Immediately, I was ready to say Mania was flat out better than the older games. After a few playthroughs, I kind of prefer S&K's approach to level design. It seems like Mania sets the baseline path as the middle, and it's too easy to avoid the lower path. Then you only get 2 or 3 upper paths that quickly converge to the middle path again, opposed to the constant INCLINE in S&K, where the paths, in spite of pitfalls, tend to remain largely different and baseline with the bottom.
This formula is played with in both games and some levels in Mania are great and expand on this.
Stardust Speedway offers many paths, but like CD, they lack memorable enough setpieces to set them apart. Studiopolis does this to a lesser degree in the upper paths.
Also, Mania throws too many "Rush/Generations" moments where you have to react in a split second or have foresight to take a different path. Not a total fan.
I still prefer Mania overall because I don't really like Sonic 3 much, the disparity in perceived level design quality isn't gargantuan, and there's simply more content in Mania than S&K.
I'm sure my opinions and tastes will evolve the more I play Mania, but stuff like
,
, and
seem to play worse and there's a distinct lack of deviation in the paths in comparison. Maybe there's more merit to taking the low path than I thought or something. I'm a big fan of S&K -- it's pretty high on my goat list; so, I realize that any deviance from Yasuhara's influence in 1, 2, 3, &K will initially strike me as "off."