I enjoyed Sonic quite a lot, but I'll be honest in saying that a large majority of that fun more than likely came from the fact I was playing the game through the Megadrive/Genesis Classics collection, which offers a ton of accessibility options such as a fast-forward/rewind feature. I honestly can't imagine playing Sonic on original hardware specifically because of the absurd difficulty spikes and general sluggishness in specific levels/zones in the game.

Certainly worth a try, but understandable if it's a major turn-off due to its abstract design choices and general sluggishness when the core philosophy behind the game was to "just go fast."