Sonic X Shadow Generations: Achievement Guide and Roadmap

Sonic X Shadow Generations, much like its previous iteration Sonic Generations, is a love letter to the Sonic franchise with levels, music, bosses, and characters from throughout the series’ history. This also means there’s an absolute ton of collectibles, ranging from unlockable skills, to music and concept art from across the entire series.

Any completionist hoping to earn all the trophies/achievements in Sonic X Shadow Generations has their work cut out for them, with collectibles to track down and S-Ranks to earn across the entirety of both Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations. This guide will break down an efficient way of earning all these trophies/achievements and help you to plan your path to Platinum.

Trophy Roadmap for Sonic Generations

Completing everything in Sonic Generations will mean clearing every stage with an S-Rank, completing every available challenge, grabbing every Red Star Ring, and unlocking every skill. Here’s a step-by-step guide to cleaning up all these objectives.

Step 1: Stages, Challenges, and Red Rings

When trying to 100% Sonic Generations, your first port of call should be clearing all the game’s main stages and challenges. Ideally, you’ll want to complete all the challenges for a stage as soon as they become available, since completing challenges can unlock some new skills, which can be used to make future stages easier. For example, you can unlock Classic Sonic’s bubble shield by clearing one of the Chemical Plant challenges, allowing you to take it into other stages and take advantage of the bouncing jump when exploring the stages.

You’ll know when you’ve completed all the available challenges for either Classic or Modern Sonic because it will cause color to flow back into the section of White Space surrounding those challenges. Completing all available challenges for Classic and Modern Sonic will make the hub world much more colorful. While you’re at it, you should also fight any rivals that appear in the Hub (Metal Sonic, Shadow, and Silver) to get three of the Chaos Emeralds. The remaining four will be found by defeating bosses and clearing stages, so by doing this you’ll ensure that you track down all seven.

It would be best if you also took this time to grab the Red Rings in each main stage as you clear them, since collecting all five for each stage will earn a new skill for either Classic or Modern Sonic. Early on, you can get Treasure Scanner for Classic Sonic by getting five Red Rings in Green Hill Act 2, which will help you locate hidden treasures in stages (though sadly, it won’t help you track down the new hidden Chao.)

If you’re struggling to find a Red Ring in a stage, you should speak to whichever of Sonic’s friends is standing outside the stage, as they’ll give you advice on how to find one of the ones you’re missing after you speak to them a few times.

Step 2: S-Ranks and Chao Rescue

After you complete all the stages, fight all the bosses, and collect the seven Chaos Emeralds, it’s time to go for S-Ranks and clean up the final big collectible in Sonic Generations: Chao. These were added in Sonic X Shadow Generations and there are three to track down in every stage. You’ll need all of them to earn one of the achievements, but they don’t give you any additional bonus once they’re collected. They tend to be tucked away in sections of levels you might not otherwise visit, such as the area under a breakable bridge in Green Hill Zone.

To get an S-Rank in any of Sonic’s stages, you’ll need to make it to the end as fast as possible, without dying or restarting from a checkpoint. When considering speed, remember the golden rule of Sonic Generations level design: The higher up a path is, the faster it is. This means that taking the highest available path through a stage whenever possible will get you to the end more quickly. It might take a few tries to get it down, but with a little practice, you’ll be making it to the end with time to spare.

Step 3: Cleanup

Once you’ve completed steps 1 and 2, you’ll have the lion’s share of Sonic Generations’ Trophies, but there are a few outliers you’ll still need to track down. The “Mad Skillz” trophy is earned by unlocking every skill. If you’re missing any by this point, make sure to visit the shop and buy any they still have in stock.

The final task you have to complete isn’t an easy one, but if you’ve made it this far you’ll probably be fine. You just have to take down the final boss of the game without getting hit. Its attacks are well telegraphed and all have well-established methods of avoiding them, so you’ll have to practice the boss a little and go for a perfect run to get the “Can’t Touch This” trophy. With that, you’re halfway done, so now it’s time for Shadow’s trophies.

Trophy Roadmap for Shadow Generations

Shadow’s section of the game is a bit simpler than Sonic’s in terms of trophies and requirements, though you’ll still need to put in a fair bit of effort to 100% it.

Step 1: Stages and Challenges

Your first objective in Shadow Generations is to complete the story by clearing every Stage, Challenge, and Boss Fight. This will give you access to all of Shadow’s Doom Powers, which will make collectible hunting much easier. Once you’ve cleared every stage and challenge once, you can go back and go for the S-Rank in each Act, utilizing your newfound power and experience to make it a much easier run. Unlike in Sonic Generations, Shadow is not penalized for dying as long as he makes it to the end of the stage quickly enough, so S-Ranks are a little easier when playing as Shadow. The golden rule of always taking the highest available path applies here too, and Doom Wing will open up some particularly crazy shortcuts in some stages once you get used to using it.

It’s important to note that Shadow also has two Hard Challenges, and Hard versions of all bosses other than the final boss, which will appear when you activate the Doom Zone in White Space. These Hard Challenges count towards the trophy for completing all Challenges, so make sure you don’t miss them.

Step 2: Collection Keys and Machine Parts

Once you’ve got all your powers, and you’ve got all the S-Ranks, it’s time to track down all the Collectibles. Shadow’s main Collectibles in levels are known as “Collection Keys” and come in three varieties. Each type can be used to unlock a different color of chest in White Space and obtain a different kind of collectible (Blue Keys and Chests for Artwork, Green Keys and Chests for Story Summaries, and Yellow Keys and Chests for Music.)

There are three Collection Keys in every main act and every Challenge act (except for the additional challenges that appear when you activate the Doom Zone), so you’ll need to carefully scour every inch of each stage to track them down.

Shadow’s other main collectibles, found exclusively in White Space, are Machine Parts. You need these to complete Orbot and Cubot’s quest, with a total of 80 needed to finish. Since they don’t all appear until you’ve unlocked the final stage, it’s best to wait until you’ve completed every Shadow Stage before you attempt to track them all down. Handing these over will unlock some more artwork for the collection.

Once you’ve completed Orbot and Cubot’s quest, you should track down and open all the remaining Collection Chests in White Space to finish off Shadow’s collection.

Step 3: Cleanup

By this point, you’ll only have one more achievement to earn. This is the “Untouchable” trophy, earned by beating the final boss without taking any damage. This is a much tougher ask than Sonic’s equivalent trophy since this boss is much harder to dodge. You’ll have to practice each phase of this fight carefully, especially the Doom Morph section midway through, if you want to earn the last trophy you need.