Suggestions

a Stronger Jump for Mario Mode.

A way to switch between Final demo lava, 2.0 era Lava, and Current lava. Some levels ported from the past depend on old behavior or old collisions
 
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I would love to see an option to ignore super music and continue to play the current stage's regular music, maybe as an ON/OFF option in the sound options or something. I really love the game's soundtrack and having to use -default every time I decide to transform kind of takes me out of it, It was nice to listen to super music for the first few times but I keep trying to not transform just because I want to continue listening to the current zone's track.
 
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Here is my wishlist and suggestion for 2.3 and 3.0. For 2.3, add two more zones for the main game. One normal zone and one zone for super sonic. For 3.0, add new game+. You keep all your emeralds but your lives and continues reset to 3 lives and 1 continues. New game+ will have longer and harder redesign zones. Bosses are also harder. That's my suggestion and wishlist for 2.3 and 3.0.
 
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Now i'm not sure if this has been mentioned before, but the only thing i want to ask for 2.2.1 is for the bridge section at the end of CEZ1 to be disabled in multiplayer, i genuinely dislike how it's forced for every player to be actively present, wouldn't it be a lot more convenient to have the other exit when people fail to make it across be open instead?
 
When you get all the emblems, you get the option to enable super forms for everyone that isnt sonic or metal. Maybe instead of having to enable it in thr pandoras box each time you start a file, it can be put in the extras and be toggle able with a option for yes or no.
 
Metal Sonic is somewhat overpowered in the current version on account of his hover ability, which allows him to skip vast portions of levels without fear of falling. I do actually believe this could be kept, but I do have a few ideas to make Metal more balanced without taking away too much from the "overpowered reward" feel to him.

As I mentioned in the now locked Super Forms thread, it makes sense for base Metal to drop like current Super Sonic instead of just falling slowly when his speed drops too much while hovering. As he lacks a thok, this would force players to be more careful while using him as recklessly slamming full speed into a wall while hovering could easily result in falling into a bottomless pit. This would also add incentive to collecting the Emeralds as him, as the better hover would be barred behind using his Super Form. Overall, this change would allow Metal to have that "Wow this is broken" feel of skipping over large parts of the levels without going too far with it.

My other idea pertains to Metal Sonic's breathing, or rather lack of breathing. Metal Sonic is a robot, which is expertly conveyed through his unique short-circuit animation when "drowning" and "suffocating" underwater and in a vacuum. However, it doesn't really make sense for him to be able to take in air bubbles to just magically undo whatever damage is being done to his internal hardware. As such, here are my thoughts:

While underwater, Metal could have quadruple the time before his countdown starts ticking down to him "drowning". The downside is he can't take in air bubbles, so he's still encouraged to progress through water sections quickly. The only way to feel more safe would be to take advantage of the infinite breath provided via shields such as the bubble shield.

While in a vacuum, he could have double the time on his countdown timer, dropping from 10 to 0 instead of 5. To balance this off, standing inside of a blue safe zone or back into the atmosphere rich environment of the level only causes his counter to slowly tick back up to 10 as his internal systems are working on repairing whatever internal damage has been done, forcing the player to choose whether to play it slow and safe (Much slower than as other characters) or rush through vacuum sections as quickly as possible.

Overall, I feel like these two changes to his breathing would make him feel much more unique compared to the other characters and would be consistent with the fact that Metal Sonic is, in fact, a robot and not just a shiny creature that sparks up when it can't breath.
 
While underwater, Metal could have quadruple the time before his countdown starts ticking down to him "drowning". The downside is he can't take in air bubbles, so he's still encouraged to progress through water sections quickly. The only way to feel more safe would be to take advantage of the infinite breath provided via shields such as the bubble shield.

I like the thought behind the idea, but this would make it unreasonably difficult for Metal to beat Azure Temple.
 
I haven't seen anyone beat ATZ as Metal in under 60 seconds so yeah. I do agree it is a bit silly that Metal still needs air bubbles after the devs went the extra mile to show that Metal doesn't actually drown, but I just file that under "it is videogame"

Calling Metal "overpowered" when he's in the same game as Tails is a bit much, methinks. Though for my money, Metal should have the mid-air boost mode charge ability from Katmint's script. It fits him so much better.
 
