I really don't get why Lost World gets so much hate. I actually thought it pretty enjoyable, even if the secret levels were easier than everything that came before them. I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but I see a lot of people say that they didn't like the game but I've never seen anyone give a reason why. Would you mind elaborating on your opinion?
I feel like Lost World was meant to be an evolution of Colors while taking notes from what Sonic X-Treme could have been. For all intents and purposes it plays very much like a sequel to Colors would.
Lost World didn't feel much like Colors though. It was a completely different game with a new gameplay style. It had wisps, which I felt were shoehorned in. But the mechanics were very different.
As for the game... this is gonna be a bit lengthy.
I wasn't a fan of how really stiff the controls felt in 2D. Jumping also feels stiff because it'd often stop your momentum. Many of the later levels weren't very fun either due to either being mechanically flawed or just plain cheap. Sometimes the game would change the rules for inconvenience's sake. I don't understand why the 4 act of the beach level suddenly decided that water is instant kill when that wasn't the case earlier.
The snow level (outside of the snowball act) wasn't very fun either. Act 1 had a very messy and confusing level design with lots of frustrating hazards and mechanics. The ice skating mechanic was pointless and hinders your controls way too much while making you too vulnerable, it became more so prominent in act 4, which is very annoying. Act 3 had a cool idea of giving us a Casino level, but the 3D segments were too flat and too straight forward while the pinball segments were annoying (being forced to play pinball AND getting killed for losing the pinball game is just not cool, I'm trying to play a Sonic game here!).
Jungle level was okay, but the stealth section felt out of place and I didn't really care much for the random cave act (that was ripped off of Windy Hill Act 3). Only thing that truly annoyed me was the Act 2 boss, where there was no way to know that I was suppose to
kick (a random mechanic that was barely used) the missiles at the boss. I've spent too many minutes figuring out the boss then I remember the useless kick exists. But that was an okay world overall, I didn't mind it too much.
Sky Road was full of cheap pits and annoying level design. Also in act 2, the dragon breaks the platforms and there were no signal the platforms were gonna break beforehand, making it too trial and error. Having difficulty is fine, but the way that was handled was kind of cheap. They've could've fixed it by having the platforms start a "Crumbling" animation, giving you a chance to realize the situation. Not to mention, when you fight Act 2's boss, your homing attack sometimes malfunction when you're attacking each segment of the boss (before reaching his head). Act 3 (the windy one where you're in air forever) was okay I guess? I don't really care for its mechanic or controls, it made navigating through things a bit too difficult. Act 4 was just really awful and annoying.
...That volcano world though, that one really takes the cake. Act 2 is the worst. Who really thought it was a good idea to have instant kill minecart bombs? There is nothing fun about that at all! D:
IDK, I realllyyy wanted to enjoy the game, but the game felt really off and often frustrating. I also didn't care for the multi-level homing attack. It made some bosses way too easy. I've one-shotted a few late-game bosses with that.
On the offhand, that's what was killing Sonic for years. SEGA could never just say "Okay, this works so let's make something similar to that." Starting with SA1 as a base, SA2 refined Sonic's game play, the Chao mini game, slowed down the treasure hunting and mech levels (if that's good or not is a point of debate) and streamlined level progression, removing adventure fields (which were really only there in the first game because it was a thing that Mario 64 did).
Jump ahead to Heroes, which pretty much threw all of SA1 and 2's game play out of the window in an attempt to feel closer to the Genesis games and also added in overly long levels and the character swapping mechanic. From there, every single future Sonic game would be afraid to just do what works and would have to put in some kind of gimmick. This is why Sonic 4 was such a let down, instead of replicating the Genesis games they instead gave it a wonky physics engine and tried to distance it from them.
I'm definitely with you there about Heroes. The levels being overly long is part of what killed the game for me. I can't stand that. Also it introduced the concept of badniks having multiple HP, I don't know why they felt that was a good idea.
And yeah, Sonic 4 not only had wonky physics, the level design was really awful and frustrating. Also didn't like how you can abuse the homing attack, I felt the homing attack itself removed a lot of depth by being included in the 2D games. That mechanic is only really meant for the 3D games. And the fact this game was outsourced to Dimps sort of shows how little care they have for Sonic 4 to begin with.
