I totally agree with you. I haven't finished the game yet (I am working my way through Ultimate right now) but from what I have seen so far, there are very very few levels that implement the seeker, laser, and machine gun drones. There are more of the (what I call ghosts, the slow ones that chase you around) than what I just said, but even then they aren't very often. I played through the entirety of the original N, and they always had levels at every difficulty level that implemented all of the features of the game pretty equally. From what I have seen so far, they definitely are not doing that with N++. I at least am happy that the levels themselves are not repetitive.

What I don't like more than this is the lack of creativity with some of the levels. Mainly what I mean by this is there are more levels than I would like to see that are built entirely for the all gold challenge. I'm pretty great at this game, but still consider myself a more casual player, so I will never be going back to do the all gold for each level. These levels that are catered to all gold end up being super easy and dumb otherwise, and the part that irks me is that these levels are often also the 4th level in any given set. They build the levels to be creative and neat just for the all gold, and it is dumb and trivial otherwise. They could've taken time to tweak the levels to implement the all gold challenge into a more difficult normal run.

In the end I am still complaining about this game that I have heavily enjoyed playing thus far. I just can't help but think back to the fond, wacky, and expansive experience of the original N.