** Spoilers Ahead. As if you cared at this point... **
Just when I thought it was over, when I thought I was done, there was more. I knew it had to happen, as the Sonic mortality I had heard about hadn't occurred yet, and I knew from Sonic Adventures 1 and 2 that a "last story" was almost assured.
I started the Last Episode almost immediately on the heels of playing Silver's episode. Uggh. It's terrible. A la Sonic Adventure 2, we play as multiple characters. However, unlike Sonic Adventure 2, this last segment is awful and no fun to play. Mysterious eye-like orbs begin appearing in random spots, and you MUST avoid them: they draw you in and hand out one-hit kills to the character unfortunate enough to come into contact with them. Certain stones reverse the effects of the end of the world/universe, but the effects wear off very quickly. My first attempt, I blazed through three Game Overs and much patience.
Any other time, there'd be checkpoints between characters. After all, Last Episode has loading screens between each character's sections! Alas it does not, leading to a terrible situation. You, the player, are tasked with retrieving the seven Chaos Emeralds from various terrains from the game. Let's do the math here. Every time the player gets a Game Over, he or she restarts with 5 lives. There are 7 Chaos Emeralds, meaning 7 segments to gather them all. Given how the different characters play, and how the level design practically throws you into the grabby eyes, this equation equals 1 very frustrating end story.
Once that frustrating bit of game is over, there's even more cut scenes. Sonic is brought back to life, and the three hedgehogs go super. The final boss fight itself is kinda "eh." It's just flying around, trying to hit Solaris's weak spot. I didn't know what to do exactly, so I just spammed the attacks of whatever character I was playing. (You had to alternate so each character could gather more rings off-screen.) A few minutes of whaling away later, and it was done. Sonic and Elise blow out the flame in the past, and the game didn't happen.
If only that were true of real life.
