YMMV / Shadow the Hedgehog

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • "To get through tight spaces, press the B/circle button to slide!"
  • "Bet I could smash that."
• Applicability: Feeding on the teen angst aspects of the game, some people have argued that the relationship between Black Doom and Shadow mirrors that of a distant father suddenly showing up in their troubled child's life and trying to gain favor with them solely for materialistic reasons, which is not uncommon in real-life (particularly in a society where divorce has become commonplace and teenagers are more mentally vulnerable than ever).
• Ass Pull:
  • Aliens having a hand in Shadow's creation. There were, at most, two hints of this in previous games. The first was some "Blind Idiot" Translation that reads like a misplaced headline used as a warning text at the rim of the pit where Eggman first found Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2 — "ASTRONOMERS ARE CONCLUDING THAT 'MONSTROUSBLACKS" (sic)^note Googling this phrase suggests that the text was also simply lifted from a 2000 article about black holes. The second, coming from Sonic Heroes, is seemingly throwaway idle dialogue from Omega in Frog Forest following the Egg Albatross battle and the initial suggestion that Shadow might be a robotic duplicate ("Shadow, that android must be an alien. Unable to analyze"), and the fact that one would have to deliberately stand still to hear it means many players completely missed it. As such, it can be argued that at no point was this meaningfully foreshadowed. On top of that, there are shaky justifications to try and shoehorn it into the backstory, and the reveal directly contradicts a few plot points already established.
  • Eggman revealing that he rescued Shadow after the events of Adventure 2 can come off as this, mainly because triggering the associated dialogue requires the player to wait over nine damn minutes during the Final Boss fight (which can be reasonably won in half that time), making it an easily overlooked plot point. And the "Why?" and "How?" regarding the whole thing is never elaborated further, especially given that Shadow clearly fell towards the atmosphere while Eggman was with everyone on the ARK.
  • The plot point that the G.U.N. Commander was a childhood friend of Maria reeks of this. It essentially renders the whole concept of the character stupid and illogical considering that he, for some inexplicable reason, blames Shadow for what happened to Maria instead of the group that murdered her and which he is now the leader of, which can make him look insanely petty and irrational. It also doesn't help that all parts of this development are only revealed if Shadow takes a specific level route, meaning his relationship with Maria will come entirely out of nowhere if you get to fight him at the end through an alternate path.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: Well, critics-alienating, at least. It's a dark, gritty, swearing and guns-filled adaption of Sonic The Hedgehog. Several reviewers lambasted the very idea, and the game has consistently been rated as one of the worst installments of the franchise for this reason by critics and longtime fans. On the other hand, it was a commercial success and sold over two million copies.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: The gritty tone of this game played a large role in the perception of Shadow as an "edgelord", portraying him as a gun-toting potty-mouth who will turn on his allies for little to no reason.
• Awesome Art: The CGI cutscenes are quite high quality. They hold up well even against Sonic titles from ten years afterwards.
• Awesome Music: While opinions on the game remain divided-leaning-negative, many agree that the game's more Nu Metal soundtrack is a great and fitting addition to the game. What do you expect from something in the Sonic series?
  • For themes with lyrics, we have all of the ending themes, but especially "All Hail Shadow", as well as "I Am... All of Me" for the main theme (performed by — who else? — Crush 40). Most of the background music also counts.
  • And for the final ending music, we have "Never Turn Back".
  • Listen closely to the song that plays when Shadow transforms into his Super form — towards the end, the guitar riff from "Live and Learn" can be heard.
  • Not necessarily from the game, but m-flo's remake of "Tripod Baby" for the game is rather interesting.
  • It can be argued that music describes what goes on in a character's head in ways that dialogue can't. "Chosen One" does a great job at proving this point by explaining how Shadow regrets the doom that he brought to the world, but in the end, he is the last hope for humanity.
  • For another awesome nod to Sonic Adventure 2, there's the "E.G.G.M.A.N." remix. Eggman is listening to it in-game — tapping his foot to it — and there's a full version of it on the soundtrack.
• Awesome: Video Game Levels:
  • Digital Circuit. Not only is the Cyberspace concept a very unique one among Sonic levels, but the sections where you race along internet circuits are really fun, and the platforming is quite well-done in the level, too! These stages also include puzzles, but they aren't too complicated to solve. Mad Matrix is another Cyberspace level in the same vein, and is just as good (unless you don't like the mission where you must destroy several bombs).
  • Lethal Highway. Of all the levels in the game, it's the closest in terms of design to the well-received Sonic Adventure 2, meaning that you can just skate along the highway at full speed, and near the end, it homages Speed Highway. It also has motorbikes.
  • The Dark mission in Air Fleet — chasing and shooting down the president's escape pod — is a wonderful mix of fast-paced Sonic gameplay combined with third-person shooting. It's one of three missions with that mechanic, one of the other two being the Hero mission of Lethal Highway above.
  • Circus Park is a bright colourful amusement park with lots of great level gimmicks, Eggman being really exciteable about it due to him creating it, and good uses of the gunplay, such as in shooting gallery sections.
  • GUN Fortress. Unusually melancholy music, wide open spaces, lots of space to run around, a sense of progression that many levels in this game don't have, and a Dark mission where you can cause massive carnage by way of the gatling gun, which can very easily become loaded with infinite ammunition by refilling the meter. It also marks an admittedly rare case in the game where both mission objectives (reach the end or destroy three very hard-to-miss cores) are fun to complete and don't bog the pace down.
  • Sky Troops, which has a great sense of speed and platforming, set high up in the sky with great music and pretty good missions (where you're tasked with either blasting Eggman's ships out of the sky for the Black Arms, or helping Eggman destroy the orbs powering the giant floating fortress to send it crashing to the ground). It was popular enough to be included in fan mods of Sonic Generations.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The base was already pretty broken over if Shadow's return in Sonic Heroes was a good thing or not, and this game did nothing but add fuel to that fire. In fact, this game cemented Shadow as the most divisive character in the series, bar none. To this day, fans are split on whether he is still a good character who's just been the victim of overexposure and bad writing that has affected many characters in the franchise besides himself, or a glorified Spotlight-Stealing Squad who should have died after his debut and whose self-serious, angsty characterization does not fit with the whimsical nature of the series.
