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Bashing Sonic 3 & Knuckles OTHER THAN THE BARREL

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Sid Starkiller, Jul 21, 2020.

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  1. Gestalt

    Gestalt

    Sphinx in Chains Member
    I have nothing against Marble Garden Zone, but I do hate crushing deaths. Need I say more?

    S3&K delivers on all fronts. It's epic as hell and almost perfect. It's this "almostness" that can be a real pain. Take for example the Eggman boss sprite in FBZ, the guardian in Sandopolis Zone or even Mecha Sonic, who shouldn't have been fought by the Master Emerald altar/socket but in space or at least in the air. But really, Sonic 3 has brought so much to the table. I love how Competition mode got its own original zones, that there are two versions of Knuckles' theme and its wide range of musical styles in general. It's your favourite memory in game form.
     
  2. Chaos Rush

    Chaos Rush

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    I can’t wait for the bash Sonic Mania thread so I can list my nitpicks. But just because I do doesn’t mean I hate the game lol, Sonic Mania was amazing and I would be totally fine with Whitehead & co. being the sole developer of 2D Sonic from now on.
     
  3. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    When I first delved into the online Sonic fanbase I was actually surprised that the consensus seemed to be Sonic 3=the best. Sonic 2 always seemed like the fan favorite, and was/is my favorite even after I finally played 3&K. It was like, I guess the internet decided 3&K is the best, but Sonic 2 is still the best. :p

    This isn't the fanbase "changing it's mind" like it's some sort of homogenized hive-mind. This is how I've always felt. I'm sure the same can be said about others offering criticisms or saying it's not the best one like I am. And of course it's still a great game, it's just my least favorite. CD moves above or below depending on my mood, but I vividly remember liking CD more when I first played it.
     
  4. Lozicle

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    This guy is not a very fun boss.
     
  5. Rudie Radio Waves

    Rudie Radio Waves

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    Many a game.
    I beat S3K (AIR, technically) last summer for the first time. I didn't grow up with this game, so I feel I'm unbiased when I say this is the best game ever.

    What I didn't like:

    - Crushing hazards (although I died of crushing much more in the other two games)
    - Marble Garden's morning stars
    - Sandopolis' slides (other than that, I actually enjoyed the stages)

    EDIT: also, I really like the weird CGI art style. I don't really mind this kind of "realism" when it's applied to the textures of physical objects of the world you play in.

    And Sonic 3's sprites are fine.
     
  6. TheOcelot

    TheOcelot

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    I don't like the Lava Reef act2 Eggman boss, which is one of the boss-fights where Sonic can't damage by jumping into it, can only be beaten by damaging itself, just like with the Flying Battery act1 & Sandopolis act1 mini-boss fights. Whereas those two require the normal eight-hits to be defeated, the Lava Reef boss requires 14 hits which is too long. You have to wait ages for the boss to destroy itself and you are constantly on top of Lava (with only small moving platforms for safety), so unless you have a flame-shield or Super Sonic (with at least 100 rings) this boss can be very frustrating.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2020
  7. kyasarintsu

    kyasarintsu

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    I like this game and I still replay it every now and then, but it has a ton of things that really grate on me:
    • I actually don't like the look of the game. The more realistic, textured, prerendered look has never sat well with me.
    • I don't like the music that much. It's not consistent like the first two games' music. I'm not a fan of some of the lazier act 2 remixes or the weird audio samples.
    • I don't like the level design style that much. It feels a lot more tunnel-based, lacking the layered design that I enjoyed in the best zones of 1 and 2. Things just feel like ant hill mazes here. Things are way longer and more expansive than in the first two games, but I don't really feel that it was to much benefit: levels lose my interest long before they're over, as I've seen basically everything by the time an act is not even halfway over. I think that Mania had a take on this game's scale, with increased density and with arrangements more like my favorite zones of the first two games.
    • There are so many annoying moments. Some of these moments are automated segments that limit your movement. Some of these moments are autoscrollers with (sometimes literally) no danger. And so many of them are repeated way too many times.
    • I can appreciate the increased complexity of the bosses, but so many of them are miserable. Bosses were never this series's strong suit but bosses in the previous games never instilled this desperate "just damage boost to get this over with" feeling in me. Marble Garden 2's boss as Tails is one of the most annoying ever, and damage boosting isn't even an option. Sandopolis 1's boss is a complete waste of a unique design. At the very least, Lava Reef 2's boss is a decent challenge for Sonic if you don't have immunity to fire.
    It's still a good game, but all the issues I've had with it over time only stick out more and more to me.
     
