The period leading up to Sonic Adventure 2's launch was one colored by excitement and confusion. I remember pouring over magazine articles covering the game and being both in awe and a bit concerned about the direction Sonic Team was going. It was set in a city that looked decidedly like San Fransisco, Sonic was trading out his traditional sneakers for SOAP shoes, and uh... that bat has boob physics. These were certainly choices!

Nevertheless, I was hyped for the game and took a small weekend job to scrape together enough money to buy a copy. I unfortunately came up a bit short, but thankfully had a friend who was nice enough to invite me over to play the game with him on launch night. We went through the entire game in a single sitting, and by the time the credits for the final story were rolling, I decided I didn't want to buy Sonic Adventure 2 anymore.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't really like this game. I never liked this game. I also love this game. I am a man of contradictions, an embodiment of id and ego. No super ego, though. Otherwise I'd be self-critical enough to not do this shit.

The first and most apparent thing about Sonic Adventure 2 is how structurally different it is from the first Adventure game. People really didn't like stuff like the adventure fields or Big the Cat, so those were tossed out in favor of a more streamlined story mode and easter eggs of Big in various states of distress. I'm sorry they're treating you like this, King. I am not one to shirk tradition, so I'm going to stick with what works and start by breaking down the various gameplay modes much like I did in my review for Sonic Adventure. Ok, let's begin: I wish Shadow the Hedgehog was my dad, maybe my parents would still be together

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Sonic/Shadow: Sonic's repertoire is expanded upon greatly, including a new roll, bounce attack, modified lightspeed dash, and rail grinding. Unfortunately, not all of the changes Sonic Team made were for the better.

The lightspeed dash can now be initiated by tapping the B button when approaching a trail of rings, which at face value is an improvement as you no longer have to come to a dead stop to use the move, but it's incredibly finicky and often doesn't work properly. Similarly, rail grinding is more involved than it is in subsequent games, requiring you to lean into turns to maintain and build speed. I get what Sonic Team was going for, but the way Sonic wobbles around when he's stuck on a rail feels unnatural and wonky, and sometimes causes you to hitch up and lose your momentum. It just feels awkward and somewhat counter-intuitive. And really, that's my problem with Sonic and Shadow's levels. All these new techniques are ostensibly designed to allow the player to perform more acrobatic stunts as Sonic without breaking their flow through the level, but due to poor implementation, a handful of these moves create the exact problem their inclusion is meant to rectify. Even things like the homing attack don't quite feel right, with the timing between attacks often being inconsistent. This was a bit of an issue in the first game too, but Sonic Adventure 2 requires you to use it far more often to cover large gaps over bottomless pits, and there's nothing worse than having Sonic lock on to the wrong enemy or botch the attack entirely by having a lock fail to form.

On the bright side, that sick sense of satisfaction I get from breaking Sonic Adventure's levels is alive and well here. Well timed spin dashes against inclines and corners makes you feel like you're in control of SA2's screwy physics, and much like the skip in Emerald Coast, it has become tradition (or perhaps habit) to launch myself off the rails near the start of Final Rush and carefully navigate my way through free fall towards rails far below. Sonic and Shadow's stages are a nightmare to get A ranks on, yet they're also the most fun, because the absurd requirements almost force you to become intimate enough with each level that you learn how to bust them wide open. It's for that reason that, despite all their faults, I find Sonic and Shadow's levels to be the most enjoyable part of Sonic Adventure 2, and the main reason why I return to it so often despite generally disliking the game.

Knuckles/Rouge: I'm on record saying I never cared for Knuckles' treasure hunting levels, so the fact that there's just more of them here isn't a positive. I'm convinced the only reason anyone bears any fondness for them is because of the goofyass rap music that plays throughout each stage.

Sonic, what are you doin' here?
I heard you were on a quest for the Master Emerald
You know me and you don't get along
I don't think that's the point right now, Knuckles
I know how much the Emerald means to you, and I wanna help get it back
Stop being stubborn and think!
Well, I guess you're right
You're damn right, Knuckles!

That's why Hunnid-P gets paid the big bucks.

Personally, I always like Rouge's jazzier tracks way more. One of Sonic Adventure 2's greatest strengths is how varied and distinct each character's music is. Sonic of course has very upbeat rock music, which acts as a great contrast to Shadow's more dirty, grungy, and industrial themes. Tails' music has a very hopeful feel, whereas Eggman's is more sinister. Sonic Adventure 2, you see, is all about contrasts.

Uhh, anyway the treasure hunting is bad. The clues you're given are often just vague enough as to be unhelpful unless you've already untangled what they mean, to the point which you need only one small hint to know precisely where to go. Otherwise, much of these stages involve you bumbling around trying to follow your fairly inaccurate radar through stages that feels clumsy and painful to navigate. Death Chamber can eat me, but so can Aquatic Mine, and Meteor Herd, and Egg Quarters and Mad Space.

