Yeah Sonic Chronicles did not age well.
And the design choices were wonky and not good.
Right now a good Sonic RPG fangame, called Tales of Mobius (which I recommend you check out), with a Tales battle system or LMBS works well with it. Though it does need a lot of polish.
I'll alright I didn't have high expectations for Sonic Boom, but I overly enjoying it. The jokes are good, though it's sometimes hit and miss. Why couldn't the games have this level of comedy? And good gameplay designs?
And... no love for SaTAM?
And to Phi, it's fine to criticize. We do need it to improve. But blatantly over-criticizing and judging something that's not out yet and just discarding isn't the right call. It's not wrong to love thing despite it's flaws, I'm not blind to it, I just give it a chance and see if I like or not. Do I want to see things to fix and improve obvious flaws? Yes. Though your comment was a tad standoffish, I do think it's insight not to be overly faithful and ignore flaws.
There is the saying of 'never judge a book by its cover', then again there's also 'fool me once, shame on me. fool me twice, shame on you'.
Sonic Forces we're given bits and pieces of it and not the whole package. They're putting their heart and soul here and making the game the way they have it setup with the atmosphere and direction.
Alright I'm going to stop there. Any other comments I'm just going to read and back off. No need to discuss or continue this debate anymore.
Another reason why I like the Avatar parts of the game is it's design choice being reminiscence of the Adventure and Heroes style gameplay, which are my favorite of the Sonic games.
Though I do think Classic Sonic is a mistake here. Should've left him out honestly, unless his role and story is fitting for Forces instead of just connecting Mania and Forces together.
Plus did people HATE the boost gameplay from the Sonic Rush titles? I mean that's like where it started from, right?
Honestly I hope Tikal comes back. We sort of know she's still around, she is among my favorite Sonic characters. Mighty, too. Is there a reason they don't want him to return to Sonic games? Would he be too similar to Sonic if they did?