Metal Sonic is somewhat overpowered in the current version on account of his hover ability, which allows him to skip vast portions of levels without fear of falling.

Tails and Knuckles both are able to skip large swathes of level design even more frequently than Metal, due to the fact that they have the ability to ascend. The only other difference between Glide&Climb/Fly and Hover is that Hover allows Metal Sonic to stay in midair indefinitely without the player grounding himself -- even still, Knuckles can effectively do the same thing if he has a wall surface to cling onto (which tends to be the case).

You could argue that the hover stacks with his dashmode ability, but then, still, Metal Sonic lags behind Sonic and Tails when it comes to speedrun times. This could be because his meta is underdeveloped, but if he's as broken as I've heard people say he is, then the records have yet to reflect this.

This raises the question: if some characters can skip more platforming than Metal, and some characters are more effective speedrunners than Metal, then what metric are we measuring Metal Sonic's character balance with that would implicate the hover ability?

The one area where I have seen Metal Sonic do more work than most other characters is in CTF, and the reason for this is simple: it's not because he's as fast as Sonic, or as oppressive in the air as Tails, but because he is adaptable. You could also argue that being one of the only two characters which can go super is also a big boost to his playtime aggregate in coop netgames, particularly since the innate hover makes him far less of a risky choice for players with high latencies. Those are really where his balance issues start and end, however; I think it could be argued that Metal Sonic is one of the more balanced characters in the game alongside Knuckles. His current design essentially makes him "jack of all trades" character with good speedrunning, platforming, and combat tools, yet not necessarily being the most powerful character in any one category.



I'll note that I'm not necessarily arguing against changing the hover ability, but it's important to clarify what we're intending to achieve here. Are we intending to make Metal Sonic less powerful, or do we simply want him to be more challenging and/or interesting to play? We could, for instance, aim to make his hover harder to use, while also making tweaks to the dashmode to make more accessible or less dependent on the level design. After all, it is a bit ironic to me that Metal Sonic's gameplay was birthed as an attempt to make a speedrunning alternative to Sonic's gameplay, while Tails' buffs resulted in both of them being outperformed.
 
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I like the thought behind the idea, but this would make it unreasonably difficult for Metal to beat Azure Temple.

I would say the best solution to that would just be to give Metal his own path entirely for Azure Temple, taking advantage of the fact that he can hover over vast bottomless pits. There could be very small areas between sections that aren't entirely underwater, allow Metal to reset his timer. The general design mentality would need to be that Knuckles can't attach himself to the type of walls lining Metal's path, and the pits are too long for Tails to swim across.

An alternative solution would simply be to add in a small area like this near the start for Metal to grab a shield that allows him to "breath" underwater indefinitely that the other characters can't reach. Then the challenge would be to beat the level as Metal without losing the shield.

Tails and Knuckles both are able to skip large swathes of level design even more frequently than Metal, due to the fact that they have the ability to ascend. The only other difference between Glide&Climb/Fly and Hover is that Hover allows Metal Sonic to stay in midair indefinitely without the player grounding himself -- even still, Knuckles can effectively do the same thing if he has a wall surface to cling onto (which tends to be the case).

You could argue that the hover stacks with his dashmode ability, but then, still, Metal Sonic lags behind Sonic and Tails when it comes to speedrun times. This could be because his meta is underdeveloped, but if he's as broken as I've heard people say he is, then the records have yet to reflect this.

This raises the question: if some characters can skip more platforming than Metal, and some characters are more effective speedrunners than Metal, then what metric are we measuring Metal Sonic's character balance that would implicate the hover ability?

