This game starts out feeling great, the character pairing is a great way to add variety to the gameplay and most of the levels are designed to encourage experimenting with that mechanic to find the best way through each one.

But this is overshadowed by some glaring issues. The first that came up to me was the Twinkle Snow boss, it's a difficulty spike that feels really bad because if you get hit once then you will just fall and die and have to start again.

Where I think this gets really bad is in the final zone. This already has the issue of an overabundance of bottomless pits and enemy/spike traps that you can't predict (there was literally one point where I didn't see an enemy because it was obscured by foreground elements in the level.) This is really bad in the third act where the entire stage is basically one whole bottomless pit and much like the Twinkle Snow boss one hit will send you falling to your death, sure there are checkpoints but once you get your first Game Over you only have 3 lives to work with before having to start the Act over.

The boss of this level is also frustrating, because of how the arena is setup it is very easy to not be able to recollect your rings when you get hit. Add to this how the boss can easily hit you without warning and this too saps a lot of lives.

I think the final boss after this may be somewhat less frustrating but honestly at this point I just wanted the game to end so I quite literally Cheesed the boss using Cream's Chap.

I really want to love this game but the final moments bring it down for me.