I've been playing every Sonic game in release order so far, and this game really is a breath of fresh air compared to the previous entries. Shadow was absolutely miserable to play, but this game is simple, fun, and has a good length despite needing to play the game twice. Replaying the game multiple times was a big part of what made Shadow much more tedious, but as opposed to ten times with different missions required to beat it, this game only makes you play once as Sonic and once as Blaze. Special stages are exclusive to Sonic, which are honestly one of the best special stages next to Blue Spheres because you have a lot of control with where Sonic goes due to the use of the touch screen. Meanwhile with Blaze, there are no special stages as you only need to beat the bosses, so it makes playing through so much easier and getting the True Ending is more accessible to casual players. Blaze doesn't feel too different from Sonic, but has enough changes that, while it doesn't feel like a different gameplay experience, it feels like you have more movement options. The levels are the same in both acts, but in a 2D setting where levels are five minutes at most, this isn't really too much of a problem. While Shadow took me over 10 hours long at the minimum, Rush is only about a 5 to 6 hour game. That isn't to excuse the fact that the levels are literally the same, but it doesn't feel as bad unless you're playing levels you didn't like the first time. Speaking of, this game isn't exactly perfect. There are segments with very questionable level designs, such as the slow platforms at the end of both Mirage Road levels, the rooms where you have to defeat x amount of enemies to progress (there game doesn't have many combat options). the slowly descending platforms at the end of both Altitude Limit levels, etc. While I do appreciate that the game makes it so holding boost will screw you over, some of the ways they do that make little sense and either slow the game down completely, or aren't visually clear with how they punish you. Bosses are also very annoying in this game, since most of them have instant kill moves, attacks where you can't hit them until the animation is done, or both. For example: Egg Hammer Fortress (boss of Huge Crisis) has an instant kill move, but also has an attack where it goes to an unreachable area and does a long range bomb attack that takes quite a bit to finish, dragging out the boss to a longer length than it needed to be, especially since the earlier iteration of the boss (Egg Hammer Mega from Leaf Storm) was much quicker to beat despite only having one different move and a variation of another. Even with that, the game has a lot of stuff going for it, like the soundtrack, which is honestly probably one of my favouirte Sonic OST's so far (I think Adventure 2 or Unleashed is still my favourite). Overall, I'd say this game is definitely worth checking out and I would say it's one of the best games to start with for a new Sonic fan in the 2D realm.