>>36497711You can blame Adventure fans for the bad reception. Sonic Heroes is entirely linear and the story is pretty simple compared to the previous 3D games, but the game's combat and level design are way more polished by focusing on the formation types to take advantage of each character's strengths.
The problem here is the replayability. All teams function the same way and they all go through the same levels. The team selection is actually just a difficulty select in disguise (Team Sonic being Normal, Team Dark being Hard, etc.) but the game expects you to play through all of them while getting all Chaos Emeralds to unlock the true final boss and ending.
And yet, when Sega finally did make a sequel to the Adventure formula, Adventure fans deny the fact that Sonic '06 is literally Adventure 3. 