There is one way to enjoy Knuckles Chaotix and that is in getting good enough at the fling mechanics that you can cross half a stage in one throw. Of course, since one of the characters is graced with the power of infinite flight this isn't a particularly useful skill to master. I do genuinely enjoy the aesthetic of the game, and I do think the special stages are a highlight (and arguably the core of the game) but it's almost immediately obviously a game with lots of ideas that never had the time to edit them, let alone refine them.
Chaotix is a game about blasting from bonus to bonus on a short 2D stage to eventually reach the special stage and collect the chaos rings. No level is particularly long once you understand the controls and have a decent idea of where to go -- pretty much always up and then to the right, though Amazing Arena especially likes to screw with your path expectations and speed slider definitely makes some interesting choices for goal placement. Similar gameplay ideas to this are much better achieved in Nights, and similar aesthetics are in the vastly more coherent and focused Ristar.
The worst problem with Chaotix is that its areas are all clearly based on the same layout that, over each of its 5 iterations, only changes slightly, usually expanding in ways that you won't encounter while playing it, and without a time attack mode or option to revisit played states there's not much to be gained from them. Structurally Chaotix feels bland because its most efficient pathways are also its most repeated. Looking at the maps over time is a bit similar to watching a city get built out in time-lapse. Since there's no canonical stage cycle unlike nearly every other game in the series, the random stage selection does a good job of hiding this sort of narrative design. It makes an interesting design less coherent.
Perhaps if time attack / mission mode had been retained during development then there'd be something to write about in terms of the game's capacity for more elaborate and focused play, but as it stands the game counters its seeming maximalist design choices with a loop that attempts to stifle them as much as possible.
My 32X is mostly for (in rough order of importance) Virtua Racing DX, Shadow Squadron, Virtua Fighter, Mortal Kombat II, and NBA Jam. Chaotix is just, well, there. I don't play it much, and for good reason. A part of me wants to see it get revisited, but not without massive changes and possibly some expansion to the story and avaialble environments.
