How to make enemies a threat again

[Diogenes]

In Sonic Heroes, the Health Bars were incentive to use Knuckles more, or level up your characters. I always level up tails to level 2 first before I even think of the others, because this attack are so weak without it.

There are better ways to get the player to use Power characters. They're better against groups of enemies, for one; even if Egg Pawns took one hit each, that's still one homing attack per Pawn, while a power character could use an area attack to take out several at once. They could also have enemies that simply can't be damaged by Speed or Flight characters, kind of like the green turtle robots; Speed and Flight characters can't hurt them without flipping them first, but Power characters can punch right through them. And there was no reason to give basic flying enemies 3 HP; the fact that they're flying and the Power characters can't aim up means you aren't going to be using the latter on the former.

Also the level up system was dumb and shouldn't have been there in the first place. At least not the way they went about it.

In Shadow the hedgehog they're justified because they encourge you to use the guns more. Would unlocking the Shadow rilfe be so rewarding if one hit just killed everything anyway?

Rewards shouldn't be predicated on relieving suffering, because that implies you have to suffer until you get that reward. Anyway I don't really have a problem with the health bars in ShtH as far as weapons are concerned; as long as you have a decent weapon, they tend to go down fairly quick anyway. It's the pitifully weak melee attacks that are a problem, so if you don't have a weapon or for some reason choose not to use them you can barely even fight.

[Aero]

Dark Gaia + Time Eater + Nega Wisp Armor + Exception combined.

That's a real threat right there.

Wait, this is about regular enemies?

[The Weeb with No Name]

Have them try to kill Sonic when he's sleeping or something.