Just to get this out of the way, I didn't go for all the emeralds. I wasn't super enjoying my time with the game and didn't feel like going emerald hunting by hunting down the ring, playing a mini-game, then quitting the stage so I could redo it all again. I just wanted to finish the game.
As for my overall thoughts on it, it's an alright 2D platformer that I can understand would look amazing to people that grew up with this franchise, especially if you played the Genesis titles as children. Personally speaking I only kind of played them as a kid. Most of my experience back then was from the Sonic and Knuckles Collection on PC which I played a lot along with the Sonic Mega Collection when I eventually got that. I never finished any of the classic titles as I'd usually get stuck or just bored and move onto somehing else. When it comes to 2D Sonic (and I'm using this term in the way the general audience sees these games cause I know dedicated fans will endlessly argue on "Well technically some 3D Sonic games are actually 2D cause there's lots of 2D segments", but general audiences don't care) the only one I can say I've finished was the DS version of Sonic Colors. I remember enjoying that one a lot, but it has also been over a decade since I last played it I think. I was hoping this game, being as well received as it is, would capture some of what I loved about that game or the bits of older games and just give them some QoL improvements to make a game that feels fresh and modern. The answer I came to was....somewhere in the middle.
To kick things off with my biggest complaint and the one that gave me so much frustration that I ended up modding the game so I wouldn't have to deal with it, this game's lives system. Lives systems are never something I tend to enjoy in games. For the most part I can deal with it cause usually, in any game I play that still has them in the last decade or more, losing all your lives and getting a Game Over just meant you had to restart the stage from the beginning. That's only kind of the case here. If you get a Game Over in this game, you go back to the start of Act 1 of that Zone. This wouldn't bother me so much if each Act didn't feel the need to end with a boss fight. In theory ending each Act with a boss fight sounds fun, but when I'm fighting the same thing over and over just so I can get back to the part of Act 2 I struggled with (whether it's a platforming challenge or Act 2's boss), it gets super annoying. I got through most of the game mostly fine with this, but then I hit the final boss of the game if you don't have all the emeralds. The boss is a bit tricky for someone like me and to only have 2 or 3 chances to learn it before getting booted back to Act 1 sucks especially since I'd usually forget everything I learned by the time I got back. Now I've heard so many defenses for this. The classic one being that Sonic games are about learning the levels so you get through them faster, but as someone who rarely enjoys replaying even my favorite games, going through the same zones over and over just to figure out faster routes sounds awful. Another defense I've heard is that it's fine cause you can grind lives or that it's at least better than older games where you restart from the beginning of the game. That second part is just dumb cause anything is better than restarting the whole game. The first part I could understand if you were able to go back to easier stages to grind lives, but you can't do that till after you beat the game.
Now that I got my rant on the lives system out of the way and have pissed off like 99% of anyone reading this, the actual gameplay is pretty good. Sonic feels nice to control, even if I have no idea where I'm launching myself to most of the time. The level design is neat with the game constantly throwing new things at you, even in the throwback Zones. As almost everyone has expressed, I do wish there were more original Zones since they tended to be the best ones. The boss fights were creative and I even liked the bit where you play Puyo-Puyo against Eggman (thankfully you don't have to be good at Puyo-Puyo to win cause I suck at it and won on my first try). The only complaint I really have with the gameplay are the Blue Sphere stages, which aren't even required for anything other than getting medals for some extra goodies. My problem isn't even with the stages themselves, but more how the game handles progression with them. I don't think I ever finished a single Blue Sphere stage, which is fine cause again they're not required for anything. However I still enjoyed doing them early on....until I realized the game was just sending me to more difficult stages despite me not even being able to finish the easier ones. I don't really get why they set it up like this. It's not like the special stages for the emeralds continue in difficulty if you lose. Like I failed the second emerald challenge early on and when I got another chance at it MUCH later, it was the same stage with the same layout and difficulty. So why aren't the Blue Sphere stages like this?
Visually this game is just gorgeous. So much amazing pixel art is on full display and it was fun to see what new Zones would come next or even how they change between Acts. Again this is where the original Zones shine cause they are just breathtakingly beautiful.
So if I had so much good to say about the game, why am I giving it a lower score than it sounds like I should be? Well it does just come down to that lives system. It sucked so much enjoyment out of me when playing that, by the time I finished, I was more relieved at not having to play more than anything. I can't personally rate a game highly if I felt I needed to mod it and change how the devs wanted you to play it just to make it enjoyable for me. If the game had a built in option for infinite lives or creating save states or something, I'd have been more than willing to give this a higher score, but I couldn't just "get good" as people like to say.
