izigame.me

I really wanted to like this game, and I went in with pretty high expectations due to how positive reviews were. Even if I didn't however, I still would have been let down and I genuinely do not understand the praise for this game. It does some things VERY right, and is a good sign for the franchise going forward, but it's still a buggy, unpolished, poorly thought out mess of a game.
To begin with, the combat and exploration do not flow well together at all and both on their own merits are poorly done.
Sonic controls fairly well, but the open zone areas are hurt by a lack of verticality and railroading. Many sections will see you being bounced around between springs and dash pads with minimal input required other than timing jumps, homing attacks and the odd boost. There are also sections where the camera becomes locked and you're forced to go through a section of obstacles in order to return it to normal, literally locking you into a small part of the map until you complete a small platforming challenge. The game also will simply not let you interact with some parts of the map until you meet a certain objective. The pop-in makes exploring frustrating as you can't tell where certain things are until you're close enough, and the rewards for going along with the exploration are also bad, with the vast majority of "puzzles" barely even counting as such and the game mainly just giving you stat boosts in return.
The cyberspace stages aren't much better, being a total mixed bag of level design. This is because the majority of them were ripped from previous games in the series, and between that and 3 of the 4 settings for cyberspace mostly just being re-used assets from previous games they are extremely recycled. Sonic controlling well makes the well designed stages fairly enjoyable, but overall they feel like padding.
As for the combat, it's not bad but is far from what it could be. The basic combo works well enough, but many of the combat systems are poorly done. All of Sonic's various attacks are just various animations that do slightly more or less damage than each other, aside from dodging a few attacks with the stomp there is basically no reason to use most of the skills as opposed to the one that has the highest DPS. The combat quickly devolves to mashing with no reward for experimenting or trying to be stylish. Parrying is not satisfying because it doesn't take effort and is more akin to blocking, limiting the designs of enemies and bosses, and quite a few mini-bosses are glorified mini-games.
The bosses also just feel unfinished, especially past the first one, with awkward transitions between cutscenes of counter-attacks and the normal gameplay, low attack variety and aspects of the bosses' designs going unused. Knight is the most egregious as the second phase is nothing but parrying the shield into it and then whaling on it despite the previous cutscene showing it firing laser barrages out of its shoulders. The final boss is also awful, being an incredibly lazy re-color of the first boss and having confusing barriers to beating it that require either looking it up or bashing your head against a brick wall until you figure it out. The true final boss on Hard mode of the main story is also one of the worst the series has ever had, being a reskin of a hacking mini-game and not using the game's main combat system at all.
The game looks decent enough on the ground but the actual environments lack the stylization present in games like Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 or Unleashed. Between that, the aforementioned pop-in and floating metal platforms lend to the game feeling very unfinished and like you're playing a test build. Very little of the game outside Cyberspace looks like it takes place in Sonic's setting. The game also still has the issue of Sega re-using very old models with minor tweaks for all the characters, which lack expressiveness and lead to awkward faces when the animators try to make them emote.
That isn't to say the game is all bad. For starters the animations and effects look pretty good, though I would argue Unleashed is still the better looking game which is sad since it's well over a decade old. The spectacle of the boss fights is one of the best parts of the game. The cutscenes are also generally well done, with a fair amount happening during the major story beats as opposed to some of the previous games like Forces where the vast majority is just characters standing around talking.
The music is also great, most notably the boss tracks with excellent vocals and strong melodies and instrumentation. They're some of the best music in the series. The rest of the music isn't quite as good, but there are still some good tracks for the mini-bosses. The overworld music is definitely the weakest, being pretty generic orchestral music. It isn't inherently bad, but it's another factor that makes it feel less like an open-ended Sonic game and more like Sonic getting dropped into an Unreal demo.
The story and voice acting are the last part of the game that deserve praise, even if they're far from perfect. For starters the characters are more in-character than they have been in a long time. Sonic shows clear care for others and has a proper range of emotion rather than being a cocky jokester all the time, Tails wants to prove himself, Knuckles is shown to be thoughtful and contemplative even if he's naive to the world outside Angel Island as opposed to a complete meathead and having a friendly rivalry with Sonic, and Amy is now more than just a Sonic fangirl being strong-willed and having goals besides just getting with Sonic. The voice actors also all did a great job, with Sonic and Eggman being the highlights giving the right tones to show their personality. Unfortunately they aren't always used the best as there are awkward moments in some cutscenes or parts where it seems like they should've been talking or grunting but didn't vocalize at all, but for the most part it's great. The story also takes a more serious tone and makes the whole series feel connected, giving more explanation on the origin of the emeralds and with characters referencing characters and events from previous games. It has issues, with the overall plot being quite generic and not a lot happening outside of Sonic finding his friends, interacting with Sage and fighting the titans, but it's probably the best story the series has had since Unleashed or even Sonic Adventure 2.
Where it fumbles is with Sage, with the emotional beats she's supposed to have not landing at all due to a lack of interaction with her and this being the first game she's in. One part plays sad music to a montage of her interacting with Eggman from earlier parts of the game, and it ends up laughable when it's meant to be sad. The ending of the game also drops the ball, with a complete lack of resolution between Sonic, Eggman and Sage and no sign of Sage feeling conflict with Eggman due to her coming to understand Sonic's perspective but still being totally loyal to Eggman in the end.
I wish this game was good, but I just can't say it is. It's the most burned I've felt from any game purchase since Paper Mario Sticker Star, which is saying a lot. I don't completely hate it because in some areas it's a big improvement and I'm excited to see where they'll take the games with a heavier focus on combat that's actually fun as opposed to Sonic Heroes' homing attack spam, but it has far too many issues. I realize this can largely be attributed to Sonic Team lacking staff and funding, but even then indie game developers are able to do more with less and the game was in development for 5 years, plus 1 more for all the updates. It feels like they got far too ambitious for their own good and ended up not being able to put enough time or thought into the game, with the end result being most of it is sub-par at best and unfixable in the end.
3.5 / 10