As someone who didn't play the classic Sonics and jumped on with Adventure 2 Battle, who's been playing since...
This is the best Sonic game trounces any Sonic game that's not a classic Sonic title. Idk about the classics since again, I never played them, but anything after you can't compare them to this. There's just so many different areas you can take a level, so many different things I'm actually paying attention to these days such as momentum too. I've never had to worry about momentum in a Sonic game before this one. Now I'm like "well hell if I launch here and stop here then that'll help me reach-" it's just crazy.
It's things like that which sort of take me out of the fact that I'm playing a Sonic game. It's like I'm moving Sonic around trying to get through the level rather than thinking "ok Sonic's here to run through shit" if that makes any sense.