I really wanted to like this game. It had a lot going for it. Most of the boss fights are challenging but fun. Plenty of secret characters to unlock. Controls are smooth.

But then there are the flaws. The special stages are absurd. The speed of the rings and bombs is too high and the control on Sonic is too loose. He slips and slides as ring blow past you. There are 3x the necessary rings for each part, but what good do they do you when they rocket by before you can move to grab them?

While the inclusion of extra characters is pretty cool, only having a single save slot really takes away from it. Other Sonic games like Sonic 3 or Sonic Mania have multiple slots so you can beat the game as each character and go back to play it again with all the emeralds. That's fun. You can't do that in this game. In order to unlock the characters, you will be forced to replace your game each time.

Really, really wanted to like this game.