I’ve dabbled a bit in this before, but never completed it. There’s some lovingly cheesy dialogue and a ridiculous plot – both of which are great for Sonic. The main levels are mostly a lot of fun, there’s a good sense of speed and when it flows well, it’s still a great spectacle.

There are some slower platform sections – which can be good in Sonic games – but unfortunately these fall victim to the wonky controls and camera a bit more than.the faster sections, and it can be sometimes difficult to be precise with jumps (there should be a more prominent shadow underneath Sonic). Overall, the main Sonic levels are an enjoyable experience.

Everything else in Sonic’s adventure is just poor padding. You have a city to walk around to get to the stages, but it’s not really utilised, with no side missions to do with the characters, it’s just more of a fancy level select. The Casino level was mainly just repeatedly playing pinball until you have enough rings (although it does seem like you get access to a much better level if you fail the pinball), and the flying stages are rather dull.

Other characters have their own adventures. Tails is mainly flying through altered versions of Sonic’s levels, trying to be better than him but others have more unique levels. Knuckles is a treasure hunt where you have to locate parts of the master chaos emerald. Amy’s story is surprisingly pretty good, with completely new levels (only three, unfortunately) with some slower, more precise platforming that works better than those sections in Sonic’s levels. Big the Cat makes an appearance with a dreadful finishing story, while Gamma has some fairly simple shooting levels.

The music is outstanding, with some great tunes and rocking songs.

(There wasn't really a specific playthrough that gave me the idea to make this review, I just felt like making one. That being said, earlier today I played through Sonic's story for the umpteenth time, to help me derust when getting back to grinding out speedruns for the game.)

I don't really have a 1-2 sentence joke review, I just want to gush for a minute or ten. I love Sonic Adventure. It's a blast to play, casually and especially in a speedrun. This game controls insanely well; while there is jank, yes, I have not felt this amount of freedom in movement in any other game I've ever played. What would be blocked by an invisible wall in any other game can be lept across if you're thinking enough, leading to wild shortcuts that can let you skip entire sections of levels. This type of thinking outside of the box is sometimes unintentional, but there are points where they put rings or item boxes in places that you'd never be able to go if this were any other Sonic game. And I don't care whether said shortcuts are "intentional" or not, they feel amazing to pull off. Is the spindash broken? Maybe. But it's fun, and the mileage you can get with it is unmatched.

Of course, Sonic isn't the only playable character in this game. The other campaigns are where the game starts to get a bit contentious, and... I like them! Knuckles and Gamma are undoubtedly the best, and it's no wonder they were the ones Sonic Team went with when making Adventure 2. That being said, due to my love for movement and finding shortcuts, Tails is probably my favorite of the non-Sonic campaigns. Knuckles, Amy and Gamma are also very fun in their own ways, though. I've even learned to mind Big's story, now that I know the fishing mechanics a little better I can get through his story pretty painlessly (though it is still very annoying when going for 100%, I'll admit.) At first I was kind of unsure about the short lengths of the other campaigns, and I do wish they adapted more Sonic levels into Tails levels, but I think it was a good idea for them to not overstay their welcome for those that dislike it. And even then, if you only want to play as a specific character, you can just... play their story, unlike Adventure 2 and Unleashed which make you swap around all the time. Aside from a short minigame or two, you'll be running as Sonic the entire time in his campaign, racing as Tails in his campaign, etc etc. So if you just want to play as Sonic, there's nothing stopping you from doing just that and calling it a day.

What instead breaks those stages up are the hub worlds, which are what kind of makes or breaks the game for some people. Sometimes it's hard to know where to go, and sometimes you just want to get to the main gameplay. I think that's a totally fair point, and I admit that I'm a bit biased, as I had watched a fair amount of videos on the game in the years prior to playing it in 2020. There's still parts that I don't really like, like navigating the jungle in the Mystic Ruins. But overall... I like these things. They add so much life into the game, with the NPCs all having their own stories, and they're a neat attempt at bringing more immersion to the world. I enjoy having a place just to hang out and maybe do some goofy shit in between levels, to just run around in, being awarded with a few emblems or Chao eggs along the way. (I will not write about the Chao Garden in this review, as that's a whole other beast entirely; but just know I love it, even if i prefer its SA2 incarnation.)

