Sonic SatAM was when the Sonic franchise caught lightning in a bottle. There was real drama at times. There were things actually at stake at times. The characters were well written and worked well off of each other. The story and world were atmospheric, moody, and correctly oppressive. There was certainly some cheese and light-hearted down-time; but over-all it's one of the best places the Sonic franchise ever went, and most people aren't even aware of its existence, or shrug it off as furry-bait

Shadow could never stand up to that. None of the canon Sonic characters or stories or games could. They were all created to fill a niche, written by lesser minds that had no idea what made the original games fun and had no idea how to write a plot or a character or dialog or a joke. Of course they didn't know how to properly be dark or edgy and had no clue what drama and conflict really means in a story or a character background. As a fan of Sonic's past and the franchise's potential, I just pretend the last 15 - 20 years never happened. Shadow included