The one area where I have seen Metal Sonic do more work than most other characters is in CTF, and the reason for this is simple: it's not because he's as fast as Sonic, or as oppressive in the air as Tails, but because he is adaptable. You could also argue that being one of the only two characters which can go super is also a big boost to his playtime aggregate in coop netgames, particularly since the innate hover makes him far less of a risky choice for players with high latencies. Those are really where his balance issues start and end, however; I think it could be argued that Metal Sonic is one of the more balanced characters in the game alongside Knuckles. His current design essentially makes him "jack of all trades" character with good speedrunning, platforming, and combat tools, yet not necessarily being the most powerful character in any one category.



I'll note that I'm not necessarily arguing against changing the hover ability, but it's important to clarify what we're intending to achieve here. Are we intending to make Metal Sonic less powerful, or do we simply want him to be more challenging and/or interesting to play? We could, for instance, aim to make his hover harder to use, while also making tweaks to the dashmode to make more accessible or less dependent on the level design. After all, it is a bit ironic to me that Metal Sonic's gameplay was birthed as an attempt to make a speedrunning alternative to Metal's gameplay, while Tails' buffs resulted in both of them being outperformed.

The reason I feel Metal's glide is overpowered is because while Tails has more vertical mobility than him, Tails grows tired after a few seconds of flying and as such has a strict limit to how far he can travel like this. Metal has no such limitation. Knuckles loses height while gliding over time. He can counter this weakness by latching onto walls as you said, but he cannot do this with every wall. Metal has none of these restrictions. As long as he can manage to reach a height somehow, he can keep it for as long as the player needs him to provided they don't lose too much speed. Even if they do, they are only punished a little bit by him losing a small amount of his height.

This effectively makes Metal's playstyle dominate over anyone else in the game in terms of general usefulness in the highest number of situations. He struggles heavily to gain as much height as Tails in most situations, but dominates in every other area, at least in regards to safety and ease of progression if not always in regards to record attack speeds.

However, I am not entirely against this. To even play as Metal, you need to clear the entire campaign at least once. As such, the superior mobility the glide gives you feels properly earned as anything it allows you to easily skip, you probably had to do the first time through legit. That's why the only major balance change I would make to it would be to limit the slow fall to his Super Form.

Overall my mindset isn't so much to necessarily make Metal less powerful so much as make him less safe, or in some situations just more unique. I actually do quite enjoy the hover as it exists now, abusing it can be a lot of fun. However, I feel like it can sometimes make things too easy due to the safety it provides, which in turn makes Metal a bit less fun to play once the novelty wears off. Skipping huge sections of AGZ as Metal with little risk for example is hilarious the first few times you play through taking different pathways, but after a while I would really rather just go through as Tails or Knuckles or if I feel especially brave, Amy.

Levels like DSZ and ERZ are where my mentality shifts away from focusing on making him less safe and more on making him more unique and in line with the concept of him being robotic. Part of the mentality is if you are going to acknowledge it with an aesthetic difference, you might as well commit fully and go full dive into it by making him play like a robot too. The other part of the mentality is that by doing this, Metal would become more unique as a standalone character because nobody else would react to these situations like he does.

Being a robot, it makes sense that he doesn't need to breath. However, it also makes sense he wasn't actually designed to function indefinitely underwater or in a vacuum, and starts to suffer internal damages as a result. His durability in these situations would likely be higher than that of the common fleshy character that needs to breath, but on the other hand all the fleshy characters need to do to recover is take a breath and they can hold it, while Metal is unable to do this. That was the concept I built my suggestion around, being careful not to make him too overpowered by introducing a drawback to his longer breath times while also being careful to make that drawback something that makes sense for him as a robot. There could be other ideas that would work better and still remain consistent with the robotic theme, but I feel like aside from situations like the current version of ATZ I took a pretty solid stab at the idea (Actually I completely forgot about ATZ when initially writing down my idea, how silly of me).
 
Tails and Knuckles both are able to skip large swathes of level design even more frequently than Metal, due to the fact that they have the ability to ascend. The only other difference between Glide&Climb/Fly and Hover is that Hover allows Metal Sonic to stay in midair indefinitely without the player grounding himself -- even still, Knuckles can effectively do the same thing if he has a wall surface to cling onto (which tends to be the case).

