Sometimes you'll need to talk to a specific character to advance the plot or help another character with his/her problem. In hubs, Sonic visits townsfolk, gathers information, helps people with various tasks, and can shop too. While the story has our hero hopping between various locales, each continent is home to its own city hub, action stages, and a Gaia Temple. Unleashed follows Sonic as he attempts to fix a broken Earth, continent by continent. Since available items and events change with the time, it's a good practice to check every place twice-once at day and again at night. Time can be passed through the world map, in the pause menu, and by using hourglasses (commonly found in Entrance Stages). The story controls the flow of time up to a point and then you can switch on the fly. At a certain point in the story Sonic can try to drive the dark spirits out, equating to a timed fight against a set number of enemies. Some people become weighed down with Dark Gaia energy when the moon comes up. Unique to nighttime cities are possessions and exorcisms.

Other things change too, such as the nature and layout of action stages, as well as what can be done in the city hubs. Sonic is lightning quick with the sun up and a powerful Werehog at night, each with their own controls.

The hook of Unleashed is its alteration between night and day.

Sonic unleashed enemies