I loved this game as a kid, I think between the GameCube and Xbox 360 releases I probably put in about 200 hours into it, just screwing around in the levels and messing with the Chaos. I never took the time to legitimately 100% it due to how easy it was for me to get frustrated at something not going well and not being smart enough to explore for non-necessary upgrades. After watching a friend play it for the first time as an adult, I decided I'd go back and finally finish what I never could as a kid. I installed some mods to fix up the visuals to be a bit closer to the original release and to make some mechanics (like rail grinding or bouncing from the homing attack) smoother, but I ultimately disabled the former in the end.
Here's a general list of my thoughts toward aspects of the game in positive (+), neutral (=), and negative (-) sections.
+ Music is consistently a banger, I don't think there's a track I feel negative toward and I'd happily listen to any of them.
+ This game oozes that Dreamcast personality that has yet to be matched by any games from any other era/console/developer.
+ When the levels feel good, they feel really fucking good. Doing a Sonic or Shadow level without messing up or getting all the Chaos Emerald shards quickly and getting an A rank is peak satisfaction.
+ Interacting with Chaos and raising them is a neat little mechanic if you mess with it casually. It's nice that you're rewarded for exploring levels with the Chao crates and random animals for raising them.
= The "reward" for getting all 180 Emblems is neat conceptually, but ultimately unrewarding. It's one of the few times seeing Green Hill doesn't feel like nostalgia bait and it's cool that they stick with the classic art style for it, but the stage is all you get. No cool abilities, no fun items, just a simple stage you can finish in under two minutes.
= Having to do the same mission five times for all their Emblems is actually garbage. I get that this game was made on a significant time crunch so they had to change the scope from the first game, but the gimmicks they have you do for missions 2, 4, and 5 are boring. The Lost Chao mission type is neat at least since it requires you to have paid attention in the last two missions to where the ancient ruins are and it's nice they make you use most of your abilities.
= Knuckles/Rouge levels are more fun than I remembered, they really incentivize memorizing locations and going fast which is the core of Sonic games to me. They can be a bit frustrating though - some of the hints are really bad, especially within the later stages. This just lead to me restarting missions and trying the same route over and over until I'd get two easy ones I knew and I could waste time finding the third. This is the one mission type where the Hard mission is actually kinda fun since the Chaos Emeralds are in the same spot every time, you just gotta figure out how to get them.
= Sonic/Shadow levels can be fun on an initial run or when you have a really good run, but going for A ranks is excruciating. Some levels are so short that a single mistake just leads to you having to reset over and over and because they're generally really fast, you'll have to be repeating all the quick movements for things like rail grinding and homing attacks.
= Homing attacks can feel really satisfying if you've got a big chain of enemies to do it on, but the fact it's contextual to the direction of the joystick can lead to some awful moments. Some levels have enemies in positions where you can aim your stick at an enemy and it'll just launch you in that direction instead of at the enemy. On top of that, the fact the height you get bounced up after doing one is random is insane, I downloaded a fix for this immediately. It's honestly so bad and inconsistent that I feel like I'm doing something wrong but I can't tell what.
-Tails/Eggman levels are definitely the worst of the bunch. They aren't very engaging and the tinnitus-inducing sound of the lock-on is awful since you'll be going for high enemy chains constantly. One thing I never noticed as a kid is that if you end up gliding against a wall, you'll be pushed down as fast as possible. This is true for all characters but this little quirk makes hovering feel terrible for these two characters especially.
- Lives are always a shitty mechanic in a game like this, running out of lives just means you're booted back to the menu so it's just a penalty to the player's time in a way that doesn't feel justified. I ended up using a cheat for infinite lives because the mechanic doesn't add anything to the game.
- Rail grinding feels terrible! I tried it with and without the mod to modernize it and I truly think there isn't a way to make it feel good in this game. It's incredibly inconsistent to the point where I think "messing up" was probably the cause of the vast majority of my deaths. So many levels refuse to let you transfer from one rail to the other by holding a direction and tapping the jump button, which just leads to you limply falling to your death and having to restart! Speaking of...
- I get that you need a penalty for the player dying, but the fact you lose all your points for dying in a game where the ranking system is specifically based on points really SUCKS! You can get away with continuing from a checkpoint on some levels but I felt like most of them required a great run from the first checkpoint to stand a chance at getting an A-rank.
- The camera is probably one of the worst things about this game. The mixture of fixed angles and a moveable camera for the player can be used well (see the Silent Hill games) but there are so many instances of this game locking your camera into awful angles in situations where it feels like you should be able to move it. Some levels actually made me a bit nauseous from how the camera places itself when it gets caught behind an object and decides to jitter endlessly.
- Doing all the completion for Chao world is actually insane. If you don't want to engage in the exploit to infinitely use animals and chaos drives, you're gonna be grinding an insane amount. Then you'll have to sit through typically 3-4 minutes of doing nothing but watching your Chao run, no way to speed up the race other than cheering your Chao on with the limited stamina it probably has. If you lose at the end, have fun waiting and watching again! If you win, have fun waiting and watching again as you do the same race a total of three to five times for the first two circuits.