Knuckles has to jump (lowest jump in the game), find a climbable surface, jump, start gliding, and still loses height at a consistent rate while doing so. Ending glide at any point forces Knuckles to start back at 0 speed.

Metal Sonic has to find a position higher than the rest of the level, jump, start hovering, and the level is effectively over. The speed at which you lose height is negligible, the air-control allows you to maintain a constant rate of speed with no loss, and is even coupled with gaining more speed on landing.

Playing as Tails requires you to mash the jump button constantly, manage your height, and has limited use.

All three of these characters can spindash.
 
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The reason I feel Metal's glide is overpowered is because while Tails has more vertical mobility than him, Tails grows tired after a few seconds of flying and as such has a strict limit to how far he can travel like this. Metal has no such limitation. Knuckles loses height while gliding over time. He can counter this weakness by latching onto walls as you said, but he cannot do this with every wall. Metal has none of these restrictions. As long as he can manage to reach a height somehow, he can keep it for as long as the player needs him to provided they don't lose too much speed. Even if they do, they are only punished a little bit by him losing a small amount of his height.

Metal's restriction is that he must maintain momentum. Depending on the situation, losing just a little bit of altitude can be a death warrant since Metal is not able to regain height through his ability. If we want to argue that this type of advantage can be polarizing, we can, but it's hardly any more or less polarizing than a character that is able to hang onto walls indefinitely or a character that can take diagonal-upward shortcuts through huge chunks of levels.



This effectively makes Metal's playstyle dominate over anyone else in the game in terms of general usefulness in the highest number of situations. He struggles heavily to gain as much height as Tails in most situations, but dominates in every other area, at least in regards to safety and ease of progression if not always in regards to record attack speeds.

I agree that Metal Sonic is generally useful, but I would consider Tails to be more generally useful in the full scale of the game due to the fact that he is a more powerful speedrunner and has more opportunities to skip segments of levels in the main campaign. I would sooner nerf Tails before I touch Metal. Sonic also appears to be stronger than Metal in the aggregate when it comes to record attack.

However, I am not entirely against this. To even play as Metal, you need to clear the entire campaign at least once. As such, the superior mobility the glide gives you feels properly earned as anything it allows you to easily skip, you probably had to do the first time through legit. That's why the only major balance change I would make to it would be to limit the slow fall to his Super Form.

Overall my mindset isn't so much to necessarily make Metal less powerful so much as make him less safe, or in some situations just more unique. I actually do quite enjoy the hover as it exists now, abusing it can be a lot of fun. However, I feel like it can sometimes make things too easy due to the safety it provides, which in turn makes Metal a bit less fun to play once the novelty wears off. Skipping huge sections of AGZ as Metal with little risk for example is hilarious the first few times you play through taking different pathways, but after a while I would really rather just go through as Tails or Knuckles or if I feel especially brave, Amy.

In fairness to your point, Metal is not the "expert character" that he is intended to play as. In fact, he is relatively easy to play. I think the reason why he feels especially powerful in the hands of most players is because his ability is one of the few platforming tools that provides instant feedback, lacks many of the use-restrictions that other characters have (most characters lack multiability, for instance), and doesn't break the flow of gameplay. I think the actual power of this ability is a bit overstated, since the majority of the current campaign has players scaling heights more often than making descents. He is undoubtedly a good character, but I think his issue is less about power balance and more about skill-indexing. I think giving Metal's hover Super Sonic-style penalties for losing speed would probably be a good counterbalance to his ease of use, since it would give floating a more prominent element of risk.


Levels like DSZ and ERZ are where my mentality shifts away from focusing on making him less safe and more on making him more unique and in line with the concept of him being robotic. Part of the mentality is if you are going to acknowledge it with an aesthetic difference, you might as well commit fully and go full dive into it by making him play like a robot too. The other part of the mentality is that by doing this, Metal would become more unique as a standalone character because nobody else would react to these situations like he does.