Tails/Eggman: Gamma's action stages worked because they were short and had a good arcadey hook. Drag those out into levels that approach or exceed 8 minutes, have genuinely unpleasant platforming, and which ditch the time limit gimmick entirely, and you have something I just don't care to play.

By my count, there are nine of these levels total, in addition to nine treasure hunting stages, versus ten speed stages. If you want to break it all down mathematically (and clearly I do) then nearly 2/3's of this game is Shit George Doesn't Like™.

Kart Racing: Honorable mention to the two cart racing stages, which genuinely feel like someone's very first attempt to program a video game. Atari Karts feels better than this, and I'm really not sure how you can fuck up that bad.

Chao Gardening: At the risk of digging my own grave even deeper (up to my chest now, spitting and screaming about Eggman levels), I don't understand what people love so much about the Chao gardens. Thankfully, you don't have to interact with these whatsoever. Well, if you don't want to unlock Green Hill Zone, anyway...

My first time going through Sonic Adventure 2, I messed around in the Chao gardens a little bit. It's neat how there's three different gardens now and how Chao can grow into light, dark, or centrist Chao, but the racing is still bad, and the grind of feeding them animals and chaos drives is beyond tedious. I bounced off of it and moved on with my life... that is, until I pulled open the back of a magazine and found out you actually unlock something for getting all the emblems in Sonic Adventure 2. That something is, of course, Green Hill Zone, rendered in 3D long before that became it's own tired trope. I immediately went back and got to Chao gardening.

Despite how much I don't like Sonic Adventure 2, there is still something compelling about it that keeps drawing me back in. So much so that I've gotten all the emblems three times over: once in the original Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast, once in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the Gamecube, and once via emulation when doing my bucket list. Sadly, my VMUs have died, but I can at least provide photographic evidence of the other two times I did this! If anything, I hope this at least validates that you'll never succeed in making me feel any different about this game than I do, because I have spent more time with it than I have my own family.

Anyway, the Chao garden is a grind. You pick up animals from defeated badniks in action stages just like in Sonic Adventure to take back with you to the Chao garden. These animals will buff certain stats and change physical attributes on the Chaos, allowing you to guide their growth. However, more often than not you'll be dragging your carcass back to the Chao garden with pockets full of chaos drives, which are the primary fuel source used in GUN's military robots, SA2's most common enemies. GUN robots are boring, generic, and plentiful, with Sonic Adventure 2 marking the series first step away from bespoke robots themed around specific levels. You'll need to cancel all your plans and probably end a few friendships to free up enough time to train your Chao and finish every race, though you can expedite this process through an exploit where you drop the animal or drive just far enough for the Chao to benefit from while causing it to fall out of their hands, allowing you to use it a second time. While this may cut the amount of time you need to grind in half, we're talking like, 8 hours instead of 16. I think. I've never actually timed it but boy it sure feels like it takes just as long to wrap up Chao racing as it does getting every other emblem in the rest of the game. It's a drag.

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Ok, I lied a little about how I was going to structure this review. Just like Sonic Adventure 2, it ended up being one long, continuous, messy stream of content.

I know for a lot of people Sonic Adventure 2 was their first Sonic game, and therefor formed a baseline in the same way Sonic the Hedgehog 2 did for me. I can't begrudge anyone for thinking it's the best in the series, even if I find myself utterly incapable of viewing it as such after (at least) a hundred hours of trying. Of course, I wouldn't keep coming back to it if there wasn't something to like. Sonic's (and by extension, Shadow's) gameplay is still compelling, if a bit janky, and finally gaining mastery over SA2's bullshit is extremely satisfying even if I might find said bullshit to be the consequence of poor design. Perhaps it's all masochistic. Maybe I like this pain.

I guess that's why it's a 2.5/5, even if the blackest parts of my heart want to slap a 1 on this thing, go "ya'll crazy" and leave it at that. I've never put so much time time into a game I don't like, and that's because its good qualities have such a magnetic pull that I keep coming back, dragged by my feet, nails digging at the floor... It's good vs evil. Hero vs dark.

From this point on, Sonic games began to lack stylistic, mechanical, and narrative continuity, sending the series down a path that would largely be defined by its failures rather than successes. It also marked the first time I sat down and really questioned what specific qualities drew me to Sonic in the first place. It's also Sonic's swan song on Sega consoles, and it honestly seems like Sonic Team was ready to move on from the series as well. If only they were allowed to. Just let them make Billy Hatcher games, god damnit, we'd probably all be better off for it!

I could probably write another couple paragraphs on how tonally weird this game is, or talk about the online features that you can no longer access, but I just realized that the Wii can't read physical memory cards when playing games off the hard drive, and that means I have an ISO of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle without a 100% complete save! Oh no!! I guess that means I'll probably be writing a mountain of words about that too, so thank you for reading PART ONE of my two part Sonic Adventure 2 review, please tune in next time for the Dark Story where I play too much Sonic Adventure 2 and lose my fucking mind and blow up half o fthe moon up !