This review contains spoilers
I refuse to submit the popular opinion that this game and its sequel suck. I refuse to do this for anyone, including people on the internet, my friends who had this game when they were kids like I did, or my Genesis-era older cousin who used to tell me that this game sucked when I was eight. This newfound, seemingly unanimous opinion of the Sonic Adventure games does not sway me even a little. Sure, after coming back to this game since I was a kid, I'll admit that some of the aspects of this game are a lot to be desired, but they do not compare to the more recent abhorrent dumpster fires that have been tainting Sonic's legacy. I guess it's just easier for people to group the Sonic eras between his early 2D games and his later 3D outputs, which is probably why the Sonic Adventure games are grouped in with the appallingly bad 3D Sonic games.
Sonic Adventure is certainly flawed for sure, but I've heard so many people regard this game as the proverbial guillotine to Sonic's run as a beloved video game character. This game's bad reputation is due to what Sonic became of after the Adventure games rather than the direct point of it. I'd fervently argue that the early Sonic Adventure games are exceptions to the unexceptional 3D Sonic games (with Generations and Colours being a few exceptions, but Sonic has had tons of bad 3D games at this point, so the exceptions are very few and far between). Am I defending this game from the barrage of negativity because the Sonic Adventure games were the Sonic games that I grew up with and bear a great level of nostalgia for me? Yes, admittedly so, but nostalgia only goes so far. The heightened feeling of nostalgia only works if whatever it is that you're being nostalgic for still upholds some sort of quality. If it's complete shit, then you just laugh and feel like an idiot for liking it. Nostalgia aside, Sonic Adventure, in my personal opinion, is one of the best Sonic outings to date and a marvelous jump to converting 2D Sonic gameplay to 3D. Still, there are plenty of deterrents that also make this game a flawed experience. I guess I'll play devil's advocate trying to defend my favorite Sonic game from its bad reputation in this review.
The late 1990s were a revolutionary period in video games. The radical shift from 2D to 3D became the norm, and franchises from the 2D era needed to adapt to this change or become outdated relics. Super Mario 64 is probably the most notable example of this shift to 3D because it was one of the first to make this transition and laid out the design on which almost every 3D platformer of this era was based. Sega developed a Sonic game for the Sega Saturn, which didn't see the light of day because the Sega Saturn was a short-lived console that got beat out by the competition. A few years later, Sega released the Dreamcast, which also became a short-lived console and the console swan-song of the once almighty Sega. For the short time that the Dreamcast was the exciting new thing, Sega decided to use Sonic Adventure as a stepping stone for the desired success for the console, just like Nintendo did for Super Mario 64 for the N64. As far as I'm concerned, Sonic's first 3D outing has aged much better than Mario's initial stepping stone into 3D. Is this probably because the Dreamcast was technically a much more advanced system than the N64? Probably, but this still holds to be true. Sonic Adventure looks better, feels better, and was much more ambitious than Super Mario 64 in several other aspects as well. Sonic Adventure, at the time, was the cornerstone of what the 3D platformer could do and was also a great shift for Sonic into the prevailing 3D world.
One of the most ambitious aspects of Sonic Adventure was the story. In previous Sonic games, the plot mostly revolved around Sonic stopping Eggman from building a robotic empire made from fellow animal creatures from his homeworld, Mobius. This was generally the plot of every 2D Sonic game with maybe an additional character or another kooky Eggman invention to shake things up. In Sonic Adventure, Eggman is searching for the seven chaos emeralds to feed Chaos, a creature entirely made out of water standing on two legs. Eggman's objective this time is to use all of the chaos emeralds to achieve Chaos's full destructive potential to take over Station Square, the city in which the game is set. It's funny to me that after so many attempts to conquer entire worlds, Eggman decides to downscale in taking over some nameless city with a casino, an amusement park, and a beachfront. It's like a mad scientist trying to conquer Atlantic City. I guess having your diabolical plans constantly being thwarted by a blue hedgehog isn't exactly a confidence booster. Sonic's objective is to stop Eggman from getting all seven chaos emeralds while he learns about the history of the creature Chaos in the process. Already, the story sounds like the standard Sonic fare of Sonic stopping Eggman's evil deeds from coming to fruition, but the story itself isn't ambitious; it's the way that it's presented that is. Besides playing as Sonic, you also get to play as five other characters that you unlock as Sonic's story progresses. These characters consist of familiar faces like Tails, Knuckles, and Amy while introducing new characters like Big the Cat and E-102 Gamma. I'll get to each of these characters' individual stories eventually, but the entire game as a whole presents these stories as interwoven sub-plots that connect ala Rashomon. I thought this plot mechanic was brilliant when I was a kid. Even though I've seen other media that have this interwoven style of plot presentation (like the previously mentioned film Rashomon), I can still appreciate the bold choice of presenting the plot of a 3D platformer like this. Is it presented consistently well? Not really. There are several cracks in the story due to trying to keep the interwoven stories connected, which leads to needless repetition. If you see three or four different characters in the same scene, you will be seeing this scene two or three more times guaranteed. I could've gone without fighting Chaos 4 three different times, believe me.