Being a robot, it makes sense that he doesn't need to breath. However, it also makes sense he wasn't actually designed to function indefinitely underwater or in a vacuum, and starts to suffer internal damages as a result. His durability in these situations would likely be higher than that of the common fleshy character that needs to breath, but on the other hand all the fleshy characters need to do to recover is take a breath and they can hold it, while Metal is unable to do this. That was the concept I built my suggestion around, being careful not to make him too overpowered by introducing a drawback to his longer breath times while also being careful to make that drawback something that makes sense for him as a robot. There could be other ideas that would work better and still remain consistent with the robotic theme, but I feel like aside from situations like the current version of ATZ I took a pretty solid stab at the idea (Actually I completely forgot about ATZ when initially writing down my idea, how silly of me).

I'm a little wary that designing Metal to be specifically better in low-gravity and water sections might make his advantages more polarizing depending on the level -- but considering that Metal currently doesn't have any alternate paths to call his own, perhaps there is some merit to the idea....

Knuckles has to jump (lowest jump in the game), find a climbable surface, jump, start gliding, and still loses height at a consistent rate while doing so. Ending glide at any point forces Knuckles to start back at 0 speed.

Metal Sonic has to find a position higher than the rest of the level, jump, start hovering, and the level is effectively over. The speed at which you lose height is negligible, the air-control allows you to maintain a constant rate of speed with no loss, and is even coupled with gaining more speed on landing.

Playing as Tails requires you to mash the jump button constantly, manage your height, and has limited use.

All three of these characters can spindash.

You put in a lot of effort to make playing Knuckles sound like pulling teeth, but you failed to mention that Knuckles has a way to naturally scale heights with his ability and Metal doesn't. This is an odd omission, considering your very next point hinges on Metal finding the highest vantage point to... skip the level? Which he can't do anyway because literally none of our levels are designed to allow that. I'm in favor of exploring changes to Metal as a character, but the framing of your argument feels pretty biased.
 
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I think Metal Sonic feels a little busted because you reach the speed for which hover's no-fall kicks in pretty quickly. Even then though he doesn't feel like, broken or like "easy mode", at least imo.
 
I think simply nerfing float would be a huge mistake because Metal's just kind of weak in general. The problem I have with it, and the reason I think that all of the people that dislike it want it nerfed, is that it's strong in comparison to Metal's supposed draw: his Dash Mode ability.

Dash Mode is extremely weak, as it takes just slightly longer than expected to charge, and Metal has no abilities to get over many of the 128 unit tall "haha, gotcha, thought you could get over this" ledges in the game. Most of a casual Metal Sonic playthrough consists of getting Dash Mode, then losing it as soon as it's ready. Dash Mode increases his jump height deep into it, but it's wasted, since you often don't have it for long enough to feel that benefit. He's not really usable in a casual, full-game playthrough setting.

The difficulty of building Dash Mode in a normal playthrough is one thing, however, let's say you instead use him to grind up perfect runs in Record Attack. After having labbed many of the game's levels since v2.2's launch, my conclusion was: in most levels, floating to skip content and flat-out ignoring Dash Mode is the best option a majority of the time. I feel like the intention is that the player is meant to decide when to build Dash on the ground and when to float over troublesome platforming. However, Dash Mode just isn't strong enough to actually make it a meaningful choice. It's far more effort than it's worth to build Dash Mode, and it's more efficient to float over things at every viable opportunity.



This brings me to my actual complaint with Metal's float: it's not that it's too strong, but rather it's boring. Compared to Tails' flight, it doesn't have a timer or any other form of resource management, thus can be used forever. Bumping into walls and losing speed only matters in extremely rare circumstances; due to SRB2's bizarre acceleration curve that gives you higher acceleration when moving faster, you don't go below the speed threshold for any more than a second. Unlike flight, it also doesn't let you backtrack and explore as much of the level as you want, which means its use is strictly limited to skipping content whenever the level design gives you even a tiny height advantage. In the end, float doesn't serve multiple purposes, it can't be used in multiple ways, and it doesn't take any effort to utilize, so it feels very binary and simplistic. It's not even a concern to me that it can skip content if you get a height advantage; I don't care either way, frankly. The point Chrome was driving at was that Metal Sonic's float is not interesting or even committal, which makes its easy-to-use nature that much more boring.

