All in all a solid part of the Classic Sonic series. The level design is classic yet experimental in order to stand out from its predecessors and usually successfully brings a breath of fresh air into the gameplay. However, Superstars is held back by two major problems. On the one hand, the music, which consists of 50% of the usual Sonic bangers, but also 50% of very poorly composed Genesis tracks. In addition, they stand out unpleasantly from the other tracks due to the choice of the"instrument". Almost as if the two halves weren't even part of the same game.
The second problem and my biggest problem personally are the bosses. First of all, I would like to point out that I don't have much objection to the idea of making classic Sonic bosses significantly more difficult and putting more focus on the attack patterns. However, there is still significant work to be done on the execution. Enemy attack phases for almost all bosses are far too long, while the player's attack phases are incredibly short. If mistakes are made, this only prolongs the already long fights (which tend to be close to 10 MINUTES for the later bosses). And this not even includes the first two final bosses (there are 3 in total), which have several phases and should take 10 minutes even if you play perfectly. In addition, these bosses in particular punish almost every mistake and are only too happy to surprise the player with instant death attacks that you NEVER see coming the first time. And there is not a single checkpoint between the individual phases. This means you can easily spend several hours with these bosses, which is not okay in any world. The third final boss isn't really that difficult and more or less a Vicory lap THAT FUCKING DESERVED AT THIS POINT!
But as I said. Sonic Superstars is a good game, but it has two strong low points that could have been avoided fairly easily. It's not just another "step in the right direction", but it's not a masterpiece either. It's a damn fine game. And that's what matters for me at the end of the day.