As for my overall thoughts on it, it's an alright 2D platformer that I can understand would look amazing to people that grew up with this franchise, especially if you played the Genesis titles as children. Personally speaking I only kind of played them as a kid. Most of my experience back then was from the Sonic and Knuckles Collection on PC which I played a lot along with the Sonic Mega Collection when I eventually got that. I never finished any of the classic titles as I'd usually get stuck or just bored and move onto somehing else. When it comes to 2D Sonic (and I'm using this term in the way the general audience sees these games cause I know dedicated fans will endlessly argue on "Well technically some 3D Sonic games are actually 2D cause there's lots of 2D segments", but general audiences don't care) the only one I can say I've finished was the DS version of Sonic Colors. I remember enjoying that one a lot, but it has also been over a decade since I last played it I think. I was hoping this game, being as well received as it is, would capture some of what I loved about that game or the bits of older games and just give them some QoL improvements to make a game that feels fresh and modern. The answer I came to was....somewhere in the middle.
To kick things off with my biggest complaint and the one that gave me so much frustration that I ended up modding the game so I wouldn't have to deal with it, this game's lives system. Lives systems are never something I tend to enjoy in games. For the most part I can deal with it cause usually, in any game I play that still has them in the last decade or more, losing all your lives and getting a Game Over just meant you had to restart the stage from the beginning. That's only kind of the case here. If you get a Game Over in this game, you go back to the start of Act 1 of that Zone. This wouldn't bother me so much if each Act didn't feel the need to end with a boss fight. In theory ending each Act with a boss fight sounds fun, but when I'm fighting the same thing over and over just so I can get back to the part of Act 2 I struggled with (whether it's a platforming challenge or Act 2's boss), it gets super annoying. I got through most of the game mostly fine with this, but then I hit the final boss of the game if you don't have all the emeralds. The boss is a bit tricky for someone like me and to only have 2 or 3 chances to learn it before getting booted back to Act 1 sucks especially since I'd usually forget everything I learned by the time I got back. Now I've heard so many defenses for this. The classic one being that Sonic games are about learning the levels so you get through them faster, but as someone who rarely enjoys replaying even my favorite games, going through the same zones over and over just to figure out faster routes sounds awful. Another defense I've heard is that it's fine cause you can grind lives or that it's at least better than older games where you restart from the beginning of the game. That second part is just dumb cause anything is better than restarting the whole game. The first part I could understand if you were able to go back to easier stages to grind lives, but you can't do that till after you beat the game.
Now that I got my rant on the lives system out of the way and have pissed off like 99% of anyone reading this, the actual gameplay is pretty good. Sonic feels nice to control, even if I have no idea where I'm launching myself to most of the time. The level design is neat with the game constantly throwing new things at you, even in the throwback Zones. As almost everyone has expressed, I do wish there were more original Zones since they tended to be the best ones. The boss fights were creative and I even liked the bit where you play Puyo-Puyo against Eggman (thankfully you don't have to be good at Puyo-Puyo to win cause I suck at it and won on my first try). The only complaint I really have with the gameplay are the Blue Sphere stages, which aren't even required for anything other than getting medals for some extra goodies. My problem isn't even with the stages themselves, but more how the game handles progression with them. I don't think I ever finished a single Blue Sphere stage, which is fine cause again they're not required for anything. However I still enjoyed doing them early on....until I realized the game was just sending me to more difficult stages despite me not even being able to finish the easier ones. I don't really get why they set it up like this. It's not like the special stages for the emeralds continue in difficulty if you lose. Like I failed the second emerald challenge early on and when I got another chance at it MUCH later, it was the same stage with the same layout and difficulty. So why aren't the Blue Sphere stages like this?
Visually this game is just gorgeous. So much amazing pixel art is on full display and it was fun to see what new Zones would come next or even how they change between Acts. Again this is where the original Zones shine cause they are just breathtakingly beautiful.
So if I had so much good to say about the game, why am I giving it a lower score than it sounds like I should be? Well it does just come down to that lives system. It sucked so much enjoyment out of me when playing that, by the time I finished, I was more relieved at not having to play more than anything. I can't personally rate a game highly if I felt I needed to mod it and change how the devs wanted you to play it just to make it enjoyable for me. If the game had a built in option for infinite lives or creating save states or something, I'd have been more than willing to give this a higher score, but I couldn't just "get good" as people like to say.