Let's just preface this by saying this series has a rather notorious reputation for taking ideas that were once considered acceptable and even ambitious for their time, before they were considered noticeable flaws as they were implemented worse.
Games
General
- Sega's very loose policy on the canonicity of side materials (most notably the cartoons and comics) created a Broken Base as early as 1992 — one year after the series debuted — as Sonic fans started siding with one particular interpretation while viciously attacking the other ones, not unlike the series' current Broken Base (only more so with gameplay than story, though the latter isn't rare either). During The '90s, however, Sonic fans had a common enemy in Nintendo and Mario, so the cracks didn't become visible to most until 2001 with Sonic Adventure 2. At that point, Sega exerted greater enforcement over canonicity, rendering all other storylines non-canon, followed shortly by its financial collapse and subsequent alliance with Nintendo. With the barriers torn down and no uniting force, the bickering became the Sonic fandom's most infamous trait.
- This episode
of {Errant Signal} argues that the early marketing of the Sonic games, which focused on how fast Sonic can go, eventually led to problems in the 3D games as Sega started to buy into their own marketing hype. Maintaining control of Sonic's momentum is the main facet of the gameplay in the older 2D games, not simply speed for its own sake, something that was forgotten in the post-Adventure Sonic games. This led to problems when the series made its Video Game 3D Leap, leading to games where poor controls designed more for high speed than precision lead to exercises in controller-throwing frustration. Only starting with Sonic Unleashed and especially with Sonic Generations did Sega finally figure out how to do Sonic in 3D, mainly by rediscovering the focus on controlling Sonic's speed rather than simply going as fast as possible (and there are some who say that they still haven't completely figured that out, either). - Sonic the Hedgehog is perhaps one of the few franchises that can claim to have suffered from Franchise Original Sin in almost every game in the series, as aspects of every game have been criticized in later installments. Even attempts to address critic and fan complaints that were initially well-received have been complained about later on, frequently due to perceived overcorrection.
- In the era from Adventure to Sonic '06, a lot of focus was placed on the series' ensemble cast. Many felt that this got out of hand, with the cast becoming too bloated, the different playstyles not being well executed, the existing characters not being given room to breathe, and overall not having enough Sonic in Sonic games (to the point that he spends most of his own 15th-anniversary game Out of Focus, with his most plot-relevant action being getting killed by Mephiles so that Princess Elise can cry and release Iblis). Starting with Unleashed, Sonic Team drastically cast back the roles of the supporting cast, with everyone except Tails making cameo appearances at best. By the time of Sonic's 25th anniversary, the other characters had been neglected for so long that many fans had become desperate to be able to play as them again, or at least wish for them to be given a more significant role in the plot. The final boss fight of Generations receives a lot of scorn in particular, as the returning characters do nothing except cheer both Sonics on.
- Related to the above; the abundance of characters as well. Almost every game introduced a new major recurring character, starting with Tails (Sonic the Hedgehog 2), Amy and Metal Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog CD), and Knuckles (Sonic the Hedgehog 3). Initially, these characters were rather popular and considered fresh additions (and because of the Grandfather Clause, you'll find very few who hate these four in particular) that added to Sonic's world. But these characters became increasingly numerous, to the degree they began to overshadow Sonic himself, and were often tied to questionable gameplay styles. Public opinion started to turn against them, and fans demanded for the cast to be cut down, which led to the aforementioned era of having Sonic as the only playable character.note However, the core problem most fans pinned on the large cast — the awkwardly implemented Gameplay Roulette — didn't actually go away; it's just that now Sonic was the only playable character, so he himself was contorted or mutated to fit the needs of the gameplay rather than a new character being added to fill that niche. The most notorious examples of this are the Werehog and Classic Sonic in Sonic Forces. The only games to actually avoid the trap of too many playable characters and/or the Gameplay Roulette problem are Sonic Mania, Sonic Superstars, and, strangely enough, Sonic and the Black Knight - the latter's surprisingly classic-style implementation is largely overshadowed by its main issues, but the example Mania that set is often cited as what Sonic Team should've been doing all along in this regard. One could argue that the focus on the number of characters in itself was fans and the developers missing the forest for the trees in that the problem was quality, not quantity - a dozen playable characters who are optional that stick to a singular core gameplay structure but still have their own interesting traits and abilities is more likely to be more palatable and provide replay value rather than a dozen mandatory characters who have completely different gameplay (most of questionable quality)note , which is why the approach taken by Black Knight, Mania and Superstars is considered to be the best one. Tails, Knuckles and Amy being playable in the DLC of Sonic Frontiers, while still rough around the edges, is also regarded as a huge improvement over previous attempts at handling multiple playable characters in mainline 3D Sonic games.
- After struggling to fix the problems that came with the series's Video Game 3D Leap for so long, Unleashed featured a mixture of 2D and 3D gameplay, with the 2D sections being fairly brief and integrating seamlessly with the 3D sections; this was well-received as it was the first time 2D Sonic gameplay had been featured on a console since Sonic 3&K. Colors features an abundance of 2D gameplay, which some have criticized when looking back at the game. Generations splits the gameplay between 2D stages with Classic Sonic and 3D stages with Modern Sonic, but Modern Sonic's stages still feature a fair amount of 2D sections, which h tend to last longer than the sections in Unleashed. Lost World features another 2D/3D mix, along with a lot of divisive new gameplay elements. By the time Sonic Forces was announced, many fans had begun to feel that the 2D sections had become a crutch to compensate for either not knowing how to implement quality 3D gameplay or for pandering to Classic fans, especially with Sonic Mania releasing in the same year. Classic Sonic's return, along with Modern Sonic once again having 2D sections in his levels, is one of the most common criticisms for Forces.
