It’s really bittersweet to me that this is easily the best sonic team game in over a decade, on the one hand it feels like they’re genuinely trying again which is awesome but on the other hand, this is really the best we can do now? It’s so painfully obvious that this is a mid budget game trying it’s hardest to mimic high budget games and as a result it feels incredibly unpolished and downright unfinished at points. Presentation is unapologetically cheap and you can’t go five minutes without feeling like something broke, this feels like a beta build of a game. Cyberspace is terrible, a bunch of reused level designs with the worst controls in the series, I skipped these whenever I could. But honestly the open zone was a lot more fun than I thought it would be, the speed here is fantastic and there’s something so enjoyable about just freestyling your way to a destination. It’s kinda like Mirror’s Edge but a lot faster and with less focused level design. The boss fights are as janky as the rest of the game but they make up for it with the awesome scale and intensity, these are new high points for the series. This is definitely one of the better Sonic stories as well, I think the characterization was pretty well done here (especially Eggman) and the general tone is such a departure from the previous titles in the best way. This is definitely a step in the right direction but this series still has a long way to go before it’s back on track.