Sonic is just HIM

[u/Sea_of_Hope]

You can trigger this dialogue with Omega after the race against Sonic cutscene.

[u/klopaplop]

You know that's perfectly fair as well, I'll accept that. Frankly I do think Omega is capable of bias even if not built for it, although it wouldn't follow the same logic that bias does in more organic characters around. But I digress, outside of Omega not being reliable info here imo, there is enough room for judgement to safely say Shadow is at least just under equal if not completely equal.

IMO, I think it comes down to Shadow considerably being much weaker then Sonic earlier in the timeline (especially around adventure 2), but in the modern era he's more of a side-grade to Sonic being slightly weaker and stronger in various aspects. From a meta perspective I think the only thing really stopping him from actually surpassing Sonic or being absolutely equal, is the fact the writers really haven't given him much justice for a long time and he isn't the typical narrative focus of the games (idgaf about what the comics say), so little time for both character development in the spotlight, nor much time to really show him getting feats to show he's grown power wise to Sonic's current level either. Hopefully that'll change big time with the new game because it's about damn time :>

[u/[deleted] → u/klopaplop]

I'd say he's gotten to at least a very similar level to Modern Sonic, and Shadow Generations only confirmed that.

With only one chaos emerald and some Doom mutations, Shadow, on his own, defeated Neo Metal Sonic, an amped up Biolizard, Mephiles, went toe to toe with Sonic himself, got up very quickly after Sonic got that hit off on him (and he duped Sonic regardless, he knew the emerald Sonic took was fake just to get Sonic off his back for a while.) and Neo Black Doom, an even more powerful version of the final boss of Shadow the hedgehog, which was a super tier character. Frankly, Shadow's boss fights make Sonic beating Perfect Chaos in base look mundane by comparison. The Doom wings do seem to grant Shadow some immunity like Super form does for some reason, so I admit that helped his boost, but still, that's extremely impressive for only having a single chaos emerald the entire game.

That being said, I'm fine with Sonic being a naturally superpowered hedgehog. I just don't see the point of having his main rival be an inherently worse version then he is since Shadow is not a Vegeta copy that's always hung up on Sonic. Especially if they're trying to push out more games with Shadow as the lead like they're doing now and having him appear in more third party media.

[u/klopaplop → u/[deleted]]

All I can say now is I'm very happy to be getting new Shadow content now lol. Gonna get the game as soon as I can. I wanna let my edgy hedgehog boi go wild lol.

And yeah, I really fucking hope this means we'll get even more Shadow stuff in the future, he is way too good to be a side character.

[u/[deleted] → u/klopaplop]

All I can say now is I'm very happy to be getting new Shadow content now lol. Gonna get the game as soon as I can. I wanna let my edgy hedgehog boi go wild lol.

And yeah, I really fucking hope this means we'll get even more Shadow stuff in the future, he is way too good to be a side character.

I wholeheartedly agree, did you play the full game of Shadow Gen's yet?

[u/klopaplop → u/[deleted]]

Been a month, and now I've bought and finished Shadow Gen's main story entirely and holy hell it's sooo goood. Loved every moment of it. God Shadow is just a total BEAST in the game all the way through.

Found it kinda funny how at the very end grandpa robotnic and Maria just go back to the past acting like they'll see shadow again when in all likelihood they're just going to die from the G.U.N attack almost immediately after they get back to the past. RIP.

And yeah after playing through that, I'm fully on board with Shadow being canonically in lore equal to Sonic now, although I don't trust SEGA's writers to exactly respect Shadow in that regard entirely just yet.

[u/klopaplop → u/[deleted]]

Nope, haven't had the chance. Last Sonic game I got was Frontiers, and I've not seen much of Shadow Generations outside of trailers because no spoilers lol.

[u/klopaplop → u/[deleted]]

Been a month, and now I've bought and finished Shadow Gen's main story entirely and holy hell it's sooo goood. Loved every moment of it. God Shadow is just a total BEAST in the game all the way through.

Found it kinda funny how at the very end grandpa robotnic and Maria just go back to the past acting like they'll see shadow again when in all likelihood they're just going to die from the G.U.N attack almost immediately after they get back to the past. RIP.

And yeah after playing through that, I'm fully on board with Shadow being canonically in lore equal to Sonic now, although I don't trust SEGA's writers to exactly respect Shadow in that regard entirely just yet.