It's impossible to think about this game without comparisons to Mario since it exists because of Mario. Sega did a lot of things right with the first Sonic game by taking the lessons Nintendo had to figure out over the course of multiple games and incorporating all of them into Sonic's first outing.
Little quality of life things like rings saving you from dying and checkpoints in the stages reduced a lot of potential frustration with the gameplay. Visually, the game was able to establish its own identity with heavy shading creating a sort of pseudo 3D effect that definitely differed from Super Mario World's very cartoonish graphics, though I do prefer the latter over Sonic's personally. The soundtrack wasn't full of bangers, but it did have some tunes that would go on to become classics and the sound design in general was equally well done.
I think the one thing that Sonic struggled with that makes it an inferior game to Super Mario World is having a cohesive design concept around Sonic's movement. While Mario has always been a little floaty and assisted by items that change how he interacts with the environment, Sonic starts off by teaching you that the game is supposedly all about fast traversal. The problem is that Green Hill Zone ends up being pretty much the fastest you'll go as Sonic before later levels introduce a lot more vertical platforming that slows the game down and makes you feel constrained, almost as if being forced to walk in a Superman game. The gameplay is still good, but the level design seemed to struggle with what Sonic was supposed to be about. An obvious example of this is that the spin dash move would not even be introduced until the second game when that sense of speed was more integrated into the level design. Similarly, the special stages felt like a weird throwaway idea from a test build that they decided to keep as filler.
Overall, it was easily one of the best playing and best looking platformers when it came out, but it just hadn't fully found its identity.
Little quality of life things like rings saving you from dying and checkpoints in the stages reduced a lot of potential frustration with the gameplay. Visually, the game was able to establish its own identity with heavy shading creating a sort of pseudo 3D effect that definitely differed from Super Mario World's very cartoonish graphics, though I do prefer the latter over Sonic's personally. The soundtrack wasn't full of bangers, but it did have some tunes that would go on to become classics and the sound design in general was equally well done.
I think the one thing that Sonic struggled with that makes it an inferior game to Super Mario World is having a cohesive design concept around Sonic's movement. While Mario has always been a little floaty and assisted by items that change how he interacts with the environment, Sonic starts off by teaching you that the game is supposedly all about fast traversal. The problem is that Green Hill Zone ends up being pretty much the fastest you'll go as Sonic before later levels introduce a lot more vertical platforming that slows the game down and makes you feel constrained, almost as if being forced to walk in a Superman game. The gameplay is still good, but the level design seemed to struggle with what Sonic was supposed to be about. An obvious example of this is that the spin dash move would not even be introduced until the second game when that sense of speed was more integrated into the level design. Similarly, the special stages felt like a weird throwaway idea from a test build that they decided to keep as filler.
Overall, it was easily one of the best playing and best looking platformers when it came out, but it just hadn't fully found its identity.