People are way too forgiving of this game's flaws. The level balance is ATROCIOUS. It actively punishes the player for using a full team of 6 as it insures you will stay far behind the difficulty curve, even if a graph of this game's difficulty curve looks like a graph of like, I dunno, bitcoin prices. That is to say, it's extremely inconsistent. Unfortunately this remake does absolutely nothing to fix the glaring flaws with the original's balance.

Still, Johto is a charming region with great music and lore, Pokémon following you is great, and there's a lot to keep you occupied after you beat the main story.

Everyone knows the story is bad. But the gameplay is bad too. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to make a 3D action game where the only controller option is the literal equivalent of an NES controller. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to give Team Ninja the Metroid IP. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to do any of the things this game does. Such a unique and intriguing disaster in every possible way.

The graphics are good for a Wii game, at least? I like that there's a secret boss that's a 3D version of the best boss in Fusion? I don't know man, I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here. This game is better off forgotten.

Generally solid, but 2D Sonic doesn't feel so good. 2D Sonic stages are lacking in branching paths and exploration, and the physics don't feel right at all. For some reason these levels are often "start-stop"-y. It's like they couldn't figure out the masterful balance between momentum and platforming that Sonic 2-3 and even Sonic Advance had, so they just shift between these gameplay styles abruptly breaking the flow. It's not as bad as Sonic 4, but it doesn't feel anywhere near as good as what it's emulating. Despite that, this is modern Sonic at it's very best. It feels great to explore all these branching pathways in a 3D space with a real sense of speed, and I think this is the first time that a 3D Sonic has had a level of exploration comparable to that of the 2D games. I can't believe there's a Sonic game where the 3D parts are better than the 2D parts!

Also, it breaks up the pace unnecesarily by making you find boss door keys in between every few stages. This requires you to play gimmicky little challenge levels. Not a fan.

And for whatever reason the PC version just doesn't fucking work with controllers sometimes. I basically can't get through a level with my Xbox controller without it disconnecting. It's not even that the controller is disconnected from the PC - Generations just has decided that it will not read inputs from my controller until I restart the game. This is a widespread issue from what I can tell, and it's kinda crazy that Sega never fixed it.