  8. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    I always thought Sonic 3's sprites were the best of the classic trilogy. They make Sonic more expressive and I always felt they added a perfect balance of cuteness and coolness. In Sonic 1 and 2's sprites, while still good IMO, he ALWAYS seems like he's pissed. Sonic 3 gives him more facial expressions: he's smirking when standing, becomes determined when running, looks genuinely freaked out balancing, and looks like he's screaming when falling.
     
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  9. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    This game is so bad I made 3.5 hours of video showing it: Part 1 Part 2

    In additon:
    - Cutscenes drag on for far too long, holding right isn't fun
    - There are a few "hold down to win" segments; while not as prevalent as Mania, it can still take you out of the game
    - Flying Battery lifts are even more boring than Spring Yard's
    - Abundance of bosses that you have to let damage themselves (CNZ1, FBZ1, FBZ2 miniboss, SZ1, LRZ2, DEZ2a, DDZ) compared with ZERO in Sonic 1 and 2
    - Abundance of reused bosses (MGZ1 is Mystic Cave's boss, FBZ2 miniboss is Wing Fortress' boss, the Sky Sanctuary boss fights are Green Hill, Metropolis, and S2 Death Egg's first boss fight respectively) and the game even reuses one of its own bosses (second phase of DEZ2 boss fight is LRZ1's boss)
    - The LRZ2 boss is literally an autoscroller
    - Music is a downgrade from the originals, especially with no Super Sonic music
    - This is the greatest game ever made and the flaws present remind me that there is no such thing as a perfect game, for a perfect game would be better than this game and no game is better than this game
     
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  10. Fadaway

    Fadaway

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    This boss rules. Just saying. Super easy, too.

    My biggest complaint against S3&K is probably an amalgamation of nitpicks.

    Sky Sanctuary sucks. It reuses old bosses and doesn't even emulate them well. It has clouds you can bounce on. I expect this in a Kirby or Mario game, but Sonic?!?!?!

    The non-corporeal ghosts in Sandopolis Zone are a decent answer to Mario's Boo ghosts, but it all involves a really annoying single stage gimmick. I'd have much rather seen them during the dark section of Carnival Night than in a desert level.
     
  11. Palas

    Palas

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    You know, I don't really disagree that the locations are less interesting in themselves. But since you can clearly see how you get from one place to the other and since the progression is so crystal clear, so much so that even the color palette follows suit from Sandopolis to Hidden Palace, I think it more than makes up for it. It really, really feels like an adventure.

    But I see this sort of start-and-stop, clear and distinct speed and platforming sections, a lot more in Sonic 3. It's so different that they go so far as to employ an endless loop in Ice Cap, which I don't recall being used anywhere else in the series. Maybe Sandopolis Act 2 has that? I don't really remember, but Sandopolis Act 2 is 100% intended to be slower and more dangerous, full of traps and sections in which you have to run against all odds -- and also the only stage where time over is a real danger. So I like the decisions made in Sandopolis.

    That's what I don't see in Sonic 3. In S&K, the dangers are very clear and varied -- in Lava Reef Act 1, it's being surrounded by fire, not being safe anywhere. In Sandopolis, it's being slowed down and asphyxiated. But in Sonic 3, all stages feel sort of... all-around? Launch Base is especially unremarkable, I guess, apart from the bird thing that comes in if you go through the alarm.
     
  12. TailChao

    TailChao

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    It's certainly the most technically ambitious of the original series.

    I like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it tries a bunch of new ideas and they don't necessarily work - but at least they were experimenting. There's a lot of nits to pick about the stage design, scripted sequences, or whatever in retrospect. However, I'd like to rewind back to when I got the game in the 1990s and was still a single-digiter.

    Buying a new game was a big deal, they were expensive. So a lot of us ended up with only Sonic 3 or only Sonic & Knuckles, and the latter was way more common. I got Sonic & Knuckles first and didn't get to play Sonic 3 until around a year later, nobody I knew owned it. I get that the whole lock-on gimmick was really cool, but it actually pissed most of us off.

    Once I finally got Sonic 3, it was fun - I liked alot of the stuff it tried. But it also felt much shorter than Sonic 2 and I got stuck in the stage geometry so often that I thought my cartridge was broken. After it was & Knuckles'd, yeah - the full adventure is great. But I do remember the playground consensus was that it felt like two half games, and Sonic 3 alone "didn't always work right".

