts it, “I’m no use to him dead.” Sonic hurries to follow the Egg Carrier, and Amy stops by to let Tails in on some valuable intel.

Instead of Sonic in the forest, Tails is focused on in Castle Town as he races to the shoreline, where I guess the Egg Carrier took off to?

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Tails completes Wave Ocean as the amigo-only stage in Sonic’s story (like Rouge in Tropical Jungle for Shadow’s story and Blaze in Wave Ocean for Silver’s story), even though he already completed Wave Ocean with Sonic once and this mission in particular accomplishes absolutely nothing.

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Elise is being held and rambled on to in the Egg Carrier’s cockpit. Eggman reveals that Solaris has the capacity to bend the fabric of history and that, again, he can utilize that to “control everything” in a plan that begs the question of where all his fun, elaborate planning in the Adventure games had gone. At the end of the day, his dialogue serves the purpose of stretching out the scene to be as long as possible.

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In Castle Town, Elise’s lady-in-waiting tells Sonic to speak with a bishop if he wants to enter the forest. Said bishop requests that three trials must be completed in order to gain access.

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The trials include the Trial of Knowledge, the Trial of Courage, and the Trial of Love.

Sonic’s stopped by the bishop at the three altars. Granted, because he’s been protecting Elise, he’s only required to carry out the Trial of Love, which is also the only one of the three trials with any weight or uniqueness.

The first two trials are based around following warp gates and smashing apart badniks, respectively. The last requires Sonic to pick Amy or Elise as a love interest, and to my continued chagrin, most people go with Elise because choosing Amy changes absolutely nothing in the story.

Freaked out by Amy’s presence, Sonic gravitates toward Elise’s side on a dime… only to see Amy perfectly content like she doesn’t need him anymore, finally wrought with the guilt of neglecting her. Elise tells him he can go to her, and that’s exactly what he does.

Sonic lets a bald eagle carry him up to the mirror gate for Kingdom Valley.

The same occurs other than a brief wisecrack on Sonic’s end.

Sonic’s confused when the badniks in front of him are thrust away by Silver, who’s now intent on saving Elise with him.

The dialogue is modified, and Silver tells Sonic to meet him on the lakeside halfway through the valley so the character switch to come isn’t as jarring.

Sonic switches to Silver, then back to Sonic, at the start and end of the second section.

For the first time, Silver’s spin dash is revealed so every hedgehog character has at least one ball attack. This is done by his cuffs detaching and the web of aura between them clamping down on him.

No reason is given as to why the Egg Carrier malfunctions. I mean it, I don’t know why it happens. Sonic falls to his knees in defeat until Silver suggests that they go back through time and reverse it. They each pull out an Emerald, perform Chaos Control, and go their separate ways through the resulting rift, with Sonic even tossing Silver his Emerald for a reason that’s never provided. Blaze is also there.

A variation of the cockpit scene occurs, only Elise is actively avoiding conversation. Eggman gets more and more aggravated until she triggers her Iblis shield, which deals catastrophic damage to the controls. Thus, Blaze joins Silver (that will be explained in his story), the ship crashes, and Tails stops by to inform him on Amy’s findings. Now knowing the Egg Carrier took off from the hangar of an underground lab system, Sonic performs Chaos Control with Silver. Note that Sonic uses the cyan Emerald Tails found after Flame Core and Silver uses the blue Emerald, and you’ll get why that is later on.

After hitting the three bells of Castle Town, Sonic’s granted access to the central gazebo and, to that effect, the gate to Aquatic Base.

Tails guides Sonic to the mirror gate, as the bell towers only complicate things.

Sonic proceeds alongside Tails and Knuckles, although neither of them appear until their respective areas.

Initially, only Tails tags along to search the multi-balcony atrium for a switch that’ll open the exit. He obliterates the units at the end of his section in a rage, and Knuckles makes a surprise entrance to help Sonic across the last water room.

In an admittedly exciting sequence, Sonic follows the upper catwalk of the hangar and dives down onto the ship’s roof right before it takes off. Not so great is that he doesn’t bust in to save Elise until the unexplained malfunction occurs, at which point the ship is already doomed.

More or less the same until the scene switches to the cockpit, in which Elise is just “settling down”. Eggman hits an emergency switch to dislodge the cockpit from the rest of the ship, dropping Sonic onto the floor of the next boss area. After reappearing in the Egg Wyvern, Eggman figures Sonic would travel through time just to humiliate him. Way to put the “iron” in “irony”.

Sonic drives the machine into falling cargo, which is probably being dropped to reduce the ship’s load. Also, yes, Eggman’s falling animation is hilarious in a cartoony way.

Instead of falling cargo, Sonic smashes the machine into the wings on either side, hence the ship’s intense damage after the fact. Sonic also self-references how closely this boss is based on Egg Viper from Sonic Adventure, and while I’d be heartless to not include Eggman’s falling animation, it now comes with him quoting those classic “after these messages” TV bumpers.

Elise prompts Sonic to dash between debris by repeating a platitude of his from earlier. One that really doesn’t mean anything. Sonic just falls short of grabbing the cliff over the shoreline and gets blasted up to the grass by the ship’s impact. The sexual chemistry between the beauty and the beast skyrockets amidst their awkward laughing fit. Come on, show such a gorgeous vista some dignity!

After Sonic cuts Elise free, she blasts him off the ship’s remains with an Iblis shield and some innocent teasing. The same explosive launch to the cliff results in Elise believing Sonic is dead or injured… until he weakly mutters, “Call the vet.” Even after all their laughter, Elise notices Sonic’s conflicted about something, and he admits with some hesitation that rescuing her has left him grieving over the old days of saving Amy—she’s fully independent at this point, after all. Elise encourages him to work things out with her, but he’s still unsure.

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A fireworks show’s scheduled that evening now that all threats are neutralized (for now). Sonic meets Amy on the central lantern, but she’s not too keen on talking to him. While awkward, he apologies for blowing her off, she reminisces over the simpler (i.e. classic and Dreamcast) times, Sonic avoids getting sentimental about it, and they spend the late evening watching the show. The original end credits theme is still associated with this scene, albeit instrumental.

