RadioSEGA Review: Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)

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RadioSEGA Review: Sonic Adventure 2 (Dreamcast)

Post by Reknoc »

(Considering I'm supposed to be the "retro" guy my only other official review is for a game that came out this year. So here's something abit older.)

Looking back on Sonic Adventure and I realise that it's not very good. But it's more of a first game in the series jank, there's the potential there for something quite decent it just needs some refining and fixing. Sonic the Hedgehog had this and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was what happened after, a much much better game. So logically Sonic Adventure 2 should be as good as Sonic 2, right?

Well no. Instead of taking what was good and improving it while fixing or removing what was bad, Sonic Adventure 2 seems to have done entirely the opposite, taken what was bad and making it worse while breaking or removing what made it good. That said at least they did remove the awful hub world rubbish.

So in Sonic Adventure 1 you chose Sonic and as you played through his story mode you unlocked other characters you can choose to play as for their own story. This was a pretty good way of doing it because each character played quite differently. In Sonic Adventure 2 you choose between Team Light and Team Dark, and you shuffle through different character's levels in the team. Unfortunatly 4/6 characters (2/3 for a team) had some absolutely awful levels. So in Team Edward you have Sonic, Knuckles and Tails. Sonic and Knuckles stages are more or less the same as what they were in the first game but Tails' stages are more like Gamma's in Sonic Adventure 1 only without the time limit, on longer levels with a slower robot. Team Jacob consists of Eggman and two new and pretty awful characters Rouge the Bat and Shadow the Hedgehog. Rouge is some kind of horrible sexed up thief and Shadow is a mopey rubbish redesign of Sonic with hoverskates. They all have their Light Team equivelent; Eggman plays the same as Tails, Rouge as Knuckles and somewhat obviously Shadow as Sonic.

So then gameplay happens! First let's look at Sonic and Shadow's stages, easily the best of the bunch and also funnily enough the least common. So Sonic Adventure had some jank, Sonic didn't always control well and some of the "advanced" techniques were kind rubbish to pull off. Now couple that, make it abit worse and also make sure sometimes the stages would just glitch out and not let you hold on to something you need to, or let you fall through the floor and you basically have the running stages. Of course the ring dash thing also makes a return and is natually incredibly choosey about letting you actually do the move instead of just falling into the bottom less pit that most of the stages consist of.

Next up are Knuckles and Rouges, the treasure hunt stages. Big boring areas where 3 items will be hidden in random locations from a selection of several. The stages tend to be just way to big making most of them a massive chore while you search around for items, some of which require the wall crawling Knuckles is somewhat known for (Rouge can also do it as well as gliding) which is, suprise surprise, sometimes abit glitchy.

Now for the worst offenders. Eggman and Tails' awful mech stages. These seem to be twice as long as everyone elses stages, with painfully slow characters. Oh and let's not forget that there's platforming, do your tiny jumps and hope you make it and that the floor is actually there this time instead of just looking like it's there.

After you do both teams theres a special stage which has you go through as all of the characters bringing along all of the problems with their stages. Totally not worth the hassle.

There are also some badly thought out driving stages.

Graphically it's not bad, it's certainly an improvement over Sonic Adventure and can sometimes look pretty decent. There's not much else to say about it since it's alright for the Dreamcast but was nothing mind blowing.

Sound, haha, oh dear. Voice acting was awful, but that's not surprising. What is surprising however is just how bad most of the music is. Some of it's so bad I can't help but kinda like just because of how awful it is (Pumpkin Hill). Sound effects are about what you'd expect, but in the DC version the ring sound would sometimes cut out.

Story is a Sonic story, awful awful awful. Next.

Oh... well. So there you have it a Sonic game where for the most part you don't play as Sonic but his stupid friends with awful gameplay. A massive waste of the potential Sonic Adventure had shown a little of.

1/5
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Post by Kaito-kun »

The Chao Garden was good.
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Post by Reknoc »

Oh I guess I missed a little something something out. Something so good it actually doesn't deserve to be mentioned along side this game. The improved Chao Garden.

Since there's no hubworld; characters accessed the Chao Garden by finding a key hidden in their stages. Once they've been there once you can choose them to enter the Chao Garden whenever via a map screen.

So what makes Chao Garden better than the original? Well for one depending on the character you use to look after them they can turn good or evil. Making one fully good or evil opens up a good or evil room to keep them in so they feel more at home. Another thing is that unlike Sonic Adventure where you could only improve them by feeding the tiny animals you freed to them, which would make them look terrible, you can now use drives which are colour co-ordinated to show what stat they'd improve, which outside the physical changes made by focusing on one stat still kept Chaos Chaoy.

Plus there's just more features, you could send you Chao to a school so they could learn little tricks they could do randomly while chilling in their garden. You could buy special items and toy from them from a strange shop. There are also better races and Chao sumo.

Unforunatly Chao Garden is a rather massive memory hog and takes up just too much memory card then it should.

