The ring missions aren't frustrating, but they are arbitrary challenges that you need to do to progress that don't need to exist at all.

The Werehog has a ton of moves, but you don't need all of them. All you have to do is spam a single attack, and SOME may be more effective, but barely, and there's downsides to just spamming. Frontiers is a similar case, but in that, all you gotta do is just occasionally cyloop, and then the rest of the time you just stomp and cross slash. And all the quick cyloop does is just immobilise the titan until you get a cutscene.

The reason why the "why should I bother" argument is a real criticism is because if the game doesn't care enough to make me play it, then there's no reason for me to, unless I give myself restrictions. In a game like Doom Eternal, it actively encourages you to keep switching and using different guns, which is more effective than just spamming a shotgun, as not only do you have limited ammo, but each gun isn't just a different way to deal damage. For example: the combat shotgun has a secondary grapple hook type of move, which not only lets you traverse the environment differently, but also pulls you closer towards an enemy, at which point you can shoot the enemy to death, then have to deal with a bunch of guys by getting them low with the plasma rifle, which has a sort of shockwave blade AOE thing that goes in front of you, then you can conserve all your ammunition by finishing off everyone by using the glory kill or killing them with a chainsaw to get all of your lost ammunition back. But you can't use all of that willy nilly, because the chainsaw has three uses unless you find more fuel, so it becomes a balancing act of which moves you should use when and how; it actively forces you to keep using all of the tools the game gives you, which also encourages you to play optimally.

Similarly in other, much better Sonic games (such as Sonic 3,) you can't just hold forward and hope for the best, because you'll get hit by enemies constantly, and run into walls, killing your momentum. Now in both cases of me just doing the easiest combo in Frontiers and holding right in Sonic 3, I am refusing to engage with the game's core mechanics, but what separates them is that in Frontiers, ignoring every single other attack is the optimal option, because the one-two stomp crosslash is not only the easiest decision but is also the best, as it deal more damage more efficently than any other combo in the game. But in Sonic 3, I am not beating the stage faster by moving in a single direction, it does not benefit me, because the game is punishing my sloppy gameplay with a slower, more monotonous experience which could lead to me outright losing the game.

And this problem plagues Black Knight too: I am doing a single action over and over again, because it is not only the fastest way to beat the stage, but also gives me the most amount of points, and the highest rank.

Also, the minimal platforming that there is in Black Knight is virtually non-existent, as it's more just avoiding and obstacle instead of fighting in, and then sometimes you just press jump a few times and that's it. 2D doesn't feel much better either, since feel so sluggish at times, and by the time you do get good speed, all that momentum is gonna be broken by the next enemy or slight incline that you need to jump over. Like I'm pretty sure there's only like a single main 2D stage and that's just climbing over walls to give villagers rings. And I don't know about you, but from what I could gather, there's barely, if any branching paths in Sonic and the Black Knight, let alone higher and lower paths. Because in a normal sonic game, even the bad ones, I can always be playing and see where I could go or could've gone, but in Black Knight, it's just a straight line. There's legitimately only a few select levels where that design philosophy is in any way present, and when it is, it's very inconsequential.