Boy they really hit rock bottom with this one. It's gonna be a downward spiral all the way from here.

People shit on this game a lot and the criticisms are more than well deserved. This game is a steaming pile of shit no matter how you look at it.

You want to talk about the characters and plot? The characters are super edgy and cringe in this game, with worst offender being our protagonist Edgy the hedgy. Literally none of them are even close to being likeable. The plot also makes no sense whatsoever. You can go the hero route and have Shadow become evil at the very end just because. Also, none of what you do in the main game matters anyway. All of your action is gonna get retconned in the "Last Story" part so brace yourself for that.

The level designs in this game is absolutely fucking hot garbage. I have never seen such a terrible progression system implemented in a 3D platforming game. The hero/dark path makes no sense whatsoever and some missions like the perfect chaos hunt in hero side makes me wanna chop both of my hands off. The game is also very consistent at being terrible as I literally liked none of the levels within this game. Oh did I mention? In order to unlock the last story you need to play ALL endings, which will pretty much require you to play Westopolis so many times you will memorize it better than the layout to your own house.

The controls also sucks ass. The movement somehow got even more slippery than in Sonic Heroes. You can barely control Shadow as he go left and right and often will charge into pits because the game literally couldn't handle Shadow's speed. And please don't bother even try the vehicles. They are somehow the polar opposite of Shadow's control - extremely clunky and slow. The existed just to make Shadow seem more edgy.

Speaking of edgy, guns. The guns are the only functional components within this god forsaken game. The auto aim is always very reliable. Unlike what some people on the internet chose to believe, you absolutely needed guns to get through the game as each bullet pretty much does the same damage as one homing attack. Later enemies and bosses will require several magazines to be brought down and your pesky homing attack simply won't suffice.

I think enough has been said. This is a very disappointing game from Sonic Team and deserves all the hate it got. Shadow is my favorite character in the Sonic franchise. So I particularly hate this miserable game as it tortured me so hard and caused irreversible damage to Shadow's portrayal in the Sonic series from here onwards. You deserve better and you should not play this game at all.

This is the tombstone for all Sonic games past this point(except Generations). If you played Adventure 1 & 2 then you could see how Sega was slowly taking the Sonic franchise into a darker and grittier area. This is the culmination of that idea and it is just as cringe as you would expect. I can’t imagine why anyone in this day and age would want to play this. If it’s for the novelty then let me tell you, it’s not a “So bad it’s good” kind of game, it’s just painful overly edgy cringe. What a joke