Recently I've played through all four games as Amy and they're just as fun as ever. She's a lot of fun to play as actually! Her abilities are quirky and can indeed be quite useful in various situations. She's sort of like a simultaneously nerfed and buffed version of Sonic and I had an awesome time playing as her. Overall I like this collection. It's not perfect but I've pretty much gotten over its issues by now I guess. :p
Continued playing yesterday: Was I just unlucky, or is Scrap Brain Act 3 *really* stingy with air bubbles? Lost so many lives because they just wouldn't spawn. It's been a long time since I played Sonic CD, but is it normal that rolling doesn't have a sound effect like the other games? Amy in Palmtree Panic Act 1 doesn't grab Sonic anymore. Instead, every time she normally would grab him it's as if Sonic jumped to get her off him. I suspect this was done to not play her voice clip. But in Stardust Speedway Act 3, she *has* to grab Sonic to finish the act, and her voice clip isn't played anyway.
I believe the answer is yes and yes to the first two questions. I’ve played SB3 without the shortcut only 1 or 2 times though, so I may not be the best person to answer. As for the rolling sound effect, I’m 99% sure that never existed. To your third point, I’m not sure why it’s like that.
Going back to Amy: After playing her non-stop for the last week, I’m personally not impressed. My cousin’s daughters (aged 6-8) and my adult sister put it best: Tails can fly, Knuckles can glide and Amy is pink Sonic. Other than the cute sprites, there’s nothing to differentiate her. Like I said before, they should have let her smash things with her hammer. Smashing stuff is fun. She could get random power ups from smashing (like Knuckles digging in SA2). Or perhaps the smashed objects could lead to pocket rooms (like the one’s Sonic can find when he pushes spikes in Flying Battery). These would make her distinct and feel less like a Sonic skin. Amy’s not even a good beginner character. My cousin’s daughters found Tails more useful, as he can fly over spikes and evade danger. They found Amy’s hammer rush too hard to pull off. And Amy’s hammer spin was too inconsistent to be useful (as sometimes it protects her from damage and other times it doesn’t, so they ended up not using it). If Amy could smash spikes, that would be more useful to beginners. And if they gave her hammer a long reach, then beginners could take on badnicks without getting too close, which again would be more useful. I’m not sure who Amy is for. She’s too bland for the fans and not useful for beginners. The lack of thought put into her is disappointing, especially given the price of the DLC.
Those of you who keep dismissing Amy's benefits are really missing how much easier she makes numerous boss fights, and how her skills nicely slip into alternate speedrun style territory. It's a subtle thing, but it's absolutely there. There's a lot of subtle benefits to this playstyle. I agree that a double jump might have been warranted like we'd see in Superstars, and if you want to consider her implementation there superior? Cool, go for it... but then again... that pushes her into "better sonic" territory and I can understand why they'd hesitate. She's got better hitboxes and less vulnerability in numerous ways that Sonic does not, while not as easily achieving his top speed. That's a sharp contrast. Essentially a deadlier, slightly slower Sonic. She is balanced precisely because she is superior in some aspects, weaker in some, but still based on his playstyle. This nicely mirrors how Shadow was essentially a variation of Sonic in the later games.
Amy has actually become my preferred way to play Sonic 2, because her increased range is actually very useful for dealing with the game's more annoying enemies and bosses which makes the pace of the game much faster, and her having the drop dash in addition to this makes her have a nice incentive to pick her over the others. I would ultimately like it if she has something else though, some other quirk to differentiate her movement.
I get those points, but the bigger problem isn't that she's worse or better Sonic but more she is Sonic in general. I feel like at the very least giving her a variation of Drop Dash made her a bit too similar. Her controls are too identical to Sonic thus don't feel like a fresh experience in the same way as Tails and Knuckles. Sure it has slightly different effects but it's still activated the same way and for the same basic usage. I feel like a better trade off would be to make the hammer run her spin dash animation, and instead of the Drop Dash-lite, give her one of her Advance attacks like the hammer high jump (which would be a much more unique vertical ability over Double Jump that's ALSO replicating some takes on Sonic). The hammer spin I do agree is a neat enough attack, and I like the trade off of invincibility for long term bigger radius, though I think it's a shame they didn't take advantage of it more, using the extra hit radius to let Amy hit or activate more objects. Not adding the ability to slam onto the corners of springs or buttons like in Advance feels like willfully denying Amy a really cool exploit only she ever had for example. And even then, again it is activated the same way as Sonic's insta shield. Both of Amy's abilities are just variations of Sonic's. I can see ONE of them but let her have something that feels truly different.
