A solid game in its own right, but also a massive fuckup of a sequel. The story isn't coherently mixed with Doom 2016, the gameplay is fundamentally broken because bosses have to spawn fodder enemies for ammo, Mick Gordon got the composer curse, Snapmap and traditional Deathmatch were removed to the detriment of replay value, and the Invasion mode was canceled for good measure.

Marble Zone might still be among the shittiest second levels to ever be put in a game. And sadly the rest of the game isn't much better.

The Sonic 30th Anniversary Symphony only having a Crush 40 remix of "Sonic Boom" to represent this game just makes me think about what a fucking travesty it was for the U.S. soundtrack to exist in the first place. The Japanese soundtrack is one of the best Sonic OSTs ever made, and I will fight to the death over that opinion.
The game itself is okay, I guess.

Isn't it funny, or perhaps a bit sad, that "The game gets worse from Oil Ocean onwards" applies to both this and Mania?

I badly want to give this the 5 stars it deserves, but the last third of the game isn't really that good. I'm sorry.

Janky as all fuck. And yet, I could declare it as the best official 3D Sonic game.
Says a lot about this series, doesn't it?

The best Sonic OST ever made is stuck on a clunky racing game that I only truly enjoyed when I was playing Sonic Gems Collection as a kid.

I honestly can't tell you whether this or Unleashed is the best "boost" game, but what I can tell you is that Classic Sonic is a much less obnoxious gimmick than the Werehog.

During one Games Done Quick event running this game, a donation comment said "There are more levels after Toxic Caves?"
I fucking felt that.

Kind of cool, but too bad that puzzle games aren't my cup of tea. My attempted playthroughs on Sonic Mega Collection were enough for me.

This is one of only a few games where I will usually idle to let the opening play out. The music, and the presentation of this collection in general, is just that good.
But featuring the standalone versions of Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, with the combined game being an unlockable, was an idiotic move in hindsight.

Somehow the presentation of this and Mega Collection just fucking hit the spot, with Origins paling in comparison to them.
However, I must remove half a star for Sonic CD being region-locked. I didn't get to hear that glorious Japanese soundtrack until the game's re-release in 2011.

It's quite remarkable how making some tweaks to the gameplay and technical aspects, with little-to-no changes in the level design, turn this from one of the worst Sonic games to one of the best Sonic games.

Almost everything I could ever ask for out of a hypothetical 3D Sonic game from the Sega Saturn... "almost" because maybe the physics are too floaty.

I absolutely adored this game when it came out, spending hundreds of hours on it, but it hasn't been aging well. The base gameplay is kind of boring and the vanilla maps are mostly terrible compared to the custom maps, but the only active servers now are M.U.G.E.N.-tier clusterfucks.
I am well beyond ready to have a clean slate with Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers, which I hope will be worthy of 5 stars.