I am still finding out weird little oddities and cool facts and details in this game to this day. From version differences, to unused things, to little details, to strange oddities, to random weird NPC lines I hadn't seen before. For example, today I learned from one of the NPCs that Amy lives in an apartment in downtown Station Square. I never really thought "Where does specifically Amy live", but I guess it's nice knowing that question's answered. Another example, I recently found out that if you plug a fightstick in when playing the Dreamcast version, pressing the Z button causes your character to look towards the screen, as some sorta debug thing they left in or something. Haven't tried it myself, but it's cool regardless! This game is an endless treasure trove of weird things to find out about, and I for one love that sort of thing.

The weird quirks and flaws, while I will acknowledge them as flaws, personally don't really affect me and are still fun to laugh off. Am I going to call this objectively an amazing game? Of course not. Am I going to pretend this game hasn't aged? Nah. I can point out a million and one problems with this game. But... I don't care, it just clicks with me. It may not be one of the best games of all time, but it's one of my personal favorite games of all time. I still am not quite sure which game is my number one favorite, but this is a contender. Everything about it, from the pleasant low-poly visuals (The DX version's fucked, if you're playing on PC, use the Dreamcast restoration mods, apparently i suck at posting hyperlinks so, https://sadxmodinstaller.unreliable.network/, yadda yadda; I don't think I had to say this, as if you're here, you probably already know. Just had to throw that out there), to the incredible soundtrack, to the freedom the gameplay gives you, to the genuinely great level design, to the utterly (albeit unintentionally) hilarious cutscenes that tell one of the best stories in the series (even if I wish the past sections were placed in spots that better explained what was going on), this game has it all for me. I respect anyone who doesn't like it, and I don't think the criticisms should be shut down, but the game just... makes me smile. I don't care if some of the reasons I love it are unintentional. The game is just a comfort game I can go back to again and again, and everything about it makes me smile. I don't think I can ask for much more than that.

Sonic Adventure is the quintessential Sonic game. By that I mean the way you feel about this game can be used as a barometer for how you'll feel about almost any other game in the series. For whatever reason it may be, some people's brains are willing and able to forgive the obvious unavoidable jank, the cheesy writing, dated voice acting, unintentionally hilarious cutscenes, and Amy and Big's sections. I will completely agree with anyone who says all those things are glaring marks against this game, but I genuinely believe the high points make up for it and turn it into one of my favourite games of all time. Sonic himself plays better than any future 3D attempts, and the level design complements his play style perfectly. Linear moments of spectacle interspersed with more open sections for pathfinding and experimentation is the perfect 3D Sonic formula for me, and outside of the two characters previously mentioned, the other gameplay styles fit really well into their respective parts of the levels.

To put it into perspective how much I love this game, the first way I played it was a dodgy download of the 2004 PC version that I played with a keyboard, and the download had replaced every single music track with the first part of Windy Valley, and I still played through the whole thing. This Xbox 360 version may be the absolute worst version of Sonic Adventure, but for being the first actual version I played it'll always be the one that holds the place in my heart.

Beat and got all emblems in Sonic Adventure (DX). I feel like I’m just repeating other people when I say this, but Sonic is incredibly fun, Tails and Knuckles are enjoyable, Amy and E-102 are fine, and Big is there too. This game is very fascinating to me and I am not sure why.

The hubs are lame and do little besides force you to look around them to progress. I’d say most stages are fun and mostly well designed (especially when you can do spin dash tricks) and the music is incredible.

If the game was solely Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, and it was all one story and it suddenly switched to another character, I think it would end up great. Those are the highlights and it’s clear they tried to prioritize them but I wish they ONLY had them.

In terms of the DX version, it’s super lame how old it looks. Yeah it’s a 1998 dreamcast title slightly “upgraded” for gamecube, but besides the models they did nothing. I feel like they could have changed so much to modernize it even though it was only a few years later.