Real Talk:I HATE The Wisps

[Hakudamashi]

I've been tolerant about them for the longest while, but deep down, I never opened up to the thought of them and I wish they would go away.

I dun know if I've ever said this before, but one of the things that drew me to continue being a Sonic fan is because I find it's way of "difficulty" very interesting. Whenever Sonic does bother to add in multiple characters, the overall difficulty of the game was tied to which character you chose at the start, rather than selecting "easy/medium/hard", and the difficulty came not from changing the level itself, or the enemies, but from how well you could exploit a character's special ability to cheese the stage. That feeling I feel when one minute a stage seems impossible with one character *coughsoniccough*, but then becomes like no biggie with another cougheveryoneelsecough.
I always look forward to the next Sonic game with great anticipation, cause I realise Shadow, Rogue, The Chaotix, Silver or Omega have not been in neither a 2D platforming Sonic game, nor a 3D Sonic game with consistent levels(Sonic Heroes is probably the closest we'll ever get to that...). I always look forward to what Sonic Team would do with Rouge as another flying character, Shadow and his chaos powers, Silver and his psychic powers, Omega with his many much weapons, etc.

But then, the Wisps came, which seemingly have destroyed any possible hope of any of that ever happening...
Sonic now supports "Temporary Power Ups" which can just conveniently give Sonic any power he wants, and it's only temporary...
Wanted to fly whenever you wanted as Tails? Pfft, now Sonic has the Hover wisp so you can only fly when the game wants you to fly.
Wanted to climb and dig whenever and wherever your curiosity lead you as Knuckles? Pfft, now there's the spike and drill wisps that not only telegraph where your allowed to explore, but you can only explore for however long the power up lasts...
Wanted to see what you could get away with by teleporting all over the place with Shadow's chaos control? Hmph, I'm sure they'd make a teleportation wisp that will be situational to solve puzzles and shit...

And look at that, despite that ending from Sonic Colours, they have no problem bringing the wisps back whenever the f*ck they want to keep Sonic's friends obsolete...

[jkid101094]

Well most Sonic 'fans' do like to bitch about his friends. I blame them because SEGA hears their voices much louder than ours.

[Hakudamashi]

Well most Sonic 'fans' do like to bitch about his friends. I blame them because SEGA hears their voices much louder than ours.

The hell were they even bitching about?

[jkid101094]

The hell were they even bitching about?

They think that the only characters in Sonic should be Sonic, Tails and Eggman.

You see where that got us.

[Hakudamashi]

It made a Mario clone out of a franchise that was supposed to be the anti-Mario...

[Hakudamashi]

I hate the wisps not because they've replaced other characters (which I don't think is true)

Well someone's optimistic.

[Hakudamashi]

So, making a bunch of power ups takes less effort than making a Sonic that can fly?

Besides, they can barely make a good Sonic game with Sonic as the only playable character.

Sonic Generations?

And seriously, who are these people complaining about Sonic's friends? What is the basis of their argument, and why are their voices still this strong?

[Hakudamashi]

Yes? Ever notice how every 3D Sonic game that lets you play as multiple characters has been an absolute clusterfuck? Sonic Adventure 1&2, Sonic Heroes, and Sonic 06 were all unfocused messes that handled multiple characters poorly.

What? The problem with Sonic Adventure 1&1 and Sonic 06 were because of the multiple gameplay styles, everyone playing completely different from Sonic, not the characters themselves. And Sonic Heroes' problem was that it's slippery as f*ck, and your essentially forced to play the same game 4 times to get the true ending, noone had a problem with the chaacters themselves, heck, when people want to play Sonic Heroes, they're more likey to play as Team Rose than anyone else.
And what about the 2D games? Sonic 3? Sonic Rush? Rush Adventure? Advance 1-3?

Right now Sonic Team is having a hard time getting just Sonic's gameplay right which is why they've been experimenting with different gameplay styles(Sonic Unleashed to Sonic Lost World).

With Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations, I don't find this  valid excuse anymore, they clearly have even history and enough feedback to get which gameplay style works, now they're just dicking around with a popular IP to see what they can get away with.

Most of Sonic's friends are unnecessary.

An opinion I disagree with completely

Shadow and Rouge are clones of Sonic and Knuckles respectively,

Because everyone knows Sonic can teleport and control time and space willy nilly, and Knuckles uses bombs and kicks...

and Silver and Omega's abilities don't work well in a series that should be all about fast-paced platforming.

Ofc, I can't possibly think of any use for psychic powers and a robot with eggman crafted gadgets in a platformer about getting to the goal as quickly as you can =/

Shadow is some sort of "ultimate life form" and Rouge works for the military?

