Replaying Sonic Dream Team has sadly further solidified that it is not an enjoyable experience for me. The decent level design is hindered by the need to constantly revisit the same areas due to the game having a bright idea of you having to return to the menu upon collecting an orb, reminiscent of Mario 64. This doesn't fit Sonic to me, and as a result of that fundamental structure, this game's potential flow is completely disrupted.

The enjoyment of playing around with the level design now heavily depends on the smooth character controls. Unfortunately, the controls were designed with touchscreen controls in mind, resulting in a sluggish feel when moving the characters around, even when using a controller. Furthermore, the other playable characters are just too simple and unremarkable. The only highlight is the ability to switch between characters at any time, but that's where the appeal ends.

Although the character animations are well done, I find the overall presentation leaves a lot to be desired. The level environments appear as if Fall Guys and Lost World have come together to birth a baby. While it does have a more cartoonish aesthetic compared to Sonic Frontiers, it still fails to capture the essence of Sonic for me and this is especially the case with this sleep-reducing soundtrack.

In conclusion, I feel like an anomaly when it comes to my opinion of Sonic Dream Team. It's polished, but just not all that appealing for me to play or find it to be a fun experience once I start judging this game as an overall video game instead of just a mobile game, which everyone else is doing to praise this to high heaven. It is only fair game for me to do it too. The best 3D Sonic game since Generations? I just don't see it personally, folks.

It's actually a shame how good this game is because it's locked behind Apple devices with Apple Arcade.

The story is whatever, Sonic stories have never amazed me or anything and I certainly wasn't expecting much from this game. It's the standard "Eggman did something, we gotta stop him" and it's fine.

The six playable characters in the game are a lie as there are really only three. Three different character types with two characters in each and those characters play the same as each other. Sonic and Amy are your speed types and they get access to the light speed dash and air dashing. Tails and Cream are your flight types who can fly, and Knuckles and Rouge are your power types who can glide and climb walls. Every character can boost and homing attack. As far as controls and movement goes it feels great to play and keep your speed going. Certainly feels better than Frontiers anyway. I will commend the game for allowing you to switch out characters in the middle of the level. While it's unfortunately not available in every level and is quite slow, I appreciate the option and offers many unique play styles and approaches.

Level design was an honest surprise, with springs that maintain your speed and wall running segments to keep your speed going. It's more difficult to get your speed and flow interrupted which is what Sonic should be to me at least. My favourite level was the last level, Egg City.

Boss fights were ok, nothing that really all too memorable. Performance is something they gotta address. Sound mixing was all over the place, with some sounds being super loud and some being really quiet. I first played and beat the game on Apple TV and had the game crash perhaps two or three times. On my M1 MacBook Air the game ran wonderfully at 60fps but again, crashes aren't uncommon.

If you have Apple Arcade or at least a free trials of it like I had, then I highly suggest giving this a go. You can pair basically any game controller to an Apple device that runs this game so do not bother with touch controls. My hope for this game is that it eventually get released on consoles, I'd happily buy this on Switch for AUD$30.

Sonic Dream Team is a strange game. The level design is somewhat akin to heroes, which makes sense with the returning speed flight and power character mechanics. The speed and flight characters feel good, but power is just bad to control, Knuckles and Rouge are comparable to how they were in 06 and I might even argue that they are even worse here. The controls have a weird feel to them that is unlike anything I've ever felt before, and playing the game on the phone makes things hard to see. On that note, the exclusivity of this game is enough to criticize it for, the fact you cannot actually own this game, and it is only available on Apple Arcade is stupid, especially since this game is incredibly repetitive. If you already have Apple Arcade, Sonic Dream Team is worth giving a shot as you may have fun with it, but by no means should you go out of your way to play this game.

An.. Apple Arcade exclusive developed alongside the mobile game team… okay then. This game was announced out of the blue and it’s exclusivity to apple devices had me worried, despite thinking the gameplay looked interesting. In the end I was surprised by how much fun this ended up being, though its mobile game roots still hold it back.