Like Super Mario 64, Sonic Adventure implements a hub world that the action stages stem. The hub world is divided into three different areas: Station Square, Mystic Ruins, and the Egg Carrier. Station Square is a relatively bustling metropolis with the aforementioned amusement park, beachfront, casino, etc. As I said, think Jersey City without the used needles washing up on the beach's shores. Mystic Ruins is a forest/jungle area directly based on real-life ruins in Latin America and is probably the most sprawling area of the three hub worlds. This isn't always to its benefit, as the deep jungle area where Big the Cat lives is like a maze. Unless you're a character that can glide/fly, good luck trying to find your way around it. The Egg Carrier is Eggman's giant flying ship equipped with a swimming pool, an arcade, a very "Lost in Space" 60's space station, a retro-looking bedroom pad, and a smattering of defense weapons, including several turrets and a giant laser. Essentially, it's Eggman's bitchin sky crib, and the blue fucker Sonic couldn't let him have that either. I used to like the hub-world in this game when I was a kid, but that was back when I used to have fun dicking around as all of the characters were without a concise objective over my head. As an adult, I'd rather jump into the action immediately. I can see why the hub world was implemented because of the intricacies of the interwoven stories, but the hub world as a whole feels awkwardly small, empty, and geographically inconsistent. For a Sonic game, it's merely adequate.
Another ambitious, albeit hilariously bad, aspect of the presentation in this game is the voice acting. I can't exactly confirm this to be true, but apparently, there was little to no direction during the recording sessions for the voices in this game, so the voice actors just winged it. It's not like it's any worse than the voice acting from many other games during this time, but it still isn't very good. I'm convinced that no one can pull off Tail's voice without sounding like a crackly pre-teen, and Knuckles is about as wooden as a cardboard box. Bless John St. John for taking on the role of Big the Cat. I definitely wouldn't want to be him during those sessions. The only voice that stands above the rest is the voice of Eggman. The quality of the graphics can be excused, but the character animations tend to be choppy and heavily exaggerated. The overall dated presentation of this game tends to be the most common criticism, but I think that it stems from being a product of its time. The other common and egregious criticism I see about this game is the glitches. I've had this game for 17 years now, played through the story so many times, re-played the levels hundreds of times just for the hell of it, and have NEVER encountered these glitches, not even on accident. I know the glitches these people speak of from watching videos, but they must be exploiting these glitches with some effort. If I couldn't activate these glitches by accident, it is not a valid point of criticism.
The game's story is divided into seven different parts, one for each playable character and a finale that is unlocked after beating each character's story. Sonic's story is naturally the one you can access first, and it is also by far the best section of the game. I've mentioned before that this game might be the best Sonic game there is, but I say this with confidence under a technicality. If this game was only Sonic's story, it could rightfully be considered the best Sonic game. Sonic's gameplay translated marvelously into 3D to the point where I believe it's much better than the gameplay in the older 2D games. One thing that I never cared for in the classic Sonic games was the trial and error type of gameplay that is presented. I'm not sure if this type of gameplay was intentional in the classic Sonic games, but it comes naturally when you're in a 2D environment with several obstacles with a character that moves so blazingly fast. Sonic's speed in the 2D games is always compromised with all of the blindspots present in every level, which I never thought was fair to the player, considering Sonic is supposed to be going as fast as possible. In a 3D environment, there is much more spatial awareness. Sonic's speed isn't compromised, and the player isn't punished for trying to take advantage of what Sonic is supposed to excel in. To aid in this, Sonic now has a homing attack to lock onto a chain of enemies, which greatly aids with the pacing of the fast gameplay. Sonic also has access to most of the levels in the game, and every level in his story is excellent (except maybe Sky Deck). There are rarely any awkward pace-breaking obstacles that punish the player for going too fast, and they are all varied and versatile. I'd state my favorites of the bunch, but they are all so good.
