It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I'm still not a fan of the Stage's physics, nor its Ring layouts, but the game throws an overabundance of Rings at you. If you know where everything is — or just get lucky — it's easy enough to hit enough Rings to clear the third checkpoint by the end of the second one.
The bomb patterns are also easy enough to read, as they aren't nearly as varied as the ones from the Sonic 2 Special Stage, and if you jump right as you see a bomb, you only graze it, and don't lose any Rings at all. Really, the most difficult part is learning the Ring patterns, and there are some that stand out more than others.
I was planning on doing a victory lap after I collected the Emeralds, but after I reset, the game's save automatically locked me onto The Final Fight. Oh well.
Final boss is pretty easy, too. I did die twice, but one of those deaths was on the extra fight after the initial boss, and the second was due to falling off the edge while dodging projectiles.
That was partly because the foreground blends in so well with the background… but really, I blame me more not paying attention than anything else. So, I beat the boss stage when I only had a single life left. Woot.
I'm now playing the game as Amy, and holy hell, am I having a time with it. Who knew that not being able to attack automatically would make a Sonic game more difficult?
I've still managed to make it to the halfway point, but yeah, it's pretty rough going. I can already see the boss of Gene Gadget 1 being an absolute nightmare.
Don't mind Knuckles, he just has a little something in his eye.