- Classic Sonic's original introduction in Generations is a move that was universally praised. Because of that game's massive success, Sega began to market Classic Sonic heavily in the following years, giving him multiple appearances in other games, his own comic book, his own anniversary title in Sonic Mania, and his own web animation miniseries. While the fanbase loved his inclusion in Generations and products featuring him tend to sell well, many fans increasingly criticized Sega's apparent decision to treat him as his own separate character, instead of a younger version of Sonic. The choice to make him a Heroic Mime also makes it difficult for him to distinguish himself from his modern counterpart. When the first trailer for Sonic Forces was released, the reaction to Classic Sonic's appearance was much more ambivalent than it was for Generations, with many fans questioning why he needed to be there (which gave the game the derisive nickname of Sonic Generations 2, not helped by the fact that Sonic Team promised that it wouldn't be a sequel to Sonic Generations gameplay wise). Whereas Classic Sonic was considered a great idea when he only appeared in Generations, these days he tends to be held up as a symbol of Sega relying too much on nostalgia-pandering and making the franchise seem stuck in the past, instead of being willing to truly push the gameplay forward.
- Starting from Sonic Adventure, the games would go on to have increasingly dramatic and over-the-top storylines. Initially, this was pretty well received, or at least wasn't considered a problem. However, by the time Shadow the Hedgehog rolled around, consensus was that the series became too melodramatic for its own good, and the questionable execution of said melodrama led the reputation of the series to tank, reaching its nadir with Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Sega seemed to have got the message, and subsequent games became much Denser and Wackier as a result, which ironically created another sin in the form of people starting to feel the series veered too far in the other direction and became too juvenile and lighthearted with games like Sonic Colors and Sonic Lost World. Games like Sonic Forces and Sonic Frontiers would then skew more serious again, and while the writing of these games is still considered somewhat hit-and-miss, the overall consensus is that it works better with the series' tone than something like Shadow.
- Even the original game foreshadows Sega's many questionable design choices to come. The game was sold on its speed, yet at least half of its stages require slower, more methodical platforming, which not only goes against players' instincts, but the momentum physics actually work against the player in such levels. What makes it less discussed for this is mostly that Green Hill Zone, the first stage, works very well as an opening salvo, due to it largely lacking annoying obstacles or stop-and-start level design, meaning that players still got a great first impression. While not as blatant as the Unexpected Gameplay Change Sega included with non-Sonic characters, or the initial previews of Sonic the Hedgehog 4, or spinoffs such as Sonic Labyrinth (which was deliberately designed as a slow Sonic game), the seeds were already planted for Sega deviating from the speed Sonic is most known for. Some fans have even pointed out that the alternate character gameplay in Sonic Adventure simply makes it more obvious by segregating the non-speed portions of the classic games into their own campaigns, e.g. Knuckles representing Sonic 3 style ring hunting except with emerald shards, Amy representing block puzzles like Marble Zone.
- One of the most panned aspects of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is Sonic's romance with Princess Elise, a human woman. However, Sonic's questionable choices in human romance trace all the way back to before the first game was even released, when Sega of Japan tried to pitch his character design with a human girlfriend named Madonna, who didn't make it into the game at all. However, even that may count as an example since concept art shows it as being inspired by Roger and Jessica Rabbit's relationship, which openly embraces the absurdity of a Funny Animal-human relationship for comedy, compared to how Sonic and Elise's relationship is treated rather seriously and thus felt jarring as a result.
- Eggman always had a penchant for Hoist by His Own Petard and Did Not Think This Through in his original trilogy boss fights, such as the Egg Conveyer's own control panel being unable to handle its friction, and the Egg Inferno and Final Weapon's first phases being only damageable by their own bombs. In later media this would lead to accusations of Villain Decay, but it was accepted here as these fights made for enjoyable Puzzle Bosses and didn't undermine Eggman's moments of competence in the rest of their stories.
Sonic the Hedgehog
- A common criticism in Sonic games starting with Adventure is the use of automated and scripted events over gameplay. However, as some have noted, the use of automated scripted segments goes all the way back to the very beginning (aka, this game), as some zones, such as Green Hill, Labyrinth and Star Light, featured sections in which Sonic goes on a scripted path with little-to-no player input. The difference though was that such segments were usually incredibly brief and non-intrusive, usually only lasting a few seconds at most before giving control back to the player. Later entries, particularly the 3D entries, would have much more elaborate and longer scripted sequences, often taking up larger chunks of the zone and taking control away from the player for much longer, leading to the growth of the aforementioned criticisms.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- Sonic 2 would start the trend of every major title introducing at least one new character, in this case Tails. This initially wasn't a problem since Tails lacked the common writing problems and Gameplay Roulette that plagued future characters, but with each game that passed by with a new residential Base-Breaking Character or Scrappy, the novelty wore off, and by the mid-2000s any case of adding a new character in the latest Sonic title could make fans lose it.
