okay...wow i have a lot of feelings about this game, some that i'm not even sure if i really feel. like i kind of fucking love it. but this game is also a complete mess. i took the neutral route first and i kind of dreaded having to play through 10 times just to get to the canonical ending. after doing the neutral route twice i went for the semi-dark route and i started to appreciate this game more. i really think it gets better as you play it and get used to the controls and bad story writing/dialogue. a lot of people say the controls are shitty i disagree a bit, i think sonic heroes has worse controls even though this game is built on the same engine. but the story. oh man it barely makes sense (which is normal for a sonic game), on top of that the cringy and confusing wording in the dialogue is laughable...although...i can't help but think its charming in a way. i don't know. i think they probably did the best they could for making the grittiest, darkest e10+ game ever. this game is a product of its time. almost like a time capsule. this was 2005 and video games were starting to appeal to more mature audiences and what better character from the sonic series could you use to capitalize on that? plus shadow was a popular character for being pretty different than the others at the time, i think this game did a decentish job at showing many different interpretations of shadow's character. i honestly kinda enjoyed this game as much as i did with sonic adventure 1 but i don't know if i can justify giving it 4 stars due to its many flaws. however this is not in anyway a bad sonic game. good idea terrible execution and all that. clearly i probably see this game as it should've been and not what it is but does that matter? the most important thing is i enjoyed it. i don't know if i want this game to get a sequel, it sure as hell isn't getting one but i'm maybe not opposed to it. the music in this game is awesome, older sonic music is just too good. also I think shadow is gay. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