Clewis

I thought it was pretty neat. It gave it more variety and a strategic use I'll give it that. I wouldn't mind seeing it return.

I thought it was nice to lock on multiple targets. I don't have a problem with Lost World homing attack, but just personally would take manually hitting all enemies since I'm more used to that.

Honestly I never found the homing attack fun, it always seemed to kill all your momentum when you used it. I was hoping lost world would fix it with the homing chain, but it still wasn't any fun.

Each to their own, I guess. I found it very pace-breaking to have to constantly hang in the air so that I could lock on to a group of enemies. And whenever you didn't wait around to destroy them all at once, choosing to attack them individually would take up even more time.

It's such an odd change to a mechanic that (for the most part) already worked in the first place. I actually found it satisfying to use during the auto-run segments where the lock-on would occur automatically, why wasn't it implemented like that in the rest of the game? 

I'll be the one that yes, but like many a concept in LW it's execution was shakey and wasn't handle quite right. it's the same with the kick attack in the Wii U version.

The homing attack in LW worked like a glorified Light Speed attack chaining multiple enemies in succession. The problem was that it has a weird "stale time" with the charging aspect towards it. You would often find yourself halting a few brief moments against an enemy type that took more then one hit with it to  which while I found this to be fine for boss battles, it was a pace breaker for the main levels when the game demanded you need to use it.

And like many variations of the HA it sent Sonic in an set upward arc rather then carrying any given inertia that Sonic had when hitting a target even while homing in to it. In "theory" i'd say you could make it work better by adding more "flexiblity" to it, allowing Sonic to cancel out the action of targeting enemy while still keeping control and gaining momentum with more succesive uses of it. Being able to seamlessly keep the flow up by controlling that variable would complement the given design behind it.

But that's just in theory, a̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶o̶r̶y̶ so I digress.

I'm not a fan of it either although it's more for a different reason.

The homing attack already makes platforming in Sonic games trivially easy since you can just hit almost anything (enemies, monitors, springs, you name it) from a yard's distance just by spamming the attack button, and heavily automating the game (don't get me started on HA chains). Yet someone thought that's not easy enough and decided the move should now allow Sonic to eat through entire groups/rows of enemies. It even removes the one playful element you could do with it (chaining enemies) since by locking onto multiple enemies, it does that for you already.

Though really, I just can't stand the HA move at this point, especially so with how it helped overwrite 2D Sonic gameplay. Absolutely glad it was nowhere near Mania (Megamix is a perfect example of how even with proper classic Sonic physics/gameplay, the HA can completely change the game focus) but I still hope to see a 3D attempt with Sonic that completely kicks the move to the curb. Absolutely sick of the notion that it's somehow necessary to even make a 3D Sonic platforming game in the first place. Go play the first Adventure without using it, the game shockingly doesn't fall apart.

My take is that the light speed attack-ish maneveur was neat, and I think making it so you have to aim a bit beforehand is a fair compromise considering it's pretty OP otherwise. Basically I would've gone a step further and made it harder to pull off, maybe have you need to charge it up like...well, again, the light speed attack. (I do agree the homing attack is slow when only targeting one enemy though, not sure why that was a thing.)

On the other hand, the "charge up the targets on a single enemy / boss just so you can deal damage at all" thing wasn't necessary at all.

I didn't like it much either if only just because of how automated it was, I always preferred pressing each HA in succession rather than just doing it once and then having the whole chain done for me. I will say I did like the kick attack as a secondary option to it though I feel like the execution was never there to make it work well in conjunction (among other things in the game).

I had high hopes for it when I saw how the attack seemed to arc off of the enemy afterwards, almost as if it kept some form of momentum to it

At the end of the day it's just a massive tease that ticks me off though, tbh. Barely travels a foot forward in the first place...

Fuck it, just put all the Taxman remasters into a bundle and release them together ala Gems Collection, then throw S3&K on top of it. For how long we've been waiting for non-mobile ports it'd be a hell of a lot better than releasing them separately at this rate.

I really like it in concept, for a game that's going for what Forces was going for but... it didn't amount to anything.  It should be coupled with actual visible stuff for additional storytelling that can happen in-gameplay, but it's just used to imply a story bigger than what you're doing on the cheap.  Because none of it ever relates to you, it's completely forgettable.

An example of how it could've been done better - you go to Space Port to investigate what Eggman's up to at that particular area, very basic pre-level talk.  You shortly get a vista view of a ton of spaceships in the background, as the radio chatter comments upon this discovery, and instructs you to continue searching the base.  Shortly after is a crackled transmission that sounds like Sonic, which HQ determines to be from outer space.  Shortly after this, Vector announces a change of plan, we're taking one of those rockets while the going is good.  You stop going the way you were headed and leap onto a path that's heading into the background, towards those shuttles you saw earlier, and the rest is history.  Obviously this all occurs at pre-determined points still, but it's just... more involved.

As is, all the "in-level narratives" just talk about what the other characters are doing, and most issues they have are solved just before the end of the stage, which usually comes off as very jarring considering the stages are 2 minutes long lol.