Sonic's game design is counter to its marketing honestly "gotta go fast" has damaged the series when honestly the main point of sonic is "speed is a reward". The game is more designed around replays and learning a stage's routes and layouts or having the twitch reflexes to keep a flow going. It's kind of like a platformer through the lens of arcade philosophy, which is odd but definitely not shocking coming from Sega. Sonic 3, & Knuckles, and now Mania even put much more of a focus on exploration and navigation to get the special stage rings for a shot at a chaos emerald.
It's also why there's a ring system instead of a number of hits you can take. Taking damage isn't that big of a deal so long as you have those, but having them is how you get the goodies like chaos emeralds in 1, 2 and CD or extra lives.
And like Zeik said, Classic Sonic doesn't have that much bullshit outside of maybe the last few zones of Sonic 2.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles is legitimately one of the greatest 2D platformers ever made. Just because Sonic got incredibly bad doesn't mean he always was. That statement has always been insane to me.
Love me some Kingdom Hearts, and it is good to see them being more positive than I expected. Series is convoluted as all hell, but still damn good. Well...most of the games are damn good.
sunsetstreek's comments