Hey Mike,
I read your news update on Sonic Adventure X Episode 1's new content and decided to give it a bash.
Here I am now to give you a short review of it :
In general, I found it to be a nice addition to the game that gave it a little bit of replayability. I enjoyed playing as Knuckles and the story and sequences you've put in were solid as well. Finding out how to unlock the various medals was perhaps my biggest motivation to play it all the way through the end and each one I got felt like a reward, regardless of whether I did something for it or not.
However now let's look at all the gripes I have with the "DLC", some subjective others not :
<em><ins>1. General Issues</ins></em>
- The story, to me at least, felt a bit rushed this time. This mainly becomes clear in the ending cutscene in which Knuckles talks with Clark as it seems like you tried to put in as many story elements as possible in as little bit of dialogue.
This may very well be just because you want to keep a focus on this "air of mysteriousness" you've currently got over the entire plot of this series you've got planned, with us not knowing the true intention of the main villain and a lot being unclear to the main protagonists but the only thing I can suggest if you wish to work on this is to, whenever you create dialogue, ask yourself the question : "Does this feel rushed in any way? Is it necesarry that I make this character mention this or talk about that?"
- After you find the key with Knuckles, we suddenly get thrown into a short cutscene where Warmachine has suddenly appeared out of the blue and is having a somewhat casual conversation with Knuckles without any transition.
My suggestion is to update the cutscene with a transition that shows us how Knuckles goes back to the door and how exactly he got interrupted by Warmachine calling him out in one way or the other after which the two introduce themselves to one another before Warmachine tells him what he came to do in the base they're both at.
- This next "complaint" may be just on my end but when I entered the "escape" scene right before the final cutscene, I let the timer run out on purpose to see what would happen. After the sound of an explosion accompanied the white screen that briefly showed up, it took a considerably amount of seconds before I was able to re-try. I don't know if this is done on purpose or if it's just lag on my end but if it's the former, you may look into reducing the "respawn time".
- Once you beat the Stark Machine, Warmachine will destroy it with a Proton Cannon Beam, but not only does the beam make no sound at all, it also is "broken up", making it look odd.
- You can literally get some medals by doing nothing (e.g. the one you get for seeing Warmachine destroy the door for the first time). While it's still nice to get them regardless, I think that for the next installment you should consider that a player should do something for every medal in order to earn it (therefore increasing the sense of accomplishment) instead of handing them some on a silver platter.
<em><ins>2. Treasure Hunter Issues</ins></em>
- Sometimes when Knuckles jumps on a platform, his sprite actually "sinks" into the platform causing the player to need to jump again in order to properly land on the platform again. This can easily be ignored in one way if you only jump from platform to platform but nevertheless it's a "beauty" issue in my eyes so it would be nice if you could fix this.
- Also sometimes when Knuckles lands on the smallest platforms available, no matter how good the jump is, he falls right through them even if he should have been able to land on it perfectly. This only happens with the smallest platforms to my knowledge.
<em><ins>3. Stark Machine Boss Battle</ins></em>
- In this part, it becomes really obvious how badly scaled the sprites are. Compared to Knuckles and the Stark Machine, Warmachine looks like an absolute giant. Once again this is a personal issue I got with the DLC but if you can re-scale the sprites so that all of them are equally big, that would be nice. If you can not or if it's too much to be asked, it's something you should consider for SAX Episode 3.
- You can pretty easily win the battle by running behind the Stark Machine as it will never do something like turn around or ue an attack that can hurt you while you're behind it's back. Therefore you may want to consider improving the "A.I." of the Stark Machine or if not possible, of any future bosses in future episodes. I am no expert at the matter but somehow letting an enemy detect the player's position and adjust it's attacks accordingly shouldn't be all that difficult I think.
- Minor gripe : once the Stark Machine flies up in the air, it will start shooting missiles that target the ceiling. However once they hit, boxes fall down while something like concrete pieces would have made more sense.
- The way to avoid the above attack completely is to stand under the SM until it gets shot down by Warmachine. However if you remain where you are while it falls, it will fall on you but cause no damage at all which isn't logical either.
- If you choose to go behind the SM to beat it down, you can accidentally transition to the next scene because the game recognizes you "flee" from the battle even if that wasn't the player's intention (because e.g. they want the medal gained for beating the boss). Adding a message that says "are you sure you want to flee?" with the options of "yes" and "no" could easily avoid any frustration caused by this.
All in all not a bad DLC at all with some minor "beauty issues". If I could suggest another medal to be added, it would be one that requires you to beat the boss without losing any health at all, making it much more difficult that it is now. It may be tough but certainly possible.
So if I would have to rate the entire game with the DLC included, I would give it a 4 out of 5 but since this review is about the DLC only, I'm going to give it a fair 3.5 out of 5 stars.