And now as expected we're seeing a rise of fans expressing a dislike over the 2000s 3D Sonic games (Unleashed being mostly an exception) both in terms of gameplay and storytelling, that the Adventure style 3D games were poorly made and Boost is superior, that the Storybook games play terrible, etc. And I'm also seeing a growing number of fans reject "wind" philosophy to Sonic's character, wanting him and other characters to be less like symbols and more fleshed out and complex while still keeping the tone overall light but still action oriented, with a greater praise given to games that feature less realistic environments or something more stylized
In a way none of these opinions are particularly new, but I believe they'll become more popular. Apologism to games like Colors and even Lost World is growing. The time has passed and those who grew up in the 2010s have different tastes and are old enough to express those tastes online. Darkagefags will become the American classicfags of the past
It's the sad cycle of a series reinventing itself at some point, alienating older fans and bringing in new fans. Older fans express their dislike, the reinvented period dies in favor of something that tries to recapture the original period to bring back old fans, which in turn alienates fans brought in the second period. The lesson is don't reinvent. Try to keep the elements consistent. It's ok to experiment when appropriate, but don't change things considerably to the point it alienates your audience. That's what happened to Sonic during the transition to modern. I like modern Sonic, but the truth is that we would be better off with we stuck with Classic Sonic