I guess it was clear to Sega and Sonic Team that Shadow was one of the most popular Sonic characters back in the day after Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes so in 2005 got an entire game dedicated to him. However, to this day Shadow The Hedgehog is generally seen as one of the worst Sonic-related games and is generally seen as the start of the "dark age of Sonic" which, while I agree that this is a deeply flawed game, I don't think it's the disaster some make it out to be.
The first complaint I would like to address is that this game ruined Shadow's character. I will admit the English dub added a lot of oddities like Shadow commenting "look how pathetic they are, I don't have time for these humans" along with other meme-worth dialog such as the "taking candy from a baby" and the light swearing. In the Japanese dialog, Shadow instead says "what happens to the humans are none of my concern" so a lot of the try hard and edgy lines were added in the English dub. Shadow is still suffering from amnesia so at the start he only remembers fragments of his past on the ARK and what happened in Sonic Heroes. This is why Shadow listening to either Black Doom or another Sonic character for objectives makes sense since you decide what's more important to Shadow, regaining the memories by obeying Black Doom or helping Sonic's friends save humanity and defeat the Black Arms?
This leads me to the next complaint I often hear about the game which is the repetition. To be fair, having to complete the game 10 times to unlock the final story is crazy and if this game were ever to get a remake, remaster, or rerelease this would be relegated to an optional achievement rather than something required to finish the story. However, I think that this game was on the right track compared to the previous 3D games in that required you to repeat the same stage with different characters with slight variations. Shadow can go through multiple different routes which change depending which objective you achieve. Also, if you hate a specific stage, you could route your path to avoid that stage and still reach an ending. However, to complete all 10 endings, you might still have to play Westopolis 10 times and will likely play at least one bad stage. Also, I know that this game gets a lot of criticism for essentially having all these routes being non-canon. To be honest I don't mind the various paths and endings since I find some of these routes to be rather interesting "what ifs" with Shadow being a hero and defeating the Black Arms, Conquer the Earth for Black Doom or even for himself, or even believe himself to be a robot and kill Eggman. That said, the route you go on could be nonsensical since every stage has accompanying cutscenes which focus on a certain story. Basically if you play one stage which is on story A, then you take the hero path which takes you to a stage which focuses on story B, then you can take the neutral path which keeps you on the current story, do the hero path which will likely take you to yet another story (story C), or do the dark mission which brings you back to story A. You see why people tend to not like the story presentation in this game? This game was going for a character study of Shadow and everything he could be. This sounds interesting but many players found the missions tedious and the stories nonsensical and jumbled so the many routes became an issue rather than a positive. Instead of having 5 branching paths, it might have been better to have 3 paths representing a dark, neutral, and hero story and thus simplifying the stories. Also, due to the 5 branching paths many levels were made and not all of them were made equal or even good.
To be honest, I don't mind completing most mission objectives. I've played the game enough to know where most enemies and items are to complete the mission objectives. However, missions like Lost Impact or The Doom where you must navigate the maze-like ARK are infamously tedious. Also, Central City which is not only another maze-like level where you either arm 5 large bombs or disarm 20 smaller bombs, but also has an 8-minute timer. This isn't helped by the game's controls which, while a bit better than Sonic Heroes' controls, are still finicky with Shadow going from walking speed to 100mph in seconds and turning being more difficult the faster you go. While this might be more realistic to Shadow with his speed and use of jet shoes, it makes playing the game less fun and he did control this way in Sonic Adventure 2. I will say that the controls are somewhat saved by using the right trigger you can walk and strafe which makes traversal and combat far more bearable.