Because a story of a short chilli dog eating  talking blue hedgehog which can apparently break the sound barrier battling an egg-shaped moustached man with a doctorate who creats a robot army powered by woodland critters is totally not allowed to have stupid backstories...

[Hakudamashi]

To be fair in Sonic Adventure 1 Tails and Knuckles played very similarly to Sonic but with their respective unique abilities. The only problem was that they didn't accommodate the full stages for them so they got butchered versions of them that weren't fun.

Which is a level design problem, not a character problem

The problem with the Unleashed-style gameplay is that there's nothing new that they can do with it. Even by the time Generations came along people were getting tired of boosting in a straight line.

That's a people problem that every franchise runs into, not a character problem.

Gee, a platformer where you can teleport anywhere you want and control time and space sounds great and not at all a huge mess. And bombs and kicks are just other forms of attacks so they wouldn't change anything.

Why does it have to be a huge mess? Could tie Shdow's powers to your "ring energy". You can use the teleport to skip platforming and bottomless pits, and you can slow down time to better position your jumps, or for the overly cautious who want an easy time on their playtrhough of a stage?
And bombs can easily just make Rouge a Tails than can attack below her while flying, that's different enough for me.

How do telekinetic powers help you get to the goal faster? And by 'Eggman-crafted gadgets', do you mean guns and the ability to hover? Cause that's all Omega is able to do. Also both characters move slow as shit and that kinda gets in the way of getting to the goal as quickly as possible if you ask me.

Off the top of my head, I can think of Silver collecting a piece of badnik debris that circles around him after everyone he destroys, after which the debris can do 2 things, either shield him from attacks and hazards( I dunno if I would treat it as a regular shield where all the debris disappear after one touch, or have them disappear piece by piece for multiple hits), and Silver gets a higher and floatier jump for each debris he collects like the Asteroid Wisp in Sonic Lost World.
As for Omega, d00d, he's a robot built by Eggman, if they need no reason to bring the Wisps on the Lost Hex, then they can do whatever the f*ck they want with Omega, give him a rocket on his back to he can propel straight up like the rocket Wisp or something...

Both move slow as shit? Clearly you've played neither Sonic Rivals nor Sonic Heroes, they were only slow in Sonic 06, but face it, EVERYONE was slow in Sonic 06.

Notice how what you described sounds silly and light-hearted while Shadow and Rouge's backstories are dark and serious (and not in a good way).

I dunno how Rouge just being with the government is automatically dark and serious, many cartoons would like to disagree.
As for Shadow, his own game aside, I can think of a bunch of ways how "and edgier version of the protagonist" can fit in a silly setting without being dark nor serious.

[SupaSpeedySonic]

WISP = GAYNESS

[Hakudamashi]

[BoomBeep]

*sits down with popcorn*

...Okay, no, but really XD

I didn't mind the Wisps personally. In Lost World, I thought it made a bit of sense because Sonic and Tails were on this other planet, so I figured that a few Wisps had migrated there or something.

As for characters, ehh, that really all comes down to a matter of opinion. I can't defend Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic Next Gen because I've never played them, but I really liked how the characters played in Sonic Adventure DX and Heroes; especially Heroes. Omega was a total beast and annihilating everything in my path was really satisfying. You could argue that Sonic games are supposed to be all about speed, but in my opinion (big emphasis on "my opinion", because that's all this is), it comes down to the characters. Getting too dizzy with Sonic's speed? Go play as Tails and do some platforming. Want to wreck everything in your path? Play as Knuckles and DOMINATE EVERYTHIIIING.

At the same time, I also don't mind Sonic games being just Sonic. Sure, I love to play as other characters (Sonic Boom eeee~), but I'm just fine playing as my favorite character throughout the entire game too. Heck, Unleashed, Colors, Generations, and Lost World are all games that I've beaten more than pretty much every other Sonic game. I think the direction they're taking Sonic in is just fine and I'll keep supporting SEGA no matter what they do.

...Unless they make me play the Classic games, because I suck at those.

[BoomBeep]

If Wisps are here to stay, they'd better just keep the good ones. So basically just Drill, Laser, Spikes, and Hover.

^ This.

Though I have hard time using Spikes properly for some reason. XD

And I want to keep Frenzy around just to hear Sonic's voice when he's all like "FRENZYYY".

[Hakudamashi]

If a platformer ever gives you the option to "skip platforming", something is really, really wrong.

Then you must have serious issues with Kirby, Peach and Megaman.

[BoomBeep]

Or, Shadow could get a free save from bottomless pits by using his Chaos Control while he's falling to teleport to the nearest platform. Or he could teleport to a higher platform that Sonic couldn't get to just jumping?

I dunno, just speculating.