Freedom Planet - Finally a Great "Sonic" Game?

Okay, real talk, Freedom Planet looks like it is probably the best "Sonic The Hedgehog" game ever made.
It started off as a fan-made actual Sonic game before they turned it into it's own thing with no relation to the Sonic IP, but this is CLEARLY superior to any Sonic game ever made.
So, if you like the original Sega Genesis-era Sonic The Hedgehog games, you should uh...be aware that Freedom Planet exists.

For the record:

While Sonic games have a reputation for being notoriously bad nowadays, with the occasional decent game mixed in there, I'm of the opinion that Sonic The Hedgehog games were NEVER actually particularly good.

The original Sega Genesis games are a maddening paradox of game design, in which the game mechanics are designed to make you go fast, but the level design fights your ability to do that at EVERY step of the way, so instead it's just frustrating.

Also, all the parts where Sonic DOES go fast aren't really up to you. You're basically just watching while the game plays itself.

Sonic seems like it was a success because Sega created him to be "edgy" and "cooler" than Mario, so his games are equated with being a rival to Mario games (which genuinely ARE some of the best ever made).

He was made to BE the face of Sega and sell Sega.

Don't get me wrong, I love Sonic, but it's not because of his games.

I love Sonic because of the "Sonic SatAM" cartoon, which was awesome, and the Archie Comics based on the Sonic SatAM world.

It was REALLY cool stuff.

The single most massive mistake the games ever made was when 'Sonic Adventure' came out and -completely- disregarded the existence of the entire Sonic SatAM setting....and instead set it on a..uh..Final Fantasy version of Earth(?) which was super bland and terrible.

Just like DC Comics (where I LOVE the characters and stories, but can't stand the comics themselves because DC constantly makes a terrible mess of their universe) my love for it comes primarily from Saturday morning cartoons in the 90's.

Freedom Planet, on the other hand, -seems- to've actually fixed these issues.

The level designs seem to be slightly more friendly to going fast, and at the same time give you plenty of reasons to WANT to slow down.

And the setting appears to actually be an homage of sorts to the Sonic SatAM/Archie Comics setting of the planet Mobius, with all the woodland creatures teaming up as the Freedom Fighters to battle the villainous tyrant who is terrorizing their world.

Where Sonic abandoned all that to be bland and terrible, Freedom Planet embraces it and is fun, neat, and kinda adorable.

All credit to this recent crop of indie game developers who CLEARLY loved these classic games and understand WHY they loved them.

They obviously understand much better than the companies who made them.

We've got Yacht Club Games who made Shovel Knight, we've got all manner of great "Mario" style games, we've got LOADS of great fan-made MegaMan games (because Capcom has essentially abandoned the franchise), Divinity:Original Sin looks like a great modern isometric RPG (like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Arcanum, Icewind Dale, etc), and now we've got a superior "Sonic" game.

I've sometimes worried that all the best types of games would be forgotten and lost as the world is taken over by mediocre FPS's, open-world games, and mobile games..

..but if the indie devs keep this up, I think we'll be ooooookay.

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These guys go over the Sonic stuff pretty well: