After having played Sonic Adventure DX a couple years back for the first time, I have finally gotten around to playing through the one I was really interested in, Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle). Being born in 1998, ALOT of people around me loved Sonic and swore by this game. I was a Nintendo kid through and through, and really despised Sega games for a while, because child me mixed up the logos for Sega and Sears, so I assumed that all Sega games were made at Sears. And I hated Sears as a kid because my grandmom would always take me there and it was boring. The only Sega game I gave an exception for, was Super Monkey Ball 2. Because I recived it with my Gamecube one Christmas and I remember thinking after playing it that "this is the ONE good game that Sears has made.". I did play Sonic Adventure 2 a little as a kid though, at my Aunt's house when she would babysit us. It was brand new on the Gamecube at the point and I only really have memories of playing City Escape over and over because I was too young to get passed it. So I thought Sonic Adventure was actually a skateboarding game for a little bit since all I was playing was City Escape. As I grew up, alot of people around me kept talking about Sonic Adventure 2 like it was the second coming of christ, where I could only really chime in if Mario was in the conversation. Sonic Mania was my first REAL exposure to playing (and liking) Sonic games back in 2017, and I have been catching up since then. I think Sonic Adventure 2 is a really good game. Which is surprising because after playing Sonic Adventure 1, I was under the impression that most people were just very nostalgic for the Adventure games. I liked Adventure 1, but it was really all over the place, cryptic and confusing outside the Sonic and Tails levels. Sonic Adventure 2 really focuses in and cuts the gameplay styles in half, making the whole experience so much more enjoyable. While I do miss Station Square as a hub world, Station Square could also be extremely confusing in Adventure 1 and made me use a guide multiple times. Adventure 2's level design is equally as good for Sonic stages, if not better. Knuckles and Rouge stages can be annoying, but there generally fun. Tails and Eggman stages are also more fun than anything in Adventure 1 outside of Sonic's stages. The music is extremely good and iconic to the era when this came out. I really didnt even play this game back in the day like I said, but still feel a weird secondhand nostalgia for the late Dreamcast visuals and qualities. Definitely has its problems, but worthy of the praise it gets. And this is all without the Chao Garden, which one day I'll get around to understanding.