Another reason why this wasn't a problem during the early years was that the cast was fairly smallnote , so not only did the new characters bring something new to the table, be it story- or gameplay-wise, they didn't overshadow pre-existing characters. Meanwhile, in later years, the series' cast had grown considerably, so new characters were often considered redundant and often came at the expense of an existing character being Demoted to Extra or Put on a Bus. - The almighty speed booster was introduced here in Chemical Plant Zone. Not a problem here, but it caught Dimps' eye, leading to a common criticism of the Sonic Rush series and especially Sonic the Hedgehog 4 being the sheer overabundance of them throughout the game.
- One of the most common complaints about the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was its glitchiness. While nowhere near to the same extent and still being a fairly solid game otherwise, Sonic 2 is also a fairly glitchy game as a result of being Christmas Rushed, even having some Game-Breaking Bugs. For instance, jumping at the end of a level while having all Chaos Emeralds and 50 or more rings softlocks the game, forcing the player to reset and lose all progress, while landing on certain objects such as the Rexon enemy the wrong way can crash the game altogether.
- Related to the above, a complaint aimed at Sonic Superstars is how easy it is to get "pinched" (getting just on the edge of a moving block as it's going up next to a wall, thus causing the game to register the wall and upward movement as the character being crushed, instead of just being pushed back onto the platform) compared to the classic games. The truth is, starting with Sonic 2, this would be a common glitch/problem in every classic Sonic game since, including the beloved Sonic Mania. The only real difference is the 3D models just makes it easier to notice when it happens.
- A major complaint about Sonic Superstars is how insanely difficult the final bosses of each campaign are. However, a lot of the things people complain about the final boss of the campaigns can be traced back to the final boss of Sonic 2. There are two phases to the fight, both with overly precise hitboxes that make stacking hits difficult. (Mecha Sonic can only be hit on the front part of its head as its spines will damage Sonic, and the Death Egg Robot has two spiked hands that give you only the briefest of windows to damage it lest you hit the spikes instead.) On top of all that, you have to do it without rings, making Sonic a One-Hit-Point Wonder. And if you die, you have to start it all from the beginning again. The main real difference is that nether boss actively restricts your movement outside of simply having large hitboxes, so it ultimately comes down to your own to avoid taking damage. The final bosses of Superstars, meanwhile, have attacks that can actively mess with the level geometry; Trip's final boss even has an attack that completely immobilizes you that unless you're good at Smashing Survival, which spells doom if you get trapped by it. Additionally, the final boss of Sonic 2 doesn't spend a lot of time in the background or staying out of your line of attack, so if you know what you're doing, you can take it down fairly quickly. Meanwhile, bosses in Superstars often have long attack and damage animations that makes their fights fairly long, which makes getting a Game Over to them all the more punishing.
Sonic CD
- The story of Sonic Forces is about Eggman winning, and conquering the world with his powerful lieutenant Infinite, who by all accounts is loyal to the doctor. Not only that, Infinite as a Final Boss fight is supposedly wasted in favor of having Eggman as the final boss. This already happened way back in Sonic CD, where Metal Sonic conquers Little Planet for Eggman, and is the boss of Starlight Speedway — the second-to-last zone. CD however came during a time Sonic games barely had a formula, while Forces suffers from the previous three main games having Eggman as the surprise final boss... in fact, the same boss.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
- This article says that as good as Sonic 3 & Knuckles is, it's also "where the weaknesses that would sink the lesser Sonic games began to manifest", namely more story, more characters, and a more muted visual style (the "realistic" palette of Sonic 3 is merely Art Evolution, but things started to backfire with Shadow the Hedgehog mostly resembling a Real Is Brown action game and Sonic '06 pushing realism so hard it just looked bland instead, to the point a reversion ensued with the cartoony Unleashed and the flashy Colors).
- The increased focus on story seen in more divisive entries is also on display in this game, with several automated sequences that, in practice, amount to unskippable cutscenes. (See: the start of Angel Island Act 2's boss fight, the start of Sky Sanctuary) It largely gets away with it due to still skewing very heavily towards gameplay on the Gameplay To Story Ratio.
- One of the most common complaints about the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is that it was too glitchy even for its time. This can be seen with this game, which had to acknowledge and pass off the enormous number of glitches for its first half as "diabolical traps". Both games also ended up like this due to Sega rushing development in order to release it by a certain date. The difference is that Sonic 3 & Knuckles had the lock-on gimmick to fix many of its more intense glitches and offered many good qualities even with its previous Obvious Beta state. Sonic 2006 never got a fixed version or patch, in spite of the fact that fan creations like Project 06 show that the vast majority of the issues people have with the game could be fixed simply by fixing a few of the more game-breaking glitches.
- Sonic Heroes would attract ire for reserving the Chaos Emeralds' Golden Super Mode for Sonic, but Knuckles and Tails have always received the inferior Power Makeover—even in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, only Sonic ever got the full Power Up Full Color Change and Expository Hairstyle Change; Knuckles and Tails only got Power Glows. The big difference between the two cases is that in S3&K, each character could earn and use a Super Mode in his own right during their individual adventures, while in Heroes, the Power-Up is restricted to one battle with the Rail Shooter Final Boss, and the preceding cutscene clearly shows only Sonic gets an actual Super Mode; Tails and Knuckles only get golden Deflector Shields a moment or two later, as though Sonic were merely lending them power. This undercuts what is supposed to be the triumphant entrance of supposed friends and equals into battle against the True Final Boss by making it clear that Tails and Knuckles have been demoted to Sonic's backup dancers.
