#illfonic

It's no secret that the development of Rise of Lyric was kind of a mess. The first game released by Big Red Button, an American studio founded by ex-Naughty Dog devs, it went through a few iterations before Sega required it to be released on the Wii U as part of an exclusivity deal. This caused problems for the engine which was not designed for the less powerful hardware, and it shows in persistent performance problems. This combined with an infamously large post-release patch led to the game acquiring an odious reputation in general and particularly among 3D Sonic games, which already have a spotty track record.

Knowing all this, I actually had a good time with this game. It has its strengths and you don't have to dig too hard to find them. The textures may be low-res but it has strong art direction. The slower-paced gameplay with exploration, combat, and puzzle-platforming sections is something I prefer over the usual 3D Sonic style. It's a forgiving co-op adventure set in a sub-universe that I've quickly come to love (mostly thanks to the silly and easy-going TV show). In short, its poor reception is a bit overblown.

The Sonic Boom subseries launched with this game, a 3DS game, a toyline, and a TV show. Archie Comics ran a short spinoff set in this world and another 3DS game followed, as well as a throwaway Hardlight mobile runner game. So far, I think the show is the strongest work: it's a short-form comedy adventure episodic series with emphasis on the funny, and it consistently hits the mark as far as I've seen. (It also struck me as oddly similar to the Donkey Kong Country animated series with its tropical island setting, flamboyant and ineffective villain, and being a French coproduction.) The comic didn't quite nail the tone—aside from the issues written by the show’s writers—and was interrupted by financially-disastrous crossover event shenanigans, and as for this game, well I'll get to that.

Along with refreshing the setting, Sonic Boom reframes its main characters in ways that I appreciate: they work well as comedy characters, with redesigns that better get across their personalities. Sonic has blue arms as he should and a nifty scarf, Amy has a practical tunic and a personality beyond “loves Sonic”, Tails is given goggles and pouches, and Knuckles is now actually big and brawny. New to the main cast is Sticks, an oddball wild child-type character with a raspy voice. She has a great design and works well as an agent of chaos, although some of her "paranoid" humour falls flat for me.

Now that Boom has been cut off as a failed spinoff, Sticks is the biggest loss. She showed up in Runners and the Rio Olympics game and that's it. Also, she's barely in this game! Her role is simply as an NPC who sends you to find collectibles, and she has only a couple of voice lines. It's a real shame, and another symptom of the game's troubled development. As for the rest of the cast, Boom has a lot of fun new side characters, some of whom appear briefly in this, but RoL also includes Metal Sonic and Shadow, who are only in a couple of episodes of the show. Their roles in this game are pretty underwhelming, only showing up for boss fights and then getting forgotten about.

The main new face here is Lyric, a snake cyborg guy who has been imprisoned for a thousand years. The game starts with a few gags to make you think it's still a comedy but when this guy shows up they pretty much drop all that, and in tone the game becomes a pretty bland action story (although I did like the very brief time travel arc). Naturally he teams up with Eggman for a bit before they betray each other, and his army of very shiny robots forms the goon squad that you spend the whole game smashing to bits. The story seems to have been another casualty during development, with none of the show's writers involved and meddling by Sega combined with content cuts leading to a bland and rushed plot despite some clear ambitions.

The four playable characters can be swapped between at any time, as long as they're present in the story (the game frequently separates them into pairs). They largely play the same but also have unique abilities, and get tasked with specific segments tailored to their skills (often in 2D). For example, Knuckles can climb walls while Amy can swing and walk on balance beams. When given the choice I often favoured Amy for her mid-air triple-jump or Tails for his ranged combat utility. Another central mechanic is the Enerbeam, a laser grapple that can throw robots around or let you swing or ride rails. When playing in 2P co-op, one player uses the TV while the other has their own screen on the Gamepad, which I'm always a fan of. Up to four players can compete or collaborate in the specific multiplayer modes which seem kinda fun if you have willing participants.

The structure of the story mode has you returning to two hub zones between levels, where you can explore and do a scarce few NPC quests. The characters' slow movement speed works well for the levels but less so for these open zones. Here you can also spend scrap found in levels to rebuild landmarks, a nice but underused mechanic. In levels there's robot fights which feel a bit clumsy and there's sure a lot of them, and the occasional mediocre vehicle section. But this is a 3D Sonic game so there's also a lot of autorunning sections: the pace in these is so fast that you can barely react and the framerate absolutely tanks, but there's little penalty for mistakes and they're decent as flashy little setpieces with changing camera angles and such.

I have to talk about the collectibles and currencies in this game. There's scrap from beating robots and opening chests, which you use for buildings but also passive upgrades to your characters. Accumulating crowns unlocks new tiers of these upgrades. But there's also rings because this is a Sonic game. These act as a health system but you get tons of them so you rarely go beneath your cap. Why is there a cap? Well you only lose a few when you get hit. You can extend your cap by making progress in Shattered Crystal on 3DS and connecting your systems, which is very dumb and funny. But even at your cap you want to collect them because your cumulative total unlocks concept art and stuff. Also, doing sidequests unlocks selectable passive buffs which are mostly useless. The whole customisation and upgrading thing frankly needed some work, but it's a neat idea.