this is a game with an interesting premise but a botched execution: i like the idea of shadow losing his way while trying to recover his memory and desperately following his new family while trying to remember his old one. however, i dont think this is a game worth investing your time in unless you thought to yourself “what if sonic heroes only had shadow and the controls were worse and also guns?” The level design leaves a lot to be desired, although there are some fairly well-designed tracks like the cyberspace level. The gun gameplay and the hedgehog gameplay dont mix all that well either. The thrill of being able to decide whether you want to be a good samaritan or an evil manlet also starts to wane when you realize you have to get all ten possible endings just to get the actual, canon true ending and the hero / dark missions usually amount to searching the levels for items or killing a specific enemy type, something the rail-like levels really arent designed for. that being said, this is probably the last mainline game in which Shadow is written fairly well, as it predates the days of SEGA deciding his only character trait is “moody” and that he hates everyone. The soundtrack also slaps, as usual. And of course we can’t forget shadow is a home of sexual 🏳️‍🌈

Shadow the Hedgehog seems hilarious from the outside. It is a game about one of the most childishly edgelord characters of all time shooting human cops with a real gun. It's a game where The Ultimate Life Form(tm) who is allegedly as fast as the Blue Blur himself, instead mows people down with a human vehicle. It marks the official point in time where Sonic the Hedgehog as a franchise became a laughing stock.

I assure you that if you actually play Shadow the Hedgehog, the joke gets old very, very quickly. The voice acting may be comically awkward, but it'll become more annoying than funny in a matter of minutes. It may be tempting to at least play up to that one ending where Shadow the Hedgehog literally kills Eggman with a fatal karate chop, and you know what? I say go for it. That's one of the neutral endings, and following the neutral path means just playing this like a regular 3D Sonic game, and that part of the game holds up just fine. You'll probably even have a good time!

To complete Shadow the Hedgehog's full tree of branching paths however is to drown oneself in a whirlpool of misery and soul-deadening ennui. In order to see the true ending, one must see all other endings. Seeing all other endings means playing all of the same stages a truly sickening number of times across several nearly identical playthroughs. Taking the "dark" and "hero" approaches to completing a level turns the whole game into the Chaotix missions from Heroes. I still taste blood when I see the level select tree.

As a kid, I played this game because I needed answers after the sequel bait planted in Sonic Heroes. I needed to know if this was the real Shadow, how he survived, etc. I didn't get my answer. At all. I completed the entire game, and never found out... until years later when I was reading TVtropes and discovered that the game answers that question in an optional, missable line that is only blurted out during the true final boss if the player is inept enough to spend an extremely long time fighting it.

Nobody got what they wanted from this game.

Aight coming back to this and like
It's not good
But I wouldn't say it's the worst thing ever
It has some good ideas
But the slippery controls and ugly graphics make me not appreciate them
Never Turn Back is my favorite song in the series though, so it gets points for that

A game that automatically discredits all modern portrayals of Shadow, in which he is a ruthless character that others dread interactions with - in his game, he is a confused, traumatised little man who is shown nothing but unconditional love from almost everyone that speaks to him.
Shadow the Hedgehog is a game with several branching narratives, tackling recurring themes of identity, patricide, and redemption through gay love. I don't know if that last one was intentional - though it is a fact that all sequences in which Shadow has several meaningful interactions with Sonic, and moves from dark to hero route, have canonical names such as "For Love's Sake" and "Under the Name of Love".
Shadow the Hedgehog also happens to not be a very good game, but it isn't offensively bad either. The controls can be slippery at times, but most of my personal frustration came from mission completion requirements. Each level has two or three missions to chose from, many of which require a specific number of well-hidden enemies to be defeated. There tend to be more of these in levels on pure hero or dark routes - if you're going through all routes to get the True Ending then I recommend those routes first, then work inwards towards neutral for an easier time as you near the end. This is a game that gets better the more you play, and the more you learn to effectively wrangle it's controls and requirements. The OST slaps.
In all honesty, this game is only worth playing if you have a high tolerance for kinda shitty game design and love Shadow (the character) very very much. Also I think Shadow is gay. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