- The combined Sonic 3 & Knuckles foreshadows much of the franchise's problems with "alternate gameplay" by virtue of introducing characters with powerful aerial abilities such as flight and gliding. The "alternate gameplay" of the 3D Sonic games is often criticized for feeling out of place with the high-speed intention behind Sonic, forcing players who don't enjoy them to contend with much slower-paced gameplay in order to get to the high-speed gameplay they like. However, the level design of 3 & Knuckles is often noted to be much slower paced and winding compared to the more fluid design of its predecessor Sonic 2. This is because Sonic 2 was designed solely with Sonic's speed and jumping in mind, as Tails' signature helicopter flight in that game wasn't controlled by the player and merely served as a means of getting a P2-controlled Tails back on screen. Sonic 3 & Knuckles, on the other hand, is designed with supporting Tails' flight, Knuckles' gliding and climbing, and Sonic's lack of such vertical and aerial abilities all at the same time, forcing the level design to implement more slow-paced sections just to keep all three characters "balanced". The alternate gameplay of Sonic Adventure and beyond was merely a method to keep Tails and Knuckles' signature aerial abilities completely intact as opposed to shoehorning them onto Sonic's stages and allowing them to completely break the game, and the lack of other playable characters in later 3D Sonic games can even be seen as a pragmatic response to the "alternate gameplay" becoming so divisive itself, as it would give the developers a three-way Morton's Fork between shoehorning characters onto stages that aren't designed for Sonic's lack of flight or gliding, retiring or nerfing those aerial abilities from the characters in question and angering fans who like them, or bringing back "alternate gameplay" wholesale and angering fans who dislike that.
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Adventure was well received as the first proper 3D Sonic game, but introduced several themes and mechanics that future games would be criticized for overusing:- Sonic using the Chaos Emeralds as an 11th-Hour Superpower instead of an optional unlockable. The climactic nature of the fight managed to undo a lot of potential animosity, but once it became the standard for every game, it was harder to justify. Heroes in particular snapped the fanbase's patience with the idea, as there isn't even a good story reason for why Super Sonic has to be a final-boss-only affair; you still collect the Emeralds in bonus stages like the old games, unlike in Adventure and its sequel, where virtually every instance when an Emerald is found or changes hands is relevant to the plot.
- Eggman being upstaged by a Monster of the Week that goes out of his control. The idea was a cool change of pace, but when it became Eggman's role in nearly every game to be a Disc-One Final Boss for some new baddie, it got old quickly and put Eggman through some major Villain Decay, needing later games to restore some of his old threat.
- Additionally, the cases of Eggman getting upstaged in Adventure and its sequel still gave the doctor enough relative nuance and context to prevent decay, or at least keep it from going too far. While Perfect Chaos does betray him at the end of Adventure by destroying Station Square, this was all part of Eggman's plan from the beginning... but only on his terms. In Adventure 2, despite being subtly manipulated by Shadow and Gerald over the game, he still shows off some agency in shaping other events himself (e.g. the Prison Island heist, tricking Tails into telling him which Chaos Emerald is the real one) and puts his own effort into defeating the ultimate threat. Heroes, however, has him spend most of the game locked in a room by Metal Sonic while robotic decoys are deployed in his place as enemies, with several of the following games having him be treated as effectively an afterthought to the greater narrative even when he's still being built up as a major villain.
- The presence of alternate gameplay styles, ironically, is worse in some Adventure routes than in its followers, with Big the Cat's infamous fishing action stages being especially disliked. But Adventure also segregates these alternate gameplay styles into their own story paths; while you need to play every story for the True Final Boss, there's never a worry when you're playing Sonic's story that you'll be playing as anyone except Sonic (the sole exception being the flight minigames where the player is technically controlling Tails, but the Sky Chase special stages are fast-paced and fun enough that few can complain). Later games have different gameplay styles on a level-by-level basis, or even interrupting a character's level to have you start playing another. There's also the fact that Adventure's takes on Tails and Knuckles are generally well-liked and not too dissimilar from Sonic, while their appearances in later games tend to be much more divergent, inconsistent, and clumsily executed.
- A very frequent complaint about side characters being Out of Focus with too much focus going to Sonic in games like Sonic Forces started with this game, and then carried on to later games along with the anime adaptation Sonic X, due to it receiving criticism that the side characters got more focus and development than Sonic and made him look like a Vanilla Protagonist who is Out of Focus in his own games. As part of Sega's attempts to address that complaint, they ended pushing the side characters to the sidelines in later games without giving them much characterization, and then making them suffer from Badass Decay so Sonic is always the one to save the day. While it's understandable that people would want the title character of the game to be the most important, this has the side effect of giving his supporting cast less of a chance to shine.