  • Over time but to a lesser extent, Black Doom has become one as well. Many fans of the franchise don't think too highly of him, as they see him as a bland villain with a generic name, design, characterization and motives, with him being shoved in to Shadow's creation being especially controversial. That being said, he does have his fans, enjoying said aspects, his genuinely imposing and intimidating presence, and Sean Schemmel's very atypical performance, and thus, it is not uncommon to see him included in fanworks.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Because of how many combinations of level sequences there are (326!), this happens sooner or later as the story continues to branch.
  • In Circus Park after Tails' plane crashes and he joins up with Shadow as a sidekick, his objective is to take back all of the stolen rings from Dr. Eggman. Just why do you need to take back all of the stolen rings?
  • In Cryptic Castle, Amy Rose joins Shadow as a sidekick and her mission is to locate Cream and Cheese who have gotten lost in Dr. Eggman's castle. Just what were they doing wandering around in a haunted castle in the first place? Other than some minor Ship Tease should Shadow help Amy in the Hero mission, it is never mentioned again.
  • At the end of the neutral mission in Cryptic Castle, a skeletal monster chases Shadow. All that's known about it is that it's underneath one of Eggman's bases, and even Eggman has never seen it before.
  • In the true ending, Eggman demands the Chaos Emeralds while sneaking away with Knuckles chasing after him as Sonic and the others start laughing.
• Bile Fascination: Many have played this game solely to witness how edgy and confusing a game about a gun-toting cartoon hedgehog can get.
• Breather Boss:
  • The Egg Breaker in Iron Jungle (and Iron Jungle only; Mad Matrix and Cryptic Castle have harder fights) is ridiculously easy if you go behind the start and spam the turret. You can beat Eggman in seven seconds this way.
  • The boss fight against Heavy Dog at The Doom. It's fairly annoying, but not difficult, especially considering how horrendous The Doom can get in all three of its missions.
  • The Egg Dealer, which appears as the final boss of four of the ten endings, is also not particularly difficult or annoying compared to Black Doom or Sonic and Diablon, who both fall right into Goddamned Boss territory.
• Breather Level: Any level where you just have to get to the end, especially if you were doing Hero or Dark missions before. Getting to the end is easier than finding stuff (especially since the "finding stuff" missions tend to require you to find all the stuff, which can be easier said than done). However, The ARK's Normal mission stands out — all you do is just fly on a Black Arms bat thing for the entire level, only you were required to do the Dark missions of either Central City or The Doom to get here, both of which are That One Level and detailed on this page.
• Broken Base:
  • Over time, the use of guns became this. It was widely derided at the time, as many detractors still consider it to be desperate edginess that borders on self-parody. However, as time passed, people started to express the opinion that although the concept is ridiculous, it makes for a fun gameplay mechanic, with much Catharsis Factor to be had from mowing down enemies. Others have also pointed out that complaining about Shadow using guns and other weapons is a ridiculous Double Standard when you consider that he isn't the first character in the series to do so (see Older Than They Think for more details)... though this argument tends to evoke significant pushback from the other side, who will often state it's not the use of weapons in general (many of which were slapstick in nature when employed by other characters), but the use of realistic firearms, something that was not only deemed to be wildly out of character for Shadow by much of the fandom but also something that, before this game, was only seen with Badniks and other Eggman Empire-affiliated characters, the E-100 series in particular. Cue seemingly endless debates.
  • The branching paths. Several fans love it for offering lots of replay value, while others dislike how it combines with the Multiple Endings structure to force the player into completing the game multiple times to unlock the Last Story, all while trying to piece together the incredibly disjointed story.
• Catharsis Factor: When you max out either your Hero or Dark meters, you're given complete invincibility and infinite ammo for whatever gun you're carrying until the meter runs out. You can also extend your superpowered period by performing more actions that build the relevant meter (which usually entails killing the relevant enemies). You can see where this is going...
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • Shadow's portrayal in the game has undergone this. His portrayal was initially hated for being angsty, and confused, not helped by the game's Random Events Plot and alternate paths causing the story to have no clear direction until the Golden Ending. However, with nostalgia for the game softening views, many have started to see that Shadow was a deeply traumatized individual who was himself thoroughly confused about his past and discovering it of his own accord, finally helping cement Shadow's character once again for the next game, letting him recover and prove himself to be the aloof anti hero he is at heart after going through a good amount of development. Nowadays, most of the criticisms of Shadow's arc are more of missed potential due to the aforementioned scattershot plot and branching structure, especially since all the interesting character beats are locked behind the true ending.
  • Upon introduction, Black Doom was widely criticized for his generic, clichéd villain personality and design which also clashed with the series, and seen as too over-the-top to take seriously and contributed unwelcome additions to the lore. In short, he was seen as the face of everything ridiculed with this games Darker and Edgier tone and how it wasn't a fit for the series. But after subsequent Lighter and Softer games became increasingly criticized for being basic and non-serious, fans were hype for the darker Sonic Forces, whose villain, Infinite, intentionally embraced clichés and was over-the-top, only for the story and character to be seen as disappointing for not coming off as serious, such it displeased fans of the darker and lighter approaches. Thus, Black Doom became better received as a more successful integration of darker elements, as it took itself seriously, working in spite of the tonal clash or entertainingly bad at worst, unlike Infinite's deliberate self-parody. Such fans were excited for Doom's return in Sonic X Shadow Generations.