Dream team has a story with full voice acting, and while the plot is nothing to talk about, the animation in the cutscenes is nothing short of amazing. While graphically it’s held back by its mobile nature, the dreamy aesthetics are brilliant , and completely original for the series.

Gameplay is a hybrid between the older more explorative styles, and the modern boost formula. The result is a pretty smooth mix that, with a controller and a few camera issues aside, captures the positives of both styles and incorporates them into some fantastic level design. There’s 3 types of characters and each lets you explore levels in different ways, which is good when there’s only 16 stages.

Now each act does have lots of smaller missions which can be fun, but this is mostly to fill the time. Dream Teams levels are brilliant but I wish there was more here I can see the potential for a really fleshed out game, and apparently it’s getting updated, but as is, Dream Team is a welcome surprise- 7.3/10

Pretty inoffensive but has a lot of good ideas and makes me hope that we continue to get a lot of these smaller sonic experiences I feel the series has been missing since the 2000's.

Characters control super well and I wish they played more into the physics allowed because the game is pretty on rails in some sections. Level design while I think is pretty great for exploration, is pretty wide and makes going through stages pretty straightforward. That said it is fun to just move around as sonic and friends so it kept the game enjoyable. It has the kinetic energy the sonic/shadow action stages from adventure 2 has which I missed from the series.

It's amazing to have a playable Sonic roster this big again. However, while there are six characters to play, you really only get 3 playstyles between the three types so I wish they leaned into giving everyone individual traits (Amy still never uses here hammer besides an aesthetic these days. The parry in the frontiers dlc doesn't count). I also feel a lot of the "get to the goal" Acts get ruined after the first playthrough since the stage/door unlocks remain unlocked after the level ends. They are able to get a lot of content out of reusing levels and I really think the extra missions were super fun.

I feel most of the problems and restrictions the game has is have is due to the nature of this being designed and budgeted for mobile platforms (please port to other platforms). I do think if Sega Hardlight is given a chance to make a bigger scale, they seriously can knock it out the park. The potential here is huge and it's brimming with a lot of good to be salvaged. I don't see myself playing this again anytime soon unfortunately since it's locked behind an apple arcade subscription I don't want to pay to do daily tails missions. (I'd pay an apple sub for original sonic runners to come back tho...)

Now that I have played Sonic Dream Team, I have no doubt in my mind that Sonic Team needs to be deprioritized as the people making Sonic games. Yeah ok people like Frontiers. So happy for you, queen. Play this shit and tell me what you think. Yeah, you see what these devs are cooking? You wish to see more of exactly this? Yeah yeah yeah.

It's got big ass problems from me de facto declaring this the best 3D Sonic game. It's short. It's padded out. I experienced performance hiccups every so often, but maybe that's just the RAM limits of the Apple TV I was playing on. You can also play this on newer Iphones and iPad but you better have a controller.

It's kind of fucked up that one of best playing Sonic games ever made is trapped on Apple Arcade, a service so few people use that only exists for sheer marketshare value of Apple. It's better than most subscription services for games. But, subscriptions for games still sucks. LET ME BUY THIS ELSEWHERE.

Am I Sonic fan? I claim not to be. I'm 31, an age where I shouldn't be really interacting with this kind of stuff lest I get sus looks. That said, Sonic as a franchise is 35 years old and I've been around every marketing push. Sega doesn't make new franchises with a lot of marketing push. They have only really pumped all their money in making this blue fuck relevant -- with feature films, TV shows, memes, half-baked games, etc. I don't even conceive of most of the characters in the sonic franchise beyond their memes. Chili dogs, gotta go fast, all the really shitty games, Ken Penders comics, Ugandan Knuckles, this song that has been stuck in my head for a year.

I can't avoid him even if I wanted to, because I can see the 3D gaming potential of Sonic. It is sad that Sonic Dream Team is a release I didn't even know existed until I was browsing my sister's Apple TV! It ended up being the best official 3D Sonic thing I've played in actual decades! Usually, unless it's a fan game, his games are probably deeply flawed! It's kind not getting that way anymore maybe!?