    The bug with Tails dying in Ice Cap Zone because of a scroller botch is just utter garbage.
     
  13. Billy

    Billy

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  14. Gestalt

    Gestalt

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    I clearly remember that day when I first saw the Sonic & Knuckles boxart in a store. That silhouette looked so freaking hype. When I told my parents that I've seen "Sonic 3" and that it has a "red Sonic" on the cover (I even drew a picture of it) guess what happened.

    Right, I ended up getting Sonic 3. :rolleyes:

    xD
     
  15. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    The main issue with 3K comes from the fact it has some of the best and the worst stuff of all classics altogether, so, while it's the one I like the most, it's also the one where bad things really ask for bashing because they hinder the great thing they're in. Most of you already have said things I would say too, so I might repeat them or not, and I'm talking from memory, so I might leave something out:

    - Artwork is different; not bad, just different, that, along with the empty year between S2 and S3, made me feel it a style shift almost as big as everyone felt the one for Sonic Adventure was. That goes for music too: in the 90's, I wouldn't be able to tell Marble Garden and Mushroom Hill were composed by different people than Carnival Night or Launch Base, but I saw really clear those didn't try to mimic Nakamura's style.

    - Giant rings are too fat and have weird lighting compared to their surroundings. The ones in S1/CD had better artwork blended a lot better.

    - I don't like monkey dudes, they're a huge downgrade from coconuts and aren't fitting the general artwork well either. There are other badniks that made me feel similar things, but that's the one I can't ignore.

    - Automation infected the whole game, sometimes in somewhat hidden ways because younger me would keep running instead of testing out this fact. Those side ramps at the end of a loop, the corkscrew run in Lava Reef 1 and at the end of Sky Sanctuary... But the least subtle ones were a wide array of new booster pads and stealth-using springs. I can do a spindash if I need the extra speed, thanks.

    - I don't mind the longer levels most of the time, specially when each act of a zone feels different enough from the other, but this a game that makes you lose a lot of time when you're inexperienced, or use that size to put too big/long gimmicks (Iizuka's automation in Flying Battery takes a lot more time than the screwed waiting rooms, because, yes, those are also Iizuka's work). Carnival Night 2 granted me time overs regularly even when I was already experienced, at least until I found the shortcut by falling through the diagonal "candy bars".

    - Speaking of CNZ, the infamous barrel was an obstacle once, the day I found it for the first time and learned how to use it, but leaping from it without getting crushed was a regular danger.

    - Marble Garden's music is ok, but I don't think it fits the level, reminds me a bit of 2P Casino Night, the one that looked off to me when it was assigned to Oil Ocean in beta builds. Great in CNZ, weird in OOZ.

    - What sucks is not MGZ boss, it's the way Tails' flight is handled. Seriously, control-wise, Sonic Chaos wins this match.

    - Carnival Night has motion gimmicks all over the place. It's annoying because, quite often, either they lead you to nowhere at all, or they're unavoidable fun-killing moments.

    - I don't have anything against Mushroom Hill boss, but I do have against the trend of auto-run bosses it started. It works in MHZ because the boss is super easy and it was the first and only time back then, but fuck off Sonic Advance 2 and Heavy Gunner.

    - Flying Battery is cool, as long as you don't try to fight the automation that will make evident how little control you have in that level when moving fast.

    - People complaining about Labyrinth zone haven't paid too much attention to how similar Sandopolis is: just change running out of breathe with letting ghosts grow, and light switches with air bubbles. The poles that make you jump from the same wall on your feet are the worst, however: most of the time you get exactly the same result just by ignoring them and jumping down directly. The ones that jump from one wall to another at least give rings and have that funny swirling movement.

    - Something more about the ghosts: I tolerated them as a gimmick, but I really feared those ghosts the first time I arrived to that level, and finding such a Mario thing in a Sonic game really pissed me off. "Ghosts are for Mario" is a feeling I got back in SA2 and Heroes, but at least King Boom Boo made me laugh.

    - Sky Sanctuary, what for? The emeralds were down there in hidden palace, the artwork isn't that special, and the level itself doesn't have to much to offer aside from the cool cutscene of running around the pillar while it crumbles, cutscene slightly ruined by the fact Sonic jumps to one side of the screen instead of jumping into the dock of the death egg we see in the background. Sonic should have fallen down to the sea.

