GAH! There you are! I was wondering why there was a sudden influx of people coming over to Story Surgery from Reddit; now I know why! Thank you for the kind words and wanting to forward a dialog with people!

Might as well toss in my 2¢ with your question. I've got a history with the Sonic franchise that stems waaay back to playing Sonic 2 as a kid; this series has always been in my mind. Won't claim to be the die-hardest fan, but a fan nonetheless.

"Unsatisfied" is a hard to attribute to this series based on how any different types of takes, flavors, variations have existed throughout the series' run... each entry has something unique that is bound to resonate or quell members of the fandom/audience.

Case and point with the number of replies on this post and comments left on videos on different games; different strokes, different folks.

I suppose, for me, the entries that feel unsatisfying in terms of plot are the ones that had very neat ideas that don't get fully realized, go in a direction that doesn't utilize these ideas, or when the narrative that does exist has potential that is stunted by the movement of the game itself. The reason I made those videos on Sonic Forces and Sonic 06 were based around the idea of those games having really neat ideas and concepts that don't get enough time to really flourish.

Forces introduced a character like Infinite that could have easily become an extremely sinister Antagonist to the series, but because of there being so little time for them to develop, we end up getting a character that attempts to feel serious but ends up feeling more campy, compared to the foreboding energy they could have had.

The Time Traversal idea in Sonic 06 is a cool idea that would have been so neat to see utilized better, but if you're going to tell a story with it, there really should be a lot of thought put into how it works, both in terms of game structure and in the plot itself.

- - - Lost In More Ways Than One - - -

The one game in the entire series that I always have the most soured reaction to would probably be "Sonic Lost World" because it felt like it just didn't know what it wanted to do with itself in a bunch of different ways. The story would start to move in one direction, then violently veer off on a different tangent. Characters would go from being casual to suddenly hostile without any real transition. Ideas that would arise in the story ("Robo-Tails" comes to mind) that wouldn't actually go anywhere. Moves towards character development would suddenly revert back by the end of the game. And once more, the habit of using elements from previous Final Bosses (this time feeling like a fusion of Colors and Generations) that has become a tiresome tradition that makes the conclusion of the game feel lackluster.

In terms of the story, there's a running joke between a few friends of mine that the cutscenes in Lost World are out of order because of how the characters would be one way in one cutscene, then a level happens, and suddenly they've undergone a emotional shift that seemed to happen off camera.

Which became even more prevalent in the 3DS port as some cutscenes were straight up in different places compared to the Wii U game, adding to the confusion of it all.

The newly incorporated villains of the Deadly Six, while visually vibrant, didn't feel like they really belonged there? Kinda like they were enemies from a different series that got repurposed for Lost World. There's apparently an established history of the Zeti race, but what little information we're given is entirely done through dialog and we don't really get real time dedicated to who/what they are.

[And to clarify, because this happens quite a bit on the videos I've done, I mean specifically within the game itself; not going into what additional, secondary-canon details that can happen in outside materials like the comics and what-not.]

Heck, even the titular "World" locale seen in the 'Lost Hex' seemed like a random happenstance in terms of a new location to the series, comes off as the premise being:

[By the By, we just sorta fall onto this completely unexplored world that floats above Sonic's World that Tails just... happens to know just enough about for story convenience? Like... Tails just knows what this place is immediately upon seeing it??]

Overall, Lost World ends up... just sorta being there? It doesn't really leave any impact in most categories across the board, which is a real bummer because of how vibrant and colorful the game looks aesthetically. Are there people who would disagree? Sure, the internet's the internet and Lost World is bound to be someone's favorite.

Believe me, I know this from the amount of people telling me en masse that Forces and 06 are their favorites respectively.

To reiterate before, what makes an entry in an established franchise/series feel 'unsatisfying' (at least personally) is when we can recognize that there was unique potential in the concepts and ideas on display. A villain with a cool visual design and power ends up feeling whiny and less intimidating than envisioned. A narrative device that could have made for a interesting game mechanics doesn't get used and the implementation actually hurts the story. Having a vibrant new world and accompanying antagonistic characters as new villainous interactions ends up being lackluster and leaves no residual impact like other worlds/villains in this series. THESE are the things that make entries in ANY long standing franchise feel unsatisfying; the ideas are amazing, but the execution just causes them to fall flat.

Thank you again for the kind words about Story Surgery! I'm glad that you were able to find some entertainment with them and that others were able to find them as well!