• Complete Monster: Black Doom is the leader of the Black Arms and a completely humorless Evilutionary Biologist. Having visited the Earth for thousands of years, he made contact with Gerald Robotnik 50 years prior to the series, agreeing to a deal where a creation using Black Doom's cells, the future Shadow the Hedgehog, would deliver the Chaos Emeralds so that the Black Arms can use Chaos Control to arrive on Earth and bring prosperity to humanity. Gerald realized once Doom left that he was lied to, as Black Doom intended to enslave the human race and use them as a food source. During the events of the game, he preaches about the evils of humanity and how they don't deserve to be free, claiming they would be better served as a food source for the Black Arms, all while showing he has no regrets killing his own men or throwing away his "son" when everything is finished. During the game, he sends his army to kill millions, manipulated Shadow by forcing him to relive Maria's death, destroys an entire city — and most of his army — with the Eclipse Cannon, and spreads a gas that paralyzes Sonic and friends to make it easier for his offspring to eat them. Hypocritical, ruthless and uncaring to even his own, Black Doom is among the worst the franchise has to offer.
• Continuity Lockout: Good luck trying to follow the story if you haven't played Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes, as this game's story relies heavily on plot threads left from those two games. Made even worse by the fact Adventure 2 would remain exclusive to the Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo GameCube until 2012. This means only one-third of the platforms this game was released on had access to the game this one acted as a sequel to.
• Critic-Proof: The game was weirdly successful^note Even the widely-considered worst port in the Playstation 2 version still sold enough to qualify the game for the brand's "Greatest Hits" label, which required a minimum of 400,000+ units sold, and overall sales figures peg the game across all platforms as having sold over 2 million copies and catapulted Shadow to becoming one of the most popular characters in gaming according to Guinness Records. You wouldn't know this from fan or critical reception. That said, any plans for a sequel were abandoned anyways; evidently, it seems Sega felt the game either didn't do as well as hoped, or decided a direct sequel wouldn't sell nearly as well.
• Cult Classic: It's still considered the black sheep installment in the mainline Sonic games, but it did amass a following that enjoys it for its branching paths, surprisingly fun gun mechanics, several well-designed levels and bosses, and its over-the-top edginess that is fun to laugh at.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Is the entire game just Black Doom trying to break Shadow down by forcing him through a "Groundhog Day" Loop until he joins the Black Arms? Black Doom can teleport Shadow places, create physical versions of Shadow's memories that the latter can interact with and can use Chaos Control to warp the Black Comet into the Earth's atmosphere and as Devil Doom during the True Final Boss fight; so if anything, manipulating Shadow's mind through multiple time loops isn't out of the question.
  • If the entire game was Black Doom messing with Shadow's head, how much of it was real? Are the intro stages and final stages the only real events in the game? Are only the intro and Last Story real and everything else Black Doom's machinations? Were The Doom and Lost Impact attempts by Black Doom to manipulate Shadow with his own memories?
  • Who created the Shadow Androids seen in the game's multiplayer mode? Did Dr. Eggman create them as specialized, upgraded versions of his Shadow Androids? Or did GUN create them as a counter to any and all threats during the Black Arms invasion? Also, why is there a yellow version of Shadow? Was he a prototype? A clone of Shadow himself? Shadow from an alternate universe/timeline?
• Event-Obscuring Camera: Present throughout the game, but it's especially egregious in Cosmic Fall, where the camera spazzing out makes it very difficult to judge jumps. (And the platforming would be kind of tricky even without the Event-Obscuring Camera.)
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The Black Arms' involvement in Shadow's creation is viewed with deliberate ignorance at best due to it being little more than a poorly thought-out plot point to justify a connection between Black Doom and Shadow. One of the more hated consequences of their addition to Shadow's backstory is the implication that G.U.N. raided the ARK due to their collaboration instead of pure impatience, painting G.U.N. as a more righteous government rather than the morally ambiguous military force they were portrayed as in Adventure 2.
• Fan Nickname: Use the terms "Grand Theft Sonic" or "Grand Theft Shadow" around almost any Sonic fan and they'll know which game you're talking about. Obviously it's first and foremost down to all the vehicles that Shadow goes for joyrides in, but also the profanity, gun use and violence.
• Fanon: Some fans believe that the "robot" that saved Shadow after he fell at the end of Sonic Adventure 2 (which is revealed by Dr. Eggman if you wait nine minutes into the final boss fight) was none other than Metal Sonic, who did so in order to copy Shadow's data in Sonic Heroes. This does, however, conflict with Metal's dialogue after the Egg Albatross boss battle in Heroes proper, wherein his declaration ("Ultimate life form data... has been copied") is delivered in present tense, as if the data copying just happened then and there.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Among many other reasons, fans of Sonic Adventure 2 tend to pretend this game doesn't exist; if not because what it did to Shadow as a character, then because of what it did to his rather clear-cut backstory from Adventure 2, which, besides making it overly complicated, it also included adding aliens to his creation.
• Game-Breaker: The Hero/Dark Shadow forms, though not for the intended reasons. Hero Shadow gives you Chaos Control, which is great for missions that simply require you to get to the end of the level, but terrible for any kill or search missions. Dark Shadow gives you Chaos Blast, which is the opposite of Chaos Control, but still impractical as each blast drains too much of the gauge for relatively little damage. What both forms have in common, however, is giving Shadow invincibility and infinite ammo for as long as the gauge lasts (and it can be refilled by gaining the respective Hero/Dark points), turning him into a One-Man Army, especially with the right weapon. The only downside is that it triggers the instant you fill up one of the meters, meaning that you have no control over when you enter your Super Mode (and begin draining your gauge) out of deliberately abstaining from performing meter-filling actions to avoid having a meter max out when you can't take full advantage of the Super Mode benefits, which requires advanced knowledge of the stage layout to even pull off in the first place and might bite you in the ass if it means ignoring mission objectives.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • By reaching a checkpoint with the blue gauge filled and pressing X/Circle then Y/Triangle immediately, the gauge never depletes, the timer stays at the time you've activated the menu, and it's possible to use Chaos Control as far as the game allows. This may cause the game to freeze and is only available on GameCube/PS2, but it's the optimal way to speedrun Neutral missions.
