To unlock the "Final Story" which is this game's true final level, boss, and ending, you need to unlock all 9 Endings. This could be handled in a very interesting way, but was severely misused as you can change paths on a whim, completely changing Shadow's personality and motivations on the fly. The game works like this. You start in the intro level, which is a destroyed city. You then have three missions that you can complete to go on a different path. The Hero Path, the Dark Path, or the Neutral Path. After you beat each level, you go either up or down on a grid which becomes bigger and bigger with more levels and therefore more possible choices.
This results in you needing to beat the game a minimum of 9 times to get every ending and therefore "fully" beat the game. But is it worth it to play the same levels 9 times? In short, no, it's not. Shadow's controls are like a slip and slide on ice, basically super slippery and fast all the time. It's torture to control, and the gun play doesn't help either. Oh right, this game has guns. Like, LOTS of guns, and swearing, and blood. What's this game rated again? E10+!? WHAT THE HECK!?
Yes, this game is indeed rated E10+, and fun fact, this was actually the first game ever given that rating. The thing is was that Sega were aiming for a hard T rating for this game, but last minute changed a few things to make it E10+, the new rated ESRB announced to them while they were finishing up the game. You think, oh, maybe the removed the swearing, removed the blood, and toned down the guns? Nope. All they did was to change the blood color from red to green and PRESTO! Instant E10+ rating! This was the case probably because the actual specifics on exactly what makes a game rated E10+ compared to E or T were not decided yet. That still doesn't explain why they give this game as an example for E10+ games, causing many possible parents to not allow their kids to play LEGO Star Wars of all games due to sharing the same rating.
This, along with many other mistakes like rating every Halo game until 5 Mature, rating most recent Kirby games E10+, rating both Smash Bros Melee and Brawl T despite being kid-friendly games, rating the Dark Souls, (both original and remastered) Dark Souls 3, and Bloodborne M despite Dark Souls 2 both original and scholar of the first sin being rated T despite having the same sort of content as Dark Souls 1 and 3, Rating both Earthbound and Beginnings T despite one being an anarchic NES game and the other originally being rated E with a bit of rude humor, (Gygais is why) and rating Twilight Princess T despite Ocarina of Time being rated E is why I don't trust the ESRB anymore. (Ocarina of Time on N64 was darker than Twilight Princess BTW. The 3DS version made the game more kid friendly and still got a E10+ rating along with Majora's Mask 3D) Also I'm still pissed about Nier Automata and Persona 4 and 5 being rated M. I know they deserve it, but It's just really disappointing not being able to play those amazing games.
Anyways, rant over. Time to talk about the story, which in all honesty, is a mess. The game starts of with Shadow the Hedgehog standing in the distance looking cool and having Vietnam flashbacks of his tragic backstory. Then suddenly, aliens! No joke, aliens just randomly fall from the sky onto the city. Then some big alien leader guy asks shadow to collect the 7 chaos emeralds for him and if he does he will tell shadow more about his past. Wait, didn't shadow already know about his past? Wasn't the Shadow that we played as in Sonic Heroes just an android? If so, how does he remember Maria and Gerald from Sonic Adventure 2? Artificial memories maybe?
Basically, shadow says he can't trust him, despite saying that he will probably have to do what he says anyways to get information out of him. Now, despite what happened in that cut scene, you have three choices. Each level has three missions you can complete to either go down to follow the dark path, go up to follow the hero path, or stay on the same path you are on to go on the neutral path. After each level, you will have a different cut scene depending on which path you choose and what path you were on. to fully experience this mess of a story, need to play though this awful game dozens of times, which is frankly not worth it at all.
At the end of each of the 9 possible paths, you will fight one of three bosses. Either a Alien Beast on the Hero Paths, Eggman on the Neutral Paths, or a GUN robot and/or Sonic on the Dark Paths. There are 9 endings. (10 if you count the true ending) The True Hero ending, the Hero Ending, the Semi Hero ending, the Heroic Neutral Ending, the True Neutral Ending, the Dark Neutral Ending, the Semi Dark ending, the Dark ending, and the True Dark ending.
This brings up the biggest sin of Shadow the Hedgehog, which is it's inconsistencies with it's story. Just randomly, if you so choose, Shadow can just go from full-on villain to goody-two-shoes good guy. It's terrible design for a non linear story to change on a whim if you so choose. This brings up many plot holes, the biggest being in one of the neutral endings. In that ending, it is completely 100% confirmed that the Shadow that you play as in both Sonic Heroes and this game is indeed an android. Heck, the whole reason Shadow supposedly started this adventure was to discover if he really was a android.
This all come crumbling down in the true ending, which doesn't really connect with any other ending. The closest to it is the Semi-Hero ending, in which Shadow defeats the Dark Beast that Black Doom (the alien leader) sends after Shadow but he escapes anyways with all the chaos emeralds and leaves in his spaceship. The True ending could happen within a timeline where instead of Black Doom's ship flying away, he instead plans to blow up station square with the 7 Chaos Emeralds as shown in the True Ending.
Back to the main point. In the true final boss battle against Black Demon (Black Doom's final form) if you wait around without attacking Black Demon for around 10 minutes, you will hear a secret message from Dr. Eggman saying that the Shadow that you are playing as in this game is the real shadow and is not an android, directly contradicting all of the Neutral endings where Shadow discovers that he is indeed an android.
The game or any future game never explains how Shadow survived his supposed death in Sonic Adventure 2 or if the current Shadow really is an android as Eggman could have been lying to raise Shadow's spirits. Hasn't been the first time he lied to the fans. This plot thread was completely abandoned after this game, as this game was so bad that it caused SEGA to plan to reboot the franchise to start off the 7th Generation. However, they could have never excepted that the final result would tarnish Sonic's legacy forever...
Good
- The Music is fine, I guess?
- The opening cutscene, despite being super edgy, is surprisingly the best part of this game.
Bad
- The game play is horrid
- Shadow controls horribly.
- The story is a mess.
- The multiple path system is handled very poorly.
- The first of many instances of potholes in the sonic series.
- The game is way to edgy for it's own good.
- The gun play is generic, gimmicky, and forced.
- The boss battles are boring and repetitive.
- The missions are boring and repetitive, with them usually being "defeat all of this type of enemy" or "reach the end of the stage" for the entire game.
Overall Score: 1.8/10
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