So I was playing Act 1, Stage 2, and I got enough rings for knuckles. I handed them over, entered the stage, hit the very first spike before reaching any rings, and lost the stage. Irritating.
But " no problem" I thought, I'll just grab more rings. So I ran around and collected rings again only to accidentally bump tails and do a tails stage, but I already had the emerald from stage 1 tails, so that was pointless. Then I FINALLY got enough rings again, gave em to knuckles.. and nothing happened. Apparently once you lose a bonus round you have to complete the level, go back, and then redo the stage AND the level all over again.
This is frustrating, why not just make Knuckles and Tails let you retry for another 50 rings?
To be fair, vyperii kind of didn't answer your question, in a sense it means you have four tries per zone to get each emerald now so even though you are sure not to get super sonic until the last level, getting all the emeralds is now way easier. In fact you don't just get four tries, you get as many as you need since you can replay the levels indefinitely.
But, this is already a game about collecting things. The whole flickie mechanic is a testament to that. ):
It's a controversial issue and it seems mostly settled but I agree with you after playing through the beta. It removes the incentive to explore and save/collect/not lose rings after you've gotten the first bonus stage of the level. Its a shame because it also makes the already frustrating last levels very hard to get the bonus stages in and the lack of being able to unlock super sonic before the end makes it less fun and more of a completionist thing.
On the other hand, once you accept that it's just a new way of playing this game, it's not all bad, you spend less time focusing on collecting things the first time you play through the game, making it less intense, and actually quite fun.
D: What? That's the opposite of an improvement! What's the point of finding both Tails and Knuckles in each stage? How am I suppose to utilize Super Sonic at all if i can't use him till the very last stage?
No, you can only get one emerald per level now... Slightly annoying, but may make collecting them more of a challenge...