I personally quite like Unleashed as well, but it's not that people don't know that the werehog form ties to the plot or whatever. They know, but they still hate on it likely because they find the concept stupid to begin with

From what I've seen most criticism rather is directed at the werehog's gameplay, how his beat'em up sections are slow, monotonous, boring and bring the fast paced action in the daytime levels to a grinding halt

Yeah slowing down Sonic with beat em up doesn't really work all that well most of the time (as with Sonic 06 and Sonic Boom). The daytime sections however paved the way for Colors and Modern Generations gameplay which is some of the best IMO. And Sonic games almost always get the music right.

One thing about Sonic Unleashed I found annoying was WOOOOO.

Sonic Unleashed is one of my least favorite sonic games. Unleashed is when they debuted the "Boost Engine" and I honestly wasn't a fan of it at all at first. Up till that point, sonic games had been platformers primarily, and I disliked how the Boost Engine felt more like a racing game or something, Sonic was too fast and I couldn't explore the levels. It wasn't fun to me. The night time levels were also obviously atrocious, like the least fun hack n slash of all time. Music wasn't memorable to me for the most part, setting didn't appeal to me, story was weak, it kinda ran poorly, etc. I'm not a fan of Unleashed. Every boost game that followed it was much better

I hope the boost formula grew on you

I can see how it might be overwhelming for someone who actually enjoyed the other games but man. I played Generations first and god did it bang

I wouldn’t say it “grew on me” moreso than later games in the series implemented it in a way I liked better. Colors is fairly average to me as a game, it’s enjoyable and even though my gripes about the boost engine not feeling like “sonic” to me are still there it feels better in that game for whatever reason. there’s more platforming and stuff. also the story isn’t complete s***. Generations was even better, splitting the 2D and 3D levels was cool and fun and I liked it. I like Forces even more for the setting and storyline and stuff (it’s very dumb and honestly has more missteps and disappointments than any other sonic game but I still like it.) The level design is a lot more compact and simple and I enjoy it. I’d still love if they brought back the Adventure/Heroes/Shadow/06 “platforming with speed” style of gameplay back but. u know. whatever. sonic go fast vroom vroom

Oh no

They made games where you go fast through levels and learn the routes to keep on the optimal path to get through the level as fast as you can

That doesn't feel anything like Sonic at all

I am ehhh about unleashed because it killed the Adventure formula. and Adventure 2 was near perfect. But because of '06, we will never get adventure 3 or playable characters besides sonic and maybe Shadow.

Yeah that's one thing I don't like about the boost engine because only Sonic and Shadow can do that and you can hardly play as anyone else anymore. I do like what they tried with Forces by giving you another character to play as but I'd prefer if it was Tails or something other than some random OC.

Hopefully future games will have better implementation of this by having multiple characters play differently and sometimes joining together for Heroes style gameplay and multi boosts. (A Sonic, Tails and Knuckles triple boost would be awesome.)

or just switch back to the Adventure style.

Or just make 2D games because none of the 3D games ever have been or ever will be as good as Mania

Adventure 2

Yeah I love having 1/3 of the game being boring mindless shooting levels and another 1/3 being annoying treasure hunting levels that only tell you where one item is when the game before it told you where any of them are

Definitely as good as one of the best 2D platformers released in the last decade

"Now I know what's going on! The military has mistaken me for the likes of you! So, where do you think you're going with that emerald? Say something! You fake hedgehog!"