Grand Prix events are horrible

[AJ_Radio]

This basically mirrors my status update for this game.

 

I'm fine with the solo challenges (the ring challenge in the fifth area took hours to finally beat), and even the solo races as the most time you're going to lose is 15 - 20 minutes, as you can easily restart the race.

 

Grand Prix events are just dogshit. Due to how bad the AI is on Hard and Expert difficulty, I'm having to repeat these Grand Prix events several times over because the AI is god awful. Too much randomness, luck and just poor execution on the events themselves because this entire game was designed to be played as a team.

 

I honestly think this was meant to be played by friends because the computer AI just isn't good enough to be consistent. Normal difficulty is the equivalent of Easy, I don't have to try to reach first place. Hard and Expert difficulty, it's time to end your run dude.

 

Team Sonic Racing was a very rare platinum (around 7 percent) prior to it being on PS Plus and after being the free game of the month for March it's now an ultra rare. Not a particularly long game, around 25 - 40 hours depending on the skill of the player, but tons of RNG and just bad AI make up most of the difficulty for this game.

 

None of the challenges are utterly unfair as they're down to the skill of the player. You can easily repeat Grand Prix events several times because of simply bad luck, and there's one per area making a total of seven Grand Prix events you have to win as a team if you want that platinum.

 

Very frustrating and it's a good reason why I only have a few racing games on my profile instead of several.

Edited April 21, 2022 by AJ_Radio

[xIRockyRock]

I would consider myself as an decent driver in these kind of games and most challenges were first try, some of them 5 tries at most. But World 4 Grand Prix on Hard let my stuck there for at least 8 hours and I just wanted to cry and delete this game because it is absolutely down to luck. Eventually I beat world 4 and flew through the game somehow. I was so relieved.

[Suicide_Tortuga]

I found it easier to use Team Shadow for the GPs. Be Omega and just feed your teammates your items. Hopefully Team Amy won't just snipe your first place out of nowhere. Had it not been for the randomness of the GPs, I could've done the platinum faster. It got to the point that I'll do Crash Team Racing over again than race with teammates in Sonic

[PerryToxteth]

Can you boost to make this game easier? Or is it only couch co-op for your team? 

[Smashero]

24 minutes ago, PerryToxteth said:

Can you boost to make this game easier? Or is it only couch co-op for your team? 

Couch coop only. I tried via share play, but I think due to my current ISP it was simply unplayable. 

 

And I totally agree with OP. 

Edited April 21, 2022 by Smashero

[AJ_Radio]

Couch co-op only sadly. Don't know if Share Play is even an option, and while I can't use it due to slower internet, it would certainly make some of these events much easier.

[kenseizenkai]

I got the plat 2 days ago & I can honestly say I only had problems with Chapters 5 & 6 GPs on Hard & Chapter 6 GP on Extreme. Here are my tips to make GP a little bit easier:

 

1. Be aggressive & spam Item Box Transfer () to build you Team Ultimate. If your teammates are already holding weapons, try to hit a rival (they have red outline around them) to get Rival Takedown points.

 

2. Use a Technique character, 'cos they can drive on any surface. They are also good to cut corners with, 'cos most corners have some type of hazard around them (green sludge in castle tracks, quick sand in desert tracks, lava in volcanic caves etc.). Also try to drift around long corners as much as you can to get a little boost. My main was Silver & my mods were:

Front: Protector's Bow (flash)

Rear: Aero Spoilers (speed gauge)

Wheels: Peaceful Revolvers (speed gauge)

 

3. Learn shortcuts. Every track has at least one & they can give you big advantage. Most of the time, other teams will use normal route & if you use a shortcut, your teammates will follow you (if you are ahead of them).

 

4. Always save Team Ultimate for emergencies. If you are 1st place & are about to be hit by a lighting or rock pillars come out of the ground, then use Team Ultimate () to get out of trouble, otherwise save Team Ultimate for last stretch of 3rd lap. Some tracks are long & you can even do 2 Team Ultimates in 1 race.

 

I hope this helps you guys & remember just because you failed 1st time, that doesn't mean you'll fail  2nd time. It's all about practice & a little bit of luck. So good luck & don't give up!

 

Edited April 21, 2022 by kenseizenkai

[AJ_Radio]

That still doesn't change the sheer luck you need to beat the Grand Prix events. And I'm definitely not alone because I've looked at some threads on the PST.org forums and they were complaining about the same thing.

