So... So I just finished watching most of all of it. I skipped some stuff where they were repeating levels early on, but stuck around for almost everything.
Seriously, this is one terrible, terrible game. I didn't even have to play it to "get" how floaty the controls were. Watching the video killed a lot of enthusiasm I had after watching some of the Colors acts partly because I know how floaty Sonic controlled (although nowhere near the amount of difficulty they were having in 06). But even if the game controlled really well, if it wasn't buggy, if the load times weren't so frequent and long, and if the camera was awesome, this would be a boring game at best. Sonic's levels would have been the most fun, but the variety in the levels is only made apparent through the use of different characters, otherwise, they're pretty linear.
The name Sonic and his Shitty Friends came from a Penny Arcade comic from 2001, but good fucking lord, I had no idea how appropriate it was here. I had imagined that while the non-Sonic characters were annoying, I didn't think they would completely overwhelm the game with their presence. The fuck were they thinking with nine characters and seven different control schemes? The game just reeks of padding. Not only do you go through the same levels as different characters in one character's story (like having Tails inexplicably play the first Act after Tails had already had his moment in the first Act), but every single main story character has to play through those levels again, with only slight variations on the design. And then Blaze has nearly a moment-by-moment remake of the first level of the game for no goddamn reason. It's just mind-numbingly repetitive and bad. What was Sonic Team thinking when they decided to make nearly every level last 20 minutes on average? I know Sonic's not about speed, but nearly every fucking challenge requires you defeat surrounding enemies to continue. And it's not like the combat system for half the characters improves at all. Silver and Omega probably have the best method of killing people, and Shadow did appear to be an easier-to-play version of Sonic.
I was actually surprised at the Knuckles and Rouge sections or, more accurately, how not as completely frustrating they appeared to be compared to the rest of the game. These were the worst segments of the Sonic Adventure games and, despite changing nothing about how they play (except making them control worse), those segments appeared to be the least nerve-wracking.
And of course, there's the obvious way the game padded everything else, with tons of city missions so you could purchase upgrades. How boring. At least in Sonic Adventure, it was kind of an award whenever you got an upgrade since it was more about you exploring the hub world.
Then there's the story, which is skippable, and that is awesome, but it takes itself way too fucking seriously, and I think that's where a lot of the game's problems stem from. It was really meant to be Sonic and His Ensemble Team of Super Friends, this awesome epic about Sonic and his buddies, but the story ends up being this awful thing that makes no sense. I doubt that Sonic Unleashed, like Secret Rings, makes much sense either, but I bet because it doesn't take itself too seriously that Sonic Team was able to focus on just making better and more straightforward Sonic stuff without worrying about extra bullshit. That formula seems to be working well for Colors too.
That endgame is unbelievable too. It's like Sonic Team's version of "The Ultimate Test" only instead of being challenging, it's objectively terrible. While there are 1ups around the world, you would think the logical thing to do would be giving the player as many lives as there are allies to control. Judging by what the lp guys had to go through, 7 lives to start with would not be asking for much. Except for Amy's and Rouge's levels, each one of those was unfairly designed, with lots of traps to be sprung just because you had the audacity to proceed. It was amazing listening to them at that playthrough, and how it goes from kinda light joking, to "I should have gotten that, stupid game" to "FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" to silence, and finally one guy reading Michael Jackson songs and other music from the 80s in monotone.
Really, I had no idea Sonic 06 was that horrible. I had seen compilations of glitches, examples of Silver and Sonic levels, and I had played the demo, which had its problems. And the impression I got was that it was bad game with annoying and boring design decisions and lots of bugs, but that was just the tip of the iceburg. It boggles the mind that anyone could defend this game, that anyone could like this game. I got on some people's cases for enjoying it before, but it was mostly ribbing them. Now I am genuinely interested in how they could reach a conclusion outside of "wow, this was extraordinarily bad." I just can't wrap my head around it.