Does Sonic really work as a game?

[Sega DogTagz]

Advance 3's extra trick moves also take a hit when you compare it to the next game in there series, Sonic Rush. There, not only was tricking tied into a new mechanic, but the air moves you can perform vastly impact how you can traverse a level. The game constantly rewards you for utilizing the extra moves, with secret paths, extra items (and full blown shortcuts once you know the stage layout) and practically begs you to use them every time you get launched into the air.

 

Where in SA3 they felt underutilized, they really picked up the slack in Rush.

[Iko]

3 hours ago, StaticMania said:

It really does control a lot better doesn't it?

Now that accel isn't tied to rings, Sonic speeds up normally. And all B moves don't completely kill your momentum, while still remaining useless.

Actually, Sonic speeds up too fast and in an awkward way... it's not really good the way he (and the other characters) gain speed... also it seems like they gain a speed boost from jumping. It feels very unprecise and unpredictable/confusing; Advance 2 felt a lot more natural.

1 hour ago, Tarnish said:

I never really understood the point of 90% of the moves in the Advance games.

All of the boost attacks are useless since the speed is so ludicrous you can barely react to anything, even if you know what's ahead (but that already requires memorization). The idle attacks usually cause more trouble than good they do. They're definitely useless against bosses for Sonic and Knuckles cause they just propel the character straight into the boss, resulting in taking damage, or make the character fall down if the enemy is close to a ledge. I guess it's decent for Amy and Tails, but for Cream you can just spam that Chao attack with zero skill required.

The 'trick' moves can easily screw you over if you have no prior knowledge of the stage layout, so again, memorization is a must, and even then I find it's not guaranteed to make the character reach what they're obviously supposed to reach.

I barely found any use for most of the tag-actions in Advance 3, usually only very few are actually useful to get to a place you need to get to, or very few attacks are practical. Not being able to roll when you have Amy as a partner..why the hell would you choose that nonsense?

Advance 3 in particular I feel they incorporated the moves first, then just never bothered to design stages/enemies/bosses in a way that actually takes advantage of those moves, but just left the moves in the game anyway.

There are some useless moves in the game, offcurse, but not all of them are bad. Sonic's basic attack can be exploited in several ways and in some situations it can even be useful for speedrunning.

The tricks aren't meant to be used to propel you into a blind jumps, it's actually the opposite: they are meant as a backup move to let you gain more air time; the most useful is the up trick. As you get more skilled, forward trick can also be useful (for Sonic at least) because it's an attack. To get an idea of how to use the tricks, if you know Hollow Knight, there is a similar move (it's actually a double jump) that's used in a similar way in a specific zone:

Spoiler

the Abyss

That place is so big and open that you can't see all the platforms, and that double jump is used as an exploration tool to let you see platforms that you can't see in your actual screen. You do a blind jump, then you realize that there's nothing and you want to go back to your previous platform, or you see a new platform but you have the wrong trajectory and you would miss it: double jump. It's not a typical use, because in most games with double jump, you can clearly see all the platforms before doing the jump.

In Sonic Advance 2 (and Rush) the tricks are meant to adjuste your trajectory when you are going too fast and you can't see in front of you. There are some places, especially Egg Utopia but also Sky Canyon, where you are launched up and you see some rails or platforms, then they go off screen because you have been launched too up or you went too fast and you missed them: with the tricks you have a chance to go back to those platforms/rails without falling. It's reflex based and may be considered cheap for some people, but IMO it's a clever use of the mechanics to overcome the problem of the very limited visibility (due to the small screen), that otherwise you should fix by adding advices with indicators and/or put more automation everywhere.

The last thing you say about Advance 3, I agree with it and it's one of the reasons why it's my least favorite, also the reason why I don't like Knuckles Chaotix (that IMO has the same issue).

 

1 hour ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Advance 3's extra trick moves also take a hit when you compare it to the next game in there series, Sonic Rush. There, not only was tricking tied into a new mechanic, but the air moves you can perform vastly impact how you can traverse a level. The game constantly rewards you for utilizing the extra moves, with secret paths, extra items (and full blown shortcuts once you know the stage layout) and practically begs you to use them every time you get launched into the air.

 

Where in SA3 they felt underutilized, they really picked up the slack in Rush.

Do you mean the tag actions? Because Advance 3 does not have the tricks (unless you pair Sonic with Tails)... The tricks are from Advance 2 and IMO in rush they simplified them in favor of the other type of tricks that has the only purpose of charging up your boost gauge. In Rush the up trick mostly serves as a way to gain more air time so you can charge more boost by spamming the other tricks. It's not bad, but IMO it's a less interesting way to use them. There's not much difference between up and forward tricks from Rush and Advance 2, the only difference between the trick system in the two games is that in Rush you can't do the backflip trick and the down bounce thing (the backflip was cool and even useful in some rare occasions, but the down bounce was bad implemented so I don't miss it... well if it controlled like the bubble shield maybe...).