The first game we'll be looking at is called
"Spirits of Hell". All of these games, including the original creepypasta and the first game in this saga
(Nightmare Beggining), begin the same way. Sonic is taken over by Exetior which is a demon, made up of bad writing and inconsistent powers. After being taken over, it's up to our remaining cast of characters to do something about it.
(The image you get when you get the good ending, which we won't be looking much at. In this game you play as Tails, Knuckles and Eggman, and yes, all of these games have many MANY endings, I also have to say it this is good art compared to what we'll see later).
Now, the gimmick of this game is that you play as each character trying to either hide and/or run away from Exetior.
There are multiple routes and endings depending on what characters stay alive but is not as deep as it sounds.
So at first, each character has their own level where they run away from Exetior. After that, they all gather at the Hidden Palace, and that's where the game splits depending on who is alive and who is not.
(This is how most of the dialog is presented in the games, the people voicing the trio sound like the characters in the main games kinda)
As I said before, depending on what characters are alive is the level you will play next. And they are all horrible. We will only be focusing on the level you play if
only Tails is alive. But i'll leave you some screenshots of funny things on the other routes:
(Knuckles expressing mild dissapointment at Tails for 2fasting into spikes, from the Knuckles/Tails route)
(Spoiler alert, he gets found...)
(I think the most wtf thing about this image is how the ship has like this one tiny lone industrial fan for no reason)
THE PLOT is that Exetior is a demon that gets more powerful the more things he kills, they can't really hide because Exetior can apparently
"sense" them. The trio can't kill him but they can escape to a place outside of his influence which is what ends up happening in the good ending.
(It's easy to forget this is a Sonic ROMhack, huh?)
Since I wanted to focus on Tails, let's just get rid of Knuckles and Eggman.
This series LOVES to kill characters either offscreen or in "cutscenes". Unfortunately there are no funny Knuckles deaths other than fucking up a jump and landing on spikes.
("DONT YOU KNOW QUANTUM PHYSICS LITTLE CHILD STALKER?" -Said Urban Tails to Normal Tails)
THE EXPLANATION for why the writing is so bad can be seen in the images above. If I had to title this image, it would be
"Undertale and its consequences have been a disaster for Indie games". These games are not made by one person, these are made by multiple people and I'm guessing this came out during the high of Undertale and FNAF where every game breaks the 4th wall constantly, takes itself too seriously by trying to "connect" with the player and make it seem like it's just not a simple videogame, bonus points for bloating itself with
"lore" .
So now, there are multiple red-eyes Sonics, with multiple names
(i.e: You see Exetior and "Sark", talking to eachother on the above right image) and multiple timelines too. If a character dies, they become possesed in a way where they are still themselves but they serve the demons too. They even do that shit where characters can recall events from other playthroughs where they died. Whatever, let's just have our shitty final boss fight.
(GLORIOUS SPRITEWORK that would put Metal Slug to shame, no assets were edited by the way, 100% original for sure!)
Tails is told by his alternate timeline self that it doesn't matter if he dies, he should keep trying until he wins.
(Where have I heard this before I wonder...) and in this instance you fight Exetior, Sark, a horrible 2D sprite of a dog, Knuckles and Eggman. Despite being outnumbered it's a pretty easy boss fight.
By the way, unless all 3 characters survive, you won't get the good ending. Even if it appears like you survived, Exetior
literally kills everyone off-screen. All 3 of them dying is
the canon ending since, in the next game, they are already possesed.
I would still say, if this was someone's first attempt at ROM hacking, is not that bad. This doesn't seem to be the case though, even then, some joy was found at least for me.