There are people who are now grandparents out there who were prime demographic youths when OG Sonic dropped. He is like Scooby Doo for Gen X. Sonic went 3D 6 years into his conception and we're just now seeing what potential there is that can be seen and felt; what a truly good 3D game can do beyond having busted or overly linear level design! It's kind of pathetic that we just got here but we are here. Sonic Team wasn't even responsible for making me feel that way. Sonic Team! YOU'RE TOO SLOW.

Sonic Dream Team is good even if you hate this chili-glizzy-guzzling anthro hedgehog. It is my hope for you that a Sonic game will natively run past 30fps without performance issues in your lifetime.

surprisingly an absolute banger!! it's such a shame it's apple arcade exclusive because this game deserves to be played by more people! the plot isn't the most amazing thing in the world but the fact that this game has a plot and full voice acting at all is really awesome!

the controls are what makes this game SO good! they're impressively responsive and each character is satisfying to control. in particular, i love the way rail grinding and light speed dashing works in this game, it's some of the most responsive on the series! the level design is awesome too with each level being inspired by a skatepark with multiple different paths to take.

such an awesome game, highly recommend it if you're able to play it!

My Apple Arcade trial ran out and I’m trying to save money so I don’t really want to pay for another subscription service but this game is really fun man. It’s hardly a return to the characterisation or world building I loved in the Adventure era but mechanically and design wise it’s super strong and I hope they bring this to consoles and PC at some point, I’d definitely buy it and run through the whole thing.

The way it blends the stage structure of classic games with the base gameplay of Frontiers makes this shine. Goes to show the basis of Frontiers’ gameplay is actually suited incredibly well to this sort of level design and it allows for fast moving sections and slower more thoughtful platforming. On a gameplay front this might be the closest thing we’ve seen to an evolution of the Adventure design, ever. It’s not perfect and I think it lacks a lot of charm and heart, but on a purely gameplay basis, it’s really solid and good fun with heaps of replay-ability and that’s what Sonic is all about.

It's a shame Sonic Dream Team is exclusive to Apple Arcade because I think it may be the best 3D Sonic since, like, Unleashed! Dropped seemingly out of nowhere with a different team backing it, it'd be understandable to be skeptical of its approach. Even though Apple Arcade doesn't allow for microtransactions, that doesn't stop some games from incorporating ill-fitting "long-term engagement" mechanics that can drag down an otherwise clean experience. Air Twister is good, but I don't know if anyone's wanting to play it for 100 hours! Despite the format, Dream Team feels far more like a console Sonic game than it does a mobile one, only more polished, concise, and focused on what it wants to be.

Ostensibly, you could lump this game in with the "Boost Games" of the series and that would make perfect sense. You do a lot of boosting, after all. But I think that'd be selling it short. You see, what makes Dream Team cool is that it understands that Sonic isn't actually about going fast 100% of the time and never has been! Dream Team isn't a slow game and much of the level design still does consist of straight corridors to pass through, but anyone familiar with the series will immediately notice that the boost feels slower, your max speed without it even moreso, and that your boost gauge is pretty small as well. This might seem ridiculous, but it's actually a very smart decision that turns Dream Team into a more exploratory game, giving it a more distinct identity that even channels a tiny bit of that Adventure magic.

Dream Team is structured a lot like Sonic Colors, or so I hear since I haven't played that one yet. You get one juicy main mission and several smaller missions in each level in a zone. The main mission has all the trappings you'd expect, including various collectables, new interactions with the environment, and branching paths that you can experiment with on subsequent runs. The level design is overall on the simple side, resulting in quite an easy game that finishes up right as it runs out of tricks, but I found that there was a lot to appreciate despite that. I think my biggest gripe with modern Sonic game design is how inefficient it is. Each level probably took weeks of hard work and skill to craft, but then you blast through them in a minute (because they're under the impression that speed is all people want from Sonic) and never think about them again unless you're a completionist or a speedrunner. It just feels bad and wasteful to have so much detail and care put into them only for it to be over so quickly, you know?