  • During the Hero missions a secondary character follows you around, and a second player can plug in a controller and control that character. In the Lost Impact stage, while Shadow is riding the Gun Rail he apparently loses his Friendly Fireproof status, as the secondary character (who is Maria, no less) can slap Shadow out of the cockpit, causing an explosion and making you lose rings.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In one cutscene, Black Doom will share a memory to Shadow about how the humans feared him, wanted to destroy him, and accomplished this. While Black Doom is manipulating Shadow to have him on his side, Sonic '06 would reveal that after Iblis was awakened and destroyed the world, humanity used the incident to hunt Shadow down and have Omega imprison him.
  • Enemy Chatter will have a G.U.N. soldier occasionally say "Mr. Yuji Naka is alright!", this game would be Yuji Naka's final time working on Sonic, with his departure crippling the development of the next mainline game. Furthermore, Naka's post-Sonic efforts have had mixed-to-negative reception, and he would later be arrested in 2022 for insider trading; Naka certainly isn't "alright" anymore.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Say what you will about the game in general, but an unambiguous positive is that Jason Griffith improved immensely on his Shadow voice compared to this.
  • Sean Schemmel in his role as Black Doom sounds completely unlike Goku, which works.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This game would see a video game franchise whose English dub began in the late 90s being replaced with a dub done by 4Kids Entertainment. Just one year later, the opposite situation would occur with Pokémon: The Series. For added hilarity, the the final Pokémon production done by 4Kids would also feature Sean Schemmel, but this time in a major heroic role.
  • Sonic says he "wouldn't be caught dead" using a gun. In the Super Smash Bros. series, while they're lasers and such, he can still utilize a gun. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games also has its share of shooting events.
  • Shadow has alien DNA and his parent is the Big Bad who leads an Alien Invasion to Kill All Humans. The only reason this is spoiler-marked because it's almost identical to a plot twist from another story starring a black and red edgy character which the official Sonic Twitter ended up referencing.
  • "Where's that damn fourth Chaos Emerald?" Many Sonic Mania players agree that the Chaos Emerald Special Stages start getting significantly harder around the fourth Special Stage. In other words, many players are struggling with that damn fourth Chaos Emerald. Oh, and Shadow guards that damn fourth Chaos Emerald in Sonic Generations.
  • This game isn't the only game to include lots of swearing in a typical kid-friendly game series while also having guns with an E10+ rating. In fact, Sonic's very own rival did the same thing and got good reviews.
  • Sean Schemmel voicing the ever dreaded, human-hating Knight Templar monster with the word "black" in his name? Why does that sound familiar?
  • Less than a year after this game's release, Schemmel would use his Black Doom voice (with basically no changes whatsoever) to portray another sinister alien: Sh'Okanabo in the Fast Forward season of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) cartoon. Bonus points: Like Black Doom's "day of reckoning", Sh'Okanobo has a "Day of Awakening" as his MO.
  • Considering what a lambasting Shadow got for being "Sonic with Guns", even at the time in 2005, it's frankly amusing that the concept would see a successor of sorts via 2024's Palworld, best described as "Pokemon with Guns", that did far better.
  • A secret bit of dialogue from the G.U.N. Commander during Expert Mode has him apologize to Shadow over the game's events and even invite him over for dinner to meet his family. In light of more recent media, one can imagine said dinner might be held at the Olive Garden...
  • Shadow wielding guns becomes even more hilarious when it was confirmed that he will be voiced by Keanu Reeves in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Two of Keanu's well-known roles are Neo and John Wick, both of whom are proficient in firearms.
• Ho Yay: One of the pathways to get to the pure Hero ending is "Under the Name of Love". In that pathway, it goes like this: Neutral Westopolis, Hero Glyphic Canyon, Neutral Circus Park, Neutral Mad Matrix, Hero Space Gadget, and Hero Final Haunt. You help Knuckles in Glyphic Canyon but go back to being neutral for a while, and it isn't until Sonic comes into the picture to give the final push to being pure hero. It's almost like Sonic's love redeemed Shadow.
• It Was His Sled: The fact that Shadow is still known for being an Anti-Hero means that people are likely to tell how the Golden Ending will play out.
• Memetic Badass: Maria, due to the fact that her slaps can demolish robots and concrete walls. So much for Delicate and Sickly...
• Memetic Loser: The Egg Dealer is widely mocked as Eggman's worst designed mech, even among his infamy for Tactical Suicide Bosses, with it being seemingly programmed to launch missiles at itself or power up its enemy through something as easy as hitting clearly-marked, unprotected buttons on its front armor. It also helps that most fights with it end in Eggman being Killed Off for Real.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Where's that damn fourth Chaos Emerald?" ^ExplanationA line uttered by Shadow at the beginning of Circus Park, which has caught on with fans simply for how forced it sounds.
  • "Find the Computer Room!", which both the fanbase and Sega launched on top of to create the sneakiest in-joke of Summer of Sonic '09 — in particular, putting up confusing signs to the computer room. Of course, it's also in the placeholder for Sonic City, and even became the name of a website.
  • "You know what they say: The more, the merrier!" ^ExplanationEggman just seems to have a habit of coming up with repetitive yet quotable dialogue during his fights. This particular quote is said during one of his attacks (specifically, the attack where Eggman stands in place and spawns six bombs that fire out in a hexagonal pattern) in the Egg Breaker fight after Mad Matrix. It's very possible to get Eggman deadlocked into using the attack over and over again, which naturally leads into him repeating the line ad nauseam.
  • "Mr. Yuji Naka is alright!"
    • After his arrests for insider trading in 2022, fans either started using it ironically, or turned it into something along the lines of "Mr. Yuji Naka is not alright."
  • OW THE EDGE.◊ ^ExplanationSimilar to the "EXPAND DONG" meme, fans have taken to chopping up various pieces of screenshots and the game's logo to spell out this phrase in response to the game's incredibly in-your-face Darker and Edgier aesthetic, which has also gone on to extend to other utterly over-the-top "edgy" characters, stories, or series.
