I think just like Heroes, this game is very misunderstood. It's got the exact same goofy writing, high skill ceiling emphasis on combat tying into a bit of a learning curve, with a structure built on replayability that detractors always use against the game for some reason. So all the things that made Heroes a bit divisive, wrapped in decades of being memed on for the "dark and edgy" tone. Making people even less willing to learn the game, which is to say, not willing at all.

Before I get into the insane amount of baggage the game has attached to it, I'd like to just talk about the moment to moment gameplay really quick so it's not buried under said baggage. Long story short, I find Shadow to be one of the most satisfying Sonic games to go fast in. The routing for killing aliens to fill your chaos control meter and have it be worth it is cool. Mastering the gunplay with a bit of memorization lets you do many of the Kill all X enemies missions just as you would any other sonic game. Running full speed blasting the correct enemies as you're going is so fun. I think they really refined a lot of the adventure era gameplay by this point. The spindash is often called worthless for not functioning how it traditionally does, but it has a LOT of utility. The momentum it gives you allows you to jump extremely far, or if there's even a slight incline, extremely high. You don't really need it as a speed up button like usual, because your base movement speed is good enough. Grind rails now have a dedicated switch rail button so they work better than ever. And you get INSANE amounts of speed if you spindash into one. The light speed dash also works better than usual especially because important trails leave transparent rings that still work when you've collected them. Level design, while usually very linear, has a lot of obstacles and decent platforming. Lava Shelter is one of my favorites to go fast in, I really like the platforms slanted downwards towards lava that you have to jump between. This game absolutely utilizes momentum in a way a Sonic game should. Yes it CAN be hard to go fast as the levels are quite cluttered a lot of the time but that's the point of these games being made for repeat playthroughs. Not that it's a very difficult trial and error type game, but it's got room to master it and feel how satisfying it is to play once you're good at it. VS. if it was completely mindless from the start and there was nothing to overcome.

The bosses are nothing special necessarily, but the nuance in trying to kill them fast is also quite enjoyable. Especially the Sonic and Diablon fight is hugely different on your first time vs. when you've gotten good at it. Finding ways to fill up your meter to get infinite ammo, and timing it exactly with a moment where the weak spot is vulnerable...Lets you shred any boss and it's always a joy.

To get into the previously mentioned baggage-
There's a lot of commonly believed aspects about this game that aren't quite true. People often criticize the missions, and wish they'd just let you rush past everything and get to the end as fast as you can like a normal sonic game, instead of combing for enemies to kill. And I definitely understand this view, it can absolutely be pretty unfun to get to the end of a level and be met with 34/35 soldiers slain. But the frequency of these missions is a bit overstated. Counting the final level there's 55 different missions across 23 different levels. 25 of these missions are strictly just getting to the end goal like a normal sonic game. And 10 more of these are extremely linear missions that have you playing the levels like normal. Difference with those ones being you have to say, destroy 5 green crystals that are directly in your path and basically impossible to miss. With those 10 I'd personally say those are basically reach the goal type levels as well. There's 11 Kill X amount of enemies missions, 2 of which actually do have more than the bare minimum required amount. And honestly a few of these could be argued as being one of those linear missions that are impossible to miss the goals in I mentioned earlier. You have to kill 20 GUN soldiers? Have you tried going down the path with all the gun soldiers lined up in homing attack lines? Then there's 9 misc. missions. These vary but honestly a lot of them are very self explanitory and not something that would leave you lost. 3 of them are simply Destroy this ship before it escapes and the level is chasing it down and trying to do as much damage as quick as possible. There's a get 400 rings level which really isn't bad considering you only lose 10 rings on hit in this game.

Not every mission is a winner, but I genuinely don't think they're as fundamentally game breaking as many believe. A lot of the time it really is just Finish the level or ignore the goal ring and reach another exit further back And the freedom the game gives you with having 326 routes, really lets you flat out ignore more or less any mission you just don't want to do. Personally the only mission I actively have an issue with is the destroy all 30 bombs one in mad matrix. It's just not very intuitive, otherwise I've really come to enjoy most of what the game has to offer. Especially the Lost Impact Hero mission (Destroy all 35 Artificial chaos) has become one of my favorite levels in the series. I realize I'm a bit of a masochist on that one, but doing that level as fast as possible is extremely satisfying and the somber tone is so unique for a Sonic stage. If you'll forgive me projecting a bit here, I honestly don't understand why SA2 fans will put up with learning RNG emerald locations with hints that are actively trying to be as useless as possible...But learning where the one Alien they missed on their first playthrough of this game is, that's there every single time you play it (During a mission you likely don't even have to do if you don't want to), is a complete deal breaker. It's weird to me how HUGE of a complaint the missions are and how much people want to say the game would be so much better if it were just reaching the end of stages like normal, but only a small fraction of the missions are actually what's being complained about. One of the many things telling me Sonic games aren't often given the time of day and are judged largely by first impressions.

