I played Sonic Frontiers more recently, but I did play SA2 a few years back on Steam. Sonic Frontiers takes up more physical space, but a lot of it was just that... space. That's what I meant by it not feeling as expansive. Then there's the Chao garden.

I guess part of the problem is also the different goals for each stage. Beating the level, beating it with a certain number of rings, and beating it with the red star rings typically happened on the first run. Outside of 1-2, the speed only took a couple tries, too. I mean, the mission for some of these is to clear it with like 20 rings...

Sonic Frontiers is solid, but it just doesn't feel anywhere near as expansive as SA2, despite having an open world. Honestly, the secret paths through the speed stages in SA2 feel almost like an open world, but more streamlined. That fit better with Sonic, in my opinion. The open world in Frontiers just served to ruin any pacing the game had.