YMMV / Sonic Dream Team

• Awesome Art: For a mobile game, the game sure has amazing, stylistic graphics with a lot of cartoony charm. The animation is particularly excellent, which is presented in an almost similar vein to Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.
• Epileptic Trees: Many fan theories tie this game to NiGHTS into Dreams… and Sonic Shuffle, two other Sega games set within dream worlds. While there is a passing reference to Sonic Shuffle (with the essence of dreams, Magination, likely being named after Maginaryworld), it otherwise is not concretely connected to them, leaving plenty room for theorycrafting.
• Just Here for Godzilla: A lot of fans, including those who grew up around the Sonic Advance and Sonic Rush era, are just here to finally be able to play a game that not only prominently features Cream as a playable entity again, but makes her participation integral to the plot.
• Memetic Mutation: Shadow's absence from the game despite being one of the most popular characters led to people to joke that he doesn't appear because he admitted in one of the Twitter Takeovers that he only uses Android^note One of Apples's biggest rivals products, which led to Apple banning him from appearing out of spite.
• Older Than They Think: This isn't the first time that Rouge joins Sonic and friends on a new adventure without the presence of Team Dark or Shadow the Hedgehog in general. Sonic X went a whole two seasons with the main Sonic cast consisting of Sonic, Cream, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, and Rouge (coincidentally all of whom make up the playable characters in this game) who were transported to Earth (Shadow doesn't appear in the show proper until the 33rd Episode of the anime)^note This is discounting Sonic Prime, where Rouge is a part of Sonic's friend group in the adaptation, but as an aloof ally, and Shadow is still present in the plot.
• Questionable Casting:
  • Players have noticed that Karen Strassman's performance as Rouge sounds much weirder and out-of-character than usual, having less of a sultry tone and sounding way too upbeat and peppy. This was previously brought up by fans in Team Sonic Racing but is even more pronounced in this game (even though Karen sounds completely fine in subsequent stuff), leading fans to wonder what the hell went on with the voice direction here.
  • While not to the same extent as Rouge, Michelle Ruff's Cream has also been criticized for sounding like she's talking to babies even though she's the youngest character in the cast. Her Voice Grunting is otherwise considered fine and even cute to listen to, but the dialogue is ruff. This could be justified that it's been over ten years since Cream had a physical appearance in a major title outside of spin-offs or mobile games.
• Self-Fanservice: Fan artists tend to draw Ariem with an ample bosom and curves that can fit her sweater/robe, despite the fact that she's only comprised of two floating hands and a head.
• Tainted by the Preview: The game being exclusive to Apple Arcade has greatly angered fans who would otherwise be excited about the game, with fans being quick to complain about the game's exclusivity immediately after the trailer dropped. Though a post by a Sega HARDlight ambassador◊ did confirm that console/PC versions aren't entirely ruled out, many fans are still worried it would remain an exclusive to Apple's platform.
• That One Achievement: Certain Tails' Award achievements require the player to earn a total of amount of reward points/XP to unlock them. Two of them aren't bad, "A New Challenger" requires beating just one of Tails' Challenge while "Tails' Bronze Award" requires reaching 750 points. The real challenge comes from the Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Ultimate achievements, requiring a total amount of 3000, 5000, 7500, and 10,000 points. Tails' Challenge only awards a certain amount of XP points even after clearing all six of the challenges and getting the bonus XP, and even after they are cleared, won't refresh until a week later, requiring players to play every week to slowly build to the total amount of XP even if they've already gotten everything else done.
• That One Sidequest: After the 1.2.0 update, Dr. Crabulous' third mission becomes this, due to the conflation of only having one ring on the player and the Timed Mission. The update also buffs up the amount of health Dr. Crabulous has, requiring six hits instead of three. Combine that with the boss fight having a time limit of one minute, and you have a surprisingly frustrating boss mission. The best ways to get past these frustrations is by adjusting the accessibility features, setting the game speed to 50% in order to get the character in a position to easily homing attack its weak points, along with setting the character to invincible so the player doesn't waste time hanging on to a singular ring.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: While the art style and the feel of the locales don't look too out of place akin to Sonic Lost World, the game goes beyond with its surreal and trippy nature, as it takes place in dreamscapes. And it's all reflected with some of the boss design (e.g. Eggman turning into a giant known as "Nightmare Eggman" that can sprout multiple arms and stretching them around).
• Unexpected Character:
  • Cream the Rabbit (who is making her first playable appearance in a Sonic platformer since 2015's Sonic Runners) was a pleasant surprise for fans. Especially since she hasn't been playable in a 3D Sonic platformer since Sonic Heroes back in 2003.
  • To a lesser extent, Rouge the Bat. While she's made many more appearances in mainline games and spin-offs, Rouge hasn't been playable in a 3D Sonic platformer since Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Rouge appearing without Shadow and as a part of Sonic's friend group may also be a bit of surprise to some as the only other instance of the latter ever happening is in Sonic Prime.

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