The gunplay is mocked immediately but it's one of the many attempts at making combat more integral to the series without devolving into traditional button mash-fare seen in generic platformers. The idea with heroes was a combat system that could deliver formidable enemies, that when mastered would allow you to shred enemies extremely fast without really breaking your flow in the level. This ended up proving to have too much of a learning curve for a lot of people, so Shadow simplifies it by adding guns to the equation. No more learning movesets and enemy reactions and counter play, etc. Just point and shoot with a wide variety of weapon types. This does a great job at mostly retaining the presence enemies had in Heroes, while simplifying the whole process to streamline the gameplay to be more standard sonic-fare. BUT, the idea of shadow using a gun is just too much for the world to handle for some reason. It genuinely all works really well and most of the gun types not only feel good to use but also are all very useful in different situations. From getting tons of ammo for an automatic gun, filling up your chaos meters for infinite ammo which lets you shoot pistols as fast as you can press the button, picking up a rocket launcher for some quick big damage and switching back to a more accurate weapon. It's all pretty seamless and there's some really helpful weapons you unlock from the Shadow crates every time you finish one of the ten main routes.

On the topic of guns, this game has the rep of Sega taking it too seriously. But honestly, looking at the actual content in the game, I gotta say it's more like the fans/general internet taking it too seriously. Shadow's here skating around with a massive gun shaped like a toilet seat that shoots out energy rays. He just takes the weapons from the enemies you slay. Goofy alien stuff from aliens, which includes a vacuum that just sucks enemies in. Literal NERF pistols from Eggman's robots. Torches or road signs from fallen debris as melee attacks. And more standard weaponry he gets from, naturally, G.U.N., the government agency who's been in the series using real guns (And comically huge unrealistic ones as well) for a while at this point. With cutscenes like Team Chaotix trying to hack a computer, only for shadow to waltz in and karate chop the keyboard, opening a portal, allowing him to chase eggman into the government's mainframe. With swearing levels not really any worse than the 2 recent sonic movies. Come on bro the game's E10+ it's nothing actually remotely edgy, it's so tame it's hard to even pretend it's trying too hard. I really don't think a lot of what the game brings to the table in this area, is actually new to the series. SA2's dark route opens with Eggman breaking into a government base with the ultimate goal of being a terrorist threat. SA2 has Sonic say the fabled, dreaded "Darn" word in one of Knuckles' rap songs, albeit not in his voice of course and sure most people don't notice that to be fair. SA2's the one that started the "Government kills child and then Eggman's grandfather" plotline. Shadow's writing is just as goofy as heroes, it's just following up where SA2 took the series. It's just a good time laughing at some premium B-movie dialogue. "Edgy the Hedgy" featuring characters like Charmy the Bee yapping in your ear about how wacky and fun the level you're playing is. Truly so dark and oppressive that we gotta joke about how edgy it is for 20 literal years in a row.

Being absolutely fair I get that it's somewhat disingenuous to imply nothing's different about the way this game presents itself compared to the other Sonic games, and there's nothing wrong with laughing at its E10+ edginess, I get it. The stock gunshot sound effect every time you select something in the menus is infinite comedy. Still it feels very Sonic to me in the way it faces its absurd premise from a very genuine, non ironic place. Never agreed with the crowd that lists off the crazy premise of Sonic as an excuse to write off the insanity some of the titles hit. "He's a super fast blue anthro hedgehog trying to stop an egg shaped fat man from powering robots with animals why's it have to take itself so seriously?!?!?" like bro the absurd premise is precisely why stuff like Shadow or the Kaiju dragon ball battles in space work. An absurd premise isn't a reason to play it safe and predictably it's an excuse to go all out with no regrets. It's not "taking it too seriously" to have a little fun with it. I'd certainly take it over the "NO FUN ALLOWED" banner looming over the series these days, as they're too afraid to do anything that reminds people of the franchise's embarrassing teenage years. Now we're just wacky ironically and actually Green Hill is Sonic's home even though it was just a place he ran through in 2 minutes 30 years ago 'cuz lord forbid a series grows past its first entry.

That said I'll never defend the story itself. The presentation more often than not is genuinely quite bad, and anything important is given the bare minimum amount of screen time and explanation. (The answer to whether or not the Shadow you're playing is a robot or the original is only given to you in some throwaway line if you end up spending 8 minutes on the final boss and also don't interrupt the line)Scenes are rarely coherently connected given there's over 300 routes you can take. And it's pretty lame that no matter how much you help out Eggman, you can never actually end a playthrough on his side.

But yeah, gameplays mostly a lot of fun if you're willing to stick with it. The "Edgy the hedgy" stuff the internet can't let go of lead to a combat system that maintains core principles Sonic was founded on while also simplifying a previous attempt to do that very thing. The cutscenes are good for a laugh though fans will likely be left disappointed by how bare and poorly told the plot is, given it's more of an attempted follow up to SA2 this time around. A lot of the music has grown on me a LOT over time. Tracks like GUN fortress and Lost Impact are so unique to the series in their tone and instrumentation. It's great to see a series known for such amazing music try some new styles here and there. Level themes are quite decent, I especially like the Halloween themed cryptic castle. Digital circuit's got a bit of a TRON aesthetic which is cool. Some classic Sonic in space levels and Eggman's base levels. Cool stuff!

The game's definitely a bit sloppy on the smaller details. Like maybe to progress in a mission you have to knock down an alien bat. Black Doom will be like SHADOW, USE THE DARK SOLDIER TO FLY FORWARD then you smack it to be able to ride it and Black Doom is like SHADOW YOU TRAITOR! There's a lot of instances of this kind of thing and really it's simply just a goofy surface level issue that doesn't truly effect anything at all. Sure if you do the dark mission and have points for killing your own team, those points count against you. But the A rank is locked behind speed more than anything this time around which all around works quite well. Also there's an expert mode run where you play through every level once you get A ranks in every mission which is a lot of fun. Most of the missions in that mode are simply reaching the end of the level too.

Truly a Man's game tbh.