In some ways, I can certainly commend Dimps for attempting to greatly improve elements that were sorely lacking in episode 1: the lackluster, cheap looking environments are now replaced with really quite good 2.5D backgrounds and environmental details. The bizarrely animated and somewhat deepfried Sonic model of the first game is vastly improved as well, and there's a lot more polish to his animations and expressions on top of it. The stage themes are more original, the music soundfont is improved (...somewhat, Oil Desert 2 still exists), the special stages are better, Sonic even feels less stiff to control. By all accounts this should've been a marked improvement over the first episode, but unfortunately a lot of elements still aren't where they need to be, and in fact, some elements ended up being DOWNGRADED for some baffling reason. The level design is a lot more automated and homogenous than Episode 1, wheras that game had some issues with placing springs and boosters everywhere, it at least allowed for some semblance of decent design here and there. In Episode 2, the boosters and springs are even more prominent than ever before, and any semblance of original level design is replaced with homing attack chains and the game browbeating you into using the newest gimmick: the Tails Combos. Basically you press a button to combo with Tails, use it in the air and Tails flies you up, use it on the ground and you both spindash together at ridiculous speeds plowing through everything (you'll be using this basically a majority of the game). The rolling attack is so fundamentally broken that it essentially trivializes 90% of the game's design, and it ends up being very mindless. But if that weren't enough, without the Tails combos, the lackluster physics are laid bare plain to see this time. In the first game at the very least you could get a dopamine rush by spamming the broken airdash to gain a ridiculous amount of speed, but here that option is considerably nerfed due to the game wanting you to use the funny 69 rolling attack in order to gain speed. In general, this game has almost no sense of flow whatsoever; whenever the game wants you to use the Tails combos, the game freezes for a second as Sonic and Tails need to high five, do a little pose, and THEN initiate the combo. Because it happens so frequently the pace gets halted and restarted so many times it'll make your head spin. And dear god, the bosses in this game are abysmal. The bosses in Episode 1 weren't anything to write home about but the bosses here take so unnecessarily LONG, and there's so many periods where you can't even interact with the boss at all, just sit there and watch it do goofy nonsensical things until it finally becomes vulnerable again.

Despite being slightly lesser than Episode 1 in certain key areas, this game is still just ok at best, mediocre at worst. Both episode 1 and 2 are experiences that go in one ear and out the other. Like the old saying goes, you can do better, but you can also do worse.