RVZ1 is one of the best levels for Metal Sonic. Compared to the other levels, it's not nearly as tall, so you can actually maintain Dash Mode on it's horizontal stretches. Float isn't any more powerful there, but I like playing Metal Sonic there because float can actually be used with Dash Mode, instead of in spite of it.

My Metal Sonic re-balance gets rid of float and replaces it with a slightly higher jump based on speed; while I'm not happy with it leaving nothing as his double-jump ability, him getting just the tiniest edge in vertical height makes Dash Mode far more fun. My takeaway from playing him is that Metal's float shouldn't be nerfed, or at least it shouldn't be the single change; he should be able to get more vertical height to be better equipped to speed through levels (either a higher jump, or a different primary ability), Dash Mode should be buffed in some way, or the floating mechanics should be made more engaging to use. Just making float worse and calling it a day would just make him... well, worse, when I think the problem is that float itself just isn't very fun.

SP balance should not be about how fast each character is, and the "power" of each character is more of a secondary point. The main thing is thinking about how different or interesting they are to play. Metal Sonic is the most uninteresting pick currently because his float is one-dimensional. Dash Mode could be the quirk that makes his float interesting, as RVZ1 shows, but in every other level float actively undermines Dash Mode.
 
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I think simply nerfing float would be a huge mistake because Metal's just kind of weak in general. The problem I have with it, and the reason I think that all of the people that dislike it want it nerfed, is that it's strong in comparison to Metal's supposed draw: his Dash Mode ability.

Dash Mode is extremely weak, as it takes just slightly longer than expected to charge, and Metal has no abilities to get over many of the 128 unit tall "haha, gotcha, thought you could get over this" ledges in the game. Most of a casual Metal Sonic playthrough consists of getting Dash Mode, then losing it as soon as it's ready. Dash Mode increases his jump height deep into it, but it's wasted, since you often don't have it for long enough to feel that benefit. He's not really usable in a casual, full-game playthrough setting.

The difficulty of building Dash Mode in a normal playthrough is one thing, however, let's say you instead use him to grind up perfect runs in Record Attack. After having labbed many of the game's levels since v2.2's launch, my conclusion was: in most levels, floating to skip content and flat-out ignoring Dash Mode is the best option a majority of the time. I feel like the intention is that the player is meant to decide when to build Dash on the ground and when to float over troublesome platforming. However, Dash Mode just isn't strong enough to actually make it a meaningful choice. It's far more effort than it's worth to build Dash Mode, and it's more efficient to float over things at every viable opportunity.



This brings me to my actual complaint with Metal's float: it's not that it's too strong, but rather it's boring. Compared to Tails' flight, it doesn't have a timer or any other form of resource management, thus can be used forever. Bumping into walls and losing speed only matters in extremely rare circumstances; due to SRB2's bizarre acceleration curve that gives you higher acceleration when moving faster, you don't go below the speed threshold for any more than a second. Unlike flight, it also doesn't let you backtrack and explore as much of the level as you want, which means its use is strictly limited to skipping content whenever the level design gives you even a tiny height advantage. In the end, float doesn't serve multiple purposes, it can't be used in multiple ways, and it doesn't take any effort to utilize, so it feels very binary and simplistic. It's not even a concern to me that it can skip content if you get a height advantage; I don't care either way, frankly. The point Chrome was driving at was that Metal Sonic's float is not interesting or even committal, which makes its easy-to-use nature that much more boring.

The first point you are making, that Dash mode kicks in later than expected and therefore is weak, isn't entirely true. You can activate it with zero required distance to cover by holding a spindash charge until it activates, and can maintain it by jumping, hovering, and then if needed releasing the hover to resume the dash along the ground without being in ball form. The only downside to this aside from the long charging time is that it's only really useful in areas that aren't too compact, or else you will likely hit a wall and lose the powered up state.

I disagree the hover can't be used for backtracking. You will indeed run out of speed and start to drop if you try to just turn around with it, but if you make a wide enough turn you can easily turn around and backtrack without losing any height. Levels like ACZ and AGZ are great for this.