- The game started a trend in the series where it began shedding its surreal, cartoon-like tone in favor of a serious, sometimes whimsical shōnen style of plot and writing. While this game's story is rather serious, it wasn't too dark compared to the previous games (most of its darker elements are relegated to Fridge Horror and Inferred Holocaust), and its tone and Character Development made it far more ambitious than the Sonic games before it, so it was well-received. As the series went on, not only did the game's story taking itself seriously became less novel after it influenced future games to pursue a similar direction throughout the mid-2000s (with some escalating to similar or even grander stakes than Adventure), but later games tended to lack the Character Development and lore-building to the original series that made this story work, and the dark aspects were ramped up to the extent that the series was seen as becoming an over-the-top parody of itself, reaching its apex with Shadow's spinoff game and the highly controversial 2006 game.
- Related to the issues of juggling Character Focus among the franchise's roster, while this game didn't quite start the trend of introducing characters with nothing to do outside of the plot of their original game (which really began with Knuckles), this game started showing the limitations of that approach with Gamma dying and Tikal and Chaos just disappearing. At the time, it wasn't a really big deal, since, again, there was nothing left for these characters to do after their stories ended. But over time, the franchise has accumulated Big (and Froggy), Shadow, Emerl, Chaos Gamma, Blaze, Silver, Princess Elise III, Shahra, Merlina, Chip, and others who are all nowadays just floating around in the margins. While the especially popular Knuckles and Shadow have stuck around in the main cast, this has mostly been accomplished by ignoring their backstories.
- While Knuckles being a Dumb Muscle with a Hair-Trigger Temper had been part of his official personality since Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this was the first game to really show it, leading to his inevitable Flanderization during the Turn of the Millennium, a situation Knuckles would wallow in for years, to the chagrin of many of his fans. It was more tolerable in this game due to having not been a trend yet and being offset by Knuckles substantially contributing to the fights against Chaos.
- One of the most polarizing elements of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is the character of Princess Elise, who many people remark as looking incredibly out-of-place next to Sonic and pals, but realistic human characters had been around since Adventure without too much complaining. Elise is just the first one to be a major character who regularly interacts with the cartoon animals, which throws the contrast in far sharper relief (and the romantic subtext just makes it even more questionable). And while Adventure does have realistic humans, the technology demanded they be stylized to a certain degree, and Sonic X does much the same outside of the games with an anime art style that makes the animal characters and human characters fit together better (though it helps that it's a fish-out-of-water story to begin with, with Sonic and friends being contextually out of place as a plot point). Seventh-gen hardware allowed for a lot more photorealism (which was the game's goal to begin with), which, again, put a spotlight on how poorly the human cast fit in with the cartoon animals. Not helping matters is that, outside the pre-rendered cutscenes, the human characters (with the possible exception of Eggman) fall squarely into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley. Sonic Unleashed addresses this sin, however, by giving the humans more cartoonish proportions to better fit in with the funny animals.
Sonic Adventure 2
- At the very end of the Hero Mode story, Sonic is able to use Chaos Control, after seeing Shadow using it earlier in the game, to save himself from Eggman's burning space pod. Fans agreed that this was a blatant Deus ex Machina at best and Ass Pull at worst, but accepted it anyway because the alternative would have been killing off the titular character of the franchise. Fast-forward to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), and the brand-new character Silver the Hedgehog is able to use Chaos Control perfectly after seeing someone else do it, just like Sonic did — but with the crucial difference that this is not relegated to a single moment in the ending, but done frequently throughout his story campaign with even less justification than in Sonic Adventure 2.
- While the first Sonic Adventure planted the seeds for the series shedding its surreal, cartoon-like tone in favor of a serious, sometimes whimsical Shonen Anime style of plot and writing, Sonic Adventure 2, more than any other game in the series, is truly responsible for crystallizing it. The game's story is far darker than those of previous Sonic games, but it also features attempts at a stronger narrative and actual Character Development that allowed fans to look past that. Later attempts to apply a serious story to the series tend to lack satisfactory narratives and Character Development, and without any of the qualities that made the stories of the Adventure games work, all that's left are the (now even more ramped up) Darker and Edgier aspects that make the series seem like an over-the-top parody of itself, especially with Shadow and 06.
- In the Last Story, Eggman's position as the main antagonist is usurped by Shadow, due to a twist that reveals Shadow had been manipulating him for his own ends all along. While this wasn't a new idea even at the time, it was accepted because Eggman is still at quite possibly his most threatening yet (at least in the game continuity), plays a very active role in the plot to the point of being a playable character, is crucial in saving the day, and never gets defeated or otherwise humiliated by Shadow. Later games, however, have Eggman displaced by other villains in ways that seriously hurt his credibility as a villain, and the repeated use of this plot device grew stale before long.
- The stage Green Hill Zone has become infamous over the years for being constantly reused as a Nostalgia Level. This game features Green Hill Zone as a Nostalgia Level, but it's an optional bonus stage as your reward for collecting all of the Emblems, and the stage hadn't otherwise reappeared in a mainline Sonic title since the first game. When later games reuse Green Hill Zone, they have it as the mandatory first level as opposed to kicking off the journey with an original stage, and it reappears so frequently (it's featured in both of 2017's Sonic titles, Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces) that fans began to view the reuse of Green Hill Zone with contempt.
- The existence of the Last Story at all. While the first game planted the seed with Super Sonic's (brief) story, this game codified it, and it tends to get the blame for games like Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog taking this trend up to eleven in some questionable ways that can really only be chalked up to Padding:
- Sonic Heroes: Instead of six distinct characters or two distinct storylines, you have the same set of levels copy/pasted with minor difficulty and cutscene adjustments. This also in all four teams somehow being able to destroy the same boss at around the same time (do they have to wait in line?). It feels like pointless busywork to unlock a final boss that easily could have been put at the end of a single, cohesive storyline covering all the necessary plot points.
