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While the character does suffer a bit in the vanilla campaign, especially in deep sea zone outside the campaign, this is my favourite modded character ever! imo the best one too. he is sooo much fun on every modded stage. 5/5

I've been on the backburner on talking about this mod which there's definitely a lot of stuff that I'd imagine people here would call pretty contrarian but considering some people have aired out similar issues I think this laundary list of things will not be as far fetched.

In many regards there is a lot to like about MRCE in terms of its goals of modernizing Mystic Realm as a whole with the new features brought to SRB2 over the years. Earlier previews promised a fair lot of levels with some good quality to them.

However in my eyes, the quality of what was initially promised has deminished significantly a lot in terms of gameplay and stability. I understand this is an early version but I think if you're going to make a public build, there are things that I've witnessed that really should've been addressed before exposure.

Enough beating around the bush though. Levels in this game have seen somewhat of a downgrade in terms of how they're constructed both mechanically and visually. JCZ in particular gave me the biggest sense of whiplash as before it was a good opener to what new was being offered, but now both acts have been over designed with new ziplines and textures which aren't as visually cohesive to keep track of the player.

This issue with making unnecessary changes from previous versions to now persists throughout what I have played. I would have assessed more beyond MFZ, but I kept getting crashes around the second act when looking for the temple, which at that point I just threw up my hands and said "screw it" and ended up dropping the game due to those issues.

Though where this issue really comes more apparent is in how the Emerald levels have been redone in an attempt to make them more like a traditional special stage... In a way that I can only describe is missing the point of a special stage as well as missing the point of a scoring system.

SRB2, quite frankly, has a poor scoring system. It is a game where more than anything, people focus more on the movement of the game rather than things that give you a big number. Having special stages basically take over what were once regular levels and only adding things on top of SRB2's existing scoring system (multipliers and score specific items) as an added requirement for the Emeralds is pretty hap hazard design that only serves to highlight how poor the scoring system is.

It's not like having a scoring system in SRB2 is impossible, given that I believe there exists a rank mod now where I'd imagine you can tailor what quotas to reach for what ranks as well as ways to change how certain actions are scored, but more than anything it requires a heavy amount of tuning that I don't think MRCE is really equipped to tailour into its challenge with how big levels get.

I never even touched how the reworked Emerald Stages add even more mechanics on top of the special stage mechanics, making routing these stages an absolute nightmare.

Ultimately; I think it would be beneficial for the project to scrap a lot of the mechanics that have been added since earlier preview builds and go back to the more basic approach of making a group of levels that take SRB2's already existing mechanics to the limits of what the player is capable of.

If anything, that has been what made the original Mystic Realm iconic to begin with, for better and for worse. I do think that version of the game was pretty brazen in terms of how it wanted to challenge the player (OG AGZ and PAZ I think are pretty big examples of an amateur trying to make something difficult) but that was also during a time where new level mechanics were very limited in what they can be.

In terms of what's already here that can be an example, MFZ1 I think showcases a lot of what I mean by the kind of design MRCE should be gunning for with the only real additions to that level being the wind current and how the underwater mechanics work.

Being prudish, I'd say remove the ziplines, grind rails, snowboarding and anything else that takes away from how you control your character directly.

Though to end on that note, while I think the Rebound Dash is decent, I feel my fears of it having too much in the ways of context sensitivity have only been realized in how they now attached shield abilities to it, making handling Sonic even more rough compared to the thok. I think the fact I have to say that would either mean you scale that ability back to something more easily understandable or... Use the thok.

Also quite frankly, Metals new jump ability seems very counter intuative to boost mode. I don't know if I'm the only one that views Metal like this; but I thought the point of Metal was trying to maintain boost mode for as long as you can with things like the vanilla hover aiding in that.

Anyway review done, probably give the impression now that all I do is complain about everything (lol).

Its a great mod and makes the SRB2 experience a lot better, my only problem is tails main body (Not including his tails those are fine for some reason) gets replaced with the blue shoes version. Even with 3D Models on it still gets replaced which is kinda annoying as I prefer to play with 3D models on, and it makes it look weird when playing as Sonic & Tails when only one of them is 3D. Still great although I would greatly appreciate an update that fixes this.

I cant get these models to work
models look really nice though. really want to try them..,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,

Now i know this is still a work in progress but i feel like the stages are kinda bland and a little empty at some times. This was kinda easy (maybe because i was playing as modern sonic and just boosted through this). I really hope there can be some improvements for future levels because this is kinda mild for my taste of level design.

Faithful Ring racers artstyle, overall an awesome product, it's crazy good. The addition of Miku gets an automatic 5.