    - The missile spitters in Death Egg are obnoxious, specially when riding those moving platforms. More obnoxious even was how counter-intuitive was bouncing off of the master emerald when fighting the main boss, resulting in falling to the bottomless pit below.

    - Back in the day, it took me a while to figure out I had to move forward to catch up with Robotnik on the second part of Doomsday zone after not having to do it on the first part.

    - Who needs three bonus stages? Give me the only working one (glowing spheres) and don't make me lose my time with the slot machine one. I can accept the gumball machine to some extent because it at least gives shields away and was the first one implemented, so maybe they didn't know the electric pinball was a lot better.


    This post got too long, I'll do some "unbashing" later. Can't wait to bash Sonic Triple Trouble, though.
     
  16. Beltway

    Beltway

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    I'm going to use this to branch into a broader critique: a good amount of S3&K bosses I say fall into two pigeonholes of either being designed to waste time and/or are designed too similar to each other to the point of repetition. The aforementioned bosses that you can't damage directly I'd say fall into the former category, and I'd also lump in those which have small windows to damage in-between significant waiting periods. Bosses such as MHZ2 (all characters, but especially if you have to play as Tails), Sonic/Tails' CNZ2, and Knuckles' SSZ with Super Mecha Sonic I'd say are guilty of these lengthy waiting periods. The latter category meanwhile I feel is present with a good chunk of the minibosses, in which "giant floating machine that lob, pilot, or drop projectiles in your direction you have to dodge" sum up a good amount of them. Virtually all of Sonic 3's minibosses besides HCZ1 can be summed up as this, as well as MHZ1 and DEZ1.

    The above is in a noticeable contrast to the first three games (1/2/CD) in which I'd say the smaller amount of bosses allowed most of them to largely avoid these issues. Bosses in those games typically managed the balancing act of being thoroughly engaging (allowing multiple hits per cycle, or had an always-active cockpit you could damage with or without cheesing/taking hits) and being more diverse in fighting setups/strategies. With this in mind, I'd argue the approach to adding more boss fights with Sonic 3&K (as well as Mania continuing this approach, and doubling down on it in certain areas for the worse) is overall detrimental more than it was beneficial. If another Genesis Sonic game is made, I think they should go back to having one boss per zone (either at the end of Act 2 as in Sonic 2, or making it a third Act in the vein of Sonic CD, which gave you a small platforming challenge prior to the fight).
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2020
  17. Beltway

    Beltway

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    From the looks of things, I'd say Sonic 3&K is the preferred favorite within the Sonic community; but Sonic 2 is the game that gets the most love from the public and the press. Between being split into and marketed as two distinct games to meet certain deadlines (specifically, the McDonald's Happy Meal campaign for February 1994) and its cryptic background about its soundtrack compositions keeping it from being (as) re-released, Sonic 3 & Knuckles has had a much rougher time in leaving a lasting legacy in the mainstream compared to Sonic 2.

    (double post)
     
  18. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    This is, more or less, my assessment as well. But I've definitely seen a lot of varying opinions within the fanbase about Sonic 3 (this thread is an example I suppose).
     
  19. SuperSonicRider

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    Hm, well, I think IceCap is kind of a boring level? The music (both proto/PC & MD imo!) is great, but gameplay-wise, compared to other levels in the game, it feels just a little empty. Pacing-wise though, coming after a busier level like Carnival Night (or Flying Battery as was originally intended), I guess it makes sense to have one that's a bit more...chill.

    I also used to not like Marble Garden much for some reason but it's grown on me. I do think it's an issue that the Act 2 Boss does not really feel like it was designed for Tails.

    Aside from those points, a few minor things. The sprites for the player characters, as many people have said already, don't really do it for me. I don't hate it and I see what it was going for though. It certainly matches well enough with the environment art style! Also, I think it's a little silly that Tails didn't have a Chaos Emerald Super Form. Also also, I think Carnival Night and Flying Battery can feel a juuuust a bit too closed in at times. I think that's it, really + - aside from this game being cursed to never be officially released again  
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2020
  20. Fadaway

    Fadaway

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    I'd previously stated in the Sonic 1 thread that as a kid, Marble Zone and Labyrinth were my two fave levels from that game. I remember getting Sonic 3 as a kid and falling in love with Marble Garden Zone. For the aesthetic and sense of exploring this huge old ruins site. And the music was snazzy. I think I usually fell in love with the Zones most people hated for some reason. Having said that, however... Sandopolis is still a huge drag, even coming from me.
     
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