Quote Originally Posted by Kevincal View Post
knuckles chaotix really does seem like an incomplete game. the most glaring thing is there are hardly any enemies in the game. i almost wonder, sega knew the 32x would not last long after they released saturn.. i wonder if they released knuckles chaotix knowing it was not complete but just wanted to make whatever money they could on it? maybe even it was supposed to star sonic but they removed him and his name from the game as they knew the game wasnt up to sonic standards and they would really piss off a lot of gamers!? the game really seems like 80% complete. i think sega just didnt care as the 32x was dying anyway. reminds me of atari in late 1995 when they released a boatload of games knowing the jag was gonna die soon.
Yeah, I entirely agree. The game really does feel unfinished, with so few enemies in the stages, no pits to fall in, and only occasional other obstacles a lot of the time. The game is slow paced, so you can't run through the levels nearly as fast as you could in a Sonic game (yes, you go fast when you throw yourself around, but that takes time to charge, and you need to aim well...), but the levels are just as long as Sonic levels, I think, so they take far longer to get through. And with almost no enemies and few obstacles other than jumping puzzles, it's not like you're challenged much either. It's just bizarre, and does kind of feel unfinished.

I have two guesses for what happened -- first, because you play the five worlds in random order, each of the five levels in each stage was made about even in difficulty. The only difficulty progression is in the five levels within each stage; otherwise you're on a mostly flat par for the five levels of each difficulty level. And with levels as long and boring as these are, this is a serious problem. They should NOT have done random level order, it'd have allowed for a much more competent and fun difficulty curve, instead of ... this. And second, because you can throw yourself around so fast, they decided not to have too many instant death obstacles that you could accidentally get thrown into. So instead, the levels are made dull and tedious, instead of a challenge. This doesn't explain the fact that they forgot to put enemies in the levels (there are entire stages with like one enemy in them, at most! What the heck?), but it does explain some of the level design elements. The throwing your characters game element is kind of interesting, and throwing yourself into death pits by accident would be really annoying, but seriously, there HAS to be a better solution than this!

I do like that Sega actually let up on their usual cheapness and actually put a save chip in the game, though... they almost never did that outside of RPGs and sports games in their cartridge games. Of cartridge Sonic-franchise titles, this and Sonic 3 are it.