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I do truly respect Sonic Team's passion with this game, honestly, but for me the frustrating thing that makes me question their competency is just that every single success always has to come with a massive asterisk on it. Sonic Colours and Sonic Forces didn't have any of these jank issues but they were SO tightly designed as to be unengaging to play.  Everything felt stiff and automated, all the 3D gameplay was extremely barebones.  There was barely anything in terms of really novel or engaging platforming gimmicks.  They played it so safe. I have more respect for Lost World and Frontiers which dared to break the mould and do some weirder, more freeform stuff that wasn't so tightly strung to avoid ever breaking... but the end result is still that it often broke.  And this DLC sort of reveals that the base game WAS playing it safe most of the time.  I mean, I knew this - up until Ouranos Island pretty much all the open zone obstacle courses are Sonic Forces/Colours grade level design, 90% automation, rail switching and homing attack chains etc.  But here they really took the safety wheels off and the gameplay systems just weren't built for it. When I LOOK at the level design for the towers and such it LOOKS fun and engaging, pretty creative even.  The way they came up with unique gimmicks for every Cyber Space stage was really cool too.  I respect the effort.  When I imagine playing them as a Sonic that behaves himself or has some leeway in how accurate you have to be, I bet they'd be a blast.  But alas. With Sonic Team it's always the execution, it's so frustrating to see time and time again. I just desperately want Sonic Team to go from being a developer that can theoretically make good stuff to having that ability to just polish things up a bit.  There are just so many issues with shifting cameras and pinpoint accurate jump requirements and frustrating punishments and lack of communication that I can't FATHOM how they were missed in playtesting and they just get in the way of the potential fun So Much. Of course... that's the thing with video game development, they probably weren't missed in playtesting.  All the parts that were fine to play are the stuff that they DID have the time and resources to polish, and the rest wasn't.  But it's just... annoying that they went with this instead of just throwing in some failsafes.   The one saving grace is that I do think Frontiers felt like a feature-complete game at launch, so the fact that this is free does give them some goodwill with me.  But I'm still left dumbfounded at some of the overarching decisions that not even "didn't have time to polish" really excuses for me, and that's the point where I start to question the competency of the creators.

So, what issues do you guys want to point out here about Sonic's friends that need to be fixed in the new story mode or in future Sonic games?

Because I'm pretty convinced they're the problem. You're free to disagree but I haven't seen a convincing argument pointing any other way yet.   I agree that the game isn't unplayable, but I have higher expectations than unplayable and the game didn't make it there. It shouldn't be an issue to discuss why, or what the causes might be.