Shadow Generations/Modern Sonic Gameplay

I’ve played all of the classic Sonic games since I was a kid to the point of near total memorization of all the levels of each mainline 2D game (and some of the Game Gear ones as well), along with Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, plus a lot of other platformers. I got Shadow Generations and have been playing through it and, of course it plays different, but I didn’t realize the state of things.

The overworld is really fun and I love the way it feel and controls there, but the controls within the levels themselves sudden become your worst enemy and sometimes completely unacceptable. It often feel like the main levels are just a bunch of QTEs one after the other and I go so fast I die and have to start over not because I missed a jump but because I’m playing faster than the enemies or other assets can spawn in, the lock-on distance for something is way too far and I can’t do what I actually want to do, or Shadow just flips out and doesn’t do what he should (like not switching rails randomly, but only on a specific part of Chaos Island…). 90% of the time I’m hitting everything perfectly, going crazy fast, and it feels great for the style of gameplay it is, but that 10% of jank is just enough to completely derail my consistent S ranks.

I haven’t played a modern 3D Sonic game in a long time and I tried this one because the reviews are great and it really is a blast at certain points but I have to ask, is this what modern Sonic has been all this time I’ve been away? Buggy QTEs done as fast as you can do them, hoping the game doesn’t flip out and make you have to start over hoping the level and control cooperate with you? It honestly doesn’t even feel like a platformer most of the time within the main levels. I’m so confused.