What can I say about Sonic Adventure 2 that hasn't already been said? If you didn't own a Sega Genesis, there's a good chance that, until Sonic Frontiers came out, this was your first Sonic game. I know it was mine. That being said, I didn't own it until recently so I think I don't have any nostalgia blindness for it. This was probably the most bang for your buck you could get out of a lot of platformers back then. Six playable characters across three campaigns, tons of side missions to try, a surprisingly robust multiplayer, and a whole game of raising animals that in all honesty is better than the main game in a lot of ways.

It tried something different with the story at the time, and while it didn't succeed in some ways, it also was doing more than Mario was at the time. While I think I prefer Sonic Adventure 1's aesthetic and laid back nature, I can't deny that this is probably the most important Sonic game. Not the best Sonic game and incredibly flawed and hinted at Sonic's wasting illness that he would develop in the 2000s, but still a fun diversion. This game was the end of one era and the beginning of another. What a way to go out and enter at the same time.