I really, really disliked this.
The first Zone was nothing more than extremely basic platforming, where there's no real hazards resulting in pretty much no difficulty whatsoever. There's a huge amount of Rings here, to the point it's just hilarious.
In the second Act, if you fall off through the canopy, you can end up in the water because of bad luck alone, then wander around a big pit of water, find a Spring, and end up going backwards.
The second Zone was some more really basic platforming, and most of the rooms, were pretty empty (though, the beginning was overly cramped).
In the first Act, there's practically no hazards at all besides the conveyor belt at the very end, which is very easy to avoid.
The second Act boiled down to running from flat hallway to flat hallway, searching for the Spring or whatever that takes you to the next path. There was one room where it opened up a bit which was really annoying, because there's no sense of direction and I wound up going in circles for a while.
Drowned Downtown incredibly frustrated me. The water was too thick and dark, making it hard to see anything. The level was mostly running through mazes where each texture is practically the same, and then probably taking the wrong path and having to go back where you started.
The scenery was absolutely terrible, and the Gargoyle puzzles were extremely messy: Pushing them is annoying enough to do, but then you have to put them in specific areas. The one with the pillars was terrible, and so was the one with the boxes. There's no real signal, and they were a giant chore to do, made even worse by the fact that it's underwater.
The waterslides added almost no gameplay at all (I only jumped once and didn't touch anything at all during the rest) except for the one with the branching paths, and it was simply timing a few basic jumps or else you're forced to go either to the beginning of the maze or to some other equally-dull area.
Near the end of the second Act where the subway was, it resorted to button-mashing in a bland and empty room as Sonic.
Snowcap Nimbus had really basic platforming. The rope pulleys were all entirely skippable (besides only one). The inconsistency with the oil (whether it's quicksand or not) really annoyed me. The floor was too slippery and there's too many pillars in the hallways, so I'd frequently crash, stuck and frustrated.
The parts with quicksand were totally skippable because you can simply Thok your way past the entire thing. The rooms with the icy floors annoyed me because the weak areas weren't obvious or expected.
The mixing between the two themes looked really bad, and there was very little variety in textures and flats in each room, making it look even worse.
Gritty Columns, in both Acts, either had very basic running through hallways, or very basic crusher gimmicks which were very weak hazards and barely a threat. The use of quicksand made many areas skippable (especially the one at the start of the first Act with the elevators)
The Gargoyle puzzle was messy and I suggest you remove it.
The rising quicksand areas can be skipped easily by button mashing as Sonic.
The platforming with the crushers felt overused and uninteresting.
The area where the sand lowers to reveal the temple was really ugly-looking. Really, the only nice-looking part was somewhat near the end of the second Act, mostly because of the lights.
Fume Shaft. At first it was really bland walking (extremely empty and I just Thokked with no danger at all), and then it was really basic platforming with ridiculous visuals that totally wrecked the framerate.
I simply got too frustrated here and lost all my patience. I quit before finishing the first Act.
Overall, this was a terrible pack. It's either extremely boring, very repetitive, or really frustrating and annoying.
The scenery altogether was really horrible and texture variation is extremely needed. There's a terrible lack of Thing and Sector-based scenery as well.
The levels all felt really "same-y": Mostly, it's a bunch of dull hallways, one after the other, and a really un-notable gimmick.
This really needs a lot of work. Add Sector and Thing scenery, remove some of the ridiculous gimmicks and puzzles (Mazes? Dark-as-hell water? Repetitive crusher segments?), add more of a challenge, and cut down on the massive amount of hallways (really, the entire pack felt like a giant bunch of hallways).
I honestly didn't like a single bit of this pack and was frustrated and annoyed throughout the whole thing.
I haven't played SRB2 in several months, and when I finally decided to give it a shot, I played this. Not exactly a good thing.
The only thing "tortured" was me when I played through this.
0/10