ChaosAngelZero wrote:Now that DA mentions it, playing the same game more than once, each time with a different character, is pointless and stupid, but somehow StH3&K managed to make it not only good, but excellent. What can it be that makes that game so damn special?
The fact that you're only partially playing the same game. There were entire levels in which Sonic and Knuckles' territory barely coincided if at all - in particular, AI2, LB2, LR2, and everything thereafter, and in the others there was always divergent terrain to be explored. No Sonic game before or since has had levels that were nearly as complex, and there probably never will be again, as it's expensive to create that much content; people easily forget now that when Sonic 3 was released there was angst over how short the game was.
FlashTHD wrote:It drops when you get hit or sustain a full gauge for long enough without doing something to keep it full (then it drops from 300 to 200%).
To be picky, how it really works is that when it hits full you get a certain period of infinite no-drain rush usage that restarts whenever you do something that fills the gauge; afterwards, if you used the gauge at all it drops to 200%, and if you didn't it just stays at 300% and supercharges again the next time you fill it.
edit: I'll make a preemptive followup to the first point before somebody calls me on it. It's easy to complain about Sega's management forcing STI to split S3K into two games for the $$$, but the fact is that there isn't much of a historical relationship in Sonic between the amount of money spent making wide expansive levels and the amount of money earned from those levels. Sonic 2 sold far more than S3K, and had significantly less lush and complex levels; Sonic Adventure outsold SA2 despite having 10 levels to its 30, and SSR outsold Sonic06 despite terrifically less content. Yes, there's lots of nuance to each example and you can argue quality and depth and so on, but ultimately the relevant opinions to the production of Sonic games are not based on our detailed understanding of the games but Sega management looking at the hard numbers of production costs and revenues and making decisions accordingly.