The next element that I'm mixed on is the use of guns and other weapons in this game. Now I like their use in-game and the variety as well as the auto aiming being easy to use. However, to make the guns appealing to use the developers decided to nerf the homing attack and spindash. Also, I feel as if the use of guns feeds into a larger issue here which is this is when the Sonic games lost their "innocence." While Sonic Adventure 2 had some darker elements such as the government cover up on the ARK and Maria's death, it still had the general feel of as classic Sonic vs Eggman story. Sonic Heroes, the previous game, really went hard into the classic feel and aesthetic so not only was Shadow the Hedgehog a massive tonal shift, but with this game trying to appear as "mature" as other contemporary games, I think this is considered the start of Sonic's "dark age" because this is when fans, especially of the classic era, turned their back on the direction Sonic Team was taking the series and everyone else though it was an dumb idea to take a game where a 3-foot hedgehog uses guns, swears, and having the game take itself this seriously.
One topic I would like to bring up is Shadow The Hedgehog: Reloaded which is a mod that overhauls the levels and objectives. For the "eliminate all enemies" missions, you do not have to get every single enemy which means that players don't have to look around every corner for that one enemy. This makes levels like The Doom and Lost Impact better to play. However, some changes I'm not entirely fond of such as the health of the President's pod and Black Arm's Tank being significantly increased in Air Fleet and Lethal Highway to the point where I couldn't even destroy President's Pod for the dark objective in Air Fleet. Also, beating Sonic to the Chaos Emerald in Space Gadget is now extremely difficult since the timer is now 3 minutes instead of 5 minutes which makes that race borderline impossible. From what I can tell this Reloaded mod is still a work in progress and perhaps there could be a way to customize the game so players can pick and choose what aspects to change or keep the same in terms of mission difficulty. All in all, this is the version I would recommend to newcomers since most objectives are simpler to achieve and you only need to complete 3 endings instead of all 10. Also, Reloaded does improve the way Shadow controls and that alone makes the game more fun to play.
I also find Shadow's soundtrack to be underappreciated, it's not rock and roll vibes of sonic but instead the grungy tones of Shadow's character and it suits the character, game, and levels just fine. I also enjoy the songs with All Hail Shadow, Waking Up, All of Me, and the end credits Never Turning Back being some of my favorites. Heck, I even liked the song Broken and that didn't even make it into the game. While there aren't many of them in the game, I really enjoyed the pre rendered cutscenes by Blur Studios which were worked on by Deadpool and Terminator director Tim Miller and the director of the Sonic movies, Jeff Fowler.
As flawed as Shadow The Hedgehog is, I enjoy it more than not. I will even say that between Sonic Heroes, Shadow, and Sonic 06 I prefer this game the most. I don't have the connection to Heroes that most people have so that game's repetition of stages and slippery controls make that game a bit of a chore sometimes. Sonic 06, as broken and unfinished as that game is, can be somewhat fun playing as Sonic even as clunky as his controls are. But Shadow and Silver's gameplay as well as the End of the World stages bring Sonic 06 way down. Also, I'm not a fan of Sonic 06's realistic aesthetics with their weird quasi-realistic looking humans and dull hub worlds. Shadow has the cartoony aesthetics from Heroes, albeit with more grungy and alien settings, that I liked and even with its issues, Shadow has the most interesting premise and story of the three games. Also, to give credit where it's due, Shadow was the first 3D game to just focus one character which, even with all the various branching paths and endings, makes the game come off as more focused than it really is. This is not to mention that I really liked what this game was going by exploring Shadow's character and having him move past his past. To be honest, Shadow after this game was primed to go on to even better stories and character exploration that's not just him remembering Maria's promise. As flawed as Sonic 06 was, I thought Shadow's story was easily the best aspect of that game. Unfortunately, outside of Sonic X, Sonic Prime, and the Archie comics Shadow has been rarely used all that well in Sonic media and when he is he's basically portrayed as a big meenie which I guess is to distill the characters to their most simple and most marketable version for general audiences. So, as flawed as this game is, I still appreciate that there was a game where I got to play as and focused on my favorite Sonic character. Also, if Sonic X Shadow Generations and the third Sonic movie are anything to go by, not only will they be taking elements from Shadow 05, but we might finally be seeing some growth for edgy the hedgy.
