That's pretty interesting, I didn't know that. It's kinda nice to get explanations about things like that. Clearly I need to spend more time reading things on the wiki =P
The stage bored me a lot when I was younger but as I've gotten older I've started to like the zone more - it still takes forever and the ghosts are more annoying than anything else, but I find it a lot more enjoyable than I used to. It's certainly not the hardest act. Death Egg 2 has that title.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z1o6_fqGJE That's where I found that out. Apparently, the checkpoints acts as an event flag to automatically summon the ghosts. The more you know!
I remember constantly getting Time Over on this level when I was younger. It's one of the more complex level layouts that really confused me (and I'm not talking about that sand slide. That just seems like Labyrinth Act 3's gimmick but a bit different) and I'm glad that it did as I got to appreciate the solid work that had been put into it. I distinctively remember hitting the boss to make his shielding fly off, thinking he was taking damage and not understanding why I kept getting crushed against the far left wall. That took me a long time to figure out.
Of noteworthy mention is the added difficulty of the act when playing as Knuckles. For starters, the ghosts are already out and about at the beginning of the level, and the level starts in complete darkness, giving the ghosts a free shot at an inexperienced player. The ghosts themselves were slow, predictable, and not much of an actual threat, yet they gave players something to fear while solving puzzles and negotiating obstacles as stated above. On top of that, the Knuckles-specific routes involve a lot more exploring and puzzle solving. Near the very end, there is a timed switch that closes at a very fast rate. The first time around, you wonder, "How do I get from holding the switch to the other side of the gate quickly enough?" You scrounge around trying to find a way out or an alternate route, and you see some block that will fill the level with sand. You hit the block and realize that the bottom half of the room is filled with sand, and realize the pushable block is still there. This is when you push the block into the switch until the switch is held open.Although not too difficult in retrospect, the switch puzzle as Knuckles really added difficulty by throwing a change-up. I suppose the many crushing hazards from moving platforms (many of which also had spikes) also added to that feeling of pressure. To summarize the Sandopolis experience... -Ghosts to distract you -Puzzles to eat up the clock -Rising Sand to crush you -Moving platforms to crush you -Timed switches to pressure you
The only thing hard about this level is the length and the amount of time they give you to beat it, otherwise it's not any harder than the other zones. You have to haul ass to finish or you're going to time over, you don't have any time to explore. I guess getting a time over isn't that bad, just a loss of life and restarting at the next checkpoint. By this point I usually have like 50 lives anyway.
Not a difficult zone... in fact everything in Sonic 3 and Knuckles is a piece of piss. It's just too fucking long, and not enjoyable at all. After clearing the rising sand section, who else forgets that you still actually have a fuckton of level left to play? The best thing about Sandopolis 2 is that it's followed up by probably my favourite act in the Sonic and Knuckles half (Lava Reef 1).
When I first started playing S3&K when I was about 9, Act 2 always drove me crazy. I too got caught on the endless scrolling slides for a while (I was not particularly bright) and the sliding doors frustrated me to no end. I don't recall the ghosts ever being all that difficult for me, but they did their job of making me scramble for the next torch handle. Not really out of fear, but just out of not wanting to lose rings. Okay, maybe a bit of fear then.... In actuality, Sandopolis did a good job of being a more slow-paced level after FBZ. Every time I got through to LRZ, I felt the tension ramp up that I was starting to get towards the end of the game, and SZ's slow pace I think really drove home that feeling. Not my favorite level by any stretch, but an important one.
