Actually ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful, but it has a fishing mini-game so I am obligated to say it is good.













TL;DR it's bad. Awful even, but the Sonic fanbase is in a Stockholm Syndrome love with it since it's… I was going to say a not terrible Sonic game but it's still pretty mediocre even by Sonic standards.

The movement is terrible. Sonic, even with his max ring boost, feels sluggish. He also stops on a dime the moment the controller goes into neutral even while boosting, which one could argue is for the new focus on platforming. This falls apart when you realize that the stomp has performed that function just fine in past games and would have done so here as well. Most of the time it feels like he is physically attached to the ground, god forbid you accidentally go off any ledge that isn't a 90 degree angle or you'll be boosting into a kill zone. Running on an open field? Don't worry you are sure to just trip over a random rock and get sent flying in a random direction, usually backwards. Or hit a boost pad or spring that will send you into a on-rails section that it locks you into and proceeds to send you off in some random direction. You might think to jump to avoid these things and retain your speed, but you lose almost all momentum while in the air even while boosting. The only time the movement feels slightly wieldy is the on-rails sections where the game plays itself for you with your only input being boost, switch rails, or homing attack. Even then I found myself transfering rails while boosting to only occasionally sent flying backwards. The homing attacks lock on is flighty as well, you would think changing it to only lock on to what is on the screen would make it easier, but it still struggles when there are two or more options to hit. For some reason they made it so your boost, double jump, and most bafflingly stomp are only refreshed on the ground or certain objects, so if you double jump before homing attack an enemy hope you didn't plan to do that again. Air boost into a spring? Well, I hope you don't need to do that again. Want to use the Stomp for some precision landings in the line of vertical launch rings? Get ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Next is the combat. It is slow and overly showy. I want to blast through basic enemies at sonic speeds, not homing attack them once and go through a whole combo while using unwieldy special attacks. When I see a big ass overworld boss that I have to run up the side of to hit their weak point I want to homing attack it once, get knocked off and run up again for the other two. Not go through a whole song and dance routine for all 3 of them. I can accept it during the boss battles, but half of those boil down to waiting to use the parry, then mashing once they hit you. Oh yeah, parrying is brain dead too, it isn't timing based like you'd think. Just hold it down and you are basically invincible for an attack before you get slow-mo and either rush in for the kill or hold it down if the game decides that's not how you beat this specific enemy so you better not get any ideas. My favorite move is the homing shot, which uses boost and homing attack so better hope you don't need to use the homing attack after boosting or you'll find that 9 times out of 10 you'll be left sitting in the air over a pit while your homing attack target dies and you no longer have a target to homing attack to.

The overworld and levels themselves are garbage as well. We all heard the joke "SEGA actually hired the Nintendo-Hire-This-Man" but it exists for a reason. Everything in the overworld looks like a basic unity asset flip with Sonic looking completely out of place. The only place this isn't the case is the levels but 3 of the 4 level archetypes are just a Generations asset flip, with the sole exception being the vaguely generic looking city levels. In lore it was described that the reason the levels were like that was because they were going through Sonic's memories, but I guess, like SEGA, Sonic can only remember Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Sky Sanctuary. While only vaguely remembering what I think is supposed to be City Escape? Speaking of these levels it's not only the assets that are flipped but the level design as well. If you've played past Sonic games you'll probably recognize various layouts from Adventure 2, Unleashed, and most prominently Generations. They have a different coat of paint but they are still recognizable in a 15-year old making a Sonic OC from a template sort of way. Unfortunately the levels they don't outright lift from other games tend to be absolutely no fun at all.

