Things I liked:
- Movement in this game feels so, so good. It's ridiculously fun just to run around and chain all of your movement options together to move across ludicrously long distances. There's a lot of movement options you don't have to use, but like in 3D Mario games, if you learn to use them and integrate them into your play, you open up a lot more fun possibilities.
- On that note, as much as the maps are heavy on rails and bumpers all over the place, the flow of one type of movement device/terrain into another is really impressive. So many structures are interconnected and can get you to point A to point B in a way that's really enjoyable. Keeping tabs on how everything works together on such big open-world maps was likely no small feat for the designers.
- Boss fights are great! Lots of creativity in their attacks and designs, as well as how Sonic can interact with them and what you need to do to beat them. Super Sonic battles feel suitably epic and important.
- The character dialogues between Sonic and his friends are quite nice. Lots of little callbacks to earlier games. Story isn't half bad either.
- All of the music in this game sounds like it came from some early 2000s DeviantArt Sonic fan's burned mix CD and it rules so much
Things I'm meh on:
- I want more Sonic-y environments. It'd be a lot more fun to explore an open Green Hill or Quartz Quadrant or Stardust Speedway than it would generic-ass ruins that look like they could have come from any other recent AAA game.
- Longer and more complex Cyberspace levels would be nice. For the effort it takes to find and access them, they feel far too brief. They are fun though, and I'm not going to hate on Sega for reusing assets 'cause games are expensive and time-consuming to make.
Things I disliked:
- THIS GAME NEEDS A MINIMAP BADLY. I am already awful with directions, and with so many gimmicks that will spin Sonic in who knows what direction I need a better way to tell where I'm facing and if I'm actually going where I want to than that weird compass thing.
- On that note, not being able to check the map when you've got enemy aggro on you is annoying as shit. *Especially* when those enemies are out of reach or obnoxious to deal with. Fuck those birds.
- Please give us a way to quick restart a map challenge or emerald challenge or cyberspace stage, having to either go through a whole mess of button presses or wait out a timer sucks
- Why can't I up multiple ring or speed levels at once, why do I have to pick the option and sit through the animation every time I have enough for 25 level-ups are you kidding me
Things I really, really disliked:
- Whoever came up with the field layout and score threshold for that miserable pinball minigame needs to be shoved in a locker
Overall: probably not going to convert anyone who isn't a long-suffering Sonic fan but it's still great and I really liked it!