This game is really charming, but revisiting this after years, I can totally see why I always played this for the Chao Garden as a kid and never actually got that far. Put it this way: I don't recommend this unless you have built up a tolerance for early-3D platformer controls. Trying to beat the first stage again was genuinely headache-inducing. I'd want to go back to an area to collect rings I'd left behind, and the camera would be facing my back. Nooks and crannies were all but noticeable because I literally couldn't see them, and this problem only exacerbated itself when enemies and traps were nearby. Running on walls to collect rings also felt incredibly janky, to the point where both the controls for it and the bad camera controls combined in such a way that the game started spazzing out through the wall I was trying to climb at one point.

I don't want to be too negative on this. I genuinely want to know why this is heralded as a classic for so many and relive some of my fondest childhood memories. I'll probably get around to playing more of it soon, but right now, my head hurts.