That's why Dream Team's approach is so refreshing. Sure, the levels still aren't gigantic, but you have actual incentive to stop and look around now. There are a lot of pretty details stuffed into the level design, whether that be background elements, some of the best visuals I've seen in a mobile game, or clever platform arrangements designed to teach players valuable lessons, and the number of branching paths and rail-heavy design probably allows for some neat timesavers on subsequent runs, so you can still get some of those speedrun thrills anyway. Some levels have you searching around for keys in a way that's reminiscent of emerald hunting in Adventure 1+2 (albeit much simpler). The collectibles are very well hidden and encourage you to make use of different characters, which in turn allows for an even greater appreciation of the level designers' craft. The sub-missions do a great job of tipping the player off to these things since they take place in bite-sized chunks of the main levels. If you play through a level first as, say, Sonic, then when a mission makes you play as Knuckles instead, you'll get to see an entirely new path with new challenges. Instead of rail grinding, maybe you're climbing on a moving wall and dodging hazards, or if you're playing as Tails, maybe you get to do a prolonged flight sequence where precision suddenly matters a whole lot. Amy, Cream, and Rouge are here, too, and it's great to have such a big roster in a modern Sonic game, but they're identical to Sonic/Tails/Knuckles in functionality, which is unfortunate. Cheese can't even be used as a weapon like in Sonic Advance 2, which kills a lot of the fun of Cream's return for me. It's not as robust as the Adventure games (I really miss finding permanent upgrades), but it's a step back towards that direction, and at this point, even a slight whiff of Adventure is enough to give me the vapors.

The core of the Dream Team experience is extremely focused and polished, but as you look at the more fringe and inconsistent elements of the game, you do begin to see some room for improvement. The boss fights are conceptually really solid and always a spectacle, but they're very easy to beat and don't offer any kind of incentive to replay them, which feels like a bit of a waste. I really enjoyed seeing how different each one was (though I do wonder if making the final boss into a prolonged level instead of a fight was the right choice...) and it's easy to imagine ways to spice them up, so having them be such a miniscule part of the experience is surprising. The collectibles are inherently fun to collect because the act of playing the game is fun, but I do wish the rewards were more interesting. A majority of the missions need to be completed just to reach the end of the game, but the rewards for the entirely optional blue rings are just Smash Bros-style trophies without the cute descriptions and history lessons those had. I agree with the idea of the journey being more important than the destination, especially since the plot here isn't particularly notable, but it'd be nice if they greased my palms a little bit, you know?

Sonic Dream Team is still a quick playthrough like most modern Sonic games, but it manages to feel a lot more substantial and confident than some of the recent ones have. It avoids rehashing the same 2D era levels for tired "nostalgia" ploys (Scrambled Shores rules because it's not just Green Hill Zone for once), it isn't afraid to try new things here and there, and it doesn't hesitate to make Sonic's ensemble cast have a meaningful presence, all of which is immensely appreciated as a long-time Sonic enjoyer. I've been very pleased with the direction of the series in recent years, between Frontiers placing Sonic in a wholly new context and The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog realizing that there's a lot of value in these characters and leveraging that, and Dream Team continues this positive trend by finally trying a different approach to 3D Sonic level design while still using a familiar foundation. I really hope Sega Hardlight gets another shot at something like this on a larger scale platform because I think they could make some of the best games the series has ever seen if they're given the chance to improve upon this idea. Hopefully, this game gets ported/expanded upon for modern platforms so that others can see how Sonic can be and should be so much more than just going fast.

Dream Team was a huge surprise! I was worried going in because it feels like conversations about this game suddenly dropped after release, but this is without a doubt the best feeling Sonic game in years. Each character feels great to control!

It fell flat in a lot of places, mainly the final boss, overall story and music, but it’s just a mobile game at the end of the day. That being said, despite the game being themed on dreams, the levels don’t feel quite wacky enough, it just feels like a regular Sonic game. It would’ve been cool for this game to be given a more unique and memorable identity, similar to how Mario Wonder stands out with the wonder seed gimmick. But again, it’s just a mobile game.

Overall, game felt great to play, level design was solid, and the game looks beautiful! Definitely worth checking out if you have Apple Arcade, and I hope this project inspires some changes in future console Sonic games!