An Adventure of a Lifetime...


I will preface this by saying Sonic Adventure 2 is my favourite Sonic game, and probably in my top 10 favourite games of all time, so some of my opinions towards it might be a little biased.
Many fans are divided between the two Adventure games, both did some things better, and some things worse.

Gameplay
While Sonic's venture into 3D might been rocky, Adventure 2 builds upon the first iteration in many ways and also deviates by offering 3 different gameplay styles this time around:
Speed (Sonic and Shadow)
Mech (Tails and Eggman)
Emerald Hunters (Knuckles and Rouge)

Speed
Sonic and Shadow's gameplay is the most simple and definitely the most refined out of the three;
Traverse the environment as fluidly and as quickly as you can, and get to the goal at the end.
You have the homing attack to chain enemies and use that to get to higher platforms or score bonuses.
Getting to the goal faster will reward you with a better score.

Mech
Tails and Eggman's gameplay consists of you getting to the goal at the end of the level while racking up combo hits with your missile attacks. The more you can lock on in one fell swoop, the better your score will be.

Emerald Hunters
Lastly, Knuckles and Rouge's gameplay has you exploring a level to find three hidden shards of the fractured Master Emerald. These may be hidden underground, in boxes, etc. Sometimes the shards are swapped out for something different like keys for plot reasons. Finding shards as quickly as possible will net you a better score.

Story
The story in SA2 is a thing that a lot of people either love or hate, due to the fact that it likes to take itself almost too seriously sometimes. The gist of the plot is that Eggman finds the "Ultimate Lifeform" known as Shadow, whom his grandfather created, he releases Shadow into the world and promptly starts causing havoc.
The public mistakes Shadow for Sonic, and ends up being captured.
While all this is going on, the Master Emerald is shattered and Knuckles and Rouge go head to head trying to find them, each for their own reasons. Eventually, this becomes a massive fight for the world as the mystery of the Space Colony ARK unveils its dark secrets...

Music
Another point of merit that SA2 has going for it is the soundtrack.
SA1 had a soundtrack spanning various genres, primarily indulging in hard rock.
SA2 takes after it, but infuses its full-sounding, (sometimes) grunge-y guitar riffs with synthesizer melodies and adorned with electronic influences all over. To add to this, it has a kickass main theme, 'Live and Learn', performed by the beloved Crush 40, who was also responsible for Open Your Heart, the main theme of SA1. They would go on to make music for Sonic games for years to come.
It's honestly a marvel of a soundtrack, and I personally listen to it on a regular basis.

Although I could sing its praises, SA2 is not a perfect game. It has the same jank that SA1 struggled with, in some cases worse than before. The camera is unruly and will definitely be responsible for making you plummet to your death at least once or twice. Some of the physics can break and throw you off course.

And that is just how it originally was back on the Dreamcast and Gamecube.

The PC port for this game can be actively horrid at the worst times and at best, playable. One of the main problems for me with the PC port is that it only takes d-pad input rather than analog input. What this means is that even if you're playing with a controller, the game will still think you're using a d-pad and thus makes the movement jagged and unpredictable.
In a game like this, where speed is key, maneuverability and ease of it should be a priority.
It is especially noticeable on curves and slopes in the terrain, like in Green Forest for example, where you will sometimes suddenly stop at a curved surface because the input is going awry.

Besides the input problem, the audio mixing is awful and the sound effects are often a lot louder than the music, which in some cases is really annoying and will drive you insane, like the water dripping sfx in Aquatic Mine.
The problem with characters cutting in on each others' dialogue and sound being poorly mixed (you can barely hear characters over how loud the BGM is) hasn't been fixed at all.

Additionally, this version of the game can be really buggy. Plenty of visual bugs in cutscenes and sometimes the movement screwing up. Some people's computers run this game at 2x the speed because of refresh rate and many, many other bugs and technical issues...

There is no way to adjust any of these problems in the game, so you're stuck sifting through modding guides and mod loaders to make the game playable and to implement plenty of QoL improvements that this game desperately needs.
SEGA have been really neglectful both for this game and SA1, and fans had to create a catch-all mod to fix SA1 on Steam cause it was nearly unplayable.

This is a really good game marred by a bad port to the PC platform, which is really disappointing.
Sonic Adventure 2 was the debut of a really important character for this franchise, as well as paving the way for future 3D titles, for better or worse, it is still worth playing in this day and age, when the Sonic franchise is in a rut.

If you're still reading this, thank you for coming to my Ted talk!

Sonic Adventure 2 reflects for the most part what the Sonic franchise has shown over the years: incosistency in terms of having good content but also bad content. Thankfully, SA2 has more good content, mixed with some average and a few poor levels. For the most part, the Sonic and Shadow levels are the best (unsurprisingly) with the other character levels ranging from good to average to some bad.

Graphics are colorful, performance is good portraying a sense of fast speed in the levels that matter the most, and controls are for the most part fairly good. The added Chaos garden section helps extend replay value.

This game is one of my favorite games of all time. Since I'm really bored I want to rewrite my review of Sa2. I'll be talking about the stages as if you're going for the max rank which is the coveted A rank.

The speed stages this time around a lot more linear than Sa1's speed stages but don't mistake that for Sonic controlling worse. Playing as Sonic or Shadow in this game feels so buttery smooth I love it. Getting A rank in the speed stages require not only speed but interacting stage gimmicks be it timing a jump off of trick ramps, homing attack chains, or jumping from rail to rail the game will award you points. What will or won't give you points depends on a stage to stage basis so it's up to you to experiment with stage and find out what will give you the most score in a timely manner. I still find new secrets and point awards when I replay this game it's awesome.

Gonna talk about the mech stages next. This is like a run and gun game. The goal is to get a long enemy chain before firing your shots and making sure to avoid enemy attacks in order to not lose your chain and the points you gain along with it. It's somewhat simple but each mech stage has a unique gimmick, whether it be blasting down doors before you run into them, a focus on platforming, or a risk and reward mechanic. Given the mechs can move a bit clunky but at this point I don't really care.

The treasure hunting stages are the hardest for newcomers and if you aren't a fan I can't blame you honestly. These stages have a hard focus on exploration and speedrunning. You'll need to map out a route of each stage which lets you backtrack and run through it the fastest in order to collect those tiny rocks. On the more vertical stages there are rockets which will blast you up high in the level which can help with your search. Usually riding the rocket will even help you start detecting where the master emerald shards are hidden such as on Pumpkin hill or Meteor herd from time to time. There are also more cramp stages which can really put your exploration skills to the test and it's a really good time either way. Also helps that the music on those stages are all time bangers.

I'm still really shocked at how good this game's level design is, especially after learning it was only developed in 6 months. There's only like 2 or 3 stages in this game that I genuinely dislike. The music is also as usual an absolute bop. Each character has a genre of music that fits their character and no song in this ost is a miss. The story is also surprising good even if the voice acting can be hit or miss. Still Ryan Drummond as Sonic and Dean Bristow as Eggman nail their characters and the vas for Shadow and Rouge aren't half bad either. All and all I'd say this game rocks