There are only a few things to talk about with the "Encore Pack" so I am just going to talk about each aspect. I feel that making a whole video about this makes no sense because of how busy I am with other videos I want to make and the fact that there really is not much to talk about. Keep in mind that this is very "first impressions-y" as the DLC just came out this morning and I only played for a couple hours at most (probably not even an hour, I don't know).
Encore Mode
Encore Mode is an interesting idea. You start the game as Sonic and you save Mighty and Ray from a tank thing. You have to choose one or the other, whichever one you don't choose turns out to be that Mirage Saloon guy. Now that you have two characters, you can (sometimes) swap between the two with the Triangle button, or whatever it is on whatever you use. In the first stage, it gives you opportunities to get other characters, or rather, whichever one you did not save, Tails, and Knuckles. You can't swap between them though. You can only play as them if you hit an item box that has a weird swap logo on it or you die as your current character. Each character you have at your disposal is also basically a life. I know that sounds morbid but what I mean is that Encore Mode keeps going until you have lost all of your characters. You can get continues like in Mania Mode (the normal mode) but still, this is basically just a more interesting twist on having 5 lives.
This would make more sense in a game like Sonic Advance 3 where different character combinations actually mattered or the characters played significantly different from each other but in Sonic Mania, they all just have one move separating them, really. I could be wrong but I think Sonic is the only other character that has any additional benefits, those being barrier-specific moves. This idea is neat and I feel like most games, especially platformers, would not bother with DLC any further than bringing back two characters from the proverbial dead and a multiplayer bonus. It's just unfortunate because I think they wanted Encore Mode to be one of the main selling points to justify the DLC being $5 (or warranting buying a physical copy of the game) but to me, it feels more like a footnote. I'm not saying it is bad but it feels like more of the same shit as Mania Mode, which I have already played through enough times for Encore Mode to not feel significantly different. I didn't beat it yet so maybe it changes drastically later but I doubt it.
Mighty
Mighty is fucking awesome apparently. His move is really simple but very useful. He just does this quick ground pound kind of thing. This means that at any given moment, you can halt your momentum from midair pretty easily to either save yourself from harm, save yourself from a hazard on the ground, or kill a line of enemies beneath you in one swoop. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles don't really have a combat-catered move or anything that's useful for taking out a lot of enemies at once, so this makes Mighty feel pretty badass. Is he alone worth $5? No but I would say that most of my justification of the purchase in retrospect was made up by the sheer fun of playing around with a new character. I'm kind of in the boat with the rest of the fanbase that want more characters, no matter how much they really don't belong. If they can find a balanced way to add in characters like Blaze and Shadow or even more off-the-wall ones like Fang, I would gladly pay the price of a fast food meal to see that.
Ray
Unless I'm missing something, which is very possible, fuck Ray. I think. Ray's move is the Super Mario World cape glide but I couldn't figure out how it works at first. You don't swoop with up and down, you swoop with left and right, which is really trippy in a game where you spend most of the time holding one direction or another. There also is not much advantage to doing this. The main thing I realized is that the other four characters have moves that are almost always useful. Sonic can always go fast after a set back with the Drop Dash even more than everyone can with the Spin Dash, not to mention again his barrier abilities. Tails can fucking fly. Knuckles can climb out of trickier situations and his glide can be used as an attack. Mighty can blast through a butt load of situations. Ray's ability is only useful in situations where you have already gone on a really high up route and have plenty of space to use Ray's ability. Towards the middle, not even the end, the middle of the game, this is borderline useless. I was already skeptical of them putting Ray back in since before the Sonic Mania Plus promo animations, Ray did not have much ability beyond what Sonic had, but now he has even less ability. If Mighty wasn't so badass, I would feel a bit ripped off. Again, I'm hopeful that they will add more DLC in the form of new stages or vastly different modes and maybe more characters... then I can forget about Ray like most fans secretly do all the fucking time.
The Pinball
Mania mode has a bunch of different bonus stages and that was one of the things I like about Sonic 3 & Knuckles. They expounded on that really hard in Mania and it made me excited to go into checkpoints with enough rings to access bonus areas that did not have to be as fun as they were. In Encore Mode, it always does this pinball thing. It isn't terrible but bare with me here: pinball is already a game. It makes you go through this long-ass pinball mode unless you opt-out by dying but by doing that you miss out on bonuses. That doesn't sound very important but let's go back to the main gimmick behind Encore Mode. In Encore Mode, the only way to survive, other than just being good at the game, is by freeing your friends and trying to keep all five of them on you as much as possible. After Green Hill, I did not see many opportunities other than in this pinball mode to do that. Hell, maybe I just wasn't paying attention and you can only grab them in the pinball mode, making this even worse. You can spend a lot of time in previous bonus stage iterations too but it felt like it was more rewarding if you did so and a real test of your skill. Pinball has a lot more luck to it and aiming the weird claw machine thing can be difficult to get used to.
If the claw machine to save your friends was made easier, this wouldn't really even make this concept work any better because then it would be too easy and getting there would be based on the luck of pinball and your reflexes of hitting a ball. So if making this harder would just make this ridiculous, the way it is now feels a bit monotonous, and making it easier would defeat its purpose, then maybe the pinball mode should have been thrown in the mix and not made to be the only bonus stage in Encore Mode.
Multiplayer
I don't have friends in my house right now so I can't tell you how 4-player multiplayer works but I'm excited to do that one day because I never understood why the Sonic Advance games and Sonic Rivals games were the only installments that let you race against three other people. I can't really see a downside to this for the player. I'm sure in development it is a different story but whatever now it's there and one of the main reasons I wanted the DLC so bad... just in case I have 2 or 3 friends over that just happen to say "let's play Sonic Mania". Yeesh, why did I buy this?
Conclusion
The new mode is a neat addition but I don't feel like it is a selling point so much as just an added bonus. Mighty is actually a lot more fun of an addition than I predicted. Ray was worse than I predicted. The pinball mode is kind of disappointing but I guess as far as Sonic goes, we all know there have been far worse mini-game segments in the series. So overall I think it is worth $5 IF:
A) You really like Sonic Mania. Maybe not speedrun bad but you do enjoy revisiting the game occasionally.
B) You play it with friends every once in a while or plan on it in the near future.
If only one of those things is true, maybe look into it a bit more honestly before you buy but I personally it is worth the $5 anyways, especially in relativity to what DLC has become over the past decade.
If both of those things are true then buy it right goddamn now.
If neither of those are true, honestly, don't bother with it. There isn't going to be enough to change your mind on Sonic Mania unless you desperately want a game where you can race in traditional Sonic gameplay with 4 people at once.
As far as the physical release thing, I wanted a physical copy really fucking bad but not enough to buy the crazy collector's edition. Like that thing is a big commitment, emphasis on big. If you don't already have Sonic Mania and you like having physical copies of games more than download then I say go for it, 100%. It should cost about the same. If you already have the game digitally and you are thinking about getting a physical copy, take it from someone who already had it digitally on Steam and PS4 just so they could play it on day one: ask yourself if that's really worth it. Is it really worth buying any game and buying it again just for something that is available for $5 via DLC? If you can refund it on Steam then maybe but otherwise you might be fucked there. I'm not sure why they did it this way, hence why I think $5 was a bit high but it would seem weird to make it $4 and I feel like $3 would be underselling everything the Encore Pack has.
For the most part, I would say it is worth the purchase, and Sonic Mania Plus as a whole is absolutely worth it if you don't already have a copy of the game. Now I guess I will just wait for the emo "Darkness Pack" where they put in Shadow and somehow a battle royale.