5/5
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Post by Killer French Bread »

Yeah pretty much how I always felt about this. I couldn't get past the last few levels it got so bad. And you need to be very determined to begin with just to suffer the Knuckles stuff.

But Sonic 2 much better than the first? Nah. Better graphics maybe, like this game.
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Post by Reknoc »

I dunno I found 3 acts 1 too many and I prefered the levels in Sonic 2.
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Post by Schezo »

I never understood why they only let you look for one emerald at a time on the Treasure Hunt stages. It basically meant you had to run/glide/climb through each stage 3 times. Somewhat understandable in the 2-Player mode but not in the main game.

I have mostly fond memories of SA2 and I play it every now and then, but when I think about it, I only play the same speed stages over and over (and sometimes treasure hunting because of the cheesy rap music).
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Post by ShadowPhantom »

I don't understand why you hate Sonic games so much. Yes, SA2 had its problems and plenty of them, but I don't think it was nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

I'll admit, I didn't much care for the Knux/Rouge stages and the change to the radar made the stages very frustating. The walker idea was ok for Eggman, but putting Tails in one was a bad move on SEGA's part. The Sonic and Shadow levels were very fun though, and I did enjoy the Eggman ones sometimes.

The soundtrack had some rockin' tunes such as Vengence is Mine, That's the Way I Like It, It Doesn't Matter and Live and Learn.

I thought the voice acting was pretty good. Ryan did a very good Sonic and Eggman's, Shadow's Rouge's and Amy's voices all fit them.

But seeing as you apparently dislike Sonic a lot I can understand why you gave the game such a bad score.
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Post by Reknoc »

fyi baseless accusations about how someone feels about a series is almost as dumb as saying people hate something because it's cool to hate it.

Though just because I can, allow me to humour you.
ShadowPhantom wrote:I don't understand why you hate Sonic games so much. Yes, SA2 had its problems and plenty of them, but I don't think it was nearly as bad as you make it out to be.
I don't. Had you been able to read you would have noticed I said some positive things about previous games.
ShadowPhantom wrote:I'll admit, I didn't much care for the Knux/Rouge stages and the change to the radar made the stages very frustating. The walker idea was ok for Eggman, but putting Tails in one was a bad move on SEGA's part. The Sonic and Shadow levels were very fun though, and I did enjoy the Eggman ones sometimes.

Yea? Shame the Walker and Treasure Hunt stages counted for the majority of the levels.
ShadowPhantom wrote:The soundtrack had some rockin' tunes such as Vengence is Mine, That's the Way I Like It, It Doesn't Matter and Live and Learn.
Terrible yank buttrock doesn't do it for me.
ShadowPhantom wrote:I thought the voice acting was pretty good. Ryan did a very good Sonic and Eggman's, Shadow's Rouge's and Amy's voices all fit them.
I'll give you Eggman but he's the exception not the rule. Being fitting for annoying characters doesn't help its cause.
ShadowPhantom wrote:But seeing as you apparently dislike Sonic a lot I can understand why you gave the game such a bad score.
Second verse same as the first.

I'd say you'd be pretty hard pushed to find people who don't see the same problems with it, but they like you can look past it and find an enjoyable game, and hey more power to you. I can't, not for this game, for others? Yea maybe, I mean I like EDF games and I want Deadly Premonition.
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Post by Shadid »

Kaito-kun wrote:The Chao Garden was good.
This.
ShadowPhantom wrote:I don't understand why you hate Sonic games so much. Yes, SA2 had its problems and plenty of them, but I don't think it was nearly as bad as you make it out to be.

I'll admit, I didn't much care for the Knux/Rouge stages and the change to the radar made the stages very frustating. The walker idea was ok for Eggman, but putting Tails in one was a bad move on SEGA's part. The Sonic and Shadow levels were very fun though, and I did enjoy the Eggman ones sometimes.

The soundtrack had some rockin' tunes such as Vengence is Mine, That's the Way I Like It, It Doesn't Matter and Live and Learn.

I thought the voice acting was pretty good. Ryan did a very good Sonic and Eggman's, Shadow's Rouge's and Amy's voices all fit them.

But seeing as you apparently dislike Sonic a lot I can understand why you gave the game such a bad score.
Theres a-oh wait, Rek already said what I wanted to say. Moving on.

When I played this the 1st time back in the end of 2001, I actually liked it...until I played it recently. And after finishing Sonic Adventure for the 1st time in 9 years. My god, there are so much problems mentioned in the review that I couldn't brace for them.

And I haven't even tried getting A Rank on all stages.
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Post by TF73 »

As with everything else it's a matter of personal taste. I can understand the people don't like this game and I can also understand those who like it. Personally I thought it was fun back in the day when it was released.
Been ages since I played it now, but this review makes me want to play it again just to see if my feelings for the game have changed.

What I remember as negative though was a camera that at times can be rather frustrating.
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