Shadow the Hedgehog should fundamentally be a good and fun experience but it’s bogged down by some baffling design decisions that keep it from being a great game. The things most people who have never played this game judge it for are actually probably the best part of the entire experience. Shadow’s guns are quick and snappy and are easy to aim and use in a variety of situations. You never feel like you NEED the guns to progress, but it's a nice bonus akin to picking up a power-up in a classic Sonic game. The edgy story and its many branching paths are nonsensical and don’t really link up to each other all that well, but I can’t help but unironically enjoy how hard Shadow tries to act cool. This game has plenty of faults but I can’t help but admire it’s good qualities that shine through the rough.

Though of course Shadow the Hedgehog has plenty of issues that do need to be addressed. The morality system is a neat idea, but the execution is entirely flawed. The branching paths are less narratively branching and more so gameplay branching. The story tries really hard to justify why Shadow would suddenly switch sides but makes no effort in trying to tie each morality choice together. Because of the amount of branching paths, each one feels more neglected then it really should have been. Gameplay wise, the branches honestly feel a bit tedious. Each choice is not created equally. Some of them you just need to get to the end of the level or find 5 objects in the level, other times you have to kill every single enemy of a certain enemy type in order to progress. It just completely bogs down the entire gameplay loop by making the high-octane Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay loop slow to a crawl. Like most of the harder objectives aren’t even that hard to complete, they’re just slow and tedious and completely antithetical to what this series is known for.

Fact of the matter is, Shadow the Hedgehog is cool as fuck, and there’s nothing anything a gaming youtuber can say to change my mind about that.