This factors back into a point I made previously: Metal Sonic gets boring because he feels too safe. The more mastery you have over his toolset, the easier it is to make use of what he has to work with and the less threatening everything is in general. A level like AGZ with many pathways dedicated to careful navigation over bottomless pits becomes something of a joke when playing as him, because there's not much of anything that can actually cause you to fall into those pits while playing as Metal short of one of those bees getting a sneak attack in from behind or the player stopping their hover too soon.

Adding to the fact that Metal is too safe is the fact that he doesn't have to commit to letting go of his hover. The downwards slope with the spike ball pendulums right before the checkpoint where the music fades in CEZ2 is a great example of this. You can easily skip any danger the balls represent by hovering above them as metal, letting go of hover as necessary to drop quickly before resuming the hover, repeating until you are safely outside.

You make the point that bumping into something and starting to slowly fall rarely punishes you much at all because you reach enough speed quickly enough that you don't lose much height at all. This is especially a strong safety net combined with just how slow you have to be moving for the slow fall to take effect. In CEZ's boss you can just hover safely above the spike balls, push the required button, lather rinse repeat until pinch phase. You don't even need to be moving that fast to pull this off, so it's easy to navigate around the circle shaped arena quite freely without worrying about touching spike balls unless you make a U turn that isn't wide enough. He can do this, as you mentioned in your post, indefinitely so long as the player doesn't screw it up.

This all compounds into my main point: Metal Sonic might not be the fastest character clearing record attack faster than everyone else, but he is indeed the safest character. When you know what you are doing with his moveset, there's not much that can hurt you short of flying badniks or other projectiles, you are able to complete levels entirely on your own terms rather than allowing the level to subject you to the punishment it intends for you.

He's the most powerful character only in regards to intentionally slowing down and taking your sweet time to progress. The most consistent enemy blocking his progress is actually walls and invisible walls, neither of which can actually hurt him directly. This makes him feel like an easy mode character in a lot of situations/zones. Interestingly, the zones I think he plays the most like everyone else in is Techno Hill and Egg Rock, as he is forced into narrow areas with vertical based progression where his hover won't allow him to skip too much of the level/platforming at once.
 
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Calling Metal Sonic's hover "boring" feels pretty apt, honestly.

I just played through Azure Temple twice, once as Sonic and once as Metal. I've been playing SRB2 since the final demo days so I'm pretty good with Sonic at this point (not great, but good) and the refinements made to the controls in 2.2 make him feel even better to control.

There were parts where I felt like I had an easier time with Sonic than with Metal, namely the hallways with the gargoyles who shoot flames from the sides and down the length of the halls. The room with walls of bubblebots as well. Sonic's ability to cross large amounts of terrain with the thok just makes those kinds of situations a lot more manageable. A well timed thok lets you zip right to the end of the gargoyle halls in one go without the fire harming you, and thokking past a bubblebot puts you in and out of its radar before it really has a chance to give chase. Versus Metal who you have to carefully move and position so the fire or bubblebots don't get you.

Meanwhile, there are parts that Metal just objectively has an easier time with. For example, start Azure Temple zone and take the right path right at the beginning. With Metal Sonic you can just hover through that room with no trouble. Then, after the first check point you can take the upper path as Metal Sonic and just hover through that room as well.

But the thing is, and again TehRealSalt hit the nail on the head--it's boring. Even though playing Azure Temple was easier with Metal, it was just less fun. I realize that's subjective, of course. And I'll also admit I haven't yet played through the single player campaign as anyone other than Sonic yet, so my thoughts about Metal Sonic's abilities are only based off of playing Azure Temple and a handful of other levels just to see how they were.

It almost feels kind of mean to the SRB2 devs to say Metal Sonic is boring because there's nothing like functionally wrong or even objectively wrong with his design. Just something about it isn't clicking.
 
It would be nice if the pre-game menu (the one after the title screen) was seperated from the title screen, and became it's own thing like Sonic CD's menu. It feels weird just browsing the menu in silence.
 

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