You might not believe it based on its reputation, but Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I sold and reviewed well when it released. It was fans, who at the time were critical of yet bound by a blood oath to Keep Buying This Shit, that really went in hard against Episode I, posting videos of its wonky physics and deriding it for failing to live up to the promise of its namesake. Glowing praise like "the differences between this and the old Sonic games are so few and far between that playing it involves existing in a constant state of deja vu," and "it takes a step back to a time when Sonic was awesome" started to fade, drowned out by videos of Sonic casually walking up walls in a world made of plastic. For Episode II to succeed, Sonic Team and Dimps needed to make some changes.

Episode I's development took it from a cheap mobile game to a supposed continuation of the Genesis series, and while it may have initially passed for such, key elements like Sonic's physics just weren't there. I mean, you might not know that if you read its Wiki page, which says it has "momentum-based gameplay," a straight up lie given Sonic's propensity to drop straight down out of the air when releasing the D-pad, or to roll more slowly down inclines if you aren't holding right. Episode II addresses this by giving Sonic more weight, and though it's not as close an approximation as the Retro Engine, it is acceptable. Platforming feels far better when your forward momentum isn't determined by how firmly you're keeping the D-pad depressed, and the design of Episode II's four-and-some-change levels feels more thoughtfully crafted around the way Sonic moves.

It even looks better, with sharper and more expressive character models, cleaner textures, and art direction that helps give Episode II an identity beyond being a soupy mess of borrowed levels. Sure, you could say Sylvania Castle is a riff on Aquatic Ruin, Oil Desert is just Oil Ocean, and Sky Fortress is a (better) Wing Fortress, but this is conveyed more in their tropes than it is in their visual design. About the only area where I feel Episode II plays to the audience's nostalgia a little too hard is its special stages, which are designed after Sonic 2's, and by including yet another Sonic CD style fight against Metal. These were less played out at the time, but going back in for a replay, they feel agonizingly tired.

My stomach is starting to hurt really bad, which means it's time to talk about Jun Senoue again. I'm replaying Sonic Adventure (DX, unfortunately. Gotta stay humble.), and I think it's incredible that this man is both capable of composing the best soundtrack in the entire series and also this. Admittedly, he has some good melodies here, but his choice of instrumentation steps all over the good he's doing. It could be worse, but it's far from perfect, and he's still turning in some incredibly short, nasty loops that play during long gameplay sequences.

Like during boss fights! Superstars has caught a lot of shit (deservedly so) for having bosses that are unreasonably long, but Episode II wades into very similar territory, giving most of its bosses protracted attack phases before opening up to allow a modest amount of damage. I've been sharing this observation elsewhere, but it seems appropriate to make a point of it here, too: bosses with set attack and vulnerability phases are antithetical to Classic Sonic's design.

In the Genesis games, your pace was often influenced by the design of the level itself - set pieces being broken up by platforming, for example - but the player still had agency, and the speed in which they finished a level was largely up to how well they played. Likewise, the length of a boss fight was mostly determined by how the payer engaged with the boss' attack patterns rather than having set periods of attack and vulnerability. It was sometimes the case that a fight was rigidly paced out, but even Lava Reef Act 2's boss fight doesn't feel quite as protracted and dull as Oil Desert's.

The best Sonic bosses are the ones where you can bash Robotnik on the head eight times before he gets one attack out, is what I'm saying.

So, yeah, I think Episode II feels good to play and that the improvements Sonic Team and Dimps made worked out in the end. But if you pull back and look at the duology of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 as a single game, which ostensibly is what it's meant to be, it's hard not to feel like you're left with an inconsistent and unfinished mess. Because, you know, it is.

Sonic 4's episodic model was popular at the time, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles had established its own weird precedent within the series itself. But if you tried to evaluate it like S3&K, as one whole piece of media that was merely divided into two, it just doesn't work. Each episode looks, feels, and is designed differently, they have their own endings and though their overarching story is connected, the narrative is so threadbare in Episode I that it feels wholly unimportant to Episode II. Hell, most of the setup exists in a four-level side story that only unlocks if you own both games in the same library.

It ends on a real down note, too. Sonic and Tails stop Eggman, but they fail to prevent the Death Egg from being completed and essentially doom Little Planet. This was supposed to be the "dark middle chapter," and presumably they would return (with Knuckles in tow) for a much happier ending in Episode III. Supposedly, Christian Whitehead was also set to collaborate on the third episode, meaning it likely would've resulted in the game feeling even more different than the previous episode. The promise of making Sonic 4 even less cohesive than it already is doesn't sound great to me, but at the same time, I really wish they just stuck to the project and finished the damn thing. Knowing there is a Sonic 4 and it's this half-finished nightmare that fails to continue the Genesis games and is wildly uneven in presentation and design, but which has that name on fucking lock is just depressing.

I guess I just find the larger story of Sonic 4 to be fascinating, because it exists at this sort of post 2006 inflection point where Sega and Sonic Team were still recalibrating, turning the nob and looking over their shoulder trying to figure out what the hell people wanted from them. Starting with a clear conception in mind, changing course when fans vocally rejected it, only to end up cancelled and abandoned as Sonic Team veered towards other projects... a perfect encapsulation of where Sonic was at. As a game, an episode, I don't think Sonic 4: Episode II is bad, but it's also not great. It tows the line between mediocrity and fun. It's a Sonic-ass Sonic game.