 

This is the last time I'm going to trust a trophy guide and assume they know what they're talking about.

[Milktastrophe]

I don't know if there's a guide on .org, but the one on here gives some pretty bad advice for winning races. Use a power character and focus on the boost stat? Lol, 90% of the race you won't be boosting so the boost stat is useless. Instead use a speed character and focus on top speed followed by acceleration. I don't think technique is good for the races either because every race can easily be won without going over rough terrain, so extra speed is better.

 

Unlike what most people say, you should actually use your team ultimate immediately.  When the ultimate is charged, you can't build towards the next one, so it's a waste not to use it  Every track is long enough to use it twice, some are long enough to use it three times. Never use the items, just transfer/request them over and over to build up the ultimate fast. Only use the item if it's a 3x item, and in that case use the first two charges immediately and then transfer.

 

Once I adopted this strategy I got first in every race by a huge margin. Enough so that I could be hit by the items that target first position multiple times and not lose the position. And because I used ultimate multiple times, my team would be able come back from bad starts to almost always be second and third.

[Suicide_Tortuga]

Sonic Team Racing is just the hardest 4/10 platinum?

 

Seriously if they gave you like 3 tries after getting a bad placement in a race, then I'll understand how this game is rated a 4.

 

I certainly did underestimate this game thanks to the guide on here much like others have.

[AJ_Radio]

50 minutes ago, Milktastrophe said:

Unlike what most people say, you should actually use your team ultimate immediately.  When the ultimate is charged, you can't build towards the next one, so it's a waste not to use it  Every track is long enough to use it twice, some are long enough to use it three times. Never use the items, just transfer/request them over and over to build up the ultimate fast. Only use the item if it's a 3x item, and in that case use the first two charges immediately and then transfer.

 

Guide definitely doesn't tell you this. The same guide is on PST.org, and people there were complaining about it too.

 

I'll try this method and see if I don't get screwed by RNG quite so much.

 

35 minutes ago, Suicide_Tortuga said:

Sonic Team Racing is just the hardest 4/10 platinum?

 

Seriously if they gave you like 3 tries after getting a bad placement in a race, then I'll understand how this game is rated a 4.

 

I certainly did underestimate this game thanks to the guide on here much like others have.

 

Team Sonic Racing was March's PS Plus game and I myself like many others thought it would be a fairly easy racing game. Wrong. Although I still think Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed is by far the hardest of the Sonic racing trilogy, due to absolutely stupid trophy requirements (the trophy Team Sonic is one of the worst I've seen) and having a very high skill ceiling that you need to have if you want that platinum.

 

The individual races aren't that hard, it's the Grand Prix events that force you to start all over. Can't tell you how many times I got screwed in the last race and had to restart from the first race.

[PotrikBerger]

I just want to offer a little defence of sonic team racing and the guide writer. I’ve only been playing the game for two or three days, but I’m nearly done and I’m not buying this ( racing and Grand Prix) as completely down to random number generating. It’s just not true. And I also want to give a bit of credit to the guide writer as I’ve used knuckles the entire time and not had any problems at all on races or Grand Prix on either hard or expert. Only maybe restarting one Grand Prix so far in nearly two complete playthroughs. In fact, I’d agree with others, for some reason expert is much easier to win than hard. To the honourable gentleman who said boosting isn’t that frequent so don’t use a power character, I’d respectfully repute that. You can pretty much drift and boost the entire track of every single race, so having the power character is extremely useful, and as the guide writer suggests, this gives you an advantage in the races if you drift 80% of the race. No need to wait for the super boost, you can just keep using the first boost from the drift and you should decimate the field.

 

you have rear view option for rivals coming up behind, you can fire backwards on. We have a map of circuit that shows where rivals are in the race and we have all the team play mechanics. Utilising all of these things along with drifting boosts. I think it’s a false claim to suggest rng and rubber banding dominate this game. They don’t. At least not from what I’ve seen.

 

the challenges can be tricky to get platinum medals in. Like others, I’ve poured time into a couple of events that just felt like I was never going to beat....until I did and it felt great lol. The ones that took me the longest were two of the traffic attack ones. The one in either stage six or seven was easily the challenge I spent the longest on.

[willmill97]

I don't think in my 20 years of gaming have I ever played a game with such fucking nonsensical mechanics. There is something seriously wrong with a game when you can lose no matter how well you do, just because your teammates perform poorly, you fucking fail. Fuck this pile of doo doo ass fuckass fuckshit.