Sonic 3 Complete VS Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and everything in-between. My thoughts on it.

[QuickSciFi]

I always saw S&K as the more-refined, cleaner game of the two. There are so many areas, especially in later levels, where I feel like I'm actually playing a Neo Geo AES game.

[Edit] Lol. Just saw what I did there. I'll move on to distinguish S&K from SNK. Hahahah.

[Lync]

agree with you entirely there

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is just perfection, as Lync said. The quintessential Sonic game. Only thing that subtracts from it is the Sonic 3 music, esp the boss themes and Knuckles', get replaced with their S&K counterparts.

agreed with all this - yeah, once i got the lock-on i never played 3 by itself again damn, okay definitely playing it that way next time then!

Works for me. 2 might be tighter(coding/level design), but 3&K has substance.

Haha, well then - great minds do think alike then!

I did forget to mention one 'Sonic' game in my summary though; all I will say is that I consider it to be 'The Polarizing' of the group... can you guess it?

I really couldn't agree more and I miss the days you're more active as regular member of the forum due to posts like this.

S&K feels uninspired and convoluted when compared to Sonic 3.
A lot of the level design became a mess, palettes are all over the place, enemy placement is way worse, etc. Sonic 3 Complete is really the ultimate Sonic experience IMO, but a lot of it for me is thanks to the options that allow you to apply S3's style into the rest of the game.

Angel Island, Hydrocity and Ice Cap are the zones I like most. They really deliver an awesome atmosphere for the environment they purpose to create.
Then you get Mushroom Hill and it's depressingly generic, recycled, flat and ugly. Really sad.

Hmm... I'll nibble a bit. I never thought there was much continuity between the levels besides the transition scenes (genius!) so I always figured most of the stages were interchangeable up until Lava Reef, to Hidden Palace, and then Sky Sanctuary.

Of all the levels I really like Mushroom Hill Zone, especially as you progress the level scenery changes in those 'autumn' colors. Makes me feel cozy... but stacking them all up, honestly S3 and S&K are dead even to me with the exception of Carnival Night Zone; that was my least favorite stage, and even then I think it's a good level. And I nailed this on my first try age six:

[Baloo]

great writeup - as a kid, i read all the gaming mags i could, but still took 3 as a complete game in itself, so when Knuckles showed up, it was just amazing: more levels, plus more ways to play my old games. i didn't feel gypped even for a moment.

swear to god though, i have "get all the #$%^ing chaos emeralds in sonic 2" on my new year's resolution list this year, it's the only one i've never done it in! and after all these years, i realize that playing it one player means sadly ditching tails, he just loses all our rings too much in those damn halfpipes.

I must say I definitely look forward to another playthrough of Sonic 3 complete with the Knuckles paths and cutscenes.

I also must say that I really like Sonic 3's special stages way more than Sonic 2's. Sonic 2's are hard and arbitrary, it took me a million tries to get all of the Chaos Emeralds in 2 on Android even with the easier view and without Tails to mess me up. Didn't get them all in one playthrough. Sonic 3 on the other hand I got 7 emeralds in 7 tries and was done by Carnival Night Zone. WAY easier to get the Blue Sphere Emeralds. The Super Emerald patterns are much harder to get in one playthrough. I have yet to get all 7 Emeralds in Sonic 2 in one playthrough. Sonic 1 is a little arbitrary but not too bad in one playthrough.

[zetastrike]

As a kid and even today, I tend to play Sonic 3 by itself. S&K's levels just aren't very fun aside from Flying Battery. To this day, I never bother to play through Sandopolis Act 2. It drags like hell and is no fun. I turn the game off at that point. I'm glad I'm not alone in my thinking.

[IrishNinja]

I must say I definitely look forward to another playthrough of Sonic 3 complete with the Knuckles paths and cutscenes.

I also must say that I really like Sonic 3's special stages way more than Sonic 2's. Sonic 2's are hard and arbitrary, it took me a million tries to get all of the Chaos Emeralds in 2 on Android even with the easier view and without Tails to mess me up. Didn't get them all in one playthrough. Sonic 3 on the other hand I got 7 emeralds in 7 tries and was done by Carnival Night Zone. WAY easier to get the Blue Sphere Emeralds. The Super Emerald patterns are much harder to get in one playthrough. I have yet to get all 7 Emeralds in Sonic 2 in one playthrough. Sonic 1 is a little arbitrary but not too bad in one playthrough.

ah, what was the "easier view" on the android version like? and glad i'm not the only one who found 3's bonus stages far more enjoyable - i'd sometimes see how far i'd get in the endless ones hidden in S&K + 1! but yeah, i'd always wondered why so few people ever said they had a difficult time getting them all in 2, unless you've a solid 2nd player with you.

though part of me wants to go back one day & play that hack of Knuckles Chaotix i read about that actually populated the levels, cause the special stages they did there clearly built on part 2's but at a glance seemed a little neater.

