Spark 3 is an enjoyable game, but it falls off at the end which seems to be a trope with this series. Most of the game is great, it features fast and free platforming with a high skill ceiling making it great for speed runners and also features some neat stage mechanics. If I had to describe a lot of levels, think of the opening cinematic of Sonic Unleashed where Sonic storms the Egg Fleet under a barrage of gunfire, very cool very exhilarating.
As to where the gameplay falls off bigtime, I have to go into depth.
First off the Rally levels. Whenever you try to attempt drifting, you'll inevitably hit a wall and when you do, the car either flys off the track or it rolls over, and when it does you are forced to restart from a check point cause there's no way to get back on the track or roll your car back onto its wheels, as a racing fan, this is very disappointing.
Next up would be Area 7, which is when the game introduces you to falling from great heights. In this game when you fall from a great height a danger meter appears and when it fills up you die automatically, the problem is when this is implemented into stage design you have to cancel your fall with a dash, jump, or charged jester dash to reset the meter so you can get to the bottom of the jump. I do believe this was implemented to keep the player from skipping most of Area 7 by just jumping off the stage since the level design is basically a giant cylinder that you have to descend down into, and not only that, the level is massive so adding a ton of out of bounds zones that insta kill would've been a huge undertaking for one person. In a perfect world where more work could've been done on the stage, I think the Downward Dash would've been better for breaking Spark's fall, kinda like Mario's Ground Pound.
Finally my last gripe with the game, the end. The last level is a giant gauntlet that is probably 40 min of gameplay depending on how well you do. It starts off with a reoccurring bossfight that you fought against 2 times already, and then a giant 20+ min level that throws the book at you, I'm talking every annoying mechanic in the game. It also features a brand new mechanic which is basically a giant cloud of gas that obfuscates the players view of the level, also accompanied by pits. This level also features much more precise platforming than the rest of the game. All in all I do believe the intention was to make the level long and drawn out and as difficult as possible to farm your lives before the final 2 bosses, just like the final level of Spark 1, how does he keep getting away with this, am I right? The final two bosses were kinda weak compared to Fark and Freom in Spark 1, the first boss was a 3 phase fight with very predictable patterns and the final boss was actually one phase which I actually kinda liked cause I was getting burned out by the stage length. I wish the last level could've been broken up into segments that you didn't have to play in one go.
So yeah those are my thoughts, if you enjoy Sonic like I do, I think this would be up your alley, but if you're not a die hard Sonic fan and prefer a more polished experience, you might not enjoy this one. All in all I think the game offers some great value if you want to experience the Spark series in its entirety since it features all of Spark 2's levels without the need of buying Spark 2 or a DLC add on.
