Made it to the final boss in Encore Mode, I ended up dying but I couldn't be arse to replaying the garbage final level so I will just give my thoughts on Encore Mode...
I hated it, I mean it was interesting but it's too tame and doesn't go far enough in taking advantage of the character's ability and I hated that how you couldn't switch between all the characters on the fly and had to find the item boxes. The new bonus game is good though and is far better than the blue sphere one.
As for Ray and Mighty, I like Ray but his gliding ability is useless as levels aren't built with him in mind and while I hate Mighty's character design, his stomp ability is pretty fun to use.
Honestly though, what I want is Sonic Mania 2 but less of the recycled older levels. I want to see new stuff and not levels from past Sonic games, I have generation for that, which honestly does it far better than Mania.
Nothing beats Sonic Advance 2 & 3's Special Stages though. Good god...
What? Sonic Advance 2 special stage is dead easy as if you just keep collecting the rings you will end up multiply your amount and Zero is not a threat at all.
In fact I applaud Sonic advance 2's special stage as it fit in with the theming of fast pace game play. The only area that it flattered on was getting into the special stage as the game was now asking the players to explore the stage in a game that wasn't really designed for it and as Sonic, who is the worse character to use to explore than compare to the others.
Though Advance 3 just takes the cake as you first have to find all the chao, then that unlock a key in a level which you have to find without dying and then take the key to the spring to do the special stage and if you fail it, well you have to do the stage again to get the key and you can't grind for them as the max you can have is 9.
Getting the last one was tedious as finding them in act 1 and 2 was annoying so I had to play act 3 and it was a slow moving platform stage.
The special stage in advance 1 was also pretty bad due to depth perception, not that the reward was worth it as the Super Sonic boss fight in Advance 1 felt tacked on.
