For this new version of Sonic World I recall the devs wanting to aim more for Quality over Quantity, removing most of the characters and stages to refine the select few they kept. I feel this was probably the best decision for this fan project. But even with that said, do not be mistaken, this fan game has a TON of unique characters and stages, far more than any other fangame or any other GAME in general really, previously it more felt there were heaps of honestly very weak content that largely overshadowed the quality within, whereas now the actual meat of this game is all your left with (Which is a good thing).

The gameplay has this free and loose feel to it, which compliments its open levels. The homing attack/air dash that most characters come equipped with, for example, is very lenient and lasts for what feels like forever in terms of its reach, which allows you to be a lot quicker and more reckless with your control/movements, and most moves in the game follow this type of philosophy, allowing for you to be fast and free with your movements, without careening of the side of the level to your death all the time, which is an issue I have in games like Sonic Heroes, which also have fast movement options.

The character selection is great, each one has a totally unique moveset, yet somehow fits into the uniform style of the game making everyone viable. It's more akin to the classic Sonic titles, whereas Sonic/Tails/Knuckles in Sonic 3 for example, all have unique moves, but maintain the same capability to blast through any level and with the mission structure of this game. The best part about the range of characters is that each character CAN excel in all mission types, but each in their own unique way, for example, you could still use a speed type character in a killing enemies mission, by blitzing all of the enemies with a homing attack chain, or you could beat them all up in a more traditional way with a power type character.

The level variety is also pretty great, pulling from a range of Sonic titles, and each level has 5 distinct missions, and even better, a lot of the missions are unique spins of the level theme, rather than a simple challenge. This can range from a second act to the level, or a totally different stage based around beating enemies. Each first act contains 5 Red Rings to find, which I found were hidden pretty reasonably, and once those are found you unlock a final Encore mission to the level, revamping the level theme into something totally different, with some pretty deep cut theme pulls, from Sonic Shuffle to Sonic R.

The game's graphical style is, amateurish. Nothing terrible but nothing great, the lighting is lacking and the textures are OK. The animation on the characters however has been entirely revamped and looks spectacular.

The seemingly "big new addition" to this release is "The Island" which is an "open world" area for you to explore, with some bonus challenge acts to unlock. But the island is more or less barren and looks really terrible compared to all the other levels in the game. The challenge acts also aren't tracked and seem quite redundant when we already have 5 missions per act, these random extra challenges just seem tacked on, and would've made more sense just having them with the other missions, not to mention these ones aren't tracked and don't unlock a thing.

Now, the bugs. This game for me was quite unstable. Every time I boot up a level I'm faced with a long load time, and a 50/50 that the game will crash and if it does load a 50/50 the music won't play until I reboot the whole game. I also had random moments of immense lag and slow down if I spent too long in a level / restarted too many times. In normal gameplay, this lag doesn't come up, but if you're doing a hard mission or something, the lag after being there for to long doesn't exactly make it easier. These load time issues and crashing issues put me off even really bothering investing much time into the Chao garden in this game, which did intrigue me at first, but I can't be bothered to sit through long load times just to crash a 100 times to keep visiting my Chao.

But even despite these issues, I have now %100 this game, all S ranks, even finished all the stupid island stuff. So is it worth playing? Definitely! And on top of all the great content left behind after the cleanup in this version, most if not all of the old, not so A tier content can be readded through the use of mods!