It's quite interesting to play Sonic 2 and 3 back to back. In my head, I remember Sonic 2 being the revolutionary one with its addition of the spindash, and Sonic 3 being more of the same. While it's true that Sonic 3 didn't give him any more special moves, it still made subtle refinements to its structure and mechanics that made for quite a different experience to Sonic 2.
The most obvious is that aside from some tough bosses, the difficulty level is lower in general. Sure there is some cheap enemy placement and momentum-traps, but there's probably less of that in this entire game than there was in the Metropolis Zone alone. While you will get hit quite a bit on a blind playthrough, the game also seems more forgiving, giving you plenty of rings and shield powerups. The lightning shield is especially broken; it allows you to completely cheese some bosses through double-jump shenanigans. Another small change that makes the game more forgiving is that you don't need 50 rings to enter a special stage, so getting hit in this game and losing your rings doesn't feel as punishing.
Most of the challenge in the game actually comes from trying to beat the clock; the stages are much larger than in any previous games and I did end up losing against bosses a few times, not from getting killed but from running out of time. The time limit now being a factor, and the more forgiving difficulty, forces you to constantly push yourself and take risks - you could do it in previous games of course, but this game gives you a genuine motivation to do so. It was a welcome change and great evolution from the previous games.
Unfortunately, despite its solid core gameplay, I felt that it didn't quite give me as good an experience as Sonic 2. The soundtrack was less consistently strong - Hydrocity absolutely slaps, Marble Garden was a bit of a yawner, and Carnival Night sounds like Casino Night and Mystic Cave somehow had a kid, but wasn't quite as effective as either. But mostly, for all its polish, it felt like half a game. Everything, from its 6 zones (down from 10 in the previous game), to the fact that you can use Knuckles in the racing mode but not the main game, makes the experience feel incomplete and the ending slightly anticlimactic Fortunately, its potential would be realized in the superlative Sonic 3 and Knuckles - which I'll hopefully get around to soon to see if it lived up to my childhood memories.
The most obvious is that aside from some tough bosses, the difficulty level is lower in general. Sure there is some cheap enemy placement and momentum-traps, but there's probably less of that in this entire game than there was in the Metropolis Zone alone. While you will get hit quite a bit on a blind playthrough, the game also seems more forgiving, giving you plenty of rings and shield powerups. The lightning shield is especially broken; it allows you to completely cheese some bosses through double-jump shenanigans. Another small change that makes the game more forgiving is that you don't need 50 rings to enter a special stage, so getting hit in this game and losing your rings doesn't feel as punishing.
Most of the challenge in the game actually comes from trying to beat the clock; the stages are much larger than in any previous games and I did end up losing against bosses a few times, not from getting killed but from running out of time. The time limit now being a factor, and the more forgiving difficulty, forces you to constantly push yourself and take risks - you could do it in previous games of course, but this game gives you a genuine motivation to do so. It was a welcome change and great evolution from the previous games.
Unfortunately, despite its solid core gameplay, I felt that it didn't quite give me as good an experience as Sonic 2. The soundtrack was less consistently strong - Hydrocity absolutely slaps, Marble Garden was a bit of a yawner, and Carnival Night sounds like Casino Night and Mystic Cave somehow had a kid, but wasn't quite as effective as either. But mostly, for all its polish, it felt like half a game. Everything, from its 6 zones (down from 10 in the previous game), to the fact that you can use Knuckles in the racing mode but not the main game, makes the experience feel incomplete and the ending slightly anticlimactic Fortunately, its potential would be realized in the superlative Sonic 3 and Knuckles - which I'll hopefully get around to soon to see if it lived up to my childhood memories.