Shadow blows through the Egg Gunners guarding Eggman’s base in White Acropolis, and although he still has his “inhibitor rings” on (oh, god, we have to get into those), he leaves big, dumb explosions behind and hops over the exterior wall. He also contacts G.U.N., as he’s now their agent because this timeline is fucked beyond belief. It’s revealed that he’s here to rescue Rouge, and he Chaos-Controls away despite not possessing any Chaos Emeralds at the moment.

Shadow spin-dashes through the Egg Gunners, as his “inhibitors” or “limiters” take what was simply an aesthetic choice, one that Rouge received as a token of remembrance after his death in Sonic Adventure 2, and decided it was a way to make him even more powerful (the third movie featured them, but from what I understand, they served a purpose by having him remove them as a risk to himself but the only way to keep the Eclipse Cannon from colliding with Earth.) He quips about the new models after jumping the wall, a brief mutter reveals what his mission is—not given by G.U.N. in this case—and he simply progresses further in without Chaos Control.

Rouge’s section begins without showing how or when she got out. Shadow also hops inside a buggy in his second section, the first of many instances of a vehicle matching his color scheme being available somewhere without any rhyme or reason.

Rouge unscrews and pops out of a ventilation grate, not to mention right after Shadow hopes she’ll be able to break herself out someday. At the start of his second section, he calls up Omega, who airdrops what turns out to be one of his and Shadow’s many weekend projects. Rouge also shows off her melee attacks and drill drive from Sonic Adventure 2 and, later, P-06.

Rouge prepares to tell Shadow about the “Scepter of Darkness”, her ownership of which got her captured, but Shadow has zero emotional involvement in the mission because he’s not allowed to have relationships anymore. A fresh line of units show up, but the first boss never appears.

Frustrated, Shadow says this is the second time he’s had to pull her out of a freezer (hint, hint), and she shows him the scepter, which really has no bigger name other than Mephiles’s scepter. She’s not sure what it is, but she does claim ownership over it by butchering a classic expression. Eggman also sounds the alarm, and the Egg Cerberus is released before the fight begins.

The fight goes pretty much the same way as Sonic’s version, which isn’t an issue.

Shadow makes plenty of dry, poker-faced dog-related quips, one of which references Pavlov’s dog experiment. He also makes a farce of Rouge and her hacking session at the exit like he did with Espio’s in the base episode, that is by watching her tap away except for the one key required. She gets mildly flirtatious with him, but he makes it clear that he has no interest in romance—after all, she still works for Maria’s killers.

Rouge goes on a mini exposition dump about Soleanna, as well as her assigned mission to bring the scepter to its extraction site.

Rouge is the first to lead Shadow inside the lab, and the exposition is reworded to feel more organic (on top of cutting out the mention of the nondescript precision machinery the kingdom is known for). Also, her mission is now to return it to where it was originally contained, which turns out to be for the dire threat it poses. She’s not so happy about having to let it go, though, which stays true to her character and keeps her from becoming dull.

Shadow progresses from New City to the woodlands in a sequence that doesn’t really have a point.

Shadow’s initially not allowed in the forest, as the gate has been locked down. However, he’s allowed passage should he halt a robbery in progress from the Rimlight shipping depot.

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Renamed from “Emergency Order: Capture the Thieves’ Cars!” Other than the mission not being given by G.U.N., Omega also deploys the buggy for Shadow to pursue the robbers in before they escape.

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Zof from Rimlight (now with the last name Kingsby) thanks Shadow with an offer to upgrade his buggy for a price, but Shadow’s satisfied with his current mechanic. He’s then allowed into the forest.

Shadow purchases an air chip (again, he should already be able to light-dash) and a blue memory shard from the network shop, the latter having zero lore or logic behind it other than nullifying the Chaos Emeralds as a requirement to perform Chaos abilities. Yes, this is a catastrophic contradiction of the most basic Sonic lore.

Shadow and Rouge are stopped in the forest by Mancini, who warns them not to progress because the woods are haunted by the spirits of the former duke and his researchers. Shadow couldn’t treat this less seriously.

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Other than making “Ghost” in the title a plural, Rouge is into the idea of a haunting until the spirits turn out to be Egg Sweepers with cloaking devices. Shadow makes a fool of Mancini before marching onward.

Using his memory shard to trigger his Chaos Boost—which is separate from his hero and dark modes from Shadow the Hedgehog, thus sparking confusion because it copies over the red sheen of his dark mode despite him being a hero at this point—he busts open the archway to a cavern, the warp gate in which takes him to the Kingdom Valley mirror gate.

Rouge points out the boulders blocking the archway, which she blows open with one of her heart bombs. Although he’s skeptical, Shadow jumps through alongside her, and she bails on him at the mirror gate to get a head start across the valley.

Shadow starts out already on his glider, and his hovercraft already exists at the lakeside.

Shadow calls the glider over from the first bridge in the valley, and Omega deploys the hovercraft without needing to be asked. Shadow also chides Rouge about not giving him a hand through the vast distance between him and the containment site, but her defense is characteristically pompous.

Eggman interrupts Rouge’s history lesson to Shadow. Shadow chooses to save Rouge when she’s knocked out of the air, which causes the scepter to hit the ground and incapacitate the surrounding Egg Gunners. Eggman flees the scene, and the evil force inside the scepter penetrates Shadow’s… errr… shadow. What emerges is Mephiles in his Shadow form, the second voice role of Dan Greene in the same game. Either because he’s just that versatile or the game wants us to suffer, although it’s probably a little of both. After seeming to know Shadow for reasons you won’t understand, he thanks him and Rouge by warping them off to a different time.

Other than the exposition being truncated, only the scepter’s central gem gets cracked, and when Mephiles is set free, the changes made to him are monumental. Other than the “the Dark” part of his name being removed, he has no Shadow form, only ever appearing in his crystalline form, and other than sounding uncomfortably charming and contemporary, he’s more or less a living statue that floats motionless off the ground. His introductory dialogue to Shadow also mirrors Shadow’s own first line to Eggman in Sonic Adventure 2. While a smaller detail, he snaps his fingers to warp characters between time periods, a much quicker and more casual alternative to his dramatic original method.

Shadow and Rouge land in New City during Silver and Blaze’s future, which Rouge calls “another location” as though it’s literally armageddon somewhere else in their time. A strange moment also occurs in which Shadow ponders who Mephiles is in a short black and white shot.

