It's gonna be controversial to say, maybe, but... I think I love this game?

Sonic Adventure 1 was ambitious. Six gameplay styles, with up to 10 levels you experience across these six, in different contexts. Six interconnected stories that culminate in a final battle. Sonic always positioned itself as cool, and stylish, compared to dumpy old Mario. Having a story more in line with a shonen anime is part and parcel of it. Is there anything more shonen than a dark rival, a mirror image? Someone with the same skills, fighting a different battle?

I think edge, applied in the right ways, can add something, and it can make a product stand out versus its counterparts. It can be done poorly, leaving the final result feeling almost campy, or crass and shallow, but I think Adventure 2 does not miss the mark. Instead of six disparate stories, you get two perspectives on one story - the Hero side, represented by Sonic, Tails (albeit in a mech) and Knuckles, while the Dark side is headed by Dr. Eggman and two newcomers, Rouge and Shadow.

Shadow is a lot like Sonic, there's a cool cockiness to both characters. Despite what popular culture kind of views Shadow as, and the validity of that depiction in later games, in SA2 he's markedly different, and acts as a sort of dark reflection of Sonic. Knuckles was a rival defined by how different he was to Sonic, whereas Shadow is moreso defined by his similarities, so much so that apparently Amy herself cannot tell the difference between the two. Both Shadow and Rouge have become series mainstays, and I think for good reason. They are cool characters, and they have interesting dynamics at play with the roster we had at the time. Ultimately, they added a little something that made the game feel more PG, compared to Mario's more all-ages appeal.

But what about the gameplay? Well, I consider it a marked improvement from SA1. There are a lot of gameplay styles going around in that one, and I think it's become clear that of those six, only three were kept around. The core gameplay of Sonic is unchanged, but simply refined and given new playgrounds. The Eggman gameplay takes Gamma's gameplay and adds some more firepower to it, as well as a health bar. It does lose something in the change, but they feel less hectic than Gamma's stages in 1. And the core gameplay of Knuckles has been brought over, with one minor change of the Emerald Radar only indicating one shard at a time. Though nothing stops you from finding them independently, the shards blend in quite easily unless you're familiar with the myriad spawn points they could occupy. But in general, each character feels tighter to control, and the levels have been made more unique for all characters - though two levels can happen in the same general area, the experience is different, and its accompanied with unique musical styles that each character is associated with.

Sonic Adventure 1 is an ambitious leap into 3D after quite an extended period away from Sonic. Sonic Adventure 2 says "We have the fundamentals down, how do we make it better? And how do we bring Sonic into the modern day?". Maybe it's not the perfect answer, but it is a very good one, melding a more serious story with tightened gameplay, cool characters and a soundtrack that I think has yet to be matched.

I've always wanted to soak my feet into jrpgs. I've played a nice handful of RPG's, but they were always games that I was drawn to for their non-RPG mechanics or alternative design conventions. Y'know, the stuff like Kingdom Hearts, Mega Man Battle Network and Star Force, Paper Mario, Undertale and Deltarune, TWEWY - the kinds of RPG's that twitter minors always include in their 'YOU'RE one of the good ones' posts. The closest to classical, traditional RPG's I ever got into were the Shining Force series and Phantasy Star IV - both of which I only got into because of my Genesis ADHD. But hey, I loved both! Even besides the narrative and aesthetic strengths of each, I was super into the simple loop of building up your squad, then going aggro on a bunch of badass monsters. And I learned from my experiences with both that surprisingly, I kinda like grinding and a lot of the other little things that people associate negatively with the genre.

So why didn't I start getting into 'the classics' of RPG's 'til now? Cause like the entire rest of my generation, I started with all of Square's big-name games and bounced off of them HAAAAAAAAAAARD. Chrono Trigger had me hooked in the first half, but left me drained by the second half when its boss design and open-endedness went in a direction that put me off immediately. I played part of FF9 and was in love, but got slowly worn out from its sluggish, 20FPS combat. I played Super Mario RPG on Wii VC cause it had Mario in it, and while I like a lot of the things it DOES, its combat was always just a less-refined Paper Mario to me, and the rough edges, dirty color palette and bad platforming pushed me off too. The only classic Square game that I was really vibing with was FF7, which I liked for the 10-15 hours of it I played! But one thing led to another, my life got busy, I got stuck somewhere, gave it up, and never looked back. I could understand the majesty and hype behind all of these games that made them genre-defining classics, but I could never get 'deep' into them. They didn't have that basic, snappy feel that made me get saturated in Shining and Phantasy Star.

Honestly, even though JRPG haters are unreasonable bitches, I wouldn't really blame them for saying stuff like Paper Mario and Persona 'got it right' when the whole internet screams to start with the big Squaresoft names - which again, aren't bad, but understandably don't appeal to everyone. Active Time Battles fucking suck dude, I get why it's a fresh change of pace for people who are FF junkies but goddamn this shit is rancid.

So instead of picking up and dropping more FF, I pivoted the other way and tried Dragon Quest for the time being. And Dragon Quest kicks ass! The leveling feels great! The feeling of branching out and surviving through each patch of the kingdom while scraping to get back to an inn or the castle before expiring is handled extremely well! And when you start getting magic that lets you minimize the busywork of items, you feel awesome! Toriyama, for as much of an asshole as he is, breathed a ton of life into the monster designs and lets them speak to the world in a way the microscopic overworld sprites couldn't. I really appreciate how the first enemies you fight are wildlife like roaming bugs and shit, but as you progress, you take on more and more of Dragonlord's direct henchmen - they're not just random encounters, these dudes are on patrol and you got on their TURF. When you finally grind up to beat the Green Dragon, and then you get to the final dungeon and TWO more variants of it appear as COMMON ENEMIES?? That's top tier kino.

Anyway this game's great, all of its design choices are laser-focused around that thrill of adventuring in a lived-in world and slowly building yourself up. Antiquated in some spots, but it gets the gameplay loop down pat and must've been even crazier back then. This was the 'hit buttons' JRPG thrill I needed to get my feet warm into the genre and rinse the taste of ATB out of my mouth.

Mobile/Switch version is ugly as shit tho, fuckin' Minecraft mod vibes.