Yes, I had a lot of fun with Sonic Forces, including the first, very simple level. I prefer Generations and Unleashed, but I think the lower difficulty to reach the end of the story is a result of many players being overwhelmed by previous games, especially Unleashed and subsequently complaining about "bottomless pits". If you go for full completion of the game it is not trivial.
Your opinion is just irrelevant, then. The enemies don't even ATTACK you in that game. Why are you complacent with such trash when things could be markedly better?
You evaluate an arcady highscore / best time design by the difficult to reach the end at all. Is every rhythm game then also incredibly easy because you will reach the end of a song eventually?
What I'm getting at is, in order to make boost even feel difficult and stimulating, the developers had to intentionally design a level that makes going fast with Sonic extremely difficult unless you literally have the whole level committed to muscle memory. Why the hell would you slow down SONIC in a SONIC game? The difficulty in Sonic games should stem from trying to maintain speed, not fearing for your life at every tile.
Congratulations on picking the single worst boost Sonic level. Yes, Planet Wisp in Gens is too slow.
Okay, sure, I cherry-picked, but why is it that they can't just maintain 3D in these boost games for long? Because that's expensive when you have boost to just blitz over the platforming, so they force verticality with the 2D sections in order to slow Sonic down and pad out the level length. Unleashed had a lot of 3D sections, so I don't begrudge that game too much, but Colors and Generations were where it started to show its limits.
One thing about combat complexity: Sonic enemies are moving obstacles and platforms, so it is pretty irrelevant as a point of criticism that it is simple to beat them. In fact, if they were harder to beat, it would kill the flow.
Okay, so, I know we've banged on about how Sonic should keep moving forward, always, but I'd rather have the enemies be harder to combat in some form and compensate in ways that keep or allow you to gain momentum. In Project Hero as linked above, Sonic has the option of using his Homing Attack while preserving his airborne momentum instead if you hold the button, rather than just coming to a halt in the air. You can also curl into a spinball whenever you want instead of having to go stationary and pressing the appropriate button (although actual spindashing is still great for achieving high speeds instantly) The added drop dash also allows you to quickly convert into speed after finishing off an enemy.
It may not keep you blitzing around with impunity like Boost Sonic does, but it keeps you mobile to greater effect than just pressing X. More accurately, the goal with Sonic is to keep him moving, not just running fast necessarily. 2D sections work to hinder this because they need Sonic to go slow otherwise the game just ends.
