PLAYED THE SONIC ADVANCE 2 SP MOD
I have tried many a time to get into Sonic Advance 2 but found that the vanilla game just never clicked with me. Due to how hard it is to get a chance to get the emeralds I never felt motivated to learn the game and get good at handling the speed the game gives you, so I would just end up barrelling forward and damage boosting until the bottomless pits in the later stages made me give up.
This mod has honestly changed all that for me, and has elevated Advance 2 to being one of my favourite Sonic games. I think the biggest reason is the changes to the Emerald Challenge, in the original you needed to get all 7 special rings (SP Rings for short) in a stage which required taking a very specific and perfect rought through an act and a lot of memorization or following a guide (neither of which are all that fun). With two simple changes this is now one of my favourite Emerald challenges, SP Rings are both more plentiful and the requirement has been dropped to 5. Add to that some really solid Special Stages that revolve around managing ring chains and multipliers to get the required number of rings to succeed and you have a winning formula on your hands. It's not all completely easy though as you need to get a good handle of the games controls and tricks to get the SP Rings as they aren't just handed to you.
The other thing that helps is a lot of the cheapness has been removed from the game, particularly in the case of bottomless pits and enemy placement. Not enough to completely throw off someone familiar with these Zones, but enough to give the game a fairer and more reasonable difficulty curve.
Both of these things have actually given me the motivation to actually "git gud" as some might say thanks to the game not kicking me when I am down and giving me an attainable goal to work towards. And thanks to this I have discovered an exhilarating platformer that eschews the manipulation of moment present in the classic games and Advance 1 in favour of fast paced reaction based platforming with an emphasis on movement options.
So far I have only played as Sonic, and have not yet got all the Emeralds to reach the true final boss (only 6 so far), but I will certainly be returning to this game to change both of those things.
I have tried many a time to get into Sonic Advance 2 but found that the vanilla game just never clicked with me. Due to how hard it is to get a chance to get the emeralds I never felt motivated to learn the game and get good at handling the speed the game gives you, so I would just end up barrelling forward and damage boosting until the bottomless pits in the later stages made me give up.
This mod has honestly changed all that for me, and has elevated Advance 2 to being one of my favourite Sonic games. I think the biggest reason is the changes to the Emerald Challenge, in the original you needed to get all 7 special rings (SP Rings for short) in a stage which required taking a very specific and perfect rought through an act and a lot of memorization or following a guide (neither of which are all that fun). With two simple changes this is now one of my favourite Emerald challenges, SP Rings are both more plentiful and the requirement has been dropped to 5. Add to that some really solid Special Stages that revolve around managing ring chains and multipliers to get the required number of rings to succeed and you have a winning formula on your hands. It's not all completely easy though as you need to get a good handle of the games controls and tricks to get the SP Rings as they aren't just handed to you.
The other thing that helps is a lot of the cheapness has been removed from the game, particularly in the case of bottomless pits and enemy placement. Not enough to completely throw off someone familiar with these Zones, but enough to give the game a fairer and more reasonable difficulty curve.
Both of these things have actually given me the motivation to actually "git gud" as some might say thanks to the game not kicking me when I am down and giving me an attainable goal to work towards. And thanks to this I have discovered an exhilarating platformer that eschews the manipulation of moment present in the classic games and Advance 1 in favour of fast paced reaction based platforming with an emphasis on movement options.
So far I have only played as Sonic, and have not yet got all the Emeralds to reach the true final boss (only 6 so far), but I will certainly be returning to this game to change both of those things.