Shadow and Rouge wake up in the future, and they can tell right off the bat that it seems to be in the future. Before he leaves with Rouge, Shadow also finds the scepter having been left with them, which pays off later on.

Inside a small lab, Rouge finds out on an active computer that they’re back in Eggman’s base, that is two hundred years in the future. Shadow deduces that Mephiles must be able to control time, and how comparable this power is to Chaos Control, before a thud outside catches their attention.

It’s suggested that they’ve been searching for clues like this lab for a while, which fills in the time gap between Silver’s first meeting with Mephiles and Team Sonic’s displacement in the future. When Shadow comments on Mephiles’s time travel ability, Rouge wonders if performing Chaos Control with more than one Chaos Emerald could achieve the same effect. They overhear, but stay quiet during, Team Sonic’s arrival outside.

Team Sonic’s future displacement scene, as well as the Team Sonic and Team Dark pact scene, are both repeated verbatim, which creates a problem as Shadow shouldn’t be able to assume that the current timeline is separate from their own.

The Team Sonic and Team Dark pact scene is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained; however, Team Sonic’s somber view of the skyline is cut out.

Shadow uses his buggy and glider in a post-apocalyptic future, by far the most nonsensical use of his vehicles.

Without his vehicles, Shadow’s sections remain faithful to Sonic’s until the unused “Section D” from his layout comes into play; in the glider section, the scrapped mission of the two hedgehogs saving each other from the whirlwind’s current is restored, or at least the part about Shadow having to save Sonic. He’s also the first one to find an Emerald, but Rouge dulls his mood by being the first to obtain it.

Rouge is entranced by the Emerald they just found… until what they find next is Omega scratched, rusted, and inactive, their reactions as hollow as the buildings around them. Shadow finds out he’s in standby mode, and the pair receive a call asking them to regroup outside the city.

Their reactions to finding Omega are heightened, and Shadow figures he’s been fully out of commission for decades. Rouge asks what they’ll do if they never get home, Shadow remains adamant about their relationship, and Rouge leaves him to watch the fire devil after the call from Tails.

The Emerald tracking scene before Flame Core is repeated verbatim.

The Emerald tracking scene before Flame Core is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained; however, it starts early from Shadow’s perspective as he recalls Maria promising him he’ll have plenty of time for new connections after she’s gone.

While not terrible, it is more or less Sonic and Knuckles’s layout copied over with some object placement differences.

This is the first stage where Shadow can activate his Chaos Boost, which he accomplishes using the Emerald he found. This time, though, it’s the same as his hero mode from Shadow the Hedgehog, meaning his aura is now blue and Chaos Blast can’t be performed. Other than the stronger purple Iblis minions now being followers of Mephiles (it’s bizarre that this wasn’t already the case) while only Iblis followers crop up in both Crisis City and Flame Core, not much else has changed, but Shadow does quote John Mulaney while Rouge quotes Home Alone. I’m prepared to embed the “Wow! What a hole!” clip after every entry for the original game.

The Emerald bait scene before the Iblis Phase 2 boss is repeated verbatim, and the boss is repeated as Shadow. The Sonic and Shadow Chaos Control scene after the boss is also repeated verbatim, plus Shadow spotting Mephiles entering the volcano and letting Rouge leave on her own.

Remember, Shadow and Rouge are both absent at the time of the Iblis Phase 2 fight, so instead, they encounter Mephiles together whereas Shadow did so alone in the original game. Mephiles reveals that human progress has gotten out of control, as both Project Shadow and the Solaris Project exemplify. He knows about Shadow’s concern that mankind has been left on a road to destruction with the death of Black Doom, but Shadow refuses to let himself be manipulated, and Mephiles turns on the pair of them.

Rouge returns to present-day New City, finds out Shadow left his Emerald behind (whoops!), holds off on her mission to retrieve the scepter, and breaks the fourth wall like that was ever a trend in this series.

N/A

This boss comes after Rouge completes Tropical Jungle, and that creates one of the most headache-inducing plot points in the entire game. Mephiles overpowers Shadow halfway through the fight, leading to Omega dropping in to help. This isn’t mind-numbing until you get to Rouge’s Tropical Jungle, as he simply could’ve awakened from standby mode to follow the team and lend a hand.

Rouge chimes in instead of Omega, gaining the upper hand on Mephiles while he’s weakened. For reference, I modded ’06 to replace Omega with Rouge in this boss, and it was perfectly completable if indeed not nearly as fast-paced.

Mephiles warps himself back to the present, and Shadow and Omega follow suit. Once in present-day New City, they meet up with Rouge in the warehouse district. Shadow figures Eggman wanted Mephiles for something (oh, where’d you get that idea?) and heads after him alone for answers.

The Sonic and Shadow Chaos Control scene after the boss is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained. Shadow and Rouge end up in the present-day forest; Shadow goes off to find Eggman alone while Rouge heads off to assist Omega in the jungle.

Good news is, the stage itself is short and tolerable. Bad news? Rouge goes to Omega, who’s somehow even more robotic than usual, and tells him to go into standby mode for the next two centuries until Shadow needs him to fight Mephiles. Other than Omega not realizing the absurdity in this request and Shadow technically already fighting Mephiles, this is the start of a trend that fucks you square in the head, which is when the characters establish the circumstances for a past, present, or future in which they’re already in place—they don’t need to set the cogs in motion when they’re already in motion, especially since their involvement will more than likely result in irreversible damage to the timeline.

After clearing Omega some space, Rouge tells him of their time-surfing escapade and what Shadow’s up to now. When Omega asks where he was and what he was doing in the future, Rouge is hesitant to answer.

Before the Mephiles Phase 1 boss, he reveals that, when the world was destroyed by Iblis, Shadow became a scapegoat to pin the blame on. He promises to bring justice to humanity, but if the first man who told Shadow that was anything to go by, he doesn’t take kindly to this suggestion.

N/A

Shadow takes the logical route and decides that obliterating Eggman’s train is the only way to make it stop. Also, he has a motorbike, but not until the final stretch.

Shadow sticks with only weakening its armor for now, but when he calls for Omega to deploy the bike, there’s some hesitation on his end—more so than usual.

