Not to be the voice of the devil, but I really liked chao hunting in advance 3 😅 I agree that hunting for them in a 2D platformer can be infuriating, but I still think they are a huge upgrade from advance 2, since you don't need to collect them EVERY TIME you want to try the special stage and instead, just collect them once, and them grab a single key at a stage, rather then 7 SP coins. Not to mention you can get 9 keys from the stages to try the special stage up to 9 times in a row and learn it faster that way While playing nearly every stage with Knuckles and Amy, I found it a neat detail that you could almost always go back to an earlier part of the stage, unlike in advance 2, where you wouldn't be able to jump back if you fell or stuff like that and looking at the garden area helped a lot too, since, if you're missing chao number 1, but have already colected chao number 2, you know number 1 has to be in an area before where you found number 2, so you don't have to scavenge the whole stage. I was able to find them all without looking up a guide, except for one, which... once I looked it up, it made me feel stupid for not being able to find it on my own 😅 Sorry for the wall of text
Nah I get where you’re coming from. Especially in comparison to Advance 2 I see your point. I think the chao hunting is conceptually cool, but it’s hard to know where you are in a level and requires somewhat arbitrary trial and error of “I don’t thiiiink I’ve taken this path yet”. I think it’s tedious, but back when I was a child and I had the time and patience to replay levels endlessly, I see where it could have value.