Sonic Team knew how to make the best of their blue boy in 3D and made something that hasn't been beaten since.
Oh yeah, and there's the rest of the game...
I wish I could declare Sonic Adventure as the best Sonic game there is based on the Sonic gameplay, but that would be like hiding circumstantial evidence from a crime scene at a trial. The other 70% of the game experiments with other gameplay styles in the 3D environment in the form of other Sonic characters' stories. Honestly, I don't mind any of the other character's stories all that much, but some are better than others, and none of them are even worth the tattered rubber peeling off of Sonic's running shoes.
First up is Tails, a familiar face from the older games that you unlock as early as the first action stage of the game. Tails crash lands on Emerald Coast trying to use a chaos emerald as a power source for his newest flying machine. He pairs up Sonic for the first half of Sonic's story until they both crash, falling out of the sky and trying to intercept the Egg Carrier. Tails flies solo (ah-ha, get it?) for a while, trying to find his path and prove to himself that he is capable of great strides in heroism without Sonic aiding him. He proves this to himself at the end of the game when he stops Eggman from detonating a bomb in Station Square. . The concept of Tails trailing behind Sonic is heavily present in the core themes of Tails not only in the story but in his gameplay as well. The objective of every action stage for Tails is to chase Sonic to the end of the level hence proving he is perfectly capable of besting Sonic at his own game. No shit, Tails, you can fucking fly. This is probably why I've never lost a race against Sonic in this game, not even when I was seven years old. Tails can just easily cheese through levels that were designed specifically for Sonic, so they turn out to be insultingly easy. Tails' story is fine, but his stages are severely broken.
Knuckles is another series mainstay that makes an appearance in this game. Like in Sonic 3, he protects the Master Emerald on the floating Angel Island when the island suddenly crashes and lands in the sea one night. A perturbed Knuckles finds Chaos emerged from the Master Emerald as it breaks into pieces as Knuckles has a scuffle with Chaos. Knuckles' story involves him finding the lost pieces of the Master Emerald and restoring order to Angel Island. Knuckles has always been a fun character to play as in any Sonic game's a very versatile character in movement and action. He can dig, glide, and climb up walls. I would say he's also a strong character because that's what he's known for, but his strength doesn't matter in his gameplay. In the Knuckles stages, there are three master emerald pieces per level to collect with the assistance of a radar. These levels usually take about a minute or two to complete because the radar lets you know where any emerald piece is, and the levels aren't big enough, so the emerald pieces are always sort of near each other anyway. As a kid, I liked playing as Knuckles in the hub world because of his diverse move set, but should that count for anything? His story is alright, but it could've benefited from providing a greater challenge that arguably doesn't come up until Sky Deck, which is Knuckles' last level.
I generally don't like Amy as a character. She's essentially an archetype of every bad teenage girl trope but with pink fur. She's whiny, vapid, and usually serves as a damsel in distress. In her story, she finds a bluebird that seems to be lost. She is then chased down by one of Eggman's robots named Zero, whose mission is to capture the bird. Amy's mission is to then protect the bird from Zero and reunite the bird with its family. I'd argue that Amy's story is the worst in the game from a gameplay standpoint. If you don't like the other character's gameplay (except for Sonic), at least the action stages are brief. The same cannot be said for Amy's action stages which are all much longer and slog on because Amy moves like she's on quaaludes. Amy's action stages seem a bit directionless as it's hard to pinpoint exactly what type of gameplay they were going with here. Does it seem like Amy's levels were scrapped Sonic levels that fit a slower character? Amy moves like she's dragging through the mud. The gimmick of Amy's levels is that she constantly has Zero tailing her at every level. Zero makes a raucous every time he's on-screen, but he never poses a threat. He makes his high pitch robot shriek, targets you, and winds up his cabled robot arm. The only way you would get hit by Zero is if you went to get a snack and forgot to press pause. Amy's story is a total bore.
