In my honest opinion, even if Sega made a very, very, VERY solid and polished Sonic 3D game, the best in the whole series even, fans would still complain about it not being classic Sonic because they wish for EVERY NEW game to bring the series back to superstardom, creating really high standards that might never be met.
I mean, Sonic Rush on the DS was amazing, the best classic Sonic game since Sonic 2. And yet, to some it wasn't ENOUGH.
So while this doesn't excuse poor development decisions its no wonder why each Sonic game fails, even when it succeeds.
Maybe I just learned to accept the Sonic games as they are and not expect the moon whenever a new game is announced.
But "Black Knight" interests me because its based off of "Secret Rings", but with combat thrown in. In my opinion, this is how the werehog levels should have been; rip the guts out of robots and enemies at light speed.