Despite what most people tell me, Shattered Crystal is barely a step up from Rise of Lyric in terms of quality. Sure, the game at the very least knows that speed is an important element to keep in Sonic gameplay, great job there I guess, it's just too bad it fails at literally everything else.
Shattered Crystal is a metroidvania-esc game that demands that you slog through the very blandly designed levels to fulfill certain objectives. There's literally no interesting stage gimmicks, character switching is usually just required to hit a switch or to get one single collectable and then pop out, the upgrades you can get with these collectables barely mean anything, every stage feels the exact same and can drag on longer than 20 minutes, stages have multiple objectives to fill for medals that are required for completion so you often need to replay levels in order to progress. There aren't even any bosses (save for one at the very end), just this one giant worm minigame you can play that barely changes. The main gameplay loop is just super exhausting and boring, you basically need to complete like 95% of the objectives in order to progress near the end of the game which is just absurd. Nothing changes or gets more interesting, Sonic has his speed but with how boring and bland these stages are and how they all often blend together it hardly really matters, and to top it all off your reward for 100% completion of this game is... a dance party. Just a random dance party. Great. Story wise the game can't even keep basic continuity with Rise of Lyric
Avoid at all costs
Shattered Crystal is a metroidvania-esc game that demands that you slog through the very blandly designed levels to fulfill certain objectives. There's literally no interesting stage gimmicks, character switching is usually just required to hit a switch or to get one single collectable and then pop out, the upgrades you can get with these collectables barely mean anything, every stage feels the exact same and can drag on longer than 20 minutes, stages have multiple objectives to fill for medals that are required for completion so you often need to replay levels in order to progress. There aren't even any bosses (save for one at the very end), just this one giant worm minigame you can play that barely changes. The main gameplay loop is just super exhausting and boring, you basically need to complete like 95% of the objectives in order to progress near the end of the game which is just absurd. Nothing changes or gets more interesting, Sonic has his speed but with how boring and bland these stages are and how they all often blend together it hardly really matters, and to top it all off your reward for 100% completion of this game is... a dance party. Just a random dance party. Great. Story wise the game can't even keep basic continuity with Rise of Lyric
Avoid at all costs