  • "THIS IS WHO I AM!" ^{Explanation (Spoilers!)}Every ending ends with Shadow making this declaration after musing on the path he's taken beforehand. Given how it always caps off each ending (when Shadow isn't busy cracking Eggman open or laughing like a maniac in certain endings, that is, and even then, Shadow still says the line immediately beforehand), it really caught on with the fans.
  • "MARIIIAAAAA!"
  • "Looks like these black creatures really mean business!" and various other lines in the game to that effect are popular to bring up, making fun of the fact that everyone constantly mentions what color the aliens are in a way which makes them sound like Civil War plantation owners or Ku Klux Klan members.
  • "This is like taking candy from a baby, which is fine by me."
  • Due to it being the game's main and most infamous theme, the song "I Am... All of Me" is very often used on the internet as an unofficial theme for edgy/angsty moments alongside stuff like Drowning Pool's "Bodies" and Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life".
  • "I AM AT ALDI" ^ExplanationA Mondegreen of "I Am... All of Me"'s lyrics, leading to jokes about Shadow shopping at Aldi, and many fans proclaiming that they Can't Un-Hear It.
• Misblamed: Fans often cite the English voice cast getting replaced by the cast from the English Dub of Sonic X as being a consequence of Deem Bristow's death in January 2005. Fans claim Sega of America wanted Mike Pollock to take over the role of Dr. Eggman following Deem Bristow's death, but complications regarding Pollock's contract with 4Kids Entertainment made it easier for Sega to recruit the entire Sonic X cast, instead of just Pollock. While it's true that Deem Bristow's passing would've made a new voice actor for Eggman necessary regardless of the circumstances, the reality is, Sega of Japan wanted America to have a consistent cast between the games and anime as was the case in Japan, with this order being made prior to Deem Bristow's death.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • After The ARK, Shadow puts his current total of five Chaos Emeralds into the Eclipse Cannon and uses it to completely destroy a capital city.
  • On a different path (Air Fleet), Shadow deliberately tries to kill the fleeing president, who is previously shown to be almost comically upstanding (and to have a great deal of respect for both Shadow and Sonic). Shadow fails to accomplish this as well.
  • His final chance to cross it for certain paths can count as a success.
    • In three of the endings, he decides to kill everyone's favorite eggheaded scientist.
    • In the Pure Dark - Dark ending, he vows to destroy the entire planet with everyone on it. His insane laughing only proves how he's too far gone. The Pure Dark - Hero ending isn't much better, with him betraying Black Doom and aiming to conquer the universe.
    • Massacring the GUN soldiers in The Doom and triggering the bombs to destroy Central City are considered them as well, in the fact that committing those atrocities will lock you onto one of the four Dark endings.
  • Black Doom's xenoforming of the planet and consumption of its inhabitants was bad enough, but then he had the balls to claim that he's trying to save humanity. He's either got a serious case of Blue-and-Orange Morality or (more likely) is trying to justify his actions.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • For some reason, activating a database in Mad Matrix produces a strange, yet soothing sound.
  • Black Doom's voice is both intimidating and badass at the same time.
• Narm: This game takes a normally kid-friendly series about Funny Animals and tries to make it Darker and Edgier by applying Real Is Brown while adding minor swearing and gun use... and not much else, all while taking itself completely seriously. The end result is that many meant-to-be serious moments end up being hilarious instead.
• Narm Charm:
  • Of course, if you're a fan of the game, you probably get off on this kind of game, and even people who don't like it have admitted that its hilariously toothless attempt at a Darker and Edgier Sonic game makes it memorable even today. Not to mention that it occasionally does hit you with some pretty serious things that can work despite how absurd it is.
  • "All Hail Shadow." It's an utterly shameless, over-the-top Bragging Theme Tune sung by Magna-Fi (or Crush 40 in later games) right down to the goddamn title of the song that it's easy to think that it's a parody of Shadow fans in general; hell, it even has a lyric that goes "Obliterating everything that's not your friend" as if Shadow was really the ultimate asshole, yet it's sung so sincerely and unironically that you can't help but love it anyway.
• Never Live It Down:
  • This game forever tarnished Shadow's image among many players, making him remembered as just a Wangsty jerk who was trying too hard to appear "extreme" and "edgy" instead of the tragic and misled revenge seeker he was in Adventure 2. Sonic Heroes was already lambasted for bringing him back, but it really didn't do much with the character himself besides giving him amnesia and hinting that he might not have been the real Shadow at all. Shadow the Hedgehog, on the other hand, amps up all the darker aspects of his personality and doesn't really do a good job at handling them, especially with how inconsistent an individual story route can get. This is still ongoing up to this day, even though Shadow has gone through lots of Character Rerailment ever since.
  • For particular moments regarding Shadow, there are his infamous "Where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?" and "This is like taking candy from a baby, which is fine by me!" lines, both of which come off as absurdly try-hard and have likely massively contributed to the character's modern perception as a laughable edgelord among the general gaming landscape, no thanks to the proliferation of GIFs, videos and screenshots depicting said moments without context (not that it makes any sense in context either).
  • Shadow wielding guns is a big one, particularly his "iconic" pistol. He only gets to wield them as a mechanic in this game since GUN soldiers can provide him with an assortment of weapons that could be of opportunistic use. Casual fans and non-fans will make you think Shadow is a psychotic Gun Nut who walks around with a pistol 24/7, and possibly even has a personal collection of them stored somewhere; in reality, Shadow has never even held a firearm since this game^note with a single exception played for laughs in the LEGO Dimensions Sonic story pack, relying solely on his Chaos Powers to fight.
  • For a non-Shadow example, there's Vector and his infamous "Find the Computer Room!" Considering how Vector tends to be a minor character in other Sonic games and thus doesn't have much screentime to showcase more of his personality, many would think he's just some computer-obsessed crocodile.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This was the game to introduce skydiving mechanics, not Sonic Unleashed. This is also the first game to involve parkour-esque wall-running mechanics as an expansion on the Triangle Jump, not Sonic Lost World. It also features a Boost, although in a different form, and you can only use it if you go the Hero path. For bonus points, SHtH was released in North America one day before Sonic Rush, which also featured a Boost mechanic^note The two games were released on the same day in the PAL region, while Japan received Rush several weeks before Shadow.
