You can really tell the confidence in the game designer's mechanics when they don't teach you the most interesting parts of it until halfway through the game.

I do, genuinely, admire Sonic Team's push to try something different within the confines of their mascot. That's really what brought my attention to playing this at all, as well as some friend who was really adamant about this being the secret underrated classic that people didn't like cuz it was different. But this is a token effort, the design here actually manages to be incredibly safe despite being mechanically different from the series. The game constantly, disgustingly, switches back to the slow very bog-standard 2D mode for a good half of its levels, with most of those even being auto-scrollers so speed isn't going to save you. Most of its levels are built around railroading you just to make sure that you please don't have a bad time :(

It's really disheartening, because I do think the parkour is actually genuinely good... whenever you get the opportunity to use it much at all. Being able to conserve your speed while jumping off walls in 3D at just the right time to speed towards the goal is really interesting, and there's good music and decent-looking areas too. I just wish the game actually focused on that instead of being the hollow product it really ends up like.

I think this is enough to put the whole team on ice, because nobody there knows what's special about their work anymore. I know Forces was already the mask-off to where all good will just kind of left the atmosphere, but this conglomerate of half-baked feelings and mishmash passion (seriously, even the Happy Tree Friends writers are just phoning it in now) is really the be-all end-all of Sonic Team.

Not worth your time.