Sonic Adventure 2 was released in the summer of 2001, a few months after Sega announced
they were discontinuing the Dreamcast and becoming a third party developer.
Sonic Adventure 2 was met with high acclaim upon release, with the press and gamers alike
proclaiming it one of the best Dreamcast games, ever.
A swan song of sorts.
The game starts off strong, picking up where Sonic Adventure 1 left off.
Sonic races down the streets of a city at breakneck speeds.
The music is upbeat, the frame rate is excellent, and there is an obligatory chase scene, setting
the Adventure tone, perfectly.
After the level is complete, there is no hub world slowing the game down, the cut scenes
have better lip syncing, and the voice acting is a step above the first game.
The second level changes the pace up completely, and introduces the Knuckles levels to the
game.
Here we must find three pieces of the Master Emerald.
Unfortunately, all of the Knuckles levels are incredibly tedious and time consuming.
The radar at the bottom of the screen is nerfed, and only works on one emerald at a time.
The stages are also incredibly vast, and often times you'll float around for a few minutes
before even getting a blip on your radar.
When you compound these two elements, you have stages that are dreadful and just not
fun to play.
They are real pace breakers, with a couple of these taking me well over 20 minutes to
complete.
Finally, we have Tails.
Rather than traditional platforming levels with flying, Tails is rocking a mech, complete
with lock-on missiles.
These stages are very hit or miss for me.
The concept doesn't offend me as much as it should, and some of them do offer satisfying
platforming experiences.
Others are again, tedious.
Often times it feels like the same sections of the levels are simply repeated over and
over to pad out their length, rather than offering new gameplay elements.
Eternal Engine is the worst, as you can actually blow up sections of the ship and get sucked
out.
Since the aiming of your weapon is questionable at best, you just sort of go through the level
and hope enemies don't hit you.
Now that I mention it, a lot of Sonic's levels have the same stretches of gameplay repeated
over and over as well.
It's as though the developers were afraid of receiving criticism about length, and padded
things out to appease them, rather than creating what they wanted.
There are other cracks to the gameplay as well.
The bosses are mostly terrible.
Far too many of them are awkward fights against another character in the Sonic Universe.
They offer very little challenge, contain no clever patterns, and are very uninspired.
Once and a while, you get something cool like this Golem.
You have to dodge his attack, get behind him, and bonk him in the head.
It's exactly what you want from a boss in a Sonic game.
But these are rare.
The game wraps up with Sonic and the gang foiling Eggman's world domination plans, blowing
up the death egg space ark colony thing and Sonic giving us his approving thumbs up.
Playing through Sonic Adventure 2 14 years later, I can't help but feel disappointed.
The level design is lackluster, we spend far too much time hoping to stumble upon an emerald
shard, and too little time racing around at break neck speeds, having, you know, fun.
***
Unfortunately, this is just the Hero side of the campaign.
After slogging through 15 levels, there is an entire Dark campaign to go through.
This is much like the Hero campaign.
Shadow has Sonic-styled gameplay, Eggman has Tails styled mech levels, and Rouge has treasure
hunting levels.
This campaign starts off promising enough.
We get to see Eggman in his own element, and then actually take him through a great level
where he is infiltrating a government facility.
But after the novelty of actually playing as the main villain wears off, the exact same
problems I've already mentioned begin to take hold.
Only worse.
Every issue I have with the Hero campaign is compounded in the Dark campaign.
First, there are just 4 stages featuring Shadow, who has the best game play style.
Next, the treasure hunting stages with Rouge are somehow worse than the Knuckles stages.
Security Hall is the absolute worst level I have ever played in a Sonic game, ever.
For some reason, you have a 5:00 time limit.
As other levels have taken over 20 minutes, it should be obvious why 5:00 is a really
awful gameplay mechanic.
Needless to say, I failed at this level, a lot.
What's even more bizarre is that when time runs out, you have to start over from scratch.
However, if you die, you get to revert back to the position, and time, of your last emerald
find.
Therefore, if you are running out of time, your best option is to kill yourself.
The dark side also features a convoluted story with Eggman trying to destroy the Earth, Shadow
trying to discover who he is, and the government trying to stop both of them.
Like the previous game, playing the Dark side adds new elements to the story, as well show
things from a new perspective.
It all intertwines in an attempt to be clever.
At times, it's just dumb.
The character boss fights are all repeated, except when playing the Hero side, the Hero
wins.
When playing the dark side, the villain wins.
It feels sloppy.
***
But Sonic Adventure 2 doesn't stop there.
After completing the dark campaign, a final chapter becomes available.
Here, the two stories come together, and our 6 characters must work together to prevent
the destruction of, everything.
For me, this is the final nail on Sonic Adventure 2's coffin.
Everything I dislike about this game is amplified in this final section.
Dr. Eggman and Tails must take their mechs to achieve some objective related to the final
plot element.
But of course, it's extra frustrating.
Enemies drop down from nowhere to hit you, or worse, you're stuck facing annoying enemies
that can't be taken out, without again, taking damage.
Rouge then takes over with a puzzle based level, opposed to hunting emeralds, which
is sort of refreshing.
The level is then handed off to Knuckles, and this is where the game finally falls apart
for me.
This section of the final level is water based, and the tasks you are required to do take
longer than the amount of time Knuckles can survive before drowning.
It turns out, at some point in the last 8 hours, I've missed an upgrade.
Sonic Adventure 2 places upgrades in the actual levels, and they are often hidden, and mostly
optional.
Except this one.
I had to go on the internet and figure out what on Earth I'd missed.
It turns out I was supposed to find something in Aquatic Mine.
Even though this item is effectively required to beat the last level, it is completely hidden
in an area you have no reason to ever stumble upon.
Buried deep in the level, in a series of tunnels that must be navigated perfectly, or you'll
drown, is the air neckless.
The air neckless allows Knuckles to stay underwater for as long as he likes, with no risk of drowning.
This, is stupid.
This is bad level design.
This is bad game design.
While fans of the series were happy to overlook this nonsense in 2001, it just doesn't hold
up.
So, after starting this final level over again, and finally making it to the Knuckles part,
we can finally make progress.
Except we can't.
These switches turn off the water current.
You have to make it from this switch, to this switch before the water current turns back
on.
It's impossible.
And this section of the level is surrounded by lasers that kill you.
Grabbing rings is risky, because this plasma looking stuff also kills you.
It’s just not fun.
I could forgive Sonic Adventure 2 for a few of the issues it has, but they are far too
frequent.
There are so few instances where the game is fun, and far too many instances where the
game is tedious and frustrating.
Many consider Sonic Adventure 2 a classic.
I just don't see it.
Two out of five.