Some more polishing...

My first impression of 'Sonic and Knuckles 2' aka 'Sonic's Return to Angel Island' was "WTF, an .zip of twentyfive magabyte?! How much will the unzipped take then?!" Luckily, the game can be run without unzipping. Or via Instant Play so you don't get the shockness out of it. Anyway, once I actually tried the game out, I'd say it's almost worth it. You can get Megabot trice for the space of 'Sonic's Return to Angel Island' , but since most computers today has gigs to play with, well, I suppose most of you out there can live with it. And this game is easier than Megabot, too. Anyways, I guess I can make my point clearer by going to the pointgiving, right?

Graphics: 4½ / 5
Most, a ton more precisely, are those sweet, sweet ripped graphics that gives a real good feeling. Backgrounds, tiles, sprites... it feels like you are playing a real Sonic game. One in 2D, to be specific. Some apparent things are disgusting though, like the generic Highscore list that appears on Game Over. A background with e.g. a laughing Dr. Robotnik or something would be a great improvement. And the F1 help file would look better with a different background color and some different text sizes, too.

Sound: 5 / 5
This music stirs my soul and makes my spine vibrate. It feels like REAL, RETRO, CLASSIC gaming music. Oh, such a difference even from my cherished MIDIs... the music even loops correctly! I get why people likes OGG files so much now. ^_^ In other words, the music is WONDERFUL and the biggest Pro of the game! Play it and just listen to it!

Gameplay: 4 / 5
Generally, great gameplay with loops, curls, and rings. Though, Sonic & Co's acceleration feels a bit too high... which makes the precise jumping, e.g. is the battle vs Angel Island Zone's boss, hard. Speaking of bosses, they felt a bit lame. If the screen locked around the bosses, and the boss music began at the same time as the actual battle, things would be much better. Now, nothing is apparently hindering the player from going back and collect rings if things are going bad. Just to name one con of the bosses. Also, I think the level design is generally too based on narrow areas where you have to spin dash in the roof. Not enough straight patches to show off the blue blurriness... I miss that. But I envy that engine. ^_^ Anyway, the increase in Knuckles' climbing speed was nice.

Story: 1 / 5
I guess the usual soup of emeralds and the PhD formerly known as Robotnik, but the game didn't really tell me anything about that.

Interface: 3 / 5
Overall nice, excluding these bugs:
When seconds are less than 10, tíme is shown as 1 : 5 instead of 1 : 05...
When trying to Spindash, you could sometimes make the spinning character jump in ball form, which looked a bit funny and certainly didn't help getting up slopes.
Also, there was some smaller misses, I won't write about them here, since they aren't that important. Like, bonuses are added at once and not being decreased piece for piece and added to the score, to name one. But otherwise, controls was good, HUD showed the important stuff, all that. An overall interface, in other words. F1 help screen could be better formatted, not to mention the highscore list... But enough about that.

Overall Rating: 3 / 5
Nice, but gigantic in the wrong way. Play it if you like the 3D / GBA Sonic games, and you will never go back to those.