LogFAQs > #976409001

It's a weird thing. I got this distinct feeling playing the main game that there had been a lot of compromise to make the game not unfun - where they had made things one way, playtested it and found it was a chore to play, but couldn't rework it for whatever reason, so had to just tone it down until it at least wasn't unenjoyable. Stuff like the parry being infinite, having a dozen combat abilities despite most enemies being easy to fight and dying quickly, almost all of the open world challenges being super simple and having a much longer timer than necessary, the entire fishing minigame negating most of the item hunting, etc.

This DLC seems to have forgotten all of that and is probably a lot closer to what the main game was originally like: much more punishing platforming without any checkpoints and more difficult combat requiring skillful use of your abilities. The problem is, this game, like all 3D Sonic games, is still super janky, so that kinda stuff doesn't work properly and rather than challenging, is just frustrating.

Maybe this DLC being free is Sonic Team testing the waters to see how much fans like this level of difficulty, so they can calibrate the next one better?