What are your thought on the Knuckles changes?

[LunickTMM]

We've had a bit to play with Knuckles, and I'm curious on what everyone's thoughts are with his new changes. For those who want a quick refresher:

Knuckles' landing animation slows Knuckles down less, allowing him to retain more momentum while still also using the landing to land safely and efficiently.

Knuckles now swims underwater. While it's still functionally a glide, it allows him to retain a lot more speed than before and he turns incredibly quickly while underwater.

Super Knuckles is now in the game without cheats. Getting all emeralds + 50 rings allows him to transform. Knuckles gets is faster all around, is invincible, has a shockwave when he climbs into walls and lands on the ground, but his shorter jump height is retained.

Personally, I wasn't super excited for many of these changes besides super Knuckles. This is not to say I think any of them are bad, but they did assist in the way I handled speed running Knuckles much, so I felt I was unaffected. The current speed run uses the landing animation almost never other than just to charge up a spin dash, gliding underwater is more often inferior to just spin dash and bunny hopping, and Super Knuckles is so far only faster on ERZ2, which is also home to 2 of the easiest tokens for Knuckles so it's not really good to use Super Knuckles for that stage.

That being said, I think from a casual stand point, these are all amazing changes. They're all great quality of life changes and makes playing Knuckles significantly more fun. The landing animation has been a huge contention, however for every problem it causes, it actually has a handful of benefits.

Swimming is also an incredibly nice tool as before glide was essentially useless when used underwater. Now you can retain speed and travel long distances, albeit they just need to be horizontal.

And Super Knuckles is just fun to have. Any reward for emblems is great, even if Super Knuckles is slightly underwhelming in the speedrunning department. He's very satisfying to use and the only thing I think that would make him better that doesn't involve jump height, is giving his glide a quicker acceleration, as spinning still proves to be faster just due to the speed build up.

Overall, I think these changes makes Knuckles much more approachable and fun as a character, which is what I've seen from a lot of my friends who didn't even want to touch Knuckles before are now saying how fluid he feels to play. It really feels like a slight barrier of entry was lifted off of him and now he's more approachable as a character to play and learn.

 

[D00D64]

I'm pretty sure the swimming was included moreso because Tails goes into a swimming animation, and it was weird that Knuckles did not. Anything on top of that was probably just a "well, that makes sense".

 

[Snowy]

I don't play Knuckles much, but all I can really say is I'm glad they kept the crouch and just shortened it's time. It's a critical thing keeping his glide from just being a more controllable thok or discount flight with climbing attached to the end. I do think these quality of life changes are wonderful otherwise, of course.

Plus I like the click sound. Tc-ki!

 

[TehRealSalt]

I love clunky Knuckles, so I was fine with the old landing timing, but I don't mind the new timing either. All I care about is that it's there, because it makes him feel like a heavy brute when gliding, rather than a plastic bag in the wind. I also hate the old ghetto 2.1 prior strategy of tapping glide to do a crappy weak thok whenever you slowed down too much

The only thing I don't like about the landing animation is that the benefit of being a spindash state is only half-implemented. What I mean is that in S3K you could charge up a full spindash in literally a split-second, but in SRB2 you have to stand still and charge, so the fact that it is a spindash state doesn't really matter much because you still need to stay still to get the full effect anyway. I kinda wish it would start you at like 50%-75% of the spindash charge time when you do it from landing; if that was implemented, I honestly wouldn't mind it back at it's old length, since it'd just give you more time to tap spin & zip off like a bowling ball :p

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

I like that the land-after-glide animation is faster, and I also like that it still exists.

As for "swimming", I'm indifferent about it. I don't dislike it at all, but I wasn't missing it before either, though it feels a little odd to me that you don't move upwards despite it being a swimming animation.


As for Super, I appreciate it. I'd have been fine with if only Sonic would get to be Super (and I found it odd that Metal Sonic could also become Super when I first acquired him), but if the long-term goal is for everyone to become Super now, I'm happy for that too. That's a nice incentive to collect all Chaos Emeralds as someone other than Sonic, which I support.