- Shadow the Hedgehog: Ten different endings, all of which require a different path through the levels to reach. Some are simple and straightforward, while others require huge collect-a-thons with no radar or hints. This would have worked fine with a level select feature — just load up the stage and pick a different ending. But instead, you have to do ten full playthroughs, all to reach a (canon) Last Story that nullifies them all.
- Both Adventure 2 and Shadow were advertised with the prospect of giving the player the choice to be good or evil, only to contain a Golden Ending which nullifies this choice. Adventure 2 is given a pass for the strength of its writing, which allows the two prior stories to occur simultaneously and still lead to the Last Story. In comparison, the paths in Shadow diverge so widely that no path can lead to the final outcome, making everything beforehand feel like padding. The gameplay and marketing also lean far heavier into the idea of the player having a choice than Adventure 2 ever did, so to have the true ending of the game throw all that out just felt like a cheat.
- This is the first game where the final boss, the Biolizard, has no real personality and is just a generic monsternote . Story-wise, though, most fans accept this because the Biolizard is more of an extension of the Greater-Scope Villain Dr. Gerald Robotnik's last will. Later games tend to reuse the Generic Doomsday Villain tropes without an interesting character behind the monster.note
- While Adventure 2 is not the first game to employ a Hidden Agenda Villain—Sonic Adventure has one in Chaos, whose story is explained in Flashbacks—it is the first to restrict the exploration of these motives to a specific storyline. This was not an immediate problem for Adventure 2 due to there being mostly just Two Lines of about equal importance to the Secret Final Campaignnote . Following the success of Adventure 2, however, following games produced increasingly complex storylines with an increasing amount of intrigue and Story Branch Favoritism determined by how much information they revealed about the true villain.
This reached a head in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where Sonic's storyline features him focusing on protecting Princess Elise from Eggman—Shadow's story would then proceed to reveal that all three of them are pawns in a game being played by Mephiles the Dark, which makes Sonic (the star and central character of the franchise) the least important hero in the gamenote .
Sonic Heroes
- Sonic Heroes is the first game to have non-boss enemies that are not One-Hit-Point Wonders, but instead have varying amounts of HP to deplete, as well as having "combat arena" segments where it's mandatory to defeat enemies to advance further in a stage. However, the idea of having enemies that can take a beating isn't problematic here because it has mechanics to take the edge off — a level-up system to make the characters stronger (and thus capable of dealing more damage) and the three-man team system giving each team a "Power" character whose main job is to be the heavy hitter and plow through the big enemies and combat arenas. The next game, Shadow the Hedgehog, keeps the beefy enemies and ditches the team system, but compensates in its own way through its weaponry system, and the later stages with the beefiest enemies also tend to have the strongest weapons that can easily shred their health meters. While the weapons do have limited ammunition, there is practically always more than enough to kill everything in the stage with as long as you hold your fire while there are no enemies in sight. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is where the beefy enemies and combat arenas become problematic, as all three core characters (and the six Amigo characters) have much worse DPS than in Heroes and Shadow. Sonic is restricted to laggy Homing Attacks, Bounce Bracelet bounding, and grounded spin-kicks, making his DPS flat-out mediocre, and he has absolutely no way to improve it. Shadow and Silver fare better in the DPS department, being able to attack at a faster pace than Sonic to deplete big enemies' health bars a little more quickly; Shadow's fighting style is literally a better version of Sonic's, with a mid-air combo system allowing him to lock on to an enemy and pummel them several times in quick succession, while Silver relies on using his psychokinesis to pick up nearby objects and fling them at enemies, which he can do at a fairly rapid pace as long as he has enough objects to throw and enough energy to pick them up. Shadow and Silver also have ways to improve their DPS even further — Chaos Boost and vehicle-mounted weapons for Shadow, and stronger objects such as explosive crates and spike balls for Silver — but lack consistent access to their improved DPS. The end result is what was once a minor flow-killer now making level progression a nigh-unbearable slog. Thankfully, Sega listened to the fans' dissatisfaction and largely dropped both beefy enemies and combat arenas; both make a single major encore appearance in the nighttime stages of Sonic Unleashed, where it actually makes sense for them to be present due to the slower-paced Beat 'em Up gameplay style, and the daytime stages of Unleashed and all stages of subsequent gamesnote went back to having all non-boss enemies be destroyed with just one attack. (Beefy enemies and combat arenas are also present in Sonic Frontiers, but once again, it makes sense to have them due to the Wide-Open Sandbox gameplay style, and Sonic has been given access to a wide variety of powerful and/or rapid-fire attack options to deal with the tankier enemies.)
- A complaint about the Sonic Rivals series is that the characters constantly pick fights with each other despite having the same goal. This happens in this game as well. Aside from the Team Sonic vs. Team Rose battle (which is due to Amy's Flanderization), however, the battles are a bit more justified by Team Sonic and Team Dark still having an antagonistic relationship while Team Chaotix are strangers to Team Dark and Team Rose.