If you already know about this game's reputation, you already know that it gets worse than Amy. After Amy, the game introduces Big the Cat, aka the Jar Jar Binks of the Sonic franchise. I cannot fathom why Big the Cat was deemed a necessary addition to this game by the developers. He is a completely useless character in every single way imaginable. Firstly, he has absolutely no stakes in the grand scheme of the story. He's a lazy fat feline with questionable cognitive abilities who lives the simplest life imaginable with his friend Froggy who for some reason in a world filled with anthropomorphic creatures is just a simple frog. Froggy has an encounter with Chaos the night he breaks free from the Master Emerald and swallows a Chaos Emerald possessing him somehow (even though I'm not quite sure of that anyway). Big the Cat's story is him searching for Froggy...and that's it. Big is the only character with no stake in the interwoven story structure except for the short moment when he tackles Tails and Gamma steals Froggy from him to take him to Eggman. Do these even count as spoilers? . He's about as aware of what's going on around him as The Dude from The Big Lebowski is, except, in this case, it's a frog and not a rug. He's just a simple creature who got caught up in something that I'm not even sure he can fully comprehend. His gameplay is a poorly executed fishing game that controls horribly, but at least it's quick if you know what you're doing (point the control stick down when Froggy bites the hook, dammit). Big also has a total of one boss fight that only takes about 10 seconds to beat. Fuckin A, Sega.
After Big the Cat comes to another new character that is surprisingly a breath of fresh air and is one of my favorite Sonic characters. E-102 Gamma is a robot made by Eggman in a series of robots that look-alike named after letters of the Greek alphabet. E-102 Gamma proves to be an exceptional robot to Eggman after defeating his robot brother Beta and capturing Froggy. He is placed on the front lines of the Egg Carrier while his brothers go AWOL or are remodeled. After Amy gets captured, Amy senses a glimmer of compassion and strength in Gamma uncommon in Eggman's other robots. Amy befriends him and saves him from getting destroyed by Sonic and Tails when they fight on the Egg Carrier. After the Egg Carrier sinks, Gamma turns against Eggman and searches for his brothers to save them from Eggman's captivity in the form of destroying their robot bodies. The final fight is against an upgraded version of Beta and after his mission is complete, he destroys himself revealing that he's a bid underneath his robot form and somehow related to the bird Amy has been protecting. It's an emotional story that has its strength where the other non-Sonic stories don't. . As a kid, playing as a gliding robot with an arm cannon was a blast, but like Knuckles, his action stages are completely underutilized. Every action stage with exception of Hot Shelter, the last one, is incredibly brief and easy. It's a shame because racking up points with Gamma's arm cannon is fun.
After playing through every character's story, there is a seventh story unlocked called SUPER SONIC with a big golden question mark (as if we don't know what Super Sonic looks like). I forgot to mention another aspect of the interwoven stories because it doesn't matter until this final section of the story. In random instances with every character (even Big), they are transported to a mysterious time and place that looks like the Mystic Ruins before it became a sprawling jungle. From what I gather from these flashbacks, the Echidna civilization that used to preside over the ruins tried to forcefully chase Chaos out of their village when all Chaos wanted to do was to protect the Chao creatures that resided around the Master Emerald in Angel Island. The only member of the Echidna tribe supporting Chaos is a young Echidna woman named Tikal, who is also the voice of every glowing hint spark in the game. In the past, the Chao is killed, which angers Chaos to the point of wiping out the Echida tribe in a watery inferno. In the present day, Chaos goes rogue and finds the last chaos emerald for himself, completing the set. He becomes a watery behemoth that completely obliterates Station Square. It turns out that Eggman was never controlling Chaos as Chaos was becoming more powerful as a means to destroy humanity again, stemming from his contempt for the Echidna civilization hundreds of years ago. Tikal appears from the past and gives Sonic the ultimate energy from the chaos emeralds to turn into Super Sonic to beat Chaos. It's an easy but epