It's so much more than just a Sonic Adventure successor. While it draws heavy inspiration from it's mechanics, there's so many more elements to the game to make it it's own thing that so many people will absolutely adore.
You do not need to have played the previous two games in this series to enjoy the game-play or understand the plot. In fact, levels from 2 were recently added to this game with it's improved game-play as free DLC, making this game an absolutely fantastic value on top of being really good.
This game is criminally underappreciated. Additional details and game-play footage under the break.
The movement is largely similar to the Sonic Adventure games, but with a greatly expanded move set. The controls are extremely tight and allow for a lot of experimenting with the mechanics, as there's plenty of advanced movement techs that can allow experienced players to access seemingly unreachable areas and shortcuts in the level. The game's level design has something of a skating game ethos to it, where it gives you a lot of opportunities to figure out your own paths through the level aside from the straightforward path.
The combat in the game is similarly expansive. It has shades of character action combat, allowing you to use combos and move cancels to juggle enemies as well as a combo meter that boosts damage done, rewarding skilled play beyond simple button mashing. This is on top of more momentum-preserving attacks like a Sonic style homing attack, meaning you don't have to break your momentum to attack every little foe and can even be used for navigation.
On top of all those, there's a Kirby-esque abilities mechanic, that gives you new movesets and opening new combat and movement options. You can hold multiple abilities in reserve and switch between on the fly, giving you even more room to combine movesets for even more creative navigation and combat. It all generally comes together seamlessly.
