You know - with the Mod Loader that lets you add the Lantern Engine and the Dreamcast conversion mods, this game... honestly isn't too bad.
The Sonic part, anyway. I don't know if I'm going to play through the rest again, especially since I don't think I ever really want to 100% this game. (I don't care for the Chao Garden at all)
Considering that this was a 1998 game, released on the same year as Ocarina of Time, before Super Mario Sunshine and Final Fantasy X - put into context, I can appreciate it for what it accomplishes.
For one thing, the only two 3D platformers at this point that had experimented with movement nearly as ambitious were Super Mario 64 and Spyro the Dragon. Sonic Adventure definitely isn't perfect in this aspect and relies on quite a bit of scripting to survive, but I don't think that bothers me as much as it used to anymore - though I think that's more me knowing how to play around Sonic Adventure's jank more than anything.
I see in this a similar idea of what I see in Super Mario Sunshine, actually. Both games were some of the last confident attempts at evolving the series' original direction (I think 64 logically continues on SMB3 and SMW's lineage, but that's for another time), and do a lot of ambitious things with their presentation and evolving the world they're set in, but are less than technically perfect and make more than a few missteps in the process.
The difference is that I love Sunshine to pieces in spite of its shortcomings, while even when I'm only ranking the Sonic part of this game, I could only really give it a 3.5 at best.
For one thing, while I can acknowledge how impressive the controls must have been in 1998, I don't think they're actually good from a modern perspective - whereas Sunshine's controls are a bit unconventional for Mario standards, but have aged gracefully nonetheless.
I don't really care about this game's world and story, for another thing - where Super Mario Sunshine kept me exploring Isle Delfino for hours just for the sake of it, I can't not skip the cutscenes and their awful pacing (supposedly so because the original Dreamcast release had to load each line individually), and the actual hub world design is absolutely uninteresting.
I'm going to sound like a hypocrite, considering that I still think Peach's Castle and its courtyard make for a really good hub world.
But thinking back to the Mario hub worlds that I think are undeniably well-put together, I have two examples: Delfino Plaza and New Donk City.
What I like about both of them is how they play with the core idea of Mario's moveset in meaningful ways - since Sunshine and Odyssey's incarnations of Mario are specifically some of his most vertically capable, they focus on having buildings of different heights that you have to engage in organic platforming with lots of things you can do with each of them.
I feel like as a similarly urban setting, Station Square fails to stick the landing: there are basically zero slopes that give players a sense of how Sonic's momentum is affected by the angle of the terrain.
I think it would have been interesting to build the hubs more like skateparks where players can safely experiment with Sonic's momentum and taking advantage of it - but maybe it's easier to say that in hindsight.
Sonic Adventure's non-action elements feel utterly superficial, in other words. The one thing I think Sonic Adventure 2 improved upon it was eliminating hub worlds... but I've been comparing Sonic Adventure to what it isn't for far too long in this review.
What Sonic Adventure is to me is... a decent, ambitious platformer for its time that I wish had been made with the insights of today. It's a one-of-a-kind, something that likely never will be done again, especially considering how averse Sonic Team seem to be in revisiting this kind of gameplay.
As with the rest of the series... it's the start of an embarrassing legacy.
The Sonic part, anyway. I don't know if I'm going to play through the rest again, especially since I don't think I ever really want to 100% this game. (I don't care for the Chao Garden at all)
Considering that this was a 1998 game, released on the same year as Ocarina of Time, before Super Mario Sunshine and Final Fantasy X - put into context, I can appreciate it for what it accomplishes.
For one thing, the only two 3D platformers at this point that had experimented with movement nearly as ambitious were Super Mario 64 and Spyro the Dragon. Sonic Adventure definitely isn't perfect in this aspect and relies on quite a bit of scripting to survive, but I don't think that bothers me as much as it used to anymore - though I think that's more me knowing how to play around Sonic Adventure's jank more than anything.
I see in this a similar idea of what I see in Super Mario Sunshine, actually. Both games were some of the last confident attempts at evolving the series' original direction (I think 64 logically continues on SMB3 and SMW's lineage, but that's for another time), and do a lot of ambitious things with their presentation and evolving the world they're set in, but are less than technically perfect and make more than a few missteps in the process.
The difference is that I love Sunshine to pieces in spite of its shortcomings, while even when I'm only ranking the Sonic part of this game, I could only really give it a 3.5 at best.
For one thing, while I can acknowledge how impressive the controls must have been in 1998, I don't think they're actually good from a modern perspective - whereas Sunshine's controls are a bit unconventional for Mario standards, but have aged gracefully nonetheless.
I don't really care about this game's world and story, for another thing - where Super Mario Sunshine kept me exploring Isle Delfino for hours just for the sake of it, I can't not skip the cutscenes and their awful pacing (supposedly so because the original Dreamcast release had to load each line individually), and the actual hub world design is absolutely uninteresting.
I'm going to sound like a hypocrite, considering that I still think Peach's Castle and its courtyard make for a really good hub world.
But thinking back to the Mario hub worlds that I think are undeniably well-put together, I have two examples: Delfino Plaza and New Donk City.
What I like about both of them is how they play with the core idea of Mario's moveset in meaningful ways - since Sunshine and Odyssey's incarnations of Mario are specifically some of his most vertically capable, they focus on having buildings of different heights that you have to engage in organic platforming with lots of things you can do with each of them.
I feel like as a similarly urban setting, Station Square fails to stick the landing: there are basically zero slopes that give players a sense of how Sonic's momentum is affected by the angle of the terrain.
I think it would have been interesting to build the hubs more like skateparks where players can safely experiment with Sonic's momentum and taking advantage of it - but maybe it's easier to say that in hindsight.
Sonic Adventure's non-action elements feel utterly superficial, in other words. The one thing I think Sonic Adventure 2 improved upon it was eliminating hub worlds... but I've been comparing Sonic Adventure to what it isn't for far too long in this review.
What Sonic Adventure is to me is... a decent, ambitious platformer for its time that I wish had been made with the insights of today. It's a one-of-a-kind, something that likely never will be done again, especially considering how averse Sonic Team seem to be in revisiting this kind of gameplay.
As with the rest of the series... it's the start of an embarrassing legacy.