I take every chance I get to complain about reviews that break a game down into pieces, like “Story: 3 stars, Gameplay: 5 stars, Music: 5 stars”, and so on. The reason why is because of situations like this. From a technical standpoint, Sonic 2 is nothing short of a masterpiece. Compare it to something like Altered Beast which came out three years prior, and was considered a good enough representation of the Genesis to be a pack-in title. Sonic is so far ahead you would think it’s on a different console, the visual design pops so much more beautifully, even without making stages hard to parse. The music avoids the sort of tinny blarp noises that plagued its contemporaries (for the most part), and there’s a reason why it keeps getting remixed even all these years later. It feels good to control, it has a lot of unique content... but I didn’t end up appreciating it much at all. The reason why is because of the level design, which was an unending source of frustration. I’m not the guy who reduces Sonic to just being about going fast, since that would be like asking why Mario has to run so much when he’s all about jumping, but there are so many obstacles in Sonic 2 designed to punish your movement for seemingly no reason. Launch pads throw you into the abyss, half-pipes have spikes at the top to slap you for going too fast, enemies will be placed in areas that require prescience to avoid, the little frustrations just pile up. If gaining lives was easy, that would be one thing, but when getting hit makes all your rings fly out, this unpredictable damage is equivalent to losing a life through opportunity cost. The process of learning efficient routes through each stage wasn’t exhilarating, it was exhausting, trying to be careful enough to where I could build up enough of a bank to make it just a bit further, before restarting the game yet again, since you have to do the final fight with zero rings.

So, in spite of Sonic 2’s top-notch music and visual design, some great stages, satisfying moments, and all that… its random frustrations were so pervasive that I didn’t really have fun. It’s a game I could see myself enjoying once I knew every little trick, but that process takes a lot of time. That’s why it makes sense that this is a lot of people’s favorite game, since its critical flaw is one which can be smoothed over just by playing more and memorizing the hazards. Once that’s done, you’re left with a five-star masterpiece, but until then all I have is three stars and zero rings. Again.