I played this again on my uncles Dreamcast recently, and I have...mixed feelings about it. Some parts still hold up, but its safe to say the game is really showing its age two decades later and really suffers from overreaching at times. Gameplay wise, Sonic and Tails' gameplay still holds up well despite a few rough edges. Knuckles is fine too if a little uncohesive compared to the rest of the game. The rest of the characters are pure filler. Amy is as fun as dragging a laggy mouse around, Gamma is a boring, monotonous shoot-a-thon (the character himself is cool though), and Big the Cat...seriously, who thought fishing in a platformer game was a good idea, especially when the controls for fishing are so bonkers? The CGI/graphics are a mixed bag. The pre-rendered FM Vs still look pretty good, and some of the in-game environments range from decent to pretty good looking. The character models are where the game kinda falls short (though the DX port notably improved on them), especially with the in-game cutscenes—you can tell Sonic Team was biting off more than they could chew with them, especially with the ridiculous lip sync and facial expressions. Some of the animation of Chaos is nice, though the bulk of the character animation is really awkward and stilted now. The story is the one thing I really don't like about this game. Its just this weird Rashoman style fantasy/sci-fi story that makes no sense at all, like they dropped you into the middle of a shonen anime series without establishing to you what the rules of the world really are (not helping is the drastic shift in tone and world from the just plain surrealistic Genesis games). And I just find the idea of them trying to tell a serious epic story with cartoony characters like Sonic to be really pretentious and stupid (though it wasnt till Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006 where they really, really went off the rails with this). The sluggish pacing, terrible voice acting and cheesy writing combined with the dated animation doesnt help either, and worst of all, the cutscenes are unskippable in the DC version (the DX port fixed this, thankfully). The soundtrack is pretty good though. A very eclectic selection of genres and plenty of really catchy toe tapping tunes. I felt thats one of the parts of the game that has really held up as a whole. All in all, this game can still be fun, but its not the showstopping title it once was anymore.
Still fun, but its really showing its age 20 years later..
I played this again on my uncles Dreamcast recently, and I have...mixed feelings about it. Some parts still hold up, but its safe to say the game is really showing its age two decades later and really suffers from overreaching at times. Gameplay wise, Sonic and Tails' gameplay still holds up well despite a few rough edges. Knuckles is fine too if a little uncohesive compared to the rest of the game. The rest of the characters are pure filler. Amy is as fun as dragging a laggy mouse around, Gamma is a boring, monotonous shoot-a-thon (the character himself is cool though), and Big the Cat...seriously, who thought fishing in a platformer game was a good idea, especially when the controls for fishing are so bonkers? The CGI/graphics are a mixed bag. The pre-rendered FM Vs still look pretty good, and some of the in-game environments range from decent to pretty good looking. The character models are where the game kinda falls short (though the DX port notably improved on them), especially with the in-game cutscenes—you can tell Sonic Team was biting off more than they could chew with them, especially with the ridiculous lip sync and facial expressions. Some of the animation of Chaos is nice, though the bulk of the character animation is really awkward and stilted now. The story is the one thing I really don't like about this game. Its just this weird Rashoman style fantasy/sci-fi story that makes no sense at all, like they dropped you into the middle of a shonen anime series without establishing to you what the rules of the world really are (not helping is the drastic shift in tone and world from the just plain surrealistic Genesis games). And I just find the idea of them trying to tell a serious epic story with cartoony characters like Sonic to be really pretentious and stupid (though it wasnt till Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006 where they really, really went off the rails with this). The sluggish pacing, terrible voice acting and cheesy writing combined with the dated animation doesnt help either, and worst of all, the cutscenes are unskippable in the DC version (the DX port fixed this, thankfully). The soundtrack is pretty good though. A very eclectic selection of genres and plenty of really catchy toe tapping tunes. I felt thats one of the parts of the game that has really held up as a whole. All in all, this game can still be fun, but its not the showstopping title it once was anymore.
Score: 6/10