I am aware of those benefits, but for me, they aren’t enough for Amy to be anything more than “pink Sonic”. In my play through, there was no sharp contrast. I genuinely fail to see how making better use of the hammer (e.g. to smash spikes and other objects as I outlined eariler) would make Amy any more unbalanced than Tails/Knuckles are in relation to Sonic. If balance was the issue, they should have not given Amy a variation of the drop dash (as that’s a move that sets Sonic apart from the rest). They could have also fiddled more with her speed like they did with Knuckles to offset her having better hammer moves (and in my experience, beginners find Knuckles’ speed easier to get to grips with). Obviously, each to their own. If people enjoy the implementation of Amy, then more power to them. I also don’t know anything about game development, so it could be that making better use of the hammer was unfeasible, which would be fair enough. However, her hammer just seemed like an easy way to create a fresh experience for vets and a more accommodating experience for beginners. The fact that they didn’t seize the potential of it stings (which seems to be the theme of Origins).
It's hard to make Amy stand out because the original trio is known for being difficult modes. Tails is easy mode, Sonic is normal mode and Knuckles is hard mode. If you make Amy a hard mode, it's bad for beginners who want to play with her. If she's easy mode, long time fans who waited so long to play with her would probably get bored. If she's normal mode, she's just Sonic. And if you make her very different, as in Advance, many will hate playing with her because she is so different.
Knuckles is exactly the same speed as Sonic and Tails... Honestly, just replace her drop dash with a hammer bounce or something. You only need a minor change to set her apart from Sonic, but as it is Sonic has two moves that Tails and Knuckles don't (the Insta-Shield and the Drop Dash) and Amy "unique" moves are just weird half-gimped versions of those very same moves.
The problem is that Knuckles and Tails are based upon movement. Knuckles goes horizontal and vertical when climbing. Tails goes vertical. Team Mania understood this philosophy. Mighty goes vertically down. Ray goes diagonal which is why he is so unique. Even Knuckles Chaotix understood this basic design principle. Vector goes horizontal and vertical when climbing, Charmy can go horizontal and vertical when flying (lol). But for some reason Amy in Origins has no movement options other than a weird nerfed drop dash.
Amy in Origins does have some movement options, but they’re counterintuitive to what one would expect from Sonic. Quick turn arounds on a dime don’t really fit in anywhere, not sure if anyone has found any useful tech related to that yet. I wouldn’t say Chaotix really knew what it was doing in that regard though, the movesets are all created out of necessity because the levels are all so damn tall, so they all need a vertical movement move and a horizontal movement move, and both are just supplements for the band tech of tossing your partner up and down and all around. The only characters who don’t follow this rule are heavy and bomb, but those characters were designed to suck (which is very weird. You scrap Tails and add these two fuckers? Should’ve revived Ray back then instead, or lol add Amy who was in the sound test anyway)
I think when Josh/Geek Critique was streaming Sonic CD, he pointed out that Amy's quick turnaround movement options was useful in CD for gaming the time travel mechanic, for what that's worth.
Oh right, whoops! Maybe "handling" is better a choice of words. He seems to handle differently from Sonic.
Wow, mind blown. I know lots of players guides, wikis and other sources say Knuckles is slower. I guess that must have stuck in my mind and wrongly influenced my perception. It’s definitely interesting to learn that they are programmed to handle the same.
The only time I recall any difference in movement speed is hyper sonic, he specifically has faster acceleration than everyone else, including everyone else's super forms, maybe even Super Sonic himself. I know because I used to make a trick out of racing super mecha sonic back and forth on the screen in Knuckles Sky Sanctuary boss when playing with debug mode, and Hyper Sonic was the ONLY form that could stay synced up with Mecha's top speed. Super Knuckles and Tails could not run side by side with super Mecha sonic, hyper sonic could. (Wish I could get a gif recording of this, but it's a pain in the butt to set this trick up)
Maybe knuckles just feels slower because of his jump height, somewhat slow climbing, and initial slower glide speed? He’s as fast as Sonic but his gameplay is slower if that makes sense.
Again, are we sure they all have the same rate of acceleration (NOT final top speed)? I haven't looked at the code, but I believe that's where differences would exist, if any.
There are no differences. Never have been. The characters are identical, save for their special jump actions.