Do I think this game is that good? No, not really. Do I think it's generally fun? Yeah, I'd say so. I think SA2 is best played by doing a casual playthrough and messing with the side content just a bit. Going for the 100% is an actively miserable and unrewarding experience that genuinely damaged a tendon in my forearm.
Here's a general list of my thoughts toward aspects of the game in positive (+), neutral (=), and negative (-) sections.
+ Music is consistently a banger, I don't think there's a track I feel negative toward and I'd happily listen to any of them.
+ This game oozes that Dreamcast personality that has yet to be matched by any games from any other era/console/developer.
+ When the levels feel good, they feel really fucking good. Doing a Sonic or Shadow level without messing up or getting all the Chaos Emerald shards quickly and getting an A rank is peak satisfaction.
+ Interacting with Chaos and raising them is a neat little mechanic if you mess with it casually. It's nice that you're rewarded for exploring levels with the Chao crates and random animals for raising them.
= The "reward" for getting all 180 Emblems is neat conceptually, but ultimately unrewarding. It's one of the few times seeing Green Hill doesn't feel like nostalgia bait and it's cool that they stick with the classic art style for it, but the stage is all you get. No cool abilities, no fun items, just a simple stage you can finish in under two minutes.
= Having to do the same mission five times for all their Emblems is actually garbage. I get that this game was made on a significant time crunch so they had to change the scope from the first game, but the gimmicks they have you do for missions 2, 4, and 5 are boring. The Lost Chao mission type is neat at least since it requires you to have paid attention in the last two missions to where the ancient ruins are and it's nice they make you use most of your abilities.
= Knuckles/Rouge levels are more fun than I remembered, they really incentivize memorizing locations and going fast which is the core of Sonic games to me. They can be a bit frustrating though - some of the hints are really bad, especially within the later stages. This just lead to me restarting missions and trying the same route over and over until I'd get two easy ones I knew and I could waste time finding the third. This is the one mission type where the Hard mission is actually kinda fun since the Chaos Emeralds are in the same spot every time, you just gotta figure out how to get them.
= Sonic/Shadow levels can be fun on an initial run or when you have a really good run, but going for A ranks is excruciating. Some levels are so short that a single mistake just leads to you having to reset over and over and because they're generally really fast, you'll have to be repeating all the quick movements for things like rail grinding and homing attacks.
= Homing attacks can feel really satisfying if you've got a big chain of enemies to do it on, but the fact it's contextual to the direction of the joystick can lead to some awful moments. Some levels have enemies in positions where you can aim your stick at an enemy and it'll just launch you in that direction instead of at the enemy. On top of that, the fact the height you get bounced up after doing one is random is insane, I downloaded a fix for this immediately. It's honestly so bad and inconsistent that I feel like I'm doing something wrong but I can't tell what.
-Tails/Eggman levels are definitely the worst of the bunch. They aren't very engaging and the tinnitus-inducing sound of the lock-on is awful since you'll be going for high enemy chains constantly. One thing I never noticed as a kid is that if you end up gliding against a wall, you'll be pushed down as fast as possible. This is true for all characters but this little quirk makes hovering feel terrible for these two characters especially.
- Lives are always a shitty mechanic in a game like this, running out of lives just means you're booted back to the menu so it's just a penalty to the player's time in a way that doesn't feel justified. I ended up using a cheat for infinite lives because the mechanic doesn't add anything to the game.
- Rail grinding feels terrible! I tried it with and without the mod to modernize it and I truly think there isn't a way to make it feel good in this game. It's incredibly inconsistent to the point where I think "messing up" was probably the cause of the vast majority of my deaths. So many levels refuse to let you transfer from one rail to the other by holding a direction and tapping the jump button, which just leads to you limply falling to your death and having to restart! Speaking of...
- I get that you need a penalty for the player dying, but the fact you lose all your points for dying in a game where the ranking system is specifically based on points really SUCKS! You can get away with continuing from a checkpoint on some levels but I felt like most of them required a great run from the first checkpoint to stand a chance at getting an A-rank.
- The camera is probably one of the worst things about this game. The mixture of fixed angles and a moveable camera for the player can be used well (see the Silent Hill games) but there are so many instances of this game locking your camera into awful angles in situations where it feels like you should be able to move it. Some levels actually made me a bit nauseous from how the camera places itself when it gets caught behind an object and decides to jitter endlessly.
- Doing all the completion for Chao world is actually insane. If you don't want to engage in the exploit to infinitely use animals and chaos drives, you're gonna be grinding an insane amount. Then you'll have to sit through typically 3-4 minutes of doing nothing but watching your Chao run, no way to speed up the race other than cheering your Chao on with the limited stamina it probably has. If you lose at the end, have fun waiting and watching again! If you win, have fun waiting and watching again as you do the same race a total of three to five times for the first two circuits.
Do I think this game is that good? No, not really. Do I think it's generally fun? Yeah, I'd say so. I think SA2 is best played by doing a casual playthrough and messing with the side content just a bit. Going for the 100% is an actively miserable and unrewarding experience that genuinely damaged a tendon in my forearm.
The Sonic/Shadow levels are so cool that they make up for any of the bad stuff in the game.