The next two levels are piss easy, followed by "Hakuna Matata", a wide-awake nightmare of waterfalls and logs that vanish as you ride them.
I actually forgot about that horseshit. Shit taught me what anxiety was as a small child.
His speed and variety made him popular with the masses. But there's a reason why you don't introduce new obstacles in each level and then forget about them.
Also didn't help that jumping on the barrels kinda works which tricks you into thinking your timing is just shit
It wouldn't have been nearly as bad if the dialogue options weren't also changed so radically as well. The way you could improve dialogue checks in ME1 meant that you could roleplay with that system (I.e put points in charm and pick renegade story options abd vice versa to create a mix between a smooth talking douche and a gruff asshole out to save people). Tying your dialogue checks directly to the meter fucked things up however to where you have to go full renegade or paragon to get all the available choices. So if you want Shepard to not just be an asshole but to be an effective one, you had to go full asshole in ME2 and 3.
Not really. I replayed the originals when the remake was announced and in 2 you can go half and half and get most checks. I believe the only check I couldn't make in 2 was the renegade option in the Legion vs Tali argument (Paragon was available as that check is a bit easier).
It's worse in Knuckles' version. Since it (likely) takes place after Sonic's, the ghosts are already out when the level starts, plus the level is pitch black at the start. So if you aren't paying attention the ghosts will IMMEDIATELY swoop in and hit Knuckles when he has no rings.
My bad. I forgot about ME3. I feel my point still stands on ME2 though, if only on New Game + where I'm pretty sure the checks would require more points.
There is a great bit in the Super Bunnyhop video where he rejoices at playing Knuckles. "Suddenly I look like I know what I'm doing! Even though I don't know what I'm doing and actually play worse!" *dies*
Actually this is where ME2's morality system turns into a fucking mess.
Honestly, you'd also need a writing team that is able to take both the "soft" and "hard" routes all the way to their beneficial and detrimental ends. "benevolent soft" and "malevolent hard" are the easy ones, really - you have your industry-standard all-loving hero and baby-eating villain, things that people tend to understand with no prompting, but it's a lot harder to write those the other way around. Jade Empire tried to do something like that, admitting in-setting that the "good" and "bad" philosophies aren't always so clear cut (an Open Palm practitioner might let a magistrate continue to treat his servants like chattel slaves because it's not in their station to question their betters, while a Closed Fist practitioner may be willing to help a merchant being ambushed on the open road because there's no way an untrained peon can fight off an entire gang of thugs), but they couldn't deliver on that in the game itself, and fell into the classic light/dark dichotomy.
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Act 2 (or Sandopolis, in general) has to be one of those cases where a casual player just Time Overs because the stage is just too damn long, especially if they miss that jump on the sand slide. And speaking of that, I had a Sonic Collection game for the DS as a kid. I played S&K, and by the time I got to Sandopolis, Act 2, I felt as if the game was bricked, on some DSP "nothing I can do" mentality.
