The difficulty is a setting in the Sonic the Hedgehog video games that modifies the game's balance which affects how challenging the game is to play.

Overview[]

Generally, the game's chosen difficulty setting can influence various gameplay factors. This varies on the game itself, though the most common factor that is changed is boss battles where a boss in a higher difficulty may have new or harder attack patterns, and it has more health, requiring more hits to defeat. Other games may include having more powerful enemies (in a similar vain to bosses), level designs configured with more enemies, obstacles and/or trickier paths.

Most video games usually have three difficulties typically have Easy, Normal and Hard. Regardless, the game's difficulty setting can usually be changed by the player in the game's options menu to suit their preferred level of challenge.

Game appearances[]

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine[]

In the Sega Mega Drive version of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, the difficulty for Scenario Mode can be changed under the "Vs. Com Level" setting in the Options menu, of which there are four choices (from lowest to highest): Easy, Normal, Hard and Hardest. Each opponent under a specified difficulty will have their own unique password, and if the player directly inputs the correct password to fight a specific opponent at a certain difficulty, they will play through the remaining opponents of that difficulty until the player finishes the game or gets a Game Over.

In all modes, the difficulty primarily affects the speed which Beans drop at; the higher the difficulty level, the Beans will drop faster, giving the player less time to decide where to place them.

In Exercise mode, each player can choose a starting difficulty before commencing the mode, where three choices are available: Easiest, Normal and Hardest. However, the difficulty will dynamically increase the higher the current Exercise level, which in turn is raised the more points the player has attained.

In 1P Vs. 2P mode, each player can select one of five starting difficulties prior to commencing the mode; those being Easiest, Easy, Normal, Hard and Hardest. In addition to setting the starting speed the Beans drop at, the chosen difficulty also handicaps a player by giving their board a certain number of rows of Refuge Beans to start at:

Difficulty	No. of starting Refuge Bean rows
Easiest	0
Easy
Normal
Hard	3
Hardest	5

Sonic Adventure 2[]

In Sonic Adventure 2, its enhanced port Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and its 2012 remaster, each stage has a Hard Mode which is designated as their fifth mission. In these missions, the stages being played undergoes various modifications to the stage design and object placements (including enemies, Rings) compared to the previous four missions. In Treasure Hunting levels however, the Emerald Shards are at fixed locations though they are usually located in places that may require certain Level Up Items to reach.

Sonic Advance series[]

In the Sonic Advance trilogy, the Difficulty, known as Level in the first two Advance games, can be changed in Options and the two available settings for each game are Easy and Normal. Between Easy and Normal, in the latter difficulty level, bosses require more hits to defeat (usually increased from six to eight) and have harder attack patterns. Also in Normal, more Badnik enemies spawn in regular stages, including those that do not appear in Easy.

When playing stages in Time Attack, the player will always play through the stage in Normal mode even if the game difficulty is set to Easy in Options.

Sonic Heroes[]

In Sonic Heroes, each playable team plays through different versions of the game's stages; usually the selected team can be considered having their own difficulty levels; Team Rose and Team Dark have the easiest and hardest stage layouts and have been referred to being recommended for beginner players and intermediate players respectively, while Team Sonic and Team Chaotix lie in between. Each playable teams' versions of the stages differ in stage length and layout, path choices and the types of enemies that appear.

In addition, Super Hard Mode is an unlockable mode which features all of the game's 14 main stages (without bosses) but their level design has been tweaked to be even more difficult than Team Dark's version of the same stages.

Shadow the Hedgehog[]

In Shadow the Hedgehog, Expert Mode is an unlockable gameplay mode which features re-tweaked level layouts of all of the game's stages which the player must play through, in a similar vain to Super Hard Mode in Sonic Heroes.

Sonic Rush series[]

In Sonic Rush, the difficulty setting is available in Options and like the Sonic Advance series, only Easy and Normal modes are available. All bosses require more hits to defeat (usually increased from six to eight) and have harder attack patterns. This time however, the difficulty setting solely affects boss battles and not other stages. In Time Attack, boss stages will always be played under Normal mode conditions even if the game's difficulty is set to Easy.

