So I finally got around to this one, and... it's an odd game, in that it's certainly a bad game, but not in the way Sonic games frequently are. IE, the issues of this game are almost entirely conceptual, whereas technically it's actually pretty competent. Like, it looks fine, runs fine, and I didn't really run into glitches. (Though it's worth mentioning that the cutscenes (which are just the WiiU ones) are really, really compressed and poor quality. Like, I'm pretty sure the 3DS can do better than that...)
All that said... the game just doesn't seem to grasp the concept of "fun" very well, in that its just full of bad ideas and concepts. Like, you've got plenty of areas where you're gated by having to destroy enemies, usually requiring the secondary kick thing followed by slow waiting for a full charge multiple times. Or the "puzzles" like having to slowly roll crap onto switches, or across pointless bridges tilting at 90 degree angles a few times. Or the stage which is largely composed of sandslides that just push you along a simple "maze" that keeps warping you back when you go the wrong way.
And then there's the wisps, and... these are even worse than the already meh implementation in the WiiU game. Just very weakly designed, and often using dicey controls. Speaking of which, the controls are a big frustration in general, for two big reasons. First off, the homing is WAY too overeager, often sending you veering off in weird directions after something vaguely nearby, which can include enemies with spikes and crap, and this is where 95% of my deaths in this game came from, I'd hazard. Also, this includes the NSMB style "you died too much" cheat thing, which I tried to avoid but the game forced me to awkwardly zoom back for it (sometimes after I was clearly heading towards ye olde "enemy bridge", leaving those one enemy short and me back at the start). You CAN turn that back off at least, but it's still a definite hassle. And then the other issue? The game seems determined to only use two face buttons (meaning it double maps commands to two face buttons a piece)... causing it to put the secondary attack on the same button(s) as bounce. And the game simply doesn't contextually shift anywhere near as well as it should, frequently causing me to awkwardly bounce in front of big old enemies that had a clear lock-on cursor on them.
Also, the bosses are just... really freaking crappily designed, and feel awful. And then the 7th world levels are entirely refights with them. Oh, and they also kind of awkwardly just kind of fly away at the end of their fights, and thanks to lazy reuse of voice samples from the WiiU game, what they're saying frequently doesn't seem to sync up with what's going on properly. I think the real clincher is looking at the final boss itself, which somehow takes the already bland WiiU one and somehow makes it even more pathetic.
Oh, and I can't go through this without talking about the special stages. I had heard about them being bad before going in, and to be fair, they're actually not as bad as a lot of the crap Sonic games have peddled out before for such things (primarily outside of Sonic 1- 3), but... Well, they use the gyro sensor in the 3DS, and it's cranked up to such a degree that you really do have to be in a position to rotate a full 360 degrees, plus up and down a decent bit. AKA I had to look like an idiot and stand up and start swinging my 3DS all about. Fortunately I at least had the privacy of my own home to do this, but it... kind of seems like a real, real bad fit for a portable game.
In theory I could do the "hard mode" levels, but what I played didn't really leave me desiring more. Same goes for finding all the red rings (which feel like a bad fit with a lot of the 2D levels, btw, with their maze-like quality and overly fast speed).
tldr: This is definitely a bad game, but almost entirely in terms of poor design rather than execution. Which is kind of weird as far as bad Sonic games go.
Also, I've played through most of the Sonic series by now, so links below to my previous threads:
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Adventure 2
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic Heroes
Sonic 06
Sonic and the Secret Rings
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic 4: Episode 1
Sonic 4: Episode 2
Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear
Sonic 2 Game Gear
Sonic Chaos
Sonic Blast
Sonic Labyrinth
Tails Adventure
Tails' Sky Patrol
Sonic Spinball Game Gear
Sonic 3D Blast
Sonic Spinball Genesis
Sonic CD
Sonic Unleashed Wii
Sonic Unleashed HD
Sonic Colors DS
Sonic Generations 3DS
Sonic the Hedgehog (3D Classics)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (3D Classics)
All that said... the game just doesn't seem to grasp the concept of "fun" very well, in that its just full of bad ideas and concepts. Like, you've got plenty of areas where you're gated by having to destroy enemies, usually requiring the secondary kick thing followed by slow waiting for a full charge multiple times. Or the "puzzles" like having to slowly roll crap onto switches, or across pointless bridges tilting at 90 degree angles a few times. Or the stage which is largely composed of sandslides that just push you along a simple "maze" that keeps warping you back when you go the wrong way.
And then there's the wisps, and... these are even worse than the already meh implementation in the WiiU game. Just very weakly designed, and often using dicey controls. Speaking of which, the controls are a big frustration in general, for two big reasons. First off, the homing is WAY too overeager, often sending you veering off in weird directions after something vaguely nearby, which can include enemies with spikes and crap, and this is where 95% of my deaths in this game came from, I'd hazard. Also, this includes the NSMB style "you died too much" cheat thing, which I tried to avoid but the game forced me to awkwardly zoom back for it (sometimes after I was clearly heading towards ye olde "enemy bridge", leaving those one enemy short and me back at the start). You CAN turn that back off at least, but it's still a definite hassle. And then the other issue? The game seems determined to only use two face buttons (meaning it double maps commands to two face buttons a piece)... causing it to put the secondary attack on the same button(s) as bounce. And the game simply doesn't contextually shift anywhere near as well as it should, frequently causing me to awkwardly bounce in front of big old enemies that had a clear lock-on cursor on them.
Also, the bosses are just... really freaking crappily designed, and feel awful. And then the 7th world levels are entirely refights with them. Oh, and they also kind of awkwardly just kind of fly away at the end of their fights, and thanks to lazy reuse of voice samples from the WiiU game, what they're saying frequently doesn't seem to sync up with what's going on properly. I think the real clincher is looking at the final boss itself, which somehow takes the already bland WiiU one and somehow makes it even more pathetic.
Oh, and I can't go through this without talking about the special stages. I had heard about them being bad before going in, and to be fair, they're actually not as bad as a lot of the crap Sonic games have peddled out before for such things (primarily outside of Sonic 1- 3), but... Well, they use the gyro sensor in the 3DS, and it's cranked up to such a degree that you really do have to be in a position to rotate a full 360 degrees, plus up and down a decent bit. AKA I had to look like an idiot and stand up and start swinging my 3DS all about. Fortunately I at least had the privacy of my own home to do this, but it... kind of seems like a real, real bad fit for a portable game.
In theory I could do the "hard mode" levels, but what I played didn't really leave me desiring more. Same goes for finding all the red rings (which feel like a bad fit with a lot of the 2D levels, btw, with their maze-like quality and overly fast speed).
tldr: This is definitely a bad game, but almost entirely in terms of poor design rather than execution. Which is kind of weird as far as bad Sonic games go.
Also, I've played through most of the Sonic series by now, so links below to my previous threads:
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Adventure 2
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic Heroes
Sonic 06
Sonic and the Secret Rings
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic 4: Episode 1
Sonic 4: Episode 2
Sonic the Hedgehog Game Gear
Sonic 2 Game Gear
Sonic Chaos
Sonic Blast
Sonic Labyrinth
Tails Adventure
Tails' Sky Patrol
Sonic Spinball Game Gear
Sonic 3D Blast
Sonic Spinball Genesis
Sonic CD
Sonic Unleashed Wii
Sonic Unleashed HD
Sonic Colors DS
Sonic Generations 3DS
Sonic the Hedgehog (3D Classics)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (3D Classics)