https://blacknerdproblems.com/sonny-legacy-collection-review/

I gave my eulogy to flash games years ago. In the ever-evolving landscape of shifting digital architecture, the flash format was quite literally made for a different era of internet. We saw countless games and animations lost to the digital ether, some only persevering through YouTube archives and the occasional port.

In fact, one of those games was so influential to middle school Mikkel that it got a direct shoutout in my eulogy: Sonny. Sonny is as archetypical to the role-playing game genre that you can get. You start off under vague circumstances (people are hunting you because you are a zombie) and thrust into a weirdly alluring post-apocalyptic world. Combat is driven through a series of background times and clicks on a radial dial. You defeat different waves of enemies across different worlds, unlocking different skills and items, and occasionally make a friend or bigger enemy along the way. The game was not particularly innovative, but it was a solid game that you could play for free on Armor Games and came with just enough narrative juice and replayability that it became one of the rare flash games to warrant a proper sequel that became the rarer flash game not to fade into obscurity. Sonny 2 was not functionally different from its predecessors. The biggest changes were updated graphics, a slightly more involved skill tree, and a plot with a little bit more direction. It was fun. I remember fondly.

So, of course, when they announced a Legacy Collection port that would bundle Sonny 1 and Sonny 2 completed by the original development, I couldn’t help but be excited. I found memories of the game, so the question is whether or not it lives up to the original, the memory, and modern gaming standards. I would say it definitely meets two of those benchmarks. Let’s discuss.

All Coming Back to Me

I am very happy to report that the Sonny Legacy Collection feels exactly like the game did back in the day. The familiar art style, the voice acting, and the linear but still enjoyable combat and RPG progression. All of the assets looked clean and everything felt the same. Which is good because a nontrivial amount of appeal for a legacy collection of this is keeping the nostalgia. It felt good looking at the stat screen and min-maxing like I did back in the day. Doing inventory management, grinding away at training fights to eek out one more level before taking on the boss. The original Sonny took about 3 hours to beat the main campaign and unlocking the bonus World 4 of challenging fights.

And then I started playing Sonny 2 and then the repetition sort of kicked in. After acquiring one of the incredible form skills, the fights quickly devolved to the same process of entering the heightened state and proceed to do a simple skill rotation which would eventually lower the life bars of any enemy to zero. Some fights would last seconds, some fights would go on for minutes. There was a handful of optimizations that could be done (timing stuns, stacking buffs and debuffs), but the formulaic approach outgrew its welcome. And I had played this before.

Yes, as a younger child, but the game hadn’t changed. And the collection reminded you that it didn’t change, referencing the old Armor Games forums for guides and having the same tutorial reminder to level up every single time because the expectation was not that you’d play the game in one setting, but that you’d play the game casually over weeks.

A Relic of Its Time

But that’s not how a lot of us consume games anymore. It’s certainly a healthier way to consume games, and I’m enjoying my time in the collection, but it’s very clearly a relic of its time. The controllers were not optimized for the Steam Deck, which is not a particular knock on anything. It played beautifully on the Steam Deck, but I just had to rely on the touch screen to simulate mouse clicks rather than the natural and somewhat expected navigation via joystick and buttons for every other RPG of this nature. And on my laptop, it loaded fast and was responsive. But ally NPC AI behaviors would always reset after battle. The constantly clicking through the same four tool tips every time you leveled up I mentioned to stop flashing before definitely grew old. This game was the pinnacle for flash games back in its heyday, but the pinnacle has dramatically shifted, and other indie RPGs offer more depth and gameplay mechanics. 

The lore and aesthetic of the game do manage to maintain a certain style nearly a decade and a half later though and the world, campy as it is, has a charm that makes it fun to stay in. The addition of in game achievements also felt like a nice bridge to modern gaming; however, that was the extent of the modernization. Nostalgia and pop ups can only carry a game so much.

I think the Armor Games devs deserve the support. I think the porting of old flash games to a platform like Steam is a great idea and the Armor Games library is deep and rich: Sonny franchise is a great example of a time when people made games with what they had and they were fun. But this collection is for the super sentimental, and that’s saying something from someone who is exceedingly sentimental. I enjoyed what I played. I’m going to keep enjoying it as I whittle through the remaining stages. And what I’m really hoping for is either a Sonny 3 or a proper reboot. One that takes the solid foundation of classes and skill trees and gives a little more meaning to the play loops. The core of the game is good, but good only gets you so far these days. Still, I’m glad I got to relive the excitement of middle school me for a few days.

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The post Point and Clicking Like It’s 2007/2008 – ‘Sonny Legacy Collection’ Review appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.