95% of sonic games are terrible so what you expect?
Kinda this. The franchise is built around speed with environments with tons of roadblocks. And while the first few were pretty neat, the franchise lost its stride after the Genesis.
Only 2 sonic games I liked after sonic on the Genesis were sonic racing transformed on Wii U and mania. Rest were garbage. Like you said it's built on speed yet so many blocks and stops it's just poor game design. And so many games had bugs and glitches.. terrible ride for sonic overall.
I've argued against the speed thing so many times. Sonic goes fast, but the games aren't about speed...
Robotnik naturally would build speed traps because THAT"S THE CHALLENGE.