Shadow drops inside Eggman’s train car for answers, and the Doctor drops the bombshell on the Solaris Project. He promises more clarification if Shadow brings him Mephiles, a request that Shadow almost seems to consider because very little thought went into the script.

Eggman’s disappointed to find Shadow instead of Sonic—he had the mockery and dramatic chair swivel and everything! He refuses to divulge much about Solaris until Shadow almost yanks both halves of his mustache off.

The Elise recapture and Shadow vs. Silver scene is repeated verbatim.

The Elise recapture and Shadow vs. Silver scene is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained; however, Sonic pulling Elise from the train car is cut out.

Nothing too grand… until Shadow Chaos-Controls Silver mid-punch so he can roundhouse-kick him upside the temple. What a wonderful moment! It doesn’t silence the asshole, though, and by missing Shadow, he accidentally creates a rift with both of their Emeralds. Shadow tells him of Mephiles’s true intentions, which are news to me, and they travel ten years back. Note that Silver’s holding a different Emerald from the one after Sonic’s Kingdom Valley.

You better believe the kick is still in there, albeit with Shadow looking and sounding more bored and brash during it. Silver also vents his frustration of why the world keeps dooming itself, which is when Shadow learns that he comes from the same future he’d last visited. They agree to head back in time, but a drawn-out comedic moment is based around Shadow trying in agony to make Silver lift his Emerald the right way. Think of it like the “no, the lid” sequence from the SpongeBob episode “Big Pink Loser”.

After the lab explosion, Shadow and Silver really spell out the original forms of Iblis and Mephiles, which begs the question of why so many plot threads are left problematically vague when the audience is talked down to during others like this. Regardless, Shadow’s handed Mephiles’s scepter by the duke, and there is no way this isn’t corrupting the timeline in a thousand different ways.

Other than the dialogue during the Solaris Project being refined to sound more natural, the duke also catches Solaris on mic as muttering “What was must always be” before the explosion. Also, without directly interacting with anyone from this time, Shadow agrees to weaken Mephiles by hunting his followers while Silver does the same with Iblis’s.

Shadow rides a bike.

Bike removal aside, Mephiles goons are the only ones that can be encountered here until the end, where Iblis goons start appearing to show that Mephiles’s are dwindling.

Shadow succeeds in containing Mephiles when another chronological mind-fuck occurs. On top of Mephiles swearing revenge, he also promises that he’ll remember Shadow’s appearance. No, he didn’t simply copy Shadow’s appearance because he was the one who inadvertently released him from his scepter in the present day. In other words, Mephiles stole Shadow’s looks because he knew he would go back to the past and seal Mephiles away, as though Shadow sealing Mephiles away had already happened in this timeline. Can somebody help me?

Shadow and Silver meet up outside the room where the duke seals Iblis in Elise’s heart using a Chaos Emerald. Once the duke passes on, Shadow consoles a disillusioned Silver, and the two of them head home.

Once both halves of Solaris are contained, Shadow and Silver meet up outside Old Soleanna Castle, Silver rests Elise against a tree, Shadow leaves the scepter nearby, and they create a rift to return home.

While Shadow shows up in New City, Rouge does not, but she is frantically trying to contact him. Omega has gone after Mephiles alone, and so, Shadow’s rush to provide backup begins.

In New City, Shadow gets rather lucky by dropping directly in front of where Rouge currently is. Believing Mephiles can be sealed in his own scepter—in which case, they’ve lost their way to that—he makes the very odd request for her to find out the scepter’s materials. You know, as though it’s as simple as constructing a new one.

N/A

Shadow and Rouge complete the “Save the Archaeologist” town mission and are guided to the fountain overlooking New Soleanna Castle by the archaeologist in question, Adrianna. Lighting the four pedestals surrounding it with Chaos Spear generates a fresh scepter. I can’t get too mad, as it is an ancient relic cursed with dark magic, and they do conveniently learn that Omega’s hunting Mephiles along the coast.

On his way to Wave Ocean, Shadow contacts Omega, letting him know he’s not up to facing a force like Mephiles. Instead, Omega takes this as an insult and blocks all contact, so Shadow has Rouge call the glider over.

At this point, the hovercraft simply existing at the pier is the least of my problems.

Rouge calls over the hovercraft; meanwhile, the stage takes place at early sunset like in P-06, the same source from which Omega borrows his gatling gun and omega shot targeting mechanics. Also, Mephiles never speaks or appears at any point, and only his minions are present, none of Iblis’s.

Omega plows through a demigod because he apparently can, but during a pause, Mephiles tells him he was created to destroy Shadow. It’s very unclear as to whether he was meant to do so in the case of Shadow’s awakening in Heroes or will be reprogrammed later on in the future—if he was initially in standby mode to take out Shadow, why didn’t he reactivate in Shadow’s presence after Crisis City? Omega finishes him off in a rage, and the strange part is that he makes it sound like he knew what his future purpose would be. They try to have a somber character moment, but at this point, the story’s so muddled and the cast is so lifeless that it fails to pack a genuine punch.

Mephiles makes a Bloody Mary joke behind Omega’s back before being blasted away… initially. He pretends to be injured before standing up and retaliating, but Shadow takes the shot for him and gets the Chaos Boost… well… boosted out of him. Mephiles zaps himself away, Shadow scolds Omega, and the E-Series model is revealed to be having an existential crisis—he realizes he isn’t superior to his fellow units and is destined to fall just like them. Rouge reconvenes with them, Shadow shows that he still has the scepter on him, and they motivate Omega to serve his purpose while there’s still time.

The town mission “Destroy the Enemies Invading from the Desert!” (quite the mouthful) begins right off the bat, and Dusty Desert is unlocked upon its completion.

While Shadow explains his findings to Rouge and Omega, Adrianna interrupts them, having noticed the scepter in Shadow’s hands; however, they’re then forced to defend her from the invading Mephiles goons.

N/A

Renamed from “Save the Archaeologist” with units from “Destroy the Enemies Invading from the Desert!” worked in. Each member of Team Dark takes a few Mephiles units out (they’re the only ones that spawn) before Adrianna takes the lead.