  • Despite Shadow's use of weapons, especially guns, being a common complaint, he wasn't the first Sonic character to use weapons. For example, Amy has her Piko Hammer and Espio has his kunai. And Shadow's not even the first to use guns either, with the most well-known examples before him being E-102 Gamma, who used a gun as his primary weapon, and E-123 Omega, who is a walking arsenal of guns, missiles and bombs. And if you really want to dig deeper, there are also more obscure characters such as Heavy, Bomb, Bean, and Fang. The first three all use bombs as their primary weapons, while Fang uses a popgun. (But, as noted in Broken Base above, this is downplayed somewhat by the fact that a large chunk of the weapons seen in-series beforehand were not realistic and/or primarily used in a more comedic/slapstick way compared to what's seen in Shadow, particularly since many players would have already been familiar with most of the aforementioned characters due to the series' late 90s/early 2000s Newbie Boom.)
• Only the Creator Does It Right: While Shadow's primary creator Shiro Maekawa appears in this game's credits, it's only as "development support" and not in any writing role. Many of Maekawa's fans blame the game's narrative shortcomings on his absence as a writer; quite ironic considering the game was Shadow's first starring role, and still remains his only one. It's worth noting that one of the better-received elements of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where Maekawa was a lead writer, was its Character Rerailment of Shadow, who is portrayed much less angsty and deliberately edgy than in this game.
• Padding: This isn't the first game in the series to lock major game progression behind replaying levels and repeating content to reach the conclusion. And to its credit, there are a wide gamut of stages to potentially play through. That still doesn't excuse having to get all ten endings for the Last Story when only one ending is canon for it, and getting those endings means playing through the game at least ten times, which means playing Westopolis as your first level over and over and over again, doing an entire playthrough of the game yet again, and having to complete every final stage twice over for both their Hero and Dark path missions. Even a basic level skip based on objectives and paths you've completed could've gone a long way towards making this a million times more palatable.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Some of the more charitable opinions of the game tend towards this. While the story is a mess of random events with barely any cohesion, the gameplay at least plays mostly like Heroes and the Adventure games, just with guns added. At the very least, it doesn't have the Gameplay Roulette that many dislike about several 3D Sonic games.
• Porting Disaster: This game was built from the same engine as Heroes, and thus the PS2 release of this game suffers from all of the same problems the PS2 version of Heroes did.
• Power Up Letdown: Getting a maxed meter for your Hero or Dark Gauges gets you the Chaos Control or Chaos Blast, respectively — but both are so underwhelming compared to pure invulnerability and unlimited ammunition while the gauge ticks down that they aren't appreciated very much. Having a gun can outright do more damage within seconds than a single Chaos Blast can do to both enemies and bosses all around, while the Chaos Control is basically designed only for the Neutral missions besides rare exceptions, and has no real overall use in most other cases or even outright renders certain objectives incompletable without a stage restart.
• Questionable Casting:
  • While most of the 4Kids Entertainment voice cast switchover was (and, for some, still is) heavily divisive, Vector's actor going from Marc Biagi (who voiced him in Sonic Heroes) to Jimmy Zoppi was heavily criticized for sounding nothing like Vector's portrayal in Heroes. While Biagi played the character with a deep authoritative tone which still sounds comedic, Zoppi's take is much more high-pitched and goofy, which many have criticized as being incredibly Narmy and unfitting for the character. What's especially baffling is Zoppi had previously shown the ability to replicate Biagi's take on the character in Season 2 of Sonic X. Though with time (and memes) people would look back on Zoppi's take with more affection.
  • Perhaps the most criticized cast change was Rouge going from Lani Minella to Kathleen Delaney. While Minella's voice fit the overconfident young adult that was Rouge, Delany's take sounds closer to a woman in her 40s or 50s trying to sound seductive. When the voice cast changed again in 2010 with the release of Sonic Free Riders, very few were upset about Rouge's recasting.
• The Scrappy: The G.U.N. Commander has his fair share of people spiting his existence as well due to being very Unintentionally Unsympathetic to some. A younger brother figure to Maria, he's so heartbroken by her death fifty years ago that he blames Shadow for everything that happened aboard the ARK, before rising to take leadership of the very same faction that caused it, and abusing his authority to try to have Shadow killed on-sight with no inclination that he's there for reform. And all we see him get is a Heel Realization when he realizes Shadow wasn't truly at fault.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The story route system of your alignment is a cool idea on paper, and allows for a high stage count with a lot of variety, even if a few stages are essentially palette swaps of each other. The problem is that the actual alignment system is total bunk; Shadow can commit horrible acts in the Dark path, including mass murder and partial genocide, and then inexplicably flip turn to the Neutral or Hero path or vice versa, resulting in Shadow's ideologies and morality flip-flopping on a dime; if you want to avoid certain mission objectives to reach the final stages, the mechanics actively encourage this. It also means that the game has ten endings, which will require you to suffer through the terrible objectives and replay every final stage at least twice to see them all so that you can unlock the Last Story, which renders all but one ending non-canon and thus the entire selling point of the game moot.
  • The weapons actually work better than you probably expect, but the vehicles are not so polished — especially the motorcycle that shows up in the intro movie. The walkers work pretty well, though.
  • The effectiveness of the weapons depends on what version you're playing. Works pretty well on the GameCube version, but is utterly useless on the PS2 version. Also, the targeting system seems to have issues when it comes to short-ranged weapons, yet works really well once you start getting medium to long-ranged weapons.
  • No matter which path you take in a level, all the enemies will attack you, which forces you to kill them and have your assist character chew you out for it. This is especially bad when you need to defeat enemies to proceed, even if doing so will raise the gauge opposite of the mission you're going for, lowering your score. Notable in Cryptic Castle, where Eggman is the Dark assist character, but whether you choose to go with him or Amy, both of them will chew you out when you destroy Eggman's robots.
