this game is genuinely one of the most patronizing video games i've ever played. it's just baffling to me that sega made this, and said to people who waited for years for a true sonic 4 and were dissapointed by ep1 and gave this. it has so little good ideas of its own, and most of the game can be played by pressing one button and that's it. my last straw was when the last special stage was genuinely giving me motion sickness and the sky fortress boss would just not fucking function, it's a terrible game and i'm so glad mania was made just to spite whatever atrocity this game is.

Honestly, it's not that good singleplayer, but I played through all the levels in multiplayer and had a good time. The multiplayer is absurdly unbalanced and chaotic, which just made it all the more fun for me. I found the level design to rely too heavily on summoning Tails to fly you around, which slows the gameplay down a little too much for my taste. I also found the music to be enjoyable enough, with some tracks that I liked, it definitely better than episode 1's, but not one of the best Sonic soundtracks out there. I didn't care for the special stages that much and only ended up getting 5 chaos emeralds because I just couldn't be bothered to play anymore of them. But overall, this is at least a fun co-op game, just not very fun singleplayer, I'd only recommend it if you have a friend who you can convince to play with you.

Sure enough this one is better. The physics suck less, the visuals are tolerable now. There are co-op mechanics with Tails to sort of give it a little mechanical identity even if it's not super interesting. The levels have less bullshit in them but the bosses, while more interesting visually, are incredibly tedious. This is still just "hey remember those old games" but it's decently fun.

Really though this is a look at a very specific period of small games, especially the ones that were not indies. There is a red ring in each level to collect but they don't do anything except award an achievement if you get them all. This was a little baby budget title from Sega in the heady days of Xbox Live. With the refinements from the first game it's probably exactly what they set out to do.

sonic 4 episode 2 is at least a little bit better than the original game. i wouldn't say it's worth playing but there's some redeeming aspects to it, like the more creative level aesthetics and much, much better looking graphics on top of better sounding audio too. but the partner mechanic is overused to the point of being annoying, and none of the progress from the first episode is carried over, you only get an additional metal sonic chapter, which is pretty much as average as the base game anyways. wouldn't really recommend, considering there are better 2D sonic games on steam to be playing instead

Tails About An Episodic 4th Entry.

Sonic 4 Episode II is an improvement of the first game in significant ways that made it a solid entry if you even somewhat enjoyed the first game but its nothing too special and you'll probably get more leverage out of other games in the 2/2.5D in the platforming genre and it is relatively short but the visuals and stage envoirments are a massive improvement over the first episode as it has minimal asset reuse and doesn't have the ugly cellshading esc look the first went for but at the same time 9/10ths of the game outside of the final special stage and flying fortress act 3 is childs play and the game is way too easy but all in all if your a MASSIVE sonic fan go ahead and play this game you might get a small kick out of it I wouldn't buy the game for any amount of money over 5-10$'s though as its way too short.

Trivia:
Owning both sonic 4's grants you access to episode metal thats a shorter but harder episode 1 with a metal sonic skin and a few cutscenes.

Hey, i found a sonic game that i hate more than sonic 1...great

Boring visual, boring music, horrible level design, even when they try new thing, broken physics, sonic as way too much weight and cant take speed for the life of him and jump like if he was on the moon, useless mechanic ..this game is just Bad

The only redeeming quality are the boss, but even then, they are way too easy and the music, but gave me a single sonic game with Bad music, i would wait

This game isn't as miserable as episode 1 but God it is still far from good. It has a lot of similar issues to episode 1 so there's not as much to cover. But this game does improve some things, the game looks better, some early stages are actually kinda fun, the controls aren't as terrible but it's still a lot of stop and go garbage, and the team up mechanic between sonic & tails is actually kind of neat if a little overused in some instances. The problems lie within the second half and the boss fights. I don't know whose bright idea was it to make most of the boss fights have minute long unskippable intros but they're and they make dying to them all the worse especially since the into isn't the only thing that is long and boring about them. These bossfights take so long, every single one them have multiple phases and if you die once you have to start from the beginning and did I mention the fact they all have like minute long intros? And then there's the second half, who thought bringing back sky chase was a good idea? And then who decided to make the stage 7 MINUTES LONG, JESUS CHRIST. It's better than episode 1 but that's not saying much don't bother with this one either unless like episode 1 you want to see how bad it is. Just play the genesis games or mania for some good 2D sonic platforming.