I adore this game, but I really can't recommend you play it - too many aspects of its core design have simply fallen out of fashion. Gone are the days where replayability was the main selling point of a game.

If you still want to play it, the best experience is on Gamecube in Japanese. All the Sonic PS2 ports were shite, and the localisation of ALL Sonic games, even to this day, are abysmal, but this game suffers from both the worst.

Sonic has never shied away from more serious subject matter, though this game admittedly lacks the elegance that SA2 handles such with. There's a fun game and a good story (only a few of the 326 paths) buried somewhere underneath all this game's BS and awkward dialogue and fairly unnecessary branching paths, but you're gonna need some level of dedication to find it.

Also one of these stars is exclusively for the BANGER soundtrack and the sheer ambition of it. Crush 40, Magna-Fi, Julien-K, Powerman 5000, the blend of industrial, metal and electronic music - The soundtrack is so good, you can skip the game and just listen to the OST as an album.