  • The "hunting" missions of every kind are terribly designed. You have no radar, and there are rarely "extra" enemies/stuff to find if you miss a few, and the only way to backtrack is to keep moving forward until you find another checkpoint. And all of these problems wouldn't be too bad, but the linear stage design just makes them unbearable, and it doesn't help that the monotone colors make it really hard to find things. Team Chaotix had something like this in Sonic Heroes (itself not well-liked either), only there you were only required to find half the things most of the time^note though many of their extra missions did require you to find all of the objects, rather than all of them.
  • Chaos Control is notorious for being poorly implemented. Despite being the Limit Break accessed by filling the Hero Karma Meter, it doesn't help you fulfill the Hero objectives. What it actually does is accelerate you towards the end of the stage, which is nearly always not the Hero objective, but the Neutral — sometimes it can even make a stage's Hero objective impossible by automatically triggering the wrong events, as it does in no less than the final level of the Hero route. This is especially bad since it's activation is mapped to the same button used to pick weapons up off the ground. If you press that button to grab a weapon and you're just a little bit off from it, it's entirely possible to send yourself flying to the Goal Ring instead, which could force you to retry a mission you were trying from the start.
• Shocking Moments: The game's introduction is loaded with it, but what should stand out as a shock to most is the question of whether Shadow has just finished beating the ever-living crap out of Sonic.
• So Bad, It's Good: The general opinion about the Darker and Edgier nature of the game. Many players have fun with the "mature" elements the game provides, such as the out-of-place swearing, the shotgun sounds in the menus, Shadow's angst and so on. This also extends to the generally poor dialogue (especially when involving certain characters like Vector) and confusing plot structure.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general opinion of the gameplay is that it's merely passable. Shadow controls fairly well and the guns help clear out rooms of enemies. However, the level design is considered to be mediocre at best (with only a few diamonds in the rough like Digital Circuit, Lethal Highway, and Sky Troops), the camera can be a frequent nuisance, and the mission system that mostly revolves around Fetch Quests gels rather badly with the speed-focused, goal-based stage design. The gameplay also suffers from several mechanics that are poorly utilized, such as the two Limit Breaks for Good and Evil which are both Awesome, but Impractical, staple Sonic abilities like the Homing Attack and Spin Dash being largely useless and somewhat glitchy at times, and enemies that attack you regardless of whether or not you're on their side.
• Special Effects Failure: The Shadow Androids are very clearly just a copy-paste job on Shadow's backup low-quality model (a common technique used by games to keep performance consistent during graphically intensive sequences). Among several other things, it completely kills the seriousness of the scene they appear in if you're aware what those low-poly models are actually used for.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • One of the major guitar riffs from Death Ruins sounds almost identical to the riff from the Danger Room level from X-Men Legends.
  • A lot of music is very similar to the background music heard in Stitch: Experiment 626. This is because both games took samples from the same royalty-free music library (specifically Electric Ghetto by Big Fish Audio).
• Tainted by the Preview: Sega's baffling choice to present the game's first trailer during the franchise's induction into the Walk of Game in 2005. Seeing gunshots blasting through footage of the franchise's history didn't help the overly edgy reputation the game ultimately became memetic for.
• That One Level:
  • Cosmic Fall is a major pain in the ass because of the numerous tricky jumps over rotating platforms, and you'll have to fight with the awkward camera throughout the entire level; good luck beating this level on hard mode! The main saving graces are that both of its missions are to get to the end of the level (one is just further away), and parts of the mission are very fast.
  • The Doom is easy to get lost in even with the use of the maps, which are as confusing as they are helpful, and the carrying of the Heal Units slows Shadow down by a lot. Its (slight) saving graces are that if you see a Heal Unit, you know a scientist is close-by, and how easy it is to use Chaos Blast over and over again thanks to the amount of destructible scenery. Gets even more frustrating in Expert Mode.
  • Even with The Doom slowing things down whichever way you play it, Lost Impact is the hardest, most tedious level in the game. It's slower due to the slow-moving GUN Lifts, with more Artificial Chaos to hunt — not to mention they are a powerful enemy. And on top of everything else, they are just about the only enemy that gives Hero points, so you won't even charge Chaos Control to speed your way in the Neutral mission.
  • Central City. Take the bland visuals of Westopolis, add the maze-like elements of The Doom and Lost Impact with the same issue of repetitive confusing visuals, no goal ring (so no Neutral mission to speed through), and an 8-minute time limit. However the Dark mission for it is pretty easy once you know the correct path to complete it.
  • Mad Matrix. The level itself isn't badly designed or anything of the sort, it's fun to go through the four towers for the Hero mission. The main problem though is the Dark mission, which is easily the worst Dark mission in the game. you have to detonate thirty bombs on the light-speed circuit on a web-like maze to complete the mission, this task is extremely tedious as it usually takes you about nine plus minutes to complete it due to how many bombs you need to blow up. Worst of all, you'll need to play this mission thirty times to get all the library sequences.
  • Black Comet. Visually bland, repetitive level design, ridiculous length, and lots of liquid that acts as bottomless pits. It gets worse, though — several sections require you to use the air saucers to maneuver across masses of liquid, only aliens and military soldiers alike are shooting the hell out of you, and if the saucer runs out of health, down you go.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Despite the previous game establishing them as Shadow's closest allies and friends, Shadow the Hedgehog does nothing with Team Dark members Rouge and Omega. Rouge is a secondary character in the story mode and doesn't get any relevant side event with Shadow despite the previous game establishing that she cares deeply for him. Omega got it worse, as he only appears in a single route of the game that has nothing to do with the Black Arms invasion, only focusing on his revenge against Eggman.