- While the game's focus on combat is criticized for a variety of Scrappy Mechanics (too frequent, too plodding on account of enemy lifebars and/or the level system, slippery controls), most players can deal with the constant breaks in the platforming action to some degree, as the game is designed around utilizing the respective strengths of each team member and most stages are still generally fast-paced enough (despite their length) to prevent the issue from becoming too grating. When later games (Unleashed and especially Rise of Lyric note ) featured an even greater imbalance of combat sections that proved even more monotonous and frustrating, fan reception was not nearly as kind.
Sonic Rush
- This game introduces the boost mechanic, which would later become a staple of the 3D games starting with Sonic Unleashed. The mechanic here did have its detractors at the time due to it allowing the player to gain maximum speed with a press of a button (whereas previous 2D Sonic games generally focus more on building momentum through skillful play), it was still regarded as a fun and novel mechanic, especially since the 2D format still allows for varied level design without making the player feel like they're locked into one specific path. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Unleashed. While it was still a breath of fresh air and an improvement over its disastrous predecessor, the boost came under particular scrutiny due to the significantly more linear level design and Sonic's movement mechanics making the game at times feel like it's on rails (and not just when Sonic is literally on rails, either), which makes the boost feel to many like an even more mindless mechanic with little actual depth for most players outside of speedrunning. Sonic Colors having significantly less 3D gameplay that is largely very linear did not help things any. Sonic Generations did improve on making Modern Sonic's gameplay feel less linear, but at that point some players felt the "boost formula" had worn out its novelty and was basically a one-trick-pony that struggled to provide actual gameplay variety, with the boost mechanic itself contributingto this problem. The mechanic is still around as of Sonic Frontiers, but it's telling that it's been nerfed so that it's unable to damage enemies; in the same game, most players use the Spin Dash instead once they unlock it.
Sonic Unleashed
In the process of removing many previous sins to undo the damage of 06, Unleashed unfortunately introduced a few new ones:- Boost gameplay. The most notorious flaw of 3D Sonic games up to 06 was the many aggravating collision and camera glitches. From Unleashed onwards, control and level structure is simplified to reduce the number of things that can go wrong and portray Sonic’s sense of speed better. However, the overt emphasis on forward movement and setpieces removes much of the player expression that the Adventure games are remembered fondly for. While YMMV on how straightforward Unleashed is to play, subsequent boost games, especially Forces, would remove most of its gameplay subtleties like drifting.
- Unleashed drastically cut down on the amount of characters that appeared, with almost everyone being Demoted to Extra. As having huge amounts of characters in each game that took too much focus away from Sonic (whether through story or gameplay) was a common complaint about many previous entries, this was seen as a breath of fresh air. Later games continued to leave the majority of the cast Out of Focus and kept Sonic as the sole playable character, and without the novelty of having solely Sonic for the first time in years and the lack of gameplay variety becoming apparent, fans began to clamor for the supporting cast to get some love again.
- In addition, while Colors would build on what it started, Unleashed was in many ways the first post-06 Sonic game to have a simpler story compared to prior games, something that was considered to be a necessary step to make given the issues with Sonic's cast at the time. However, it was balanced out by having a lot of strong world-building and minor characters to provide Sonic and Chip someone to bounce off of as sidequests, thus ensuring that things wouldn't get too boring even if the plot was simple, as well as keeping the world lively and fleshed out even if Sonic's friends weren't around. Most subsequent stories after Colors didn't have characters like these, instead either keeping Sonic's friends around in a limited capacity, or having only Sonic and the new antagonist of the week to deal with alongside Eggman. This had the detrimental effect of making the story feel very small and narrow, even if the intent of the storyline was to be grander or more epic, and left the games with barren and/or shallow plots with little to comlement them.
- This game features a mix of 2D and 3D to address Sonic's growing pains with the 3D transition. The 2D segments are rather brief, and the two types of gameplay integrate seamlessly. It also plays around with the camera a lot in these 2D sections. Later games like Colors and Forces featured far longer 2D segments in far more abundance, and 3D Sonic games consisting more of 2D than 3D soon became a common complaint.
- This game is considered to be the start of Tails' Badass Decay, due to the scene where he gets easily frightened by some Nightmares despite fighting greater threats before. Even then, this segment is rather brief and could be written off as Tails being scared of something he knew little about rather than being unable to fight (The fact that Nightmares can seem very similar to ghosts could also help explain why Tails acted the way he did). Many later games have far more segments in which he needs to be saved by Sonic, the most infamous being a scene in Forces where he cowers in fear at Chaos 0, despite previously fighting the more powerful Chaos 4 and witnessing his more powerful forms, with him latching onto Classic Sonic as a crutch making him seem absolutely pathetic.
- The egregious amount of pop-in in Sonic Frontiers is one of the most widespread criticisms from fans and critics. However, the Hedgehog Engine was having trouble with draw distance and pop-in as far back as Unleashed. The difference is that in previous games that used the Hedgehog Engine, the camera was locked in place most of the time, which combined with the linear level design to obscure the graphical erorrs most of the time. In Frontiers, however, levels are non-linear and the camera is mostly unlocked and movable (outside of some platforming segments, some of the boss fights, and the Cyber Space levels), which exposes the pop-in that would've been hidden in past games.
