If you think abt it ray and mighty are just knuckles and tails

Finally I'm not alone here

I like Mighty, but Ray sucks.

Ray did nothing wrong. He seems chill.

He also did nothing right.

I hardly use Ray in Mania Plus purely because they basically made all of the new content rotate around Mighty. You don't even get that much leeway with Ray because a significant portion of the game is set in closed spaces where you cannot use him to the max

Mighty is invulnerable to projectiles, spikes, can uncover exclusive paths (to the point they salvaged a scrapped Lava Reef route for him only in Mania Mode), and is even able to cheese some bosses

Meanwhile Ray can fli

I think Ray got hit hard by not being in Knuckles' Chaotix. Mighty being there tied him to the Chaotix, allowing him to make appearances in comics, which added to his characterization. Ray on the other hand was stuck being a reskinned Sonic in a single arcade game, even when he did make it into Archie, he received no personality beyond "Mighty's friend" and "Flying squirrel" that's all he was, and that's all he got to be in Mania.

Mighty was 100% only put in Chaotix because he was the best replacement for Sonic they had

The two's sprites are identical and all. Mighty really was just a Sonic recolor back then

It was nice they were back for a while... but that's about it, really.

Mighty got the Knuckles and Bark treatment while Ray had the Caoe Feather treatment