rank s on first portal to hard?

[x22uwe]

hey im new to sonic, bought this game started a few days ago and i love it. but in the first portal i struggle to beat the track with rank s , i'm not even close to it even though i watched a guide but im 42 years old and my reactions are not the best.

so is this game over now for me? i need ranks to play on right? :(

[NBOX21]

You don't need good ranks to progress through the game. You simply get an extra key for getting an S rank on a stage as well as three more keys for completing all 4 missions in the stage (reach the goal, collect all red rings, get an S rank and hold at least X rings) which can all be done on separate runs. So long as you have enough keys to collect the emeralds, you can skip getting S ranks entirely.

If you need more keys, fishing with Big the Cat is also an option.

[mdesaleah]

S ranks are optional. Progression works like this

Mini boss Gears -> Stages (keys) -> Emeralds

and

Character Tokens (like hearts) -> Dialogue Cutscenes (two emeralds eventually)

Sure, an S rank will give you a key, but you can also get keys by finding all Red Rings in a stage, beating the stage with a set number of rings, lying around when you loop something in the hubs, or if you find the fishing mini game in the hub then you can just buy keys

So there are multiple ways of getting what you need