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At the fountain overlooking New Soleanna Castle, Adrianna reads a reworded passage from the Book of Solaris, and Shadow has it in mind to light the torches around the fountain. Then, like the Staff of Ra from Raiders of the Lost Ark, he holds the scepter up to the fountain’s statue, and its central gem rotates the statue in the direction of the desert.

Rouge suggests that Mephiles is seeking the Chaos Emerald in the ruins, and Shadow—without a doubt in his mind—knows he’s seeking the Emeralds to join with Iblis. Even though Mephiles has never shown any interest in the Emeralds. And there’s no reason to believe anything other than Elise crying can allow Solaris’s two halves to join.

Omega airdrops the hovercraft at the start, a joke is made about Shadow not remembering Eggman’s pyramid base from Sonic Adventure 2, his partners take an alternate route through the ruins, and like in all other present stages, only Mephiles offspring are present.

Mephiles makes it sound like he wants to give Shadow a second chance at justice, only to be very surprised and disappointed when he doesn’t take the bait.

Mephiles considers bringing the duke’s bones as an effigy for Iblis… and reveals that Omega will be reprogrammed by humanity in the future to hunt Shadow. For a moment, it seems that Black Doom was right all along—humanity will just end up fearing Shadow again—but Shadow’s photo of Maria and Gerald keeps him on the light side and only worrying about the present.

Shadow fights off Mephiles’s “shadow giants” until his action gauge is full, at which point the boss is pulled from hiding for as long as Chaos Boost is activated.

Because Rouge took point midway through the first battle, Omega gets tagged in halfway through the second.

Mephiles is successfully stored in his scepter… or so it seems. Instead, it’s snapped apart thanks to its prisoner having acquired Shadow’s properties after Aquatic Base (why didn’t he do that when he was first released?) To quote SpongeBob, Mephiles makes… A MILLION OF ME! and asks why Shadow would save those who’ll just end up persecuting him. In defiance, Shadow goes full incel and says he’ll fight the world off if it ever decides to turn on him, then removes his inhibitors to launch the same ridiculous “trailblazing” attack from his introduction.

Sure enough, it’s confirmed that Mephiles combined Shadow’s powers with his own when the scepter was first dropped in Kingdom Valley, and he in no way quotes Mafia III after his clones surround Team Dark. Rather than going full incel, Shadow refuses to embrace fear and paranoia as he reactivates his Chaos Boost and rips through the clones in one overpowered Chaos Control, bathing the burial site in a solid black and white filter.

Silver discusses the state of his world in an internal monologue, as well as introducing the player to Iblis.

His monologue is replaced with the voices of expectation mounted on him throughout his life, the aggression and urgency of which overwhelm him. He also never uses psychokinesis on a fire devil.

Other than going on just a little too long, we also get the first sense of who Blaze is as a character. Which is pretty much nothing.

Whereas Silver tries to quell his boredom, Blaze stays self-serious and dignified, clearly trying too hard to seem like royalty.

Iblis rears his head, as does the corniness in Silver’s writing and delivery.

For the most part, the only change is the more natural dialogue.

Not too much to complain about, although it is rather epic in scale for a first boss.

More banter is added, which mines a joke about how normalized actions like throwing buildings have become.

Silver grows agitated about Iblis never being able to be stopped. He’s only distracted from this by Mephiles in his Shadow form, who claims in his overly theatrical fashion that everything has an origin. Unfortunately, they should never even consider taking him up on his offer because of how blatantly menacing he is, both in diction and overall presence.

Even Blaze pauses halfway through her claim of victory to admit they’re both fraudsters. Silver starts posing question after question, now spun out and hopeless over their repeated failures, before Mephiles in his one form (his crystalline form) consoles him. He explains that problem-solving starts with identifying the root of the problem before introducing himself.

Silver and Blaze’s first meeting with Mephiles is repeated, this time with an extended beginning and without Team Sonic.

Mephiles establishes himself as a lonely wanderer who was close with Iblis until he occupied New City, as well as having time travel powers passed onto him—Shadow’s powers, which were combined with his own. To further seduce them, he empathizes with Silver and his uncertainty before revealing the real Iblis Trigger (not a term ever used here) to be Elise, as she’d apparently released Iblis shortly before her death.

Silver finds himself alone in the forest, realizes he’s been separated from Blaze, and briefly notices how lively the present day is before reiterating his empty and repetitive “I will fight for the future!” sentiment.

Silver wakes up in the forest, and while his reaction is delayed, he does become astounded and ecstatic by the state of his new setting… which is nearly soiled when Blaze turns out to be nowhere in sight.

Silver hits the gate to Tropical Jungle after asking around for leads.

The female partner in a quarreling couple mentions Elise’s reflection spot to Silver, who’s still mystified by families living normal lives in this vibrant time. An old lady seems to think the Egg Gunners have come to take people’s jobs, and Silver crosses the mirror gate.

Basically Rouge’s version with object layout differences, like the inclusion of vines to swing from and logs to thrust back and forth on with psychokinesis.

Similar, only Silver finds enjoyment in the lush biome and denies that he talks to himself immediately after he talks to himself. The stage also takes place in the late evening, once more coinciding with P-06.

Even when left alone, Blaze only thinks about Silver, with nothing new being added onto her.

Like Silver’s introduction, she becomes enraged at the internalized words of her royal family, as well as the hefty standards placed on her and the destructive potential of her pyrokinesis. This, in a way, ports over her characterization from what I’ve seen and understood of Sonic Rush. All the while, it takes place at late sunset like it does in P-06.

Very short and very similar to Tails’s, although I will say it’s not nearly as pointless.

While at the same time of day as P-06, the layout and length match the original as Tails’s amigo stage is now Dusty Desert.

Although Silver repeats his line from Sonic’s introduction on the same rooftop at night, it’s at the time of Elise’s first capture instead of during the bombing run. When Amy mistakes him for Sonic, she cranks her cute and passive level up to seven hundred, further reversing her character development.

Silver appears at a different time and place from Sonic’s intro, as well as saying a separate line. He’s frustrated after having lost his target thanks to Amy, but the two make up and break the ice. Amy’s stuck between the rock of her crush on Sonic and the hard place of his neglect, but she’s nonetheless enthusiastic about helping Silver find him.

Silver learns that Sonic’s in the desert, but he’s not allowed access without ridding the badniks from the gate to Castle Town.

