The greatest guilty pleasure game of all time. This game is laughable for how terrible it is, and I revel in that shit. It just oozes with stupidity, the same kind of stupidity that is like watching a child run face first into a wall painted like a door, and laughing at them. I hate children, about as much as Sonic hates guns, so I find their misery quite hilarious, kind of like this game. Did I mention that Shadow the Hedgehog is for "manly men". Yes, very "manly". I used to watch Bleach back in the day. It was "cool". Shadow the Hedgehog is also "cool". Cool in the way that watching a smoldering fire turn into smoke while getting pissed on by my Indian friend from Boy Scouts, Simeon, and my other friend Joshua. What I'm trying to convey is that I hate kids, and also that Shadow the Hedgehog is hilarious and I can only imagine what a drunk playthrough would be like.

will go on record as the most misunderstood game of all time. while by no means perfect; the controls can be slippery, the homing attack can be finnicky, the bosses are mediocre, and yes, it's edgy and ridiculous, there are moments where genuine design consideration and soul ooze in. you can get through every ending with minimal stage repeats by planning your route and i highly recommend trying to get through each stage at least once.

some of the larger, open-ended stages that encouraged exploration like Lost Impact, Mad Matrix, and Central City were very much appreciated and the highlights of the game for me. there's many childhood games of mine that i've grown to realize were shit but this isn't one of them. SEGA might have completely lost their minds with the idea of having Shadow a protagonist that wields guns but the development and design aspects of the game prevented it from purely falling apart.

okay...wow i have a lot of feelings about this game, some that i'm not even sure if i really feel. like i kind of fucking love it. but this game is also a complete mess. i took the neutral route first and i kind of dreaded having to play through 10 times just to get to the canonical ending. after doing the neutral route twice i went for the semi-dark route and i started to appreciate this game more. i really think it gets better as you play it and get used to the controls and bad story writing/dialogue. a lot of people say the controls are shitty i disagree a bit, i think sonic heroes has worse controls even though this game is built on the same engine. but the story. oh man it barely makes sense (which is normal for a sonic game), on top of that the cringy and confusing wording in the dialogue is laughable...although...i can't help but think its charming in a way. i don't know. i think they probably did the best they could for making the grittiest, darkest e10+ game ever. this game is a product of its time. almost like a time capsule. this was 2005 and video games were starting to appeal to more mature audiences and what better character from the sonic series could you use to capitalize on that? plus shadow was a popular character for being pretty different than the others at the time, i think this game did a decentish job at showing many different interpretations of shadow's character. i honestly kinda enjoyed this game as much as i did with sonic adventure 1 but i don't know if i can justify giving it 4 stars due to its many flaws. however this is not in anyway a bad sonic game. good idea terrible execution and all that. clearly i probably see this game as it should've been and not what it is but does that matter? the most important thing is i enjoyed it. i don't know if i want this game to get a sequel, it sure as hell isn't getting one but i'm maybe not opposed to it. the music in this game is awesome, older sonic music is just too good. also I think shadow is gay. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

It's alright. Interesting approach to the story with multiple endings. All three mission routes in each level fall in line with Shadow's character so you can choose which side you think he'd take. The levels are fairly short so you'll most likely want to do multiple routes. But the missions where you have to defeat 30, 40 or more enemies are a bit of a slog. In fact, I don't think most missions or levels are interesting enough to replay to make going through 10 endings worth it. If you do a couple routes sticking to the missions that are easier you'll have a good time. Shadow controls pretty well; a tad slippery, but an improvement over Sonic Heroes. The use of weapons is neat as well. Gotta respect the direction they decided to go with for Shadow's story, the edginess makes this game standout (among the Sonic series) and worth taking a peek at.

This is the worst game I've played in my life.

Oh, before any Sonic fan says it by the way, the PS2 version isn't why I didn't like the game. I only ever had framerate issues on the first level and the multiplayer.

Everything about this game is a disaster. From the story, to the graphics, to the controls, to the level design, to the missions, to the hilariously unfinished multiplayer.

The story exists to retcon stupid crap into Sonic Adventure 2 and to be overly "edgy". This is sprinkled with the delightful multiple path system where the endings are extremely similar and the levels/cutscenes rarely connect into eachother. The graphics are ugly and look extra bad when contrasted with all the reused models from Sonic Heroes.

Shadow controls like he's on ice, the level design is bland at best and labyrinthean at worst, it even reuses level design within the same levels too which is insane for a game made by supposedly competent developers. The missions consist of annoying chores that can sometimes take over thirty minutes to complete while you listen to the white noise this game calls music.

This game is just a total trainwreck, please don't play it, go watch some funny YouTube man play it if you wanna laugh at the occasional unintentionally funny parts of it.

Maybe having a Star Fox like progression system that makes you replay the game from scratch to get different endings wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't keep Sonic Heroes godawful control and handling, terrible level design and added braindead shooting mechanics to the game, and to justify them, the game makes you shoot at numerous enemies throughout the levels to progress, similar to Sonic 3D Blast, and just like that game, it's also just as unfun here. So the fact Sonic Team wanted you to experience this embarrassing edge lord story for the ages of 10 and up 10 times to get a "true ending" just adds to the suffering. No thanks.

The game is definitively on the lower end of the sonic entries, but it's not terrible. The progression system lets the player choose what objective they want to do but it creates the problem of requiring 10 playthroughs to get the ending of the game. I went above and beyond and played all 326 possible routes on the game out of enjoyment towards the game.
The level design is similar to what you could encounter in sonic heroes, except you won't get any fly or power character segments as you can only play as shadow, who feels like a more "ballistic" speed type character from heroes. This plays both in favor and against this game, Shadow feels good to control on more straight roads and high speed sections but becomes a problem once you have to turn frequently or do more precise platforming, This does not become a huge problem as long as you don't mind slowing down every now and then.
The story is, while understandable, not that great or easy to put together as you only get bits of it through different playthroughs, not something many would do if they didn't enjoy the first run of the game.
A big point of this game is the guns you pick up along the path and they don't feel bad to use at all, the shooting system is simple enough to pick up and fully use quickly but still has you do some aiming to hit the right target, you get plenty of ammo so you shouldn't run out that easily and they feel quite strong all throughout the game.
The objectives in levels may deter some people from playing which is quite understandable if you play this for the few first times, but on repeated runs through a stage, they feel really "streamlined" with only very few exceptions of having to go out of your way to search for them so you can chain them quite frequently even on more open levels like Central City, Lost Impact or The Doom. This does not excuse the possibly bad experience a newcomer could have with these as some can be rather hidden if you aren't paying attention.
I can recommend giving the game a shot to try it and go for the real ending, but I do not recommend 100%ing the game as the process takes months to do and it's really underwhelming once you do.

In short: the game has some ideas going for it and the guns feel ok to use. Objectives become faster and faster on repeated playthroughs but someone can totally not enjoy the gameplay for valid reasons as it can drag on and be very confusing.