You ever notice how as soon as this game became more available to people that this started getting criticized more? That's the bell curve at work..

Sonic CD is probably one of the best 2D platformers for its time and arguably still now.

What many don't realise is that SEGA was a company the strongly specialised stylised and memorable arcade games and their philosophy from the arcade was transferred to the home console (like everyone else but there's a point to this I swear)

As such, Sonic games in this case, their games have a strong focus on score and finding the coolest way of getting high scores. In this case, getting the good ending. (Getting the good end in sonic games is supposed to be the result of a high score play rather than a secret or reward to unlock)

To break it down lets imagine a new player's experience with Sonic CD.

By the first 3 acts the player will naturally understand the game wants them to:
- Take out as many mobs as possible (gives immediate positive feedback by rewarding 100 points)

- Collect as many rings as possible without getting hit (Ring bonus and Special Stage which both reward bonus score)

- Finishing a level as fast as possible (Time bonus score)
Along the way they will run into the time travel mechanic and from such will learn:
- Futures have more enemies and more harmful obstacles

- Past has less enemies and less obstacles
Naturally this will encourage the player to go to the past as a) it's safer and b) has more rings available and resets monitors. And of course they'll run into a Robot Transporter from which they'll immediately obtain 2000 points and every enemy will be destroyed and create a Good Future. (If they player is really smart in this case they'll realise that after destroying a RT they'll travel to the future in the same act and find and even safer layout of level design compared to the past)

Though it should be noted it'd be really difficult to perform all of this will still being able to beat a level in record time, this is where the real fun of Sonic CD starts as you'll have to make the decisions on what would net you the most amount of points for each stage.

Suddenly the 'chaos' of Collision Chaos stops being an inconveniences and actually becomes objects to play with (especially considering how they could be used as platforms with skillful play)

Now for the level design "issue". People say Sonic CD's design is random and poorly thought through and to that I say literally look at any glitchless speedrun of Sonic CD and eat your words and secondly those 4 half-pipes that do and mean nothing are meant to be landmarks. If a game expects you to look around a level to find something with no map you're going to NEED landmarks to be able to create a mental map for yourself and in conjunction of that will naturally memorise the level design for replays and mastery of the game is something that comes naturally rather than something you're forced to do.

Despite how much I've ranted I can't lie to you, I highly doubt all of this was EXACTLY intentional. Hell I'll admit that the "one of the best platformers" statement might have been an exaggeration but I'm hoping this review will help people actually properly analyse what the game you play expects then see how much it makes sense together.

Good games make sense, Bad Games are the inverse.

sonic cd's level design is focused more around exploration then it's predecessor(s). some very nice environments and music but the game design is boggling. your two choices for finishing the game and getting the good ending are fucking around in stages for 10 minutes trying to find all the generators to get a 'good future', the other is to go through like a typical classic sonic games collecting 50 rings to enter a special stage and collecting the time stones in what are probably the worst designed special stages in the entire series. one of these options is painfully slow, the other is painfully unfun.

I tried to replay Sonic CD this morning after 2-3 years of not touching it since my first two playthroughs, out of curiosity because one of my friends adores this game and thinks it is one of the best 2D Sonic games of all time.

This time, instead of trying to get the Time Stones, which I did when I first played, I instead tried to follow the central gimmick of Time Travel and destroy the robot generator. I quit midway through Collision Chaos Act One.

As soon as I attempted a Robot Generator run I immediately realized why I hadn't played this game in over two years, it's a fucking schizophrenically designed Metroidvania trapped in a Sonic game attached to Time Travel.

The levels are overly expansive, which leads to one thinking they need to explore. However, there are many active points where the game just tries to shoot you to the right side of the screen to try and end the level faster as if the game designers themselves knew that the time travel mechanics weren't fun to utilize and wanted to create the illusion of playing a decent Sonic game by getting players out of the levels as quickly as possible. Initially, back in 2018, this led to me feeling like the game lacked substance. Now it makes me feel like an intentional design to create the illusion of speed.

These levels are not fun to traverse, boss fights are either piss poor easy or straight up bullshit, and the "Illusion of Choice" between the Robot Generators and the Time Stones feels exactly like that, an illusion.

I cannot actually fathom people enjoying a Robot Generator run because it just feels like a load of bullshit. As I am aware, there is a robot generator underneath a fucking block, which you would normally be trained to avoid because how getting crushed is an instant kill, yet this one block doesn't kill you. It's bullshit, honestly.

The fact that I felt an almost immediate flood of disgust upon replaying this shocks me man. No other Sonic game, besides maybe Sonic Heroes, has ever given me this feeling.

Is CD better or worse than Sonic 1? I have no idea, but at least Sonic 1 for all its faults felt somewhat cohesive, this shit just feels haphazard.

Better than Sonic 3 & Knuckles my ass.

The music is still baller though, you'll never catch me shitting on the JP OST.