This is more of a review of SADX specifically as opposed to Sonic Adventure in general.
So SADX has garnered a lot of hate in the Sonic community, mostly because of its graphics and how it’s “so glitchy to the point of being unplayable.”
As someone who’s played SADX since forever, I can say that a lot of the criticisms against it have been ridiculously exaggerated, and even fabricated in some instances.
To get the most obvious change out of the way, the graphics have seen an update. Many of the textures have been replace with newer ones to make the world look more modern and realistic. Some of the character models have also seen an upgrade from their original Dreamcast models. The game has also been updated to run at 60fps which is pretty good. I think the new visuals are very good overall and look better than the original visuals. Sure, the lighting doesn’t look as good as the original, but that can easily be forgiven since it doesn’t have any impact on gameplay. Really, the major gripe is that SADX doesn’t go the full nine yards to update every character. Eggman hasn’t seen any touch ups and still looks bad for example. And even the animations and lip syncing are still the same as they always were.
As for gameplay changes, there are actually quite a few of them. For starters, the controls have seen a mild downgrade. This is to be expected from a GameCube port, but in the case of SADX, while it does make a few areas a little bit harder, it’s not so big a deal that it ruins anything (unlike Sonic Heroes on GC which is completely destroyed by its poorly optimized controls). You can also set an option for free camera mode, which is unfortunately really useless and has no inversion options which always annoys me.
But I think I need to bring up the two biggest reasons on why I feel SADX is better than the original. First up is the addition of a map, which can really come in handy for first time players in case they get lost, especially in Mystic Ruin. Second, and most importantly, the cutscenes can now be skipped. This doesn’t sound like much, but when you remember how stilted, long and drawn out the cutscenes are in SA1, the ability to skip them at any time is enough to elevate it over the original and makes revisiting SA1 a lot less of a boring chore.
SADX also sports an updated Chao Garden to match up more with Sonic Adventure 2’s chao garden, minus the chaos drives. On GameCube, you can connect the game to a GBA link cable and transfer your chao to a Sonic Advance 1, 2, or Pinball Party cartridge to raise on the go.
The game also sports a new mission mode, which has you performing 60 tasks scattered all over the game across all 6 characters. You can also unlock Game Gear titles for every 20 emblems you get.
Lastly, I want to discuss the glitches, since that seems to be the talking point. The only real glitch that I’m aware exists is the loop at the beginning of Emerald Coast. Basically, if you let go of the Control Stick, Sonic will clip through the loop and die. However, this glitch doesn’t do any harm to the game, because you’d have to actively trigger the glitch. Any reasonable person would simply hold up and not do anything else. In fact, I’m convinced that every glitch falls into 2 categories:
1. You have to arbitrarily find and trigger them yourself.
2. They do nothing and are just harmless.
Really, I don’t see the point in complaining about glitches if you have to intentionally trigger them yourself. Why do games like Assassin’s Creed Unity or Skyrim get free passes with their constant game breaking bugs that actively harm the game, yet when Sonic Adventure DX has one loop that’s only mildly glitchy it gets lambasted into being called a bad game?
Overall, Sonic Adventure DX is a nice upgrade from the DC original. The fact that cutscenes are slippable now is enough to consider DX the superior way to play SA1.
So SADX has garnered a lot of hate in the Sonic community, mostly because of its graphics and how it’s “so glitchy to the point of being unplayable.”
As someone who’s played SADX since forever, I can say that a lot of the criticisms against it have been ridiculously exaggerated, and even fabricated in some instances.
To get the most obvious change out of the way, the graphics have seen an update. Many of the textures have been replace with newer ones to make the world look more modern and realistic. Some of the character models have also seen an upgrade from their original Dreamcast models. The game has also been updated to run at 60fps which is pretty good. I think the new visuals are very good overall and look better than the original visuals. Sure, the lighting doesn’t look as good as the original, but that can easily be forgiven since it doesn’t have any impact on gameplay. Really, the major gripe is that SADX doesn’t go the full nine yards to update every character. Eggman hasn’t seen any touch ups and still looks bad for example. And even the animations and lip syncing are still the same as they always were.
As for gameplay changes, there are actually quite a few of them. For starters, the controls have seen a mild downgrade. This is to be expected from a GameCube port, but in the case of SADX, while it does make a few areas a little bit harder, it’s not so big a deal that it ruins anything (unlike Sonic Heroes on GC which is completely destroyed by its poorly optimized controls). You can also set an option for free camera mode, which is unfortunately really useless and has no inversion options which always annoys me.
But I think I need to bring up the two biggest reasons on why I feel SADX is better than the original. First up is the addition of a map, which can really come in handy for first time players in case they get lost, especially in Mystic Ruin. Second, and most importantly, the cutscenes can now be skipped. This doesn’t sound like much, but when you remember how stilted, long and drawn out the cutscenes are in SA1, the ability to skip them at any time is enough to elevate it over the original and makes revisiting SA1 a lot less of a boring chore.
SADX also sports an updated Chao Garden to match up more with Sonic Adventure 2’s chao garden, minus the chaos drives. On GameCube, you can connect the game to a GBA link cable and transfer your chao to a Sonic Advance 1, 2, or Pinball Party cartridge to raise on the go.
The game also sports a new mission mode, which has you performing 60 tasks scattered all over the game across all 6 characters. You can also unlock Game Gear titles for every 20 emblems you get.
Lastly, I want to discuss the glitches, since that seems to be the talking point. The only real glitch that I’m aware exists is the loop at the beginning of Emerald Coast. Basically, if you let go of the Control Stick, Sonic will clip through the loop and die. However, this glitch doesn’t do any harm to the game, because you’d have to actively trigger the glitch. Any reasonable person would simply hold up and not do anything else. In fact, I’m convinced that every glitch falls into 2 categories:
1. You have to arbitrarily find and trigger them yourself.
2. They do nothing and are just harmless.
Really, I don’t see the point in complaining about glitches if you have to intentionally trigger them yourself. Why do games like Assassin’s Creed Unity or Skyrim get free passes with their constant game breaking bugs that actively harm the game, yet when Sonic Adventure DX has one loop that’s only mildly glitchy it gets lambasted into being called a bad game?
Overall, Sonic Adventure DX is a nice upgrade from the DC original. The fact that cutscenes are slippable now is enough to consider DX the superior way to play SA1.