  • Sonic and his friends recognize the amnesiac Shadow from Sonic Heroes, and in this game (particularly the Hero route) there could've been an opportunity for them to ask Shadow about his memories and even offer to help regain them, but instead, they only ask Shadow to help them on certain missions. Likewise, Shadow himself doesn't bother asking the others about his past since they recognize him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The premise of Shadow deciding whether to be a hero or a villain could have been a great character study for one of the most morally complex characters in the franchise. Instead, the plot of the game is essentially Shadow going "Maybe this guy knows about my past... no maybe this other guy." There's no involvement of actual character morals whatsoever, and the Random Events Plot nature of whatever route you take heavily undermines any Character Development we might see from Shadow.
  • The branching route system could have been a good way of affording the player an opportunity to change the story as they went, with various characters reacting differently to Shadow's decisions to help different factions to uncover clues about his past. However, almost every character,^note The G.U.N. Commander being the only exception hero and villain alike, doesn't treat Shadow any differently regardless of the decisions he's made up to that point, instead requesting his help and acting like he can be trusted. What's more, enemies attack Shadow regardless of his current route, with only G.U.N.'s forces receiving any sort of explanation as to why they do so. Putting all of that aside, the existence of the Last Story undermines every non-Pure Hero playthrough by establishing that Shadow is a good guy just for the sake of the game fitting into future Sonic canon.
  • Shadow's implied Robotic Reveal towards the end of Heroes would have made things even more interesting... But it's only even really mentioned in the last two of the Neutral route levels, and thus the two endings where Shadow accepts this as fact are two of the absolute least canon, even when taking the game's story before the Omega Ending as Broad Strokes. Instead, we just have to accept that Shadow had an Unexplained Recovery after Adventure 2. The game does establish that Shadow was rescued by Eggman as he fell, so at least this plot thread isn't Left Hanging (and said reveal does explain why Shadow is found inside a stasis pod in one of Eggman's secret bases at the start of Heroes), but only if you wait 9 minutes into the final boss, as this is never brought up in any actual cutscenes.
  • The fact that there is no way to end up truly siding with Eggman. The game gives you the option of siding with the boring alien-out-of-nowhere, Black Doom, or with G.U.N., Sonic, and his friends. There are even individual levels where one of the mission choices is to side with Eggman. But there is no ending where Shadow actually declares his loyalty to Eggman; the ending of Lava Shelter where, by your own choice, you decide to follow Eggman turns out to be a big fat lie as Shadow suddenly turns around and proclaims that he's going to use the Chaos Emeralds to destroy him. When you consider that Eggman is Dr. Gerald Robotnik's grandson and Maria Robotnik's cousin, you'd think he'd be an obvious option for Shadow to go to for answers and Eggman giving them if Shadow helps him. Instead, the game has the Shadow Android subplot turn out to be based on a lie. It's a massive disappointment for those Rooting for the Eggman Empire.
  • While the very concept of the game had been roundly mocked by fans, some feel it might've actually had a shot at working if the game didn't take itself so seriously and decided to have fun with the idea's absurdity. Sadly, the idea was not used for Rule of Funny, and at best, most of the humor is of the unintentional variety.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: The path of least resistance and next to no real annoying mission objectives for first-time players will be the Neutral path, which summarily has the entire Alien Invasion being swept aside for the inexplicable Shadow Androids plot that goes nowhere and ends abruptly with no resolution, and killing Eggman to take over his Empire. It results in an entire story arc that could be removed with nothing changing, and easily the weakest conclusion of all the endings, to the point that both Neutral-Dark and Neutral-Hero are almost identical besides the inclusion of Omega in the latter. It also reeks of Noob Bridge, intentionally having a crummy story to not-so-subtly nudge the player into actually bothering with objectives to get the "better" stories.
• Ugly Cute: Some find Black Bull cute in an odd way.
• Uncertain Audience: The intent behind the game was to appeal to the crowd into games like Halo and Grand Theft Auto with the more demonic-looking Black Arms and morally ambiguous human antagonists while not alienating the main Sonic crowd by including more cheesy, lighthearted moments alongside the usual cartoonish-designed cast. In practice, fans into darker games felt the game was too hamstrung by its family-friendly roots while established Sonic fans felt the darkness went too far and/or came off as over-the-top in a juvenile way.
• Unexpected Character: While Maria's presence in the game is to be expected due to her importance to Shadow's character and backstory, the fact is that she's a gameplay partner in two levels isn't. This also makes her among the few human playable characters in the entire series, since most partners can be controlled with a second controller.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The G.U.N. Commander is supposed to be a tragic character with an understandable reason for pursuing Shadow in order to avenge Maria's death. In practice, he comes across as a Hypocrite whose grudge against the hedgehog ends up being a severely illogical case of Misplaced Retribution, since Shadow was completely innocent and G.U.N. themselves were the ones who killed Maria.
• Wangst: This is the game that inadvertently set Shadow's characterization among some of the fanbase as this. Ironically, it's also the one where he actually gets over it at the end.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Compared to other Sonic games, this contains alien blood, child murder, frequent profanity and gun violence. Many have wondered why the game got away with a tame E-10 rating.
• Woolseyism:
  • Omega's motivation is to have revenge against Eggman, and prove he is the strongest. He makes it clear in the Japanese version's boss fight against the Egg Dealer. The English version, however, rewrote the line to have him express the desire to take over the Eggman Empire and "reign supreme", expanding on his motivation. Needless to say, Omega and Shadow end up killing Eggman in the Neutral ending, with both taking over the empire.
  • In the Last Story, Black Doom's explanation for needing the Chaos Emeralds differs between the Japanese and English versions. In the original Japanese version, Black Doom explains that because the Black Comet is a cyclic comet it would never cross paths with the Earth's atmosphere. This can lead to confusion given the game also implies that the Black Comet is closer in structure to a biomechanical spaceship than an actual comet, assuming the player even knows what a "cyclic comet" is. Given this was already an exposition-heavy scene, the English dub simplifies the explanation to the Black Comet not being fast enough to penetrate Earth's atmosphere, thus necessitating the use of Chaos Control.

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