Depends on you.
How can I put this...Sonic, since his first 3D game, has had some crazy (as well as lame) adventures. Let's be honest: most of his 3D games are not good and I feel that some people have this bias that every sonic game now sucks. When I came into this, I had to throw out all the biases and come in as neutral as possible to prepare myself for this game. For the most part, all I heard was that this game is terrible in it's own outright. Well, that's not true, but this is one of those games that you either like or don't.
At first, when I saw this game WAY before it came out, I was excited for the daytime stages in this game because it felt like SEGA was doing something right. Once I saw the nighttime stages, I felt uneasy, knowing that people will rip this game just for that, and that's exactly what happened. My bigger concern was that why did the Wii version get praised and the HD console versions getted screwed? Were the reviewers lazy? I was just curious. My turning point in buying this was when I found out there was Japanese Voice acting, which was great because the english is terrible.
I will admit, there are flaws here, which I knew would happen since I tried the demo first. Camera doesn't screw with you, but there are times I wish I could turn it (though it's not a huge problem gameplay wise). Also, I noticed something while playing this: this game is not easy. If Sega was aiming for a young audience, the game should've been easier, but I found parts the the game to be difficult and I felt the Kingdom Hearts syndrome (which means it's for fans who are used to gaming). The good thing is that it's fairly easy to gain lives, but you also can die easily as well when you aren't careful. Nighttime stages do require some skill and thinking to pass as there are parts where you have to make sure you aren't defenseless. I still think not all nightitme stages are too long (The first one can be done in almost 6 minutes) but as you progress, they get longer. Daytime stages are great, but not perfect. Some stages ask you to perform tricks as a part of the course, and later, they become required to move on. This tested my patience, but being able to go extremely fast was still fun.
This next sentence is a slight spoiler, but if you don't wish to read, don't read it.
I found that the last stage was too long a difficult, but as part of the last continent, you have to do that stage and the boss fights all in a row without stopping. It took me a whopping 3 hours to do it (but I did it at least.)
As for the rest of it, the hub towns don't bother me. It just gives me an idea how SEGA can work on environments and characters, as much as the people of each town can look wierd. For the most part, the environments and architechture look great and they worked great on the details. Menus aren't too bad and missions give you something to do if you are bored. Chip, as much as I probably will regret saying, is meant for comic relief early in the game. When I gave him the food he likes, he started making comments that made me chuckle every now and then.
This is probably the end of my review. I truely think that this game was more of an "experiment" for SEGA to try something new. It's not outstanding, but it's not horrible either. As I said before: it's either a game you like or don't and if you intend to get it, be prepared.
