It is wild how much my nostalgia for this game - and the Sonic series as a whole - marred my view of this game. I've been going through this recently, and honestly this game isn't very good. It's constantly at odds with itself. The marketing of Sonic is that you're supposed to go fast - blast processing and all that - but when you do this you ram into some random thing you could not have possibly seen every 5 seconds. I had the most fun playing as Tails and moving through each stage like a paranoid tank. This partly solved the issue but you're still completely subject to the stage. There could probably be another fulfillment out of this game by say, looking at the full map and making a route to go on as Sonic, but given how zoomed in the camera is this was clearly not what the designers had in mind when making this game.

If I can give it anything, the soundtrack (like in most Sonic games) is great, and there are some pretty good boss battles as well.