Amy encourages Silver to ask around for Sonic’s whereabouts. The same result occurs, albeit rewritten.

The goal is simply to clear out the waves of robots at the front of the forest.

Renamed from “Protect the Gate to the Castle Town”. Other than his new spin dash being utilized, only the dialogue has been changed.

They sort of try making Silver come off as doubtful and absent-minded, but again, he only proves to be flat-out annoying.

There’s some irony when Amy tells Silver he’s been spending too much time in the post-apocalypse (she doesn’t know he literally has.) He also admits that it wasn’t his choice to switch his persona between an awkward nerd and a brave warrior when needed.

Amy pounds her hammer in the most sluggish way possible while Silver struggles to knock billiard balls into their holes for an hour.

Not much dialogue, although Silver does comment on the concentration needed for the billiard puzzle, and it’s a strong advantage that you don’t have to complete it yourself this time.

Silver’s first confrontation with Sonic is repeated, although Amy is wandering away from the site of the battle mere moments before it begins.

A new scene of Silver and Amy near the Tornado’s crash site, as Sonic’s footprints are identified before the point where they end. Amy’s also far more glum over losing his trail.

N/A

From a rooftop back in Castle Town, Silver locates Sonic and Elise, and his first confrontation with Sonic is repeated with the previous edits retained.

The Elise kidnapping and Amy rescue scene is repeated verbatim minus the start, as Sonic has already been pummeled. When Amy’s angered to know Silver’s been hunting Sonic this whole time, Silver is adamant that Sonic’s the Iblis Trigger because creepy monochrome Shadow with slit pupils and no mouth told him that. Amy says she’d choose Sonic over the rest of the world, and honestly, this makes it a blessing to have her be his love interest in the rewrite.

The Elise kidnapping and Amy rescue scene is repeated verbatim minus Sonic’s exchange with Amy at the end.

Blaze rejoins Silver by the water in New City. When he poses the question of whether it’s right to kill someone to save the future, Blaze shames him for being naïve and demands that they do it anyway—again, because they put their trust in the last figure they should ever put their trust in.

Instead of raising this question, Silver’s a smartypants who knows when he and Blaze might have been duped. She gets rid of her royal facade in his presence, then levels with him while figuring this is a chance worth taking. It ends with a friendly laugh because that’s a moment characters share.

Having hypothesized that finding Eggman will lead them to Sonic, Silver buys the shock bracelet from the network shop and performs a psycho shock on the switches in front of the cavern to White Acropolis.

He instead picks up the trail that Eggman, who’d just kidnapped Elise, left behind. The young boy in flannel at the cavern points out its destination, Blaze lets Silver do his thing with the switches, and the kid realizes he probably shouldn’t be skipping classes.

Basically Sonic and Shadow’s versions combined, only with Blaze rushing downhill on foot and Silver taking point from halfway in to the end.

Okay, in all fairness, not much other than the dialogue has been changed.

They arrive too late and get hit with an earthquake because they’re incompetent.

They prepare to continue inside, but they’re stopped in the courtyard for being rude and not introducing themselves.

Nothing too special but nothing too horrible. It’s much longer than Sonic’s version, though.

Blaze asks which weak spot they should start with, and Silver’s answer is yes. In fact, it really doesn’t matter, as Eggman slips and confirms one such weak spot himself.

Presumably, the blue Chaos Emerald Silver finds was dropped by the machine.

Silver’s drawn to the Emerald like a cat to a laser pointer, and the machine is confirmed to have dropped it. Meanwhile, Amy turns off her cloaking device behind their backs and prepares to enter, as this was Sonic’s last known location.

Yes, it is jarring that the scene cuts to Amy already inside the base, even more so when she explains it aloud to herself. She tries to sneak away until Elise swings the door to her cell open, then gets led out of the base by the hand when the alarms go off.

Amy narrowly misses being spotted, then gets smacked in the face by Elise’s door.

After Amy’s face gets infected with cartoon pixie dust, she makes friends with Elise and most certainly wouldn’t clobber her for fawning after Sonic.

Amy amazes herself rescuing a monarch but cuts herself off to keep it looking like a heroic escapade. She reminisces about how she first met Sonic, only for her mood to be spoiled when Elise asks if he feels the same way.

N/A

Badniks arrive to greet them upon their entry to Castle Town, turning Amy into royal security for a few minutes.

The player learns the hard way why they rarely get to control Amy.

Renamed from “Defeat the Pursuers and Escort Elise!” After the fight, Elise departs from Amy, as the underwater lab system stretches all across the kingdom (hence how Amy knows to give Tails the slip).

At New Soleanna Castle, Elise is cornered and recaptured by Eggman to prove that royal security has no right to exist.

Elise is stopped by Eggman in the lab system’s tunnels, seeing as he’s occupied them and stolen the duke’s research notes.

Silver and Blaze find and meet with Mephiles in New City. Silver asks him for more info on who exactly Sonic is and what exactly he did in the future. Mephiles tells him to stop asking so many questions, so at this point, it’s entirely their fault for buying into his grift.

Silver and Blaze have lost the trail as neither Sonic or Elise were present in White Acropolis. Mephiles gives them the pointer to Eggman’s train, but when Silver asks if Elise intended to release Iblis, Mephiles tells him involuntary manslaughter still counts as manslaughter. At this point, Silver’s already starting to have doubts because anyone of average intelligence would.

Silver hears about the guards’ patrol routes outside the station, then buys the Heart of Wind from the network shop for use in the next town mission.

Silver receives the same information—if indeed in a shadier manner—and joins Blaze back at the station an hour later.

As one of the shortest town missions, it entails dodging guards without peripheral vision and swerving around rows of Jeffrey Dahmer’s blue barrels.

Renamed from “Get into the Station!” This time, it’s a touch slower and a touch more tense; Blaze tells Silver to pass the mirror gate without her after being spotted at the last second, hence her absence in the next stage.

Very few complaints, especially regarding the length, other than Silver still being devoted to Mephiles’s assignment.

Silver’s self-hatred is reignited when he finds himself snapping at factory equipment.

The Elise recapture and Shadow vs. Silver scene is repeated verbatim.

