(
B-but I like the look of Playtopia, the rotated fist animation and the "HD" minified Rayman... 
)
Ryemanni has stated years ago that Redemption is done and there won't be any more updates for it, so making suggestions of things to fix now is (sadly) wasting your time, especially when Ryemanni's last message here dates back to 2018.
Though, I do agree with some of the criticism and I'd add some nitpicks like the altered Hunter bullets, forgotten plum riding animation, missing original bonus levels, or the rushed ugly Picture City pirate redesign from update 1.1.0
(which happened because of a... certain Twitter user 
)...
As dr_st said, Rayman Redemption is its own experience with its own quirks, in the end there's still something to enjoy in the original official game.
Ryemanni has consistently been referring to Redemption as a "
reimagination" of Rayman 1 (look at the
Game Jolt description for example), so it wasn't meant to just do the same but better.
That doesn't make it immune from opinions/criticism of course, whether free or not, and I'd say the amount of work isn't an excuse either (even if the impressive number of years Ryemanni dedicated to it and his other fangames deserves nothing but praise!
), as criticism's intent isn't to harm but tell you how to do even better (well,
usually, that is
)...
But indeed, some may be genuine design choices from the dev (like point 1 as Playtopia is visually an hommage to the Welcome to Darkland fanmade expansion in every way, point 8 for all the complaints R1 got for its difficulty and how many players used the lives cheat, or 9 for what I'll elaborate upon below).
And for anything you may expect in that reimagined Rayman 1, someone else may have demanded the opposite. As Ryemanni said in the Postmortem stream (if I recall correctly), "you can't please everyone"... I can't begin to imagine the number of conflicting requests/complaints he got since Redemption's reveal.
(Some people were even asking why the Rabbids weren't included... yes, that's why there are 2 cheats codes in Redemption saying "no" to them 
)
Though, for point 5, I do remember him acknowledging the flaw in Tarayzan's level, albeit it's not that the water isn't rising but not rubberbanding (which is why it's not keeping up with Rayman), which is a feature he added to ReDesigner years later (as a bet for losing a speedrun race against Glackum).
Things like point 9, especially in the context of something "easily fixable", would require to redo most of Redemption's level design as it was thought to account for the gameplay of having all of the powers and an infinite helicopter glide.
That change is actually an interesting idea when Rayman 1 actually was originally designed with the player starting with all of the powers, as revealed in L'Histoire de Rayman (if I'm not remembering it wrong
). Here, the satisfaction of earning them has been replaced with unlocking the Pink Helpers, Gold Rings, power-ups such as the Paint Fist, and the upgrades in the shops.
Not to mention having to redo dialogues and rethink Betilla's role (which could bloat the story a bit here with the new extra characters and dialogues)... I'd also personally argue that this wasn't much of what should be called "character development", as it's just the character getting stronger (not even achieving it himself as it's through someone else's powers). Rayman can just do more things in gameplay, his character in terms of personality hasn't grown or changed in any way from that. This is more of a reward to the players than anything, as a game design incentive for them to progress.
Rayman showing empathy and kindness to Bzzit after defeating him, on the other hand, was something very worthy of being called story writing in my eyes, which is something Ryemanni did fix from the 2019 Gameplay Demo (where the scene had been replaced by a bland emotionless dialogue, as I critiziced in my playthrough of the demo back then).
Each game has its quirks. It doesn't have to be exactly like Rayman 1 in all ways. It's good enough that it's close. I agree with almost everything you wrote, but many of these can be legitimate design choices. It's not supposed to replace Rayman 1, but complement it.
Remember he made it for free.
(4:14)
gamejolt.com
)
), and I made sure to replace the Redemption-exclusive tunes with the most suitable equivalents.