The "shockwave" when latching onto a wall while Super is fun, too, but... I'm not a fan of the "shockwave" when landing-after-gliding's current implementation. If I may copy-paste a post that I made in the Suggestions thread...


It feels odd to short-hop, glide, stop, land, and then have a devastating nuke/shockwave occur to nearby enemies, despite how little the hop might have been.
(It feels good and impactful when doing the same off the edge of a tall cliff, though.)

I'd suggest to have Super Knuckles' shockwave when landing after stopping a glide be dependent on velocity, with at least a minimum speed needed before the shockwave occurs at all.

 

[Spiky]

I have to say I love all the changes, especially Super Knuckles (a long overdue feature IMO) and the shorter landing animation. The pause after landing from a glide has always been the only thing about Knuckles' gameplay that annoyed me (if there's one thing Chaotix did right was removing it altogether IMO), but its shorter duration in the new version makes it perfectly bearable and much less intrusive.

 

[zevirik]

i dont play knuckles much (which is ironic because hes my favorite sonic character, but SRB2 without fang just isnt the same to me) but id say these changes are very much welcome. adding a new super form while making it obvious theres probably not gonna be any new supers, at least not for a while, makes sense. i mean, neither amy nor fang have supers and tails' super is... weird. but the buffs added to him are very nice. plus i like pink knuckles lol.
tldr THEYRE GOOD

 

[Radicalicious]

I'm pretty sure the swimming was included moreso because Tails goes into a swimming animation, and it was weird that Knuckles did not. Anything on top of that was probably just a "well, that makes sense".

The swimming for Knuckles is an ability he had in the original SRB. It was used in Echindaopolis, though the SRB1 Remake didn't have the swimming as he could glide instead. The swimming in SRB2 is not as flexible though, as he could swim anywhere in the water in SRB1, which probably wouldn't work as well in SRB2.

 

[cookiefonster]

I like the changes! The swimming sprites are great and make him interact with water much differently from other characters; it also means that Sonic is the only one of the main trio who doesn't know how to swim, which is really funny.

I never understood why people hated the halting crouch after landing from a glide so much. Knuckles does exactly that in Sonic 3 and in Mania, and it serves well to contrast him against Sonic: he has much more physical strength and versatility, but nowhere near as much speed. The halt lets you be more careful and precise with platforming, much more so than just running as usual after landing from a glide would be. That said, it's a fair change to decrease the halt time because having something force you to stop for a such a significant time can definitely be annoying.

As for Super Knuckles, I haven't gotten around to using him much, but I think translating his hyper form from Sonic 3 into 3D was the right way to do go about it. It makes sense not to increase his low jump height, since exclusive paths and content have always been a fundamental part of playing as Knuckles.

 

[GrayAngel]

Was excited about the swimming, but it wasn't what I was expecting. I was hoping he'd be able to swim up and down. It's fine how it is. It just wasn't as big of a deal as I thought it was.

I'm glad to see Super Knuckles in the game, without mods, after all these years. Little weird that he has Hyper Knuckles' shockwave power, though. I guess this means Hyper forms will remain limited to God Mode. Unless they make Sonic the only one who can go Hyper, which would be fine with me, since his Hyper form was the only one that was visually distinct from his Super form.

The swimming for Knuckles is an ability he had in the original SRB. It was used in Echindaopolis, though the SRB1 Remake didn't have the swimming as he could glide instead. The swimming in SRB2 is not as flexible though, as he could swim anywhere in the water in SRB1, which probably wouldn't work as well in SRB2.

Wait. You're telling me that Knuckles' swim was in the original game, and yet the old guard was totally against it being in the sequel? That makes no sense.

 

[Megaboom1]

The new additions are pretty much strict improvements but the newly implemented high speed crouch skidding doesn't feel good to me. When gliding and dropping at a high speed, the last thing I want is the game's weird skidding system to kick in and make platforming uncomfortable. Feels like it flies in the face of 2.2's Knuckles philosophy to make him less of a bootleg Sonic.

Also, it'd be nice if Super Knuckles could break monitors with his quakes like how the Elemental Shield flames can. An increase of the quake radius in general would be cool, too. Or if it's possible, making the quake radius increase based on how fast you are when hitting a wall/landing.