The Elise recapture and Shadow vs. Silver scene is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained; however, Sonic pulling Elise from the train car is still cut out.

The glorious high kick and subsequent time travel scene is repeated verbatim.

The glorious high kick and subsequent time travel scene is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained because you know damn well it had to be.

The Solaris Project incident scene before Aquatic Base is repeated verbatim.

The Solaris Project incident scene before Aquatic Base is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained.

Mostly boils down to Shadow’s layout combined with parts of Sonic’s.

As the antithesis of Shadow’s layout, only Iblis spawn are available until the end.

Silver tries to hold back Iblis, but the duke insists on sealing his flames inside Elise using a Chaos Emerald. And dying in a tremendously awkward way.

The Iblis trapping and return home scene with Shadow and Silver is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained.

The return home scene outside Old Soleanna Castle is repeated… well, with one minor addition, that is Silver leaving his Emerald behind for Elise. You can assume he saw it in her possession when he witnessed her rescue and kidnapping during the festival, but he wouldn’t need to leave it for her given a later oddity, and this can’t logically explain why she confuses Sonic for him in Sonic’s introduction—she’s unconscious when Silver leaves it for her, and again, he doesn’t alter history by leaving it for her until way later in the timeline.

Blaze longs for her home in the Sol Dimension before a frantic Silver runs over. He deduces that Mephiles must’ve baited them into killing Elise and releasing Iblis, Blaze informs him on the princess’s latest capture, and he figures out Eggman’s plot on the spot.

Like Shadow in front of Rouge, Silver reappears in Blaze’s presence, telling her Sonic isn’t the Iblis Trigger when nothing he’s seen proves that. An offscreen crowd has formed in response to Elise’s capture, and Silver figures Eggman’s plan was to release Iblis from inside of her.

N/A

Silver’s instructed to complete three of his own trials in order to proceed.

His trials are his consequences for putting Elise’s life in danger.

A timed combat mission with the goal of releasing Blaze from her cage.

Other than dialogue, not much has changed.

The questions include: “future”, “inferno”, and “ruined city” with the answers of “mission” and “escape”; “Flames of Disaster”, “seal”, and “ten years ago” with the answers of “Princess Elise” and “Blaze”; and “blue hedgehog” with the answers of “hatred” and “teamwork”.

The questions include: “Sonic” with the answers of “enemy” and “friend”; “Thou must decide for thyself the sender of true suffering: the release of sensation or the denial of sensation” with the answers of “acceptance” and “repression”; and “future”, “inferno”, and “city” with the answers of “martyr” and “survivor”. The last question defines Silver’s path from here while the second-to-last one foreshadows a major twist in the last story, as well as the new arcs for Silver, Blaze, and Elise revolving around emotional repression.

Silver’s challenged to eliminate Eggman’s units without any improvised weapons.

The same applies, notably that he’s acquiring what he needs the most: courage.

Sonic’s same skyward route to Kingdom Valley by the way of a bald eagle.

Again, the same applies, although Silver does instruct Blaze to meet him at the end of the valley so she doesn’t just appear there.

The Silver’s surprise rescue scene before Kingdom Valley is repeated verbatim.

The Silver’s surprise rescue scene before Kingdom Valley is repeated verbatim with the previous edits retained.

The Egg Carrier crash and Chaos Control scenes are repeated verbatim, which creates two problems: we still never see what causes the crash, and Silver now owns the duke’s Chaos Emerald without an explanation.

The Egg Carrier pre-crash cockpit scene follows with the previous edits retained.

Silver and Blaze appear in the same clearing from the cutscene before Sonic and Shadow’s Flame Core. Silver figures he now has the means to seal Iblis, although he plans on using his two Emeralds when it’s been confirmed that only one is needed.

The Sonic and Silver Chaos Control scene follows with the previous edits retained. By the end, each hedgehog has one Emerald, as Silver never let go of his blue Emerald.

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In the same desolate clearing before the next stage, Silver doesn’t pretend to know for sure that he can seal Iblis this way, but at this point, he has no desire to alter history.

The one oddity of note is the enormous ball of rock at the end, which is referred to as the power of Iblis because “power” is an easy word to use. Because nothing really happens once it’s broken, it never has much of a point.

While Silver describes the ball as Iblis’s “cradle”, it’s implied to be his egg or chrysalis, hence why he’s released in a far deadlier third phase after Silver cracks it open. Also, up until that point, only Iblis offspring appear.

Silver challenges Iblis to a final skirmish.

Silver announces his plan to trap Iblis inside of himself, which Blaze is too appalled to allow. Silver tells her he’s willing to try anything to bring the beautiful present back, but she refuses, instead giving herself as a vessel because she already has a… well… blaze inside of her. Silver takes on Iblis while Blaze absorbs him with their one Emerald. Oh, and there’s a Little Shop of Horrors nod in the scene description.

While it’s never really explained, Silver’s rejected as a vessel for Iblis, but Blaze is sure she’ll be accepted because of the flames inside of her. She tells Silver to perform Chaos Control to seal them in another dimension (while, yes, they have two Emeralds to use for this, there was never an indicator that two Emeralds can switch its users between dimensions.) Silver refuses, but she fades away from their world regardless, and he’s left mourning as the sun shines upon the land for the first time in centuries.

Instead, Blaze feels herself being dragged out of Silver’s world and into her own. Even as a panicking and heartbroken Silver demands that she hand him the Emerald, she figures it’s time to go home and fades away so the sun can shine again.

Mephiles ominously looks upon his Chaos Emerald and laughs, presumably after his confrontation with Shadow.

This scene is entirely absent in the rewrite.

On their peaceful walk through the forest, Sonic and Elise are paralyzed by the flash from Mephiles’s Emerald. He takes the chance to impale Sonic through the back with a laser beam, although he isn’t even earning a bronze medal in a sinister laugh contest with Black Doom. In response, Elise belts out a classic Darth Vader “NOOOOOOOOO!!!”, and Mephiles makes damn sure the audience knows Iblis is let out and open to recombine into Solaris as a result.

