As someone who finally beat this game as Sonic, all 7 chaos emeralds and all, I have some shit to say. I understand the desire to make what was once a somewhat obtuse and nonstandard Sonic game into something that felt like a traditional Genesis game. Nothing really wrong with that, fan demakes are cool and a concept this alone was solid. All of my issues come from how exactly all of this was done. I'll start with positives though, as some things done were genuinely pleasing.
+Emeralds are saved the second you complete the special stage
+Physics feel exactly as they should
+Sonic's repertoire is the complete combo of peel-out, instashield, and spin-dash
+The cutscenes are well-done
+Sonic Sonic can use shield abilities
+Act 1 Boss for Puppet Panic no longer uses Tails if you're in super form. That's really cool.
+Act 1 Boss for Puppet Panic disables your hitbox when you’re off screen and if an attack would hit you on your way up, it prevents you from rising back up until it’s over.
Okay here's my fucking gripes.
-Released in 2020, last update was 2022, somehow still no widescreen option? It's [current year] and this game's dickish enemy placement requires widescreen and intelligent camera movement in order to properly react to shit.
-As the difficulty is unforgiving, I don't think it's unthinkable to provide a fucking infinite lives option. The amount of times I fucking died to a boss, and had to replay Acts 1 & 2 to get another opportunity to fight said boss is fucking ridiculous. In that same vein...
-You wanted this to be a traditional version of Sonic 3D Blast, I get it, but even then your long-ass level designs do not lend well to a fucking 9:59 time limit, especially when combined with the lack of an infinite lives option. Holy fuck.
-I complemented the physics, but the i-frames are fucking fucked up. It is nowhere near the same amount of grace period as you got in the games you're trying to replicate.
-The Final Fight boss should have walls on the sides, you couldn't fall off and die in the real 3D Blast during this boss fight, you shouldn't be able to here, either.
-The extra boss fought as Super Sonic is superfluous and feels like it's there to just have one, rather than being an actual meaningful addition to the gameplay. It being a recolored boss from Pocket Adventure is also rather egregious, and I get where you were coming from with it, as you wanted this fangame to be a sort of link between Sonic 3&K and Sonic Adventure, but just straight up stealing sprites from other games is gross. On that fucking note
-Too many sprites and whatnot are just taken from other games, and it clashes real fucking hard. A lot of enemies aren't even designed to look like their counterparts in Sonic 3D Blast, it's just lazy recolors.
-Too many of the game’s bosses and environments are assets from other games mashed together. It lacks a real identity.
-The tube section at the end of Gene Gadget Act 1 is stolen level design is from Sonic 2 8-bit, specifically the end of Scrambled Egg Act 1.
-I'm sure you're fucking sick of hearing it, but regardless, your special stages fucking suck. Sonic controls like butter in a fucking frying pan, and you have no time to react to fucking anything. The only way you beat this shit is by replaying an act over and over and just memorizing where shit is. Having 3 times the rings in each section of the special stage does not balance out the shit, it just makes it more clear that you did not want to actually try and make something that was worth a damn.
-The post-credits scene using the same text as Sonic Adventure 2’s post-credits scene misses the point.
Not the nicest fucking review in the world, and I'm far from a professional reviewer whatever guy, but you fangame mostly pissed me off and I wanted to yell at you over the internet about it. Again, my biggest gripes are no reasonable way to deal with the difficulty other than replaying shit over and over again when you game over, and the lack of widescreen and intelligent camera shit.