That’s fair. I’m just trying to frame it in the context of these tier lists and also answer why they’re not as remembered/highly regarded. Though most people here place it just under the classics or on par with Sonic 1 which is pretty reasonable IMO. The lack of ports probably contributes to lower awareness outside of Retro. Unless you’ve got a DS/GBA around or emulate, you’re out of luck. This pretty much precludes the fanbase that’s under 15 or so. They’re also old without the prestige of being the “classics,” so younger people will probably overlook them for that reason as well.
Yea, the lack of release for them on modern hardware along with Rush kind of guarantees they're going to remain obscure for the foreseeable future. But hey, if Mega Man Battle Network can get a collection, so can those games eventually.
For what it's worth: Advance 1 is a solid game and easily the best of the three; Advance 3 is fairly decent (and has the best special stages of the three); and Advance 2 has far too many bottomless pits, every stage's map can be summed up as \ , and has the unforgivable twin sins of a boss that can one hit KO you even if you have rings and special stages that you literally need GameFAQs guides to be able to reach. At least once you found a Chao in SAdv3 it STAYED collected.
Wow! You've gone wild Palas! Why have you ranked Sonic 06 higher than the Adventure games? And Secret Rings higher than base Sonic 3? Madness! This is certainly a hot take!
The one I put in the OP was already old when I made this thread, so I decided to re evaluate mine. Not that much has changed really, but I feel like I hate Forces and Episode 2 significantly less after replaying them. I also had an obsessive interest with Riders the entire summer and played it constantly like blue sphere guy or something, so I've grown much more of a fondness for it than when I made my original one. I just wish it had more content like extra race tracks. I still have no idea where to put 06, though. I put it in F tier out of obligation, but I have quite the soft spot for it, yet I can't really bring myself to put it up there along with the actually good games. Maybe that game should go in it's own tier I also tried to play Advance 2, but I honestly quit the game at the Sky Canyon boss just because it made me want to tear my hair out. Maybe it's unfair to rank a game before beating it but honestly I don't think finishing it will change my opinion in the slightest. It's just frustrating.
Honestly I think this is about as pertinent a criticism as saying every Sonic 2 map can be summed up as —. Like sure, all of the levels have a general downward gradient to them, and some lean into this more than others (particularly the first two zones, Leaf Forest and Hot Crater), but Advance 2 still had plenty of verticality and I’d say the game never feels like Diagonal Line Zone. Furthermore, the gradient is in service of the game’s mechanics of building up to the mach state and then maintaining that. Even with all of this, Sky Canyon and Techno Base (with the exception of Techno Base Act 1) flip the concept on its head and have you climb upwards through the level to get to the goal. I wholeheartedly concede that Advance 2 has some flaws but I wouldn’t class this as one of them. Speaking of those flaws, of course we now have the reverse assembly or decompilation or whatever the technical term is for Advance 2, so hopefully someone with more coding knowledge than myself comes out with a definitive edition of Advance 2 that rectifies those issues. I know someone has already released a mod that lowers the special stage requirement from needing to grab all the SP Rings in a level to just three of them.
Oh, no, I didn't really rank them like that. I just put them on the list as I saw them on the pool below, but no particular order within the rank was intended! (Still I DO rank Sonic 06 higher than SA2. I find it more exciting, I guess)
Maybe I shouldn't have. I don't like it nearly as much as Sonic 3, of course, or even Sonic Advance for that matter. But I think it's a lot smarter than most 3D Sonic games in handling multiple ways to experience speed. There's a tension/release pattern in using the two special moves whose names I'll never remember (let's name them Fast Mode and Slow Mode) that's very satisfying, something a little like going from a platforming-heavy section to a fast lane in Sonic 3 and that doesn't really happen in boost games. The hazards are reasonably dangerous in Secret Rings and having to maneuver Sonic around them with Slow Mode, or time your bar correctly to use Fast Mode through it, is a good way to create the feeling that a stage is more than a collection of set pieces.
Honestly, I'd prefer it wasn't an autorunner, that game has the record of the Sonic game I stopped playing the quickest (mere seconds), and I hate it because of that "feature".
