Sonic Origins Plus Reviews
Longtime Sonic fans should scoop up the physical edition of Sonic Origins Plus if they missed out last year, but the new content may not be worth a paid upgrade for existing owners.
Sonic Origins Plus, as a basic package, looks even more complete than last year, and a beautiful physical version is also released.
Review in Greek | Read full review
The inclusion of Amy Rose in Sonic Origins Plus is most welcome, but everything else in this DLC is roughshod. The poor port job of the Game Gear titles makes them borderline unplayable, and the package is a bit light when it comes to any other additions.
In keeping with tradition, Sonic Origins Plus is a bit of a mixed bag. The new playable characters, Game Gear games, and other content feel just barely worth the upgrade fee, but there's no escaping the sense that Sega could've done a lot more for this update and chose not to. While the overall package is a strong one, we'd give the new content of this expansion a very light recommendation as it does ultimately feel worth the price tag (for existing owners). But how much value this will hold to you depends heavily on how much nostalgia you have for the Game Gear and how badly you want to play as Amy in the classic games. Here's hoping that Sonic Superstars provides an old-school Sonic experience that feels less underwhelming.
If you hadn’t previously been enticed by the quartet of Genesis classics, you are unlikely to be swayed now. In a vacuum, this is fun and gratifying DLC for a certain breed of loyal hedgehog fan, whereas the remainder of consumers may be decidedly non-plussed.
Sonic and friends will always have a special place in our hearts for all those great memories, and that's probably why SEGA is sacrificing quality and using Sonic's name to generate money.
Review in Persian | Read full review
Sonic Origins Plus is an okay, but ultimately superfluous expansion to an already good collection. The addition of Amy is a net positive and a nice primer ahead of her playable appearance in the upcoming Sonic Superstars. Knuckles finally becoming playable in Sonic CD also feels like it fulfills an age-old promise, but in his case, it feels like too little too late. The Game Gear titles themselves are nice to see again, but many of them have little lingering novelty. Their shoddy sound emulation is also somewhat disappointing. If you don't own Sonic Origins, go with the Plus version. But if you do, this will really only appeal to the most diehard of Sonic fans.
Sonic Origins Plus really fills out and completes this package, adding much more variety to the catalogue and giving you some clever, different ways to play titles you already know and love. Most of the titles haven’t aged that well with brutal difficulty, hit and miss control inputs and some lag. To be honest, they probably also look, feel and play better on handheld with the majority of the screen taken up by borders, but there’s some real gems in here Sonic Collectors shouldn’t be without.
Such is the wrinkle here. My final score applies to the expansion in particular. Taken as a complete product, my previous review (right here) is a more accurate assessment. But man oh man, that expansion. If you’ve already got the base game, I can’t imagine you’ll get much out of Origins Plus. If you grew up playing the Game Gear, great news! These are twelve colorful trips down memory lane. Otherwise, I don’t recommend it. Turns out Sega’s first portable gaming experiment aged rather poorly. Sonic Origins is a fun and accessible way to play Sonic’s greatest hits. But Origins Plus spends too much time on bland, awful games.
I might not be much of a Sonic fan, but I know that if Square Enix had done the equivalent of this to that Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection, I would have blown my top. I did give the lazy effort to bring the mobile ports of Dragon Quest 1 – 3 to Switch a piece of my mind, and I don’t see that SEGA’s done any better with the Game Gear games here. The good news is that if you’ve already got Sonic Origins, then you’ve got all the bits of Sonic Origins Plus worth playing.
Seeing other aspects fall short of even the versions available via Sega Ages just really disappoint me, and while I don’t think a kid jumping into the Sonic series for the first time via this set will come away disliking any of the games, I do feel that compared to the Mega Collection I grew up with, the spit and polish to make this feel like the ultimate museum for a celebrated franchise is just not here.
Even with my complaints, there’s no denying that what is present in Sonic Origins Plus is nonetheless worth the time of fans. These four Genesis platformers remain some of the best in the genre after all this time and have never looked better. The various extras in the museum are engrossing and the additions and tweaks that the Plus DLC provide only make the compilation better. Thus, I give Sonic Origins Plus a nod of recommendation, even as I find my teeth grinding as I think of all the wasted opportunity here. Oh, and expect to still download the Plus DLC even if you buy the cartridge version! Yet another oddity among many in this compilation.
Sonic Origins is still a good collection of SEGA hedgehog games. You can now pretend Plus doesn't exist, or buy everything together.
Review in Italian | Read full review
This release is a slap in the face to Sonic enthusiasts, game collectors in general and those concerned with video game preservation, and I sincerely hope that Sega — and the gaming community — learns from this.
Sonic Origins Plus is an even more definitive version of all those classic games that defined Sega's mascot as we know it today. Now with 16 games from the old Game Gear to his credit and that will surely make us remember old times. Let's not forget that it also includes the DLC packs that were released separately with the base game last year, plus the ability to play Amy Rose in all installments and Knuckles the Echidna on Sonic CD. A juicy treat for every fan only darkened by the absence of the original songs from some phases of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, a real shame to lose songs like the one from Ice Cap Zone, possibly one of the best of that installment.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The definitive way to play these classic games, but only because the other options have now been delisted.