Elise is enjoying the day after the fireworks show. She’s pleasantly surprised to see Sonic with Amy—he’s still skeptical about whether it’ll work out, though—yet concerned about Iblis remaining inside of her. The use of the Emerald never factors in, as Mephiles simply kills off Sonic with the intention of doing the same to Elise. The twist? She refuses to grieve over Sonic, thus throwing Mephiles for a loop, but not because this keeps Iblis in. It’s actually what brings him out. After reciting an extended version of the ancient quote from Silver’s second trial, which actually warns against repressing one’s emotions, Mephiles rejoins with Iblis without the Chaos Emeralds, as letting him out is the only requirement. Solaris reforms and plunges the kingdom into chaos with an extended version of its “what was must always be” proverb.

Mephiles summons and absorbs the Chaos Emeralds from the ruins Team Dark fought him in because there are officially no rules.

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Using the Emeralds, the rest of which I’m sure he summoned from afar, Mephiles joins with Iblis, and Solaris overtakes the kingdom.

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Everyone, including Eggman but not Blaze, finds Sonic deceased in Elise’s arms. Eggman deduces that Solaris is cross-dimensional and therefore must be stopped in the past, present, and future; meanwhile, Elise can sense that Sonic isn’t fully dead, so please, someone quote Miracle Max from The Princess Bride.

Elise’s tears full-gush not just over Sonic, but over all the grief and trauma her father forced her to hide. More than anyone, Tails is shameful for blowing Sonic off, but Eggman arrives to reassure the group. It’s understood that Solaris is inhaling physical matter from every timeline to craft a rigid world that can’t be tampered with, as well as that Sonic could be revived with all seven Emeralds. After an enormous issue’s solved with the mention that they’ll need multiple Emeralds in order to time-travel and collect the rest, they each credit Sonic with something he’s done for them and start setting roles for one another.

The order of sections is as follows: Tails in Crisis City, Omega in Flame Core, Knuckles in Tropical Jungle, Silver in Dusty Desert, Amy in White Acropolis, Rouge in Wave Ocean, and Shadow in Kingdom Valley. The only way the first two could possibly make sense is that they’re forced to start in Silver’s future and switch to the present once they have the first two Emeralds, although this is never made clear. Also, there’s never a reason given as to who serves in which section.

The order of sections is as follows: Tails in Dusty Desert, Amy in White Acropolis, Knuckles in Tropical Jungle, Shadow in Kingdom Valley, Rouge in Wave Ocean, Omega in Flame Core, and Silver in Crisis City. Not only are they ordered by their connection to Sonic, but they’re each linked to their respective sections as they begin: the desert ruins require someone light on their feet; Amy has a cloaking device to avoid detection by the searchlights; Knuckles has been familiar with jungles since his birth; Kingdom Valley’s abuzz with spiritual energy, which Shadow can naturally bend; the mountainous shoreline has been left too feeble for anyone who can’t glide gracefully to cross; only the most durable survivalist can endure an active volcanic field during such an incident; and Silver knows his city like the palm of his hand. Surprise surprise, however—Blaze saves Silver from an Eye of Solaris, and Rouge rewards Shadow with their first kiss after he frees her from the same fate.

Ah, a scene so notorious, it’s given people Stockholm Syndrome, so now, they’ve decided they like it. While it doesn’t seem necessary, Elise kisses Sonic square on the mouth in what I can only guess was meant as a reverse-gender Sleeping Beauty. I mean, if the zoolover aspect no longer creeps anyone out, you could just tally all the other problems with it—why it needs to happen other than her connection to him, how sappy and uninteresting said connection is, and the most rightfully clichéd of them all, what Amy thinks of all this.

Very similar minus that one detail. I’m serious, other than Blaze’s inclusion, only the dialogue saw a smattering of changes here and there.

Split up into two phases with their own separate music tracks, much like Perfect Chaos in Sonic Adventure. To a certain extent, I appreciate that Jason Griffith isn’t a screaming maniac when playing Super Sonic like he is in Sonic X and Smash Bros. Brawl. Also, as a weird little aside, Solaris is described as a “super-dimensional” being when “multidimensional” seems proper.

While there’s technically only one fight, the same transitions between phases are intact, as are the associated songs. Other than the boss’s “core”—a term as overused and meaningless as “power”—being identified by Omega as a compressed red giant, another touch that was simply reworded from the original is each of the three super hedgehogs representing a period in time they’re rescuing from Solaris: Sonic only worries about the present, Shadow’s left behind the past, and Silver’s already saved the future.

We’re given a surprisingly surreal sequence where Sonic and Elise witness Solaris in its purest state, which resembles a white dwarf, and the two proceed to let it engulf them. Elise recalls her father promising her seven-year-old self that, with the “Flames of Hope” (please, just say Solaris), they’ll get to see her mother again. The catch? While extinguishing the flame will rectify all recent casualties, it’ll make it so she never met Sonic. Personally, I say blow the damn thing out, but when she breaks down at the thought of it—hell, she actually considers letting the world burn just to be with him—Sonic tells her to “just smile”, which is always a healthy thing to encourage. At last, she blows the flame out, and this entire game is scrubbed from the timeline.

Other than a kiss from Amy to Super Sonic that will surely divide as many people as Elise’s kiss—although I desperately hope for their sake that it doesn’t—the duke tells young Elise that, without the flames, the past and any recollection of it would fade away. So, older Elise, now surrounded by the only people she’s connected with since her childhood, is terrified of leaving them behind. Sonic, though, tells her if she needs to cry, she knows it couldn’t hurt. Not only does this make it so the same thing doesn’t have to be taught in Episode Storybook—yes, Secret Rings basically had to contradict the “don’t cry” lesson from ’06 because they knew how ridiculous it was—but everyone patiently stands by and lets her tears flow because I definitely hadn’t watched the Mr. Rogers movie with Tom Hanks before writing it.

A scene that, without the context of the shit-fest before it, is nothing short of beautiful. Sonic rushes to Castle Town in time for the festival, Elise notices the presence of someone or something in the wind—subconsciously, even if she doesn’t know who—and Sonic gazes up at the moon, eager for his next adventure.

Really the only thing to tweak ever so slightly was the dialogue. Also, I’m keeping Elise’s theme “My Destiny” as the ending theme, as it can be heard from from both Amy and Elise’s perspectives while capturing the breathtaking vocal talent of Donna Del Lory. Christ, just for killing her career, I think I might hate his game even more now…