Wow, I can´t believe it. I´ve been waiting for a final release during almost 10 years, looking every here and there for the next release. I´ve seen every improve from version 2 to now. And this is the first time I´ve seen people complaining that much. What did you want? GFZ and THZ gimmicks? Just plain land with easy as hell enemies?? Come on!! That´s not a game at all. You thought Techno Hill Act 2 was hard?? It was just the second zone, it was plain obvius to me that the game would get harder on every zone.
Maybe developers should have done plain levels with tons of decoration content with no new added gameplay at all, so you play all the zones the day of the release, finish it, and then say "omg! when will you release the next version". That´s not how a game works, and that´s not how a classic game work. If you wanna end this version, you will have to play, and you will die a lot. That´s how a game is suppossed to be. If it´s fun for you to end with more than 10 lives the game, ok. For many people isn´t. I´ve died multiple times in multiple spots and I´ve arrived to Eggrock Zone on my first try, not even trying to get additional lives.
This is a superb update. I haven´t seen so much variety in enemies, levels and gameplay until now. I love the new enemies. They aren´t just "oh, look, I´m here, kill me!" enemies that have been in all Sonic games since years ago. I want enemies that actually can kill me. And enemies that don´t just move towards you. You obviously haven´t played that much if you have trouble with them anyway. You can just run in most parts without even dealing with them.
Level design has improved a lot too. No more huge areas with many ways but nothing to do in them but run and kill some crawlas. These levels have taken the THZ2 kind of gameplay, and that´s really good. You can be amazed at every room with new gimmicks, and that is always good.
I like difficulty setting gone too. Come on, how many classic Sonic games had difficulty settings? It was stupid to play the exact same game with just more enemies, I prefer it this way. If you are truly a completionist, just ending the game with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and unlocking all additional content will take as many hours as a real game. And it´s not even finished.
Really thanks to all the team for improving so much SRB2. I´m a programmer and I know how much time this has taken. And it´s surely NOT rushed. Not even for this release. I´ve seen many more bugs in any recent Sonic game, but whatever.
If you want to complain, at least finish the entire game multiple times, LEARN how to play it. I suppose many of the complainers didn´t play Mystic Realm at hard setting back in its launch date. Because it was obviously harder (until the point it was a little softer in the next release). This takes time. When you have played SP like 15 hours, come to complain. And tell exactly which spots do you think are broken, because there isn´t many of them.