[Baloo]

ah, what was the "easier view" on the android version like? and glad i'm not the only one who found 3's bonus stages far more enjoyable - i'd sometimes see how far i'd get in the endless ones hidden in S&K + 1! but yeah, i'd always wondered why so few people ever said they had a difficult time getting them all in 2, unless you've a solid 2nd player with you.

though part of me wants to go back one day & play that hack of Knuckles Chaotix i read about that actually populated the levels, cause the special stages they did there clearly built on part 2's but at a glance seemed a little neater.

The Android version simply has real-time rendered 3D special stages that make them look a little bit nicer.

Do you have a link to that hack? Knuckles Chaotix used to be one of my favorite games but I haven't played it in a while due to the lack of challenge in it.

[Obviously]

I always thought neither game made sense without the other. When you realize they're one game the difficulty curve works out pretty well. To me, both games feel like they're missing something when they're separated but there's no way I can look past a bias I've had since I was a kid. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is one of my favorite games of all time and I've played it to the point where it's difficult for me to step back and analyze. It's all so ingrained into me that I can't really look at the levels critically since I breeze through them so effortlessly and have such fond memories of the entire package.

So maybe my opinion would be different if I had a fresher set of eyes but I'm too far gone to really judge Sonic 3 and S&K against each other as separate experiences.

I will however say each game has a single Zone I don't care for. Carnival Night in 3 (no I didn't get stuck on the barrel as a kid and I didn't even know this was a problem for people until I was an adult) and Sandopolis in S&K (though I give them kudos for trying something different unique with it).

[IrishNinja]

so this thread got me playing Sonic 3 Complete tonight! what a cool game, i'm only in hydrocity cause i wanted to get as many chaos emeralds as i can

Do you have a link to that hack? Knuckles Chaotix used to be one of my favorite games but I haven't played it in a while due to the lack of challenge in it.

...shit, did i dream this one up? i'm checking romhacking and only seeing the one that brings sonic. checked my mega ED and there's a few on there but not that one either...balls! i'll keep at it, if it doesnt exist someone really should go nuts with a debugger or something.

[LinkueiBR]

This carnival night part is an perfect example of bad game design. When you first play, probably you will try jumping just because Tails keep jumping. It's nothing intuitive!

Anyway, Sonic 3 and Knuckles RULES!!

[NeoVamp]

This carnival night part is an perfect example of bad game design. When you first play, probably you will try jumping just because Tails keep jumping. It's nothing intuitive!

That barrel thing is a prime example of how the mind deals with problem solving, some minds just realize quicker that its something to be figured out.

I never understood why people had a problem with that barrel, after ten or so jumps you gotta realize that jumping just doesn't work.
I mean I tried jumping, blinked my eyes when that didn't work.. jumped again.. tilted my head, and started trying out stuff like spinning and pushing up an.. there we go.

It's bad game design for sure, but it's not the huge roadblock that apparently nobody could figure out.

[IrishNinja]

holy hell, you can customize sonic 3 complete from the site, too?! man, what a fantastic effort right there, that's awesome.

[Flygon]

It's bad game design for sure, but it's not the huge roadblock that apparently nobody could figure out.

It took me over a decade to figure it out. And that's because I only had to Google it. I was assuming I was jumping wrong.

There was simply no reasonable indication to tell you that you should press Up and Down. If jumping appeared to do something, then you must be jumping wrong. Clearly.

They'dve done a lot if they'd just made it so that the barrel didn't move at all when jumped on. Or even better, the barrel didn't exist at all.

[NeoVamp]

It took me over a decade to figure it out.

Took me like 5 minutes, It's not rocket science.

[LinkueiBR]

Took me like 5 minutes

To me too back in the day, but i just don't get why tails keep jumping... It's probably intentional. Programmers trolling players LOL

[NeoVamp]

i just don't get why tails keep jumping...

Probably has something to do with the barrel physics, it's in up and down motion so the CPU probably gets confused and thinks the player is going up and down.