I guess everything else is just the smaller nitpicking stuff that slowly built up to crush my enjoyment. I hated the upgrade system, at least half of it. The defense and offense fruits weren't that bad, but the Korok- I mean Kocos that blend in with the gray rocky terrain and buildings are a pain to find. It is even more painful to turn the Kocos in for your speed and ring upgrades. For the fruits all you need to do is go to the guy, turn in all the fruits at once, and get all your levels all at once. The Kocos? You have to individually level up one at a time in a menu that delays itself by a second before it will let you interact with it. It took me 30+ minutes of nothing but this menu to get to max speed and the best part I still felt slow after getting all the Kocos I needed from fishing. Menuing in this game overall is terrible especially for ♥♥♥♥ you want to just do fast, like resetting levels or fast traveling. Oh hey, you unlocked and completed that level and you think that would give you a fast travel spot? What are you stupid? Complete all the poorly aped challenges/puzzles to get the whole map view and then we'll unlock all the level statues as quick travel whether you ever touched them or not. Oh you're clicking on the fast travel point to go there? Sorry you need to switch to the fast travel tab you idiot. I mentioned it earlier, but the puzzles all feel like poorly aped versions of Breath of the Wild puzzles copy-pasted across the map. My favorite puzzles were the night time only puzzles, where you might think "oh maybe it will have to be night to do a puzzle related to the moon and the stars, maybe a puzzle that has to do with light and darkness" if you were playing a good game. No, it's the same glowing spots that only appear at night because SEGA wants to waste your time. "Oh, so I'll just use the pass time function that all competent games with day-night cycles have to get it done now" you might say, but no. There is no quick time passing, so if you are left with only one "puzzle" left you just have to sit there for about 10 minutes afk waiting for night to fall. Special shout out to my two favorite enemies, the one that takes control of the camera to fly away leaving a balloon trail for you to go up and kill it when I just want to pass by, and the group of robot wolfs that if you get too close to will circle in a trap that you can't jump out of as they one by one come out for you to slowly counter before you can leave.

The good things?
-The fishing minigame is simple but fun and it also gives you pretty much all the collectibles. You could ignore basically everything besides purple coins and the star shower event that gives you more purple coins to do more fishing and just unlock everything with Big.
-The interactions between Sonic and his Friends are pretty nice, a lot of nice character interactions and development that I'm sure will be disregarded immediately as soon as a new game comes out.
-Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) was made canon by a Eggman log you get from fishing.

Actually fucking awful, but it has a fishing mini-game so I am obligated to say it is good. TL;DR it's bad. Awful even, but the Sonic fanbase is in a Stockholm Syndrome love with it since it's… I was going to say a not terrible Sonic game but it's still pretty mediocre even by Sonic standards. The movement is terrible. Sonic, even with his max ring boost, feels sluggish. He also stops on a dime the moment the controller goes into neutral even while boosting, which one could argue is for the new focus on platforming. This falls apart when you realize that the stomp has performed that function just fine in past games and would have done so here as well. Most of the time it feels like he is physically attached to the ground, god forbid you accidentally go off any ledge that isn't a 90 degree angle or you'll be boosting into a kill zone. Running on an open field? Don't worry you are sure to just trip over a random rock and get sent flying in a random direction, usually backwards. Or hit a boost pad or spring that will send you into a on-rails section that it locks you into and proceeds to send you off in some random direction. You might think to jump to avoid these things and retain your speed, but you lose almost all momentum while in the air even while boosting. The only time the movement feels slightly wieldy is the on-rails sections where the game plays itself for you with your only input being boost, switch rails, or homing attack. Even then I found myself transfering rails while boosting to only occasionally sent flying backwards. The homing attacks lock on is flighty as well, you would think changing it to only lock on to what is on the screen would make it easier, but it still struggles when there are two or more options to hit. For some reason they made it so your boost, double jump, and most bafflingly stomp are only refreshed on the ground or certain objects, so if you double jump before homing attack an enemy hope you didn't plan to do that again. Air boost into a spring? Well, I hope you don't need to do that again. Want to use the Stomp for some precision landings in the line of vertical launch rings? Get fucked. Next is the combat. It is slow and overly showy. I want to blast through basic enemies at sonic speeds, not homing attack them once and go through a whole combo while using unwieldy special attacks. When I see a big ass overworld boss that I have to run up the side of to hit their weak point I want to homing attack it once, get knocked off and run up again for the other two. Not go through a whole song and dance routine for all 3 of them. I can accept it during the boss battles, but half of those boil down to waiting to use the parry, then mashing once they hit you. Oh yeah, parrying is brain dead too, it isn't timing based like you'd think. Just hold it down and you are basically invincible for an attack before you get slow-mo and either rush in for the kill or hold it down if the game decides that's not how you beat this specific enemy so you better not get any ideas. My favorite move is the homing shot, which uses boost and homing attack so better hope you don't need to use the homing attack after boosting or you'll find that 9 times out of 10 you'll be left sitting in the air over a pit while your homing attack target dies and you no longer have a target to homing attack to. The overworld and levels themselves are garbage as well. We all heard the joke "SEGA actually hired the Nintendo-Hire-This-Man" but it exists for a reason. Everything in the overworld looks like a basic unity asset flip with Sonic looking completely out of place. The only place this isn't the case is the levels but 3 of the 4 level archetypes are just a Generations asset flip, with the sole exception being the vaguely generic looking city levels. In lore it was described that the reason the levels were like that was because they were going through Sonic's memories, but I guess, like SEGA, Sonic can only remember Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Sky Sanctuary. While only vaguely remembering what I think is supposed to be City Escape? Speaking of these levels it's not only the assets that are flipped but the level design as well. If you've played past Sonic games you'll probably recognize various layouts from Adventure 2, Unleashed, and most prominently Generations. They have a different coat of paint but they are still recognizable in a 15-year old making a Sonic OC from a template sort of way. Unfortunately the levels they don't outright lift from other games tend to be absolutely no fun at all. I guess everything else is just the smaller nitpicking stuff that slowly built up to crush my enjoyment. I hated the upgrade system, at least half of it. The defense and offense fruits weren't that bad, but the Korok- I mean Kocos that blend in with the gray rocky terrain and buildings are a pain to find. It is even more painful to turn the Kocos in for your speed and ring upgrades. For the fruits all you need to do is go to the guy, turn in all the fruits at once, and get all your levels all at once. The Kocos? You have to individually level up one at a time in a menu that delays itself by a second before it will let you interact with it. It took me 30+ minutes of nothing but this menu to get to max speed and the best part I still felt slow after getting all the Kocos I needed from fishing. Menuing in this game overall is terrible especially for shit you want to just do fast, like resetting levels or fast traveling. Oh hey, you unlocked and completed that level and you think that would give you a fast travel spot? What are you stupid? Complete all the poorly aped challenges/puzzles to get the whole map view and then we'll unlock all the level statues as quick travel whether you ever touched them or not. Oh you're clicking on the fast travel point to go there? Sorry you need to switch to the fast travel tab you idiot. I mentioned it earlier, but the puzzles all feel like poorly aped versions of Breath of the Wild puzzles copy-pasted across the map. My favorite puzzles were the night time only puzzles, where you might think "oh maybe it will have to be night to do a puzzle related to the moon and the stars, maybe a puzzle that has to do with light and darkness" if you were playing a good game. No, it's the same glowing spots that only appear at night because SEGA wants to waste your time. "Oh, so I'll just use the pass time function that all competent games with day-night cycles have to get it done now" you might say, but no. There is no quick time passing, so if you are left with only one "puzzle" left you just have to sit there for about 10 minutes afk waiting for night to fall. Special shout out to my two favorite enemies, the one that takes control of the camera to fly away leaving a balloon trail for you to go up and kill it when I just want to pass by, and the group of robot wolfs that if you get too close to will circle in a trap that you can't jump out of as they one by one come out for you to slowly counter before you can leave. The good things? -The fishing minigame is simple but fun and it also gives you pretty much all the collectibles. You could ignore basically everything besides purple coins and the star shower event that gives you more purple coins to do more fishing and just unlock everything with Big. -The interactions between Sonic and his Friends are pretty nice, a lot of nice character interactions and development that I'm sure will be disregarded immediately as soon as a new game comes out. -Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) was made canon by a Eggman log you get from fishing.