I really want to hate this game. Like, you have no idea how much I wish I could say that I absolutely despised it, and to some extent, I did...but I didn't.

First things first though, lets start with the poopy caca garbage parts of this game. The tornado stages are absolutely abysmal, they control like shit, targeting the enemies is shit, it's unclear what you need to do in certain sections without looking it up, it's just a complete and utter shit show. It took me 20 minutes to beat the first Tornado stage, 30 to beat the second one, and over 30 to beat the last. That's approximately 1/6th of my playtime being wasted on a garbage attempt at a varying gameplay style that I have zero interest in revisiting of my own accord.

Next there's, stop me if you've heard this one before, the story. It's definitely ambitious in a lot of senses, and some individual moments are pretty cool when removed from the larger narrative it's trying to tell, because that larger narrative is a fucking disaster. I'll give it this, it's exactly the type of stupid story I'd expect out of a 2000's Sonic game, but that's not saying much because the plot itself SUCKS. However the voice acting, while pretty funny, isn't as much of an issue as I think people make it out to be, at least for me. Latino Shadow is the funniest shit ever to the point where I can't be mad at it, Eggman's rusty accent is weird yet oddly fitting, and the rest of the major characters do at least decent jobs. The one voice I actively don't vibe with is Sonic's, I understand his actor is trying to do a Jason Griffith impression and he doesn't outright do a terrible job at it, but like, IDK man it just feels wrong.

Now, this is as far as I'd heard the worst aspects of Omens, and they did not dissapoint, but the thing I'd heard the least about was the actual game behind it all, and when I played it, it was the most insane whiplash I've had in a long, long time. Even if I never outright performed excellently in any of the stages, something about the way they were designed, Sonic and Shadow's movesets or some other third thing clicked with me. I wanted to actively punch myself in the face in utter disbelief I was like "No this can't possibly be why the fuck am I having so much fun this is meant to be the bad Sonic fan game everyone bashes on and yet I'm having a blast what the fuck dude".

Worst part is, the praise doesn't end there, because the bosses, by some fucking miracle, are just as good as the levels. They're challenging and require an understanding of their patterns and your moveset, but they're never outright unfair, and that final conforntation with the Exiled is absolutely phenomenal as a Super Sonic final boss spectacle wise.

The art direction, while somewhat disjointed, looks great throughout the whole game and feels exactly like something you'd see in a sequel to Sonic Unleashed aiming for a more cartoony tone and yet managing to mantain the more real style of other Sonic games, and the music is stellar all throughout. Sure two of the songs are taken from other games and the fact a Cars 2 the game song is used in Area 99 will never not be funny, but every other track, both for cutscenes and in the actual game is fucking stellar, with the main theme Weight of the World becoming a new favorite of mine.

And I need you to understand, I absolutely hate myself for typing these words, like I am in complete and utter shock at myself for even thinking this, but it's simply how I feel, and I've learned to let my opinions not be fully influenced by whatever people say about a game. So as much as I hate it, and for as tight of a knot as I'll feel in my stomach after posting this...

I love Sonic Omens. I really, really do.

I played this expecting to hate it but I was pleasantly surprised (somewhat).
I think the main Sonic/Shadow stages were generally enjoyable, I liked how Sonic and Shadow controlled and the levels themselves were big, open and let you experiment with the physics a lot and I mostly had fun playing them at least when they weren't full of annoying trial and error insta-deaths, Shadow's gameplay was a bit gimmicky for my liking but nothing too egregious.
Too bad I can't say the same for those bloody plane levels, good god they were awful, just what I want when playing a Sonic game, long boring segments where I'm slowly flying around trying not to bump into something that will insta-kill me while trying to snipe an enemy that will also insta-kill me if I get too close!
These levels were so bad that I couldn't be bothered to make it to the end of the game and fight the supposedly awful final boss, whoever approved this needs to be kicked in the balls.

UPDATE:
I have since downloaded a completed save file that allowed me to skip the god awful flying stages, turns out I didn't miss much, a poorly designed Sonic stage and some crap bosses, avoid it and save the 8gb of space.