Heh, yeah. The game had a lot of potential, but was just so weird and quirky for like the first 3 discs. Then when you're finally getting the hang of it, the story really kicks into gear and then its over.
Yeah there's a lot of interesting stuff. Really, I think the single biggest thing is Sega ruined their relationship with developers. The stupid early release for the Saturn (and then basically publicly announcing they were giving up on it within 2 years or so) hurt. I have to wonder if it went beyond that though, as it seems that companies like EA were spreading falsities about the hardware capabilities of the Saturn (or the PS1, bit of both, the main point being they claimed the PS1 was much more powerful), and then game media parroted this and so gamers were under the impression that the hardware sucked.
The sad thing is it happened pretty much the exact same way with the Dreamcast and PS2. That really highlighted how little mainstream media or even dedicated media (game media) understand this stuff. Too bad they didn't learn their lessons about Sony the 2nd and 3rd times around. Maybe the 4th.
Really, that Sega could piss off developers so badly is a testament considering Nintendo's had a rep for, forever really although it was about the worst around the N64 era, not being developer friendly. Sony hasn't exactly gotten a lot of praise there either, although I think a lot of that has been the PS2 and PS3 and the hardware Sony chose.