In Sonic Rush Adventure, the difficulty setting is referred to as Boss Difficulty, and it is available by talking to Setter at the back of Marine's house at Southern Island. Like in Sonic Rush, the Boss Difficulty setting has Easy and Normal as the only two setting choices and when talking to Setter, the player has the option to change the difficulty to the other. As the name suggests, only boss battles are influenced by this setting. While each boss's attack pattern are harder in Normal, the Boss Gauge which the bosses have in this game (as opposed to bosses requiring a pre-determined number of hits in most other games) remains unaffected. Also, all bosses fought in Time Attack and in some Missions will always behave in Normal conditions even if the Boss Difficulty setting is on Easy.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)[]

In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), there are two difficulty modes initially available for Sonic, Shadow, and Silver. These are Normal and Hard Mode, and a Very Hard Mode exists as DLC available for each character as well. Difficulty selection is chosen while on the Act Select screen, and is not available for bosses and Boss Attack DLCs, Tails, Rouge, and Blaze's solo stages, Town Missions, the Last Story, or Team Attack Amigo, all of which features a single option simply called "Mission".

Normal Mode stages are played through the story, and are the only levels where the player can collect Silver Medals. Hard Mode stages are the same stages, but with edited object layouts and enemies to make progression more difficult. Getting an S-Rank on both stages is required to collect every Gold Medal.

Very Hard Mode is DLC available for Sonic, Shadow, and Silver. The stages are, as indicated by the name, even more difficult than their Hard Mode counterparts, and very frequently feature structural changes to the level's progression, including changes such as Sonic's Wave Ocean being played in reverse or every stage for Shadow (except for Wave Ocean) featuring sections with Rouge and Omega, regardless of whether they were present in the stage during the story or not. S-Ranking every Very Hard Mode stages is not required for collecting every Gold Medal.

Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing[]

In Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, the Grand Prix mode has three difficulty choices when selecting the mode: Beginner, Advanced and Expert. When playing Races at higher difficulties, all computer-controlled opponents use a higher degree of AI when racing against the player(s); they will be more competent in utilizing from Boost Starts, Drifts and Stunts. They are also smarter in using their items.

Sonic Generations[]

In the console/PC version of Sonic Generations, bosses can be fought either on Normal Mode or Hard Mode on the boss stage selection screen that the player can choose between. However, when fighting bosses for the first time, the player must fight on Normal Mode only; Hard Mode will be available in subsequent visits of the boss selection after their first completion. In Hard Mode, the bosses themselves have harder attack patterns and in addition, the stages they are fought at can have different object placements or exclude certain objects.

Sonic the Fighters (2012)[]

In the 2012 remaster of Sonic the Fighters, the ability to set the difficulty appears exclusively in Arcade Mode. Upon entering the Arcade menu, four difficulties are available: Easy, Normal, Hard and Hardest. The difficulty influences the skill level of the computer player.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed[]

In Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, all Career modes have a selection between four difficulties that the player can choose upon selecting a Grand Prix cup, World Tour challenge or a Single Race course. The list of difficulties are (in the order of lowest-highest difficulty):

Difficulty	Rank-Class	Description
Easy	C	Race in C-Class against easy opponents. Perfect for beginners!
Medium	B	Race in B-Class speed against intermediate opponents.
Hard	A	Race in A-Class speed against tough opponents. Players will have their skills tested!
Expert	S	Race in S-Class speed against very hard opponents. For advanced players only!

Similarly to Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, when playing Races at higher difficulties, all computer-controlled opponents use a higher degree of AI when racing against the player(s); they will be more competent in utilizing Boost from Boost Starts, Drifts, Transforms and Stunts and are smarter in using their items. In World Tour, the challenges have stricter requirements including:

• Shorter time limits in timed challenges
• In Hard and Expert, the player must finish 1st in Race challenges instead of 3rd or higher in Easy and Medium (in addition to higher racing AI of computer-controlled opponents in Grand Prix and Single Race)
• More obstacles in Traffic Attack
• Smaller Drift zones in Drift Challenges
• Stronger tanks in Pursuit

In Time Attack and its related challenges in World Tour, the player cannot choose a difficulty in these modes but will instead be ranked according to the time they completed the lap of a given course in comparison of the game's pre-registered completion times of four ghosts (Easy Ghost, Medium Ghost, Hard Ghost and Expert Ghost).

Completing World Tour challenges will award a number of stars from each challenge depending on the chosen difficulty it was completed in; Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert awards one, two, three and four stars respectively. The player is ultimately required to complete all World Tour challenges in Expert to win all possible stars, which then allows the player to obtain every unlockable feature (characters and Mods) from the mode.

Sonic Forces[]

In Sonic Forces, the two difficulties available in the game are Normal and Hard modes. In Normal mode, the player's time and score records are not published on the leaderboards. Additionally, characters only lose 20 rings per hit, but the ring cap is set to 100. In Hard mode, the ring cap is set to 999, but a single hit will take away all rings, unless you have a shield.

Team Sonic Racing[]

In Team Sonic Racing, when starting a race, three difficulties are available: Normal, Hard and Expert. Depending what the player chooses will change how the computer players will play.

Sonic Frontiers[]

In Sonic Frontiers, when starting a new game, three difficulties are available: Easy, Normal and Hard.^{[note 1]} The difficulty can be changed between these three modes in Game Settings under Options at any time outside of a cutscene. The difficulty influences all enemies' attack patterns and the number of Rings the player loses when attacked. For the first time in the series, the chosen difficulty now affects the game's ending; if the game is set to Hard, the player will also fight The End, an additional ending cutscene is viewed and the credits' theme song will be different ("Vandalize" will play for Easy and Normal and "One Way Dream" will play for Hard).

As of Update 1 (Sights, Sound, and Speed), an Extreme difficulty is unlocked after the player gets an S-Rank on all five the newly added Battle Rush modes. The difficulty can only be chosen when starting a new game and once selected, the difficulty cannot be changed mid-game.^[1] While sharing the same ending that Hard has (as well as playing "One Way Dream" during the credits), Extreme also makes the following changes which makes the game significantly harder from the other three difficulties:

• The player only has one hit point, thus getting attacked by an enemy or obstacle immediately triggers a Game Over (including the Titan fights, unless a Real-Time Interaction or a cutscene is triggered)
• Stat level ups are disabled^[1]
• Enemies are substantially stronger^[1]
• The Cyber Space stages' Rank system has shorter time requirements for each Rank (except for 1-2's S-Rank).
• The price for exchanging Treasure Tokens at Fishing Spots for items is ten times more expensive.

Starting with Update 2 (Sonic's Birthday Bash) and continuing in Update 3 (The Final Horizon), Easy difficulty was given several changes to better reflect it. These changes include:

• The towers on Rhea Island and Ouranos Island (during The Final Horizon episode) were given additional platforming elements to make their ascents easier and less stressful.
  • The 1.4.1 patch released after Update 3 further reduced the difficulty of the towers on Ouranos Island.

Perfect Parry's timing, as well as the amount of time Amy, Knuckles and Tails can hold the Parry, is dependent on difficulty. The timing for these upon release of Update 3 was the following:

Character	Mode
	Easy	Normal	Hard	Extreme
Sonic (Perfect Parry)	60 frames (1 second)	12 frames (0.2 seconds)	8 frames (~0.133 seconds)	4 frames (~0.067 seconds)
Amy	240 frames (4 seconds)	240 frames (4 seconds)	180 frames (3 seconds)	90 frames (1.5 seconds)
Knuckles	180 frames (3 seconds)	180 frames (3 seconds)	120 frames (2 seconds)	60 frames (1 second)
Tails	120 frames (2 seconds)	90 frames (1.5 seconds)	60 frames (1 second)	30 frames (0.5 seconds)

In version 1.4.1, however, the Perfect Parry's leniency was extended:

• In Easy Mode, it lasts for 600 frames (10 seconds).
• In Normal Mode, it lasts for 24 frames (0.4 seconds).
• In Hard Mode, it lasts for 16 frames (~0.266 seconds).
• In Extreme Mode, it lasts for 8 frames (~0.133 seconds).

Shadow Generations[]

In Shadow Generations, harder versions of the bosses and some of the Challenge Acts become available after the Doom Wing is acquired, where they appear exclusively in the Doom Zone, which can be activated through the Black Moon.

Trivia[]

• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), there exists four unused difficulties entitled: Easy, Super Hard Mode, Ultimate, and Extra, though only Super Hard Mode and Extra's text are able to be loaded into the difficulty screen as they were meant to be released as DLC. Presumably, Easy was meant to be a simplified version of the story layouts, Super Hard Mode was potentially an alternate name or totally different layouts for stages that would have been more difficult, similar to Very Hard. No leftovers indicate what Ultimate or Extra difficulties would have been like, however.
  • Additionally, there are unused Hard Mode layouts for Tails and Blaze's Wave Ocean and Rouge's Tropical Jungle.

Notes[]

References[]