I recently played The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, and overall, it was a unique and interesting experience, but with a few notable frustrations. The game took me about 2.5 hours to complete, which isn’t too long, but honestly, it felt much longer due to the slow pacing and repetitive mini-games.
The story itself is quite engaging at the beginning. You’re on a train with Sonic’s friends, playing a murder mystery game, only to discover that Sonic has been “murdered.” It’s up to you to gather clues, interview the characters, and figure out who did it. The mystery is intriguing, and I enjoyed piecing everything together. However, my initial excitement faded as the game progressed.
One of the biggest issues for me was the mini-game where you have to collect rings. It’s fun the first couple of times—Sonic runs, and you collect a set number of rings to move on. But the game keeps bringing it back over and over, increasing the number of rings you need to collect each time. By the time I had to gather 60 rings multiple times, it just became tedious and felt like unnecessary padding. This repetitive mechanic interrupts the flow of the story and takes away from the fun of solving the mystery.
Another problem is the dialogue pacing. The characters talk so slowly, and you can’t skip through the conversations as quickly as I would have liked. It really drags the game down, making it feel like it’s taking forever to get through the dialogue. At one point, I thought to myself, "I could watch an entire episode of The Big Bang Theory while these characters are still talking!" It felt like the story wanted to be drawn out far longer than necessary, which can be frustrating when you're eager to move forward in the mystery.
The middle part of the game, when you’re stuck in a closet with Amy and have to find her hammer, was fun initially but was followed by yet another round of collecting rings. After that, you interrogate Knuckles, Espio, Vector, Blaze, and Rouge, and at this point, I found myself wondering if this game was just trying to drag things out for no reason. You keep getting hit with long conversations, slow pacing, and more ring-collecting.
Eventually, after talking to Shadow and Amy, you get to a room with a dart, and the story picks up a bit again. There’s a nice twist when you find out that Espio threw a dart at Sonic, causing him to pass out. This part was actually pretty interesting and made me curious to see how it would wrap up. However, just when I thought it was over, the game throws in a final boss fight where you have to collect even more rings. At that point, I felt like the developers were just stretching the game unnecessarily.
The final moments of the game reveal that Eggman was using the train for evil, which leads to a boss battle and a quick resolution to the mystery. In the end, the story wraps up nicely, but it takes way too long to get there. The pacing issues and repetitive gameplay really hold the game back.
I’m giving the game 4 stars because I did enjoy the story and the mystery elements, and the concept itself is fun. However, the slow pacing, excessive dialogue, and repetitive mini-games made parts of the experience frustrating. If you’re a hardcore Sonic fan or you enjoy mystery-solving games, it’s worth checking out. Just be prepared for some parts that feel dragged out and repetitive.