needed to cleanse myself after advance 2 thinking id enjoy this game less but no i actually like it more now
this is a HUGE improvement over advance 2
less automated level design better difficulty curve that makes sense bosses that make me fight it and not do quick time events time attacking as the other characters is fun again the music doesnt make my ears decay
The time attack experience here is worse than advance 2 which i think has the best time attack of the advance games but its still a really fun experience
lets hope dimps doesnt make a game that goes back to what advance 2 did horribly and somehow do it worse aswell but thatll never happen right?

i shoulda gone harder on this game
this is basically sa2 released on a weaker console with all good aspects of the speed stages watered down until it becomes a soulless husk
the level design is dogshit and obnoxiously automated
pretty much any difficulty goes away if you follow the automation and use uptrick
the rails suck as you can only land on the start of the rail and pmuch everything else is invisible floor
the ost kills makes my ears decay
the boss fights i used to hate for being hard now i hate them for being just waiting for cycles to land (atleast the first 2 die semi quick)
time attacking as any character but sonic SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS
overall dogshit game and definitely one of the worst in the dimps catologue
its definitely better than both sonic 4 episodes and lost world 3ds but its still pretty terrible
i really shoulda went much harder on this game the first time
time attacking it is still fun tho
1/10 for my enjoyment

the fact a moth infestation hit my bedroom as i was playing this game was no coincidence
this is even worse than episode 1
there is no flow at all you keep having to pause the game for 2 full seconds
not to mention the 6 minute auto scroller at the end
the only area this game improves on the first is the music and visuals
everything else is worse
the level design is worse
the physics are still ass
and the bosses are worse
fuck this game
fuck everything it stands for
i cant accurately describe with words how much i fucking hate this game
fuck it

God where the fuck do i begin.
after dropping colors DS (the most 6/10 video game of all time) dimps drops this child that shoulda been thrown in a fucking dumpster.this game actually got so much worse on a replay its incredible.
theres literally nothing positive i can say about this game it is the most soulless annoying frustrating worthless nothing game i have ever played

lets start off with how it feels to move sonic as apparently they fucked this up aswell.
no matter how much speed you gain simply neutral sticking will make sonic stop moving. you can spam homing attack to build infinite speed cause fuck me this franchise really is for babies. there is no presence of momentum in this game you gain like no speed going downhill at fucking all. also the homing attack in 2d? really? you couldnt think of a single fucking original idea? who do you think you are the director of jason goes to hell?

next lets go onto the level design cause they also fucked this up aswell.
the level design basically consists of dash pads into homing attack chain 99% of the time. however because this is a sonic game they had to shove in zone gimmicks to make everything fresh. however the zone gimmicks in this stupid fucking game are terrible. whether its the pinball/cards in casino street the torch and wrecking ball in lost labrynth or the stupid fucking cogs and seesaws in mad gear. btw notice how all the level themes are just reused from the og 2d sonic games? yeah we will talk about reusage later also. this game has easily the worst zone gimmicks in the entire franchise, maybe sonic heroes comes close tho.

Next lets talk about the boss fights. now the boss fights in sonic games arent usually very good especially in 2d sonic but the bosses in this game in particular BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW. they are just retreads of the 2d sonics bosses which arent very good but they suck more here because they last longer. the first zone boss is just the wrecking ball from sonic 1. the 2nd zone boss is just the casino night boss from sonic 2 the 3rd zone boss is just the labrynth zone boss from sonic 1 the 4th zone boss is the metropolis zone boss from sonic 2. the last boss is the death egg from sonic 2.
these bosses have more i frames preventing them from being booped but it just makes them drag on tbh especially in the death egg robos case which is a 24 hit slog that has an insta kill attack at the end which i somehow dodged first try.
as for the other zones its pretty bad also especially the mad gear boss. the casino street boss because of how the pinball works in this game you can easily kill it by just getting onto the top and just jumping on it repeatedly. the lost labrynth boss begins as a retread of sonic 1 before going onto this wierd thing where you have to get up to eggman and boop him before you get crushed. this boss will either take 3 seconds or 3 hours cause of the i frames in this game. the mad gear boss also blows cause of the autorunner chase sequence at the end. and it doesnt help the very last zone is just a boss rush leading into the slog that is the death egg which takes 24 hits to kill in this game for some reason.
in general all the bosses in this game fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

now lets get into the visuals and music. gonna try to keep this short but basically both are soulless stinky. the animations look bad sonics model looks bad the backgrounds look akward. the music also isnt very good it sounds like genesis era leftovers.

finally we have the special stages. they are the sonic 1 special stages so they were obviously gonna suck but they are somehow even worse here as you control the entire stage and not sonic. with ring gates you gotta clear which make em feel extremely padded out but it doesnt matter i dont wanna do special stages in this shitty fucking worthless slop pile of a video game anyway

anyway yeah this game fucking sucks. i legit cant think of a single redeeming aspect this game has it fails at pretty much anything required to be a memorable video game.
gonna play episode 2 tommorow but ima take a break from garbage and play a good game. sonic cd sounds nice