Sonic Mania Plus’s Encore Mode is hard. Dr. Eggman wasn’t fooling around this time.

Sonic Mania Plus is a very well made game, with plenty of features to satiate anyone who played the first release of Sonic Mania last year.

However, reader be warned: Encore Mode is basically the Dark Souls of Sonic games. With new enemy placement and slightly altered boss battles, this mode joins my list of “oh my God I beat it and it was relatively fun but NEVER AGAIN” games.

Sure, the original Sonic Mania was no walk in the park, but the touted balanced boss battles weren’t enough to make up for the added levels, boss battle, and altered level designs.

I know what you’re thinking, but I’m no Sonic 2D platforming newbie. I grew up on Sonic Advance 2 for the GBA, of which Mania Plus remotely reminds me of.

No, it’s the extreme ruthlessness in the new Encore Mode that seems unique to any of my Sonic playthrough experiences.

Much like Sonic Advance 2 and other titles before/after it, Encore Mode allows you to play as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles (but no Amy, which was a big oversight in this re-release). Instead, we’re re-introduced to two obscure characters from Sonic canon: Mighty the Armadillo, and Ray the Flying Squirrel, both from the 1993 arcade game SegaSonic the Hedgehog.

Starting off with Ray: the character plays a lot like the cape power up in Super Mario World. It can come in handy to glide in place while waiting out a grounded AEO attack, but other than that, Tails will always remain the original and OP flying Sonic character. Perhaps speedrunners will find his blindingly fast gliding mechanic more handy than casual players.

On the other hand, Mighty may seem like a bit of a dud when you first play as him, but looks come to be deceiving when it comes to this red haired armadillo. Much like real-life armadillos, he has a hard outer shell that makes him nearly impenetrable from projectiles, spikes, and other types of attacks while in his jump-spin animation. He also has a ground pound attack, which feels powerful and satisfying to land on enemies and spikes alike with.

I found that during some of the later re-tooled bosses in Encore Mode, Mighty was a necessity. There were some fights where I couldn’t seem to figure out a way to damage the boss without taking damage myself. However, whatever counterattack or trade I had with the bosses was often nullified by Mighty’s hard outer shell.

The thing is, it would be a piece of cake if Encore Mode simply let you choose which character you wanted to start off with, much like the regular Mania Mode does. On top of that, Sega changed up the game this time by axing extra lives. Instead, you have to collect each 5 characters as your “lives,” which somehow translates to checkpoints no longer working.

That’s right. Checkpoints no longer act as checkpoints, only pretty spinny machines for you to feel sad at. That means that you cannot die in a boss battle at all. Once all of your characters die (which can happen very quickly in a scramble and a panic), you’re back to Act 1 of that Zone.

It’s sometimes nice to be able to stay in the action as opposed to having to go back to a checkpoint, but it somehow gets worse.

In any Sonic 2D game, it’s typically an endless loop of death sentences to get stuck as the flightless Sonic. With Sonic Mania Plus, the character that you die last as is the one you’ll restart the level as. I was stuck as Sonic for longer than I’d like to admit, and it came to the point where I would purposefully avoid getting extra lives if he was one of the few remaining character options.

Getting the “extra lives” for other characters is inconsistent, mainly from the fact that you’re too busy trying to survive to even look for extras, which are often tucked away in godforsaken corners covered with enemies.

The only saving grace is something that, upon first playthrough, you might happen to trip over. The aforementioned useless checkpoints have a great feature in Encore Mode: magic sparkles.

Seemingly at random, a ring of light will hover, briefly, atop a recently activated checkpoint if touched while having 50 or more rings. Touching the pretty, pretty lights is something of a godsend, as you’ll be tossed into a pinball mini-game in which it’s fairly easy and consistent to get extra lives in.

Sonic Mania Plus tries hard to challenge seasoned Sonic and 2D gamers, at which it succeeds. At that, I found it particularly disheartening to fall into a death loop in the Zone two after Green Hill Zone. The *shudders* auto scrolling boss in Act 1 of the Studiopolis Zone is ruthless and unrelenting.

Past how difficult this game is, I couldn’t help but fall in love with the retro sounds and visuals. The music, whether remixed or original, was a lot of fun to run around at the speed of sound to. The optional CR-TV filters made me feel like I was back in the 90’s, playing around on a Sega Genesis in a dusty attic.

The character designs represent a lost art of 2D sprite animation. Between cutesy yawning idle animations and breathtaking action sprites that break the 2D spectrum, Sonic and co. have never looked as interesting and yet altogether classic.

The packaging for the physical release of Sonic Mania was well worth the wait. The reversible Sega Genesis cover is adorable. The 32-page art book is teensy and fun, and is bound to make a great addition to any Sonic fan’s collection. I played the Switch version, meaning that the shiny gold cardboard packaging accommodated for the smaller Switch game case with added padding packaging to keep everything in place.

The added 4-player multiplayer in Competition Mode is viable and fun. Playing through this mode felt like a track and field race, and involved a surprising amount of strategy to win. Different paths that you may have never thought of before suddenly become more important as you consider the quickest way to reach the end goal.

Sonic Mania Plus offers what some might consider a fun challenge for those that loved 2017’s digital release. The upgrade for any Sonic Mania owner looking to get the Plus features costs a measly $5, making it a no-brainer for anyone that has the original digital copy.

Listen, I get it. Y’all want harder and prettier 2D sprite platformers. The Sonic series has had its bumps in the road as of late, making the Plus additions feel worth the journey. From here on out though, I’m going to leave the 2D Dark Souls-like games out of my life, thank-you-very-much.

Grade: A-