Sonic Colors
- The Color Power mechanic in this game was met with praise, as the levels were designed specifically to accommodate it, and the Wisps themselves were both cute and important to the main plot. However, following games would bring the gimmick back with less than stellar results. The Wisps in Sonic Lost World were considered clunky to control and disruptive to the main gameplay, while the Wispons from Sonic Forces were criticized for coming out of nowhere and being so overpowered that they remove any semblance of difficulty the game could offer.
- Wisps supplanting the more traditional power-up monitors and character-specific abilities and equipment left a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of fans, with Sonic Team's reasoning for them still being around amounting to "they're around because they like Earth" not smoothing it over at all. Team Sonic Racing provides a more reasonable excuse for the Wisps' involvement, with Dodonpa collaborating with them in order to build his cars and set up the tournament, though it didn't do much to endear Wisps up to those who were already sick of seeing them.
- The game's story being more lighthearted than previous installments was, at the time, considered a breath of fresh air after the Darker and Edgier games that came before it. There was also the fact that the new comedic tone didn't clash with the game's overall plot too much, and the game still had some genuinely impactful moments from time to time. As time went on, however, the games that came after Colors started relying heavily on this style of comedy to the point where, any time the series attempts a dramatic moment, it has a tendency to fall flat. By the time Sonic Forces rolled around, fans started getting tired of newer Sonic games not taking themselves the slightest bit seriously anymore, especially when it hurts their overall story.
- When Sonic Origins had its proper reveal, it received ire for the website's confusing table showing the different versions in a confusing manner. Sonic Colors: Ultimate originally did the same on the website. It didn't gain much ire, however, due to only comparing the standard and digital deluxe editions, while Origins featured the DLC packs as well, leaving fans to believe there were five versions of the game rather than two.
Sonic Generations
- The infamous tendency for Sega to reuse Classic Sonic and older zones for the sake of pandering to nostalgic fans over moving the series forward can be traced back to here. However, at the time Generations was released, Classic Sonic had not appeared in a mainline Sonic game in a very long time, and the remixed zones were seen as a fun way to celebrate Sonic's long history. It wasn't until Classic Sonic began returning without the novelty of seeing him again after a long time and many more games that consisted mostly of (often the same) reused zones came out (mostly notably, 2017's Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces both featured Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant, with two-thirds of Mania consisting of reused zones while 3 of the 7 regions of Forces are old locations, and even Classic Sonic's levels for the new regions homage classic levels) that it became a problem.
Comics
Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)
A lot of the complaints about Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) aren't exactly new.- Many point to Issue 50 as the moment the series started going downhill, mainly because it killed off Dr. Robotnik. Issue 50 was meant to be the Grand Finale for the comic, so killing the main villain was the natural conclusion. However, the comic was renewed at the last minute, resulting in a general lack of direction. Though "The Big Goodbye!" (and its revised version, "For Whom the Bell Tolls") is seen as a lot better than what came after, there's a reason why Sonic fans argue over whether or not it was one of the last good stories during Ken Penders' tenure as one of the lead writers, or one of the first bad ones.
- The Knuckles comic was another problem, with Penders deciding not to expand on clues left behind in the video games at the time—indeed, he claimed to have never played the games before joining the comic. Instead, he used the comic more to world-build a society of echidnas, mostly because Sega wouldn't let him get away with anything like that with Sonic himself, but they completely ignored what he was doing with Knuckles, giving him carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. It worked out for a while, mainly because it helped flesh out the comics' world and the stories themselves were good enough. It also gave Knuckles and the echidnas much needed focus in Archie when he got Demoted to Extra in the later games. After Knuckles merged back into Sonic, though, Knuckles' story was given an increasingly heavy focus while Sonic's fell by the wayside, even though the comic was named after the latter. All of this culminated in the "Great Harmony" subplot, where Knuckles is proclaimed The Avatar, one of two heroes prophesied to bring about the eponymous event, while Sonic is just "another champion". This Creator's Pet mentality towards echidnas would eventually cause Penders to trigger the lawsuit that helped kill the comic entirely, though in this case it was Penders himself getting an oversized ego and burning every bridge in the process.
- The revelation that Espio is a member of a ninja clan and his betrayal of the Chaotix to the Iron Dominion (said ninja clans' masters) was only the latest in a series of Retcons/Face Heel Turns involving certain characters during Ian Flynn's run, most famously Fiona Fox revealing out of nowhere that the only reason she fell in love with Sonic was because of Scourge, and then betraying the Freedom Fighters to be his girlfriend. While not without controversy, it slid by, as Fiona was a mostly forgotten Canon Foreigner before exploding in popularity as a villain. With Espio, however, he was not only a popular character as a hero, but also a character straight from the games, and it became far harder to ignore. Thankfully, he got better.
- The Executive Meddling was there from the beginning, with Sega executives having a role in what gets produced. The earliest true flex of their influence dates to the uncancellation of the comic at issue 50; they allowed Robotnik to be killed off, but mandated that Ken Penders undo the other major death of the issue, Sally Acorn. Since Sally's death had been widely criticized for the way it was handled, this was and still is generally seen as a positive move. However, by the time the comic was canceled, this had blown up to the point that there were entire pages worth of mandates on how the comic should be written. This carried over to the IDW comic, which is 'even more editorial-driven, with some mandates proving highly unpopular (such as game characters who returned from a two-decades long real-life absence in Sonic Mania no longer being allowed to be used, while previously they were recurring characters in the Archie series in spite of the game canon having them on a Long Bus Trip at the time).
