Sonic Forces: Speed Battle Version 2.0 Available Now

A huge update for Sonic Forces: Speed Battle is now live, and it brings a number of substantial changes to the experience. To start, all tracks have received layout changes; for some, the tweaks are minor, but for others, the changes are so comprehensive that the modified stage ends up feeling entirely different. Additionally, tracks now fit into only three difficulty tiers – Easy, Medium, or Hard – and tracks that were formerly of Extreme difficulty have been adjusted to account to this.

Another major change is the addition of Seasons, which will track your trophy point progress across a certain length of time and grant you rewards if you finish the season above a certain point threshold. Starting at Tier 4 and 1,000 trophy points, these new Season Chests get more lucrative as you progress to higher tiers, with dozens of red rings and several hundreds of character points ready to be handed out. To accommodate even greater rewards, Tiers 8, 9, and 10 have been added, with point thresholds of 4,000, 5,000, and 6,000, respectively. Finishing a season at Tier 8 or higher also earns you Prestige Points and places you in the in-game Prestige Hall of Fame.

Those new point totals might sound absurd, and in previous versions of the game, they would be. However, this update also brings with it the long-awaited re-calibration of the trophy point reward system, and this is perhaps the best quality-of-life change in the game’s history. The previous point system often weighted losses far more heavily than wins, and multiple losses in a row commonly resulted in substantial point loss, especially at higher tiers. Thankfully, the frustrations of a cold streak are all but eliminated as the new point system is much more generous. Double-digit gains for coming in second are now commonplace, winning outright increases those gains further, and fourth-place finishes are much less punishing – think a 9 or 11-point loss instead of 20 or more. This system makes higher tiers much more practical for determined players, and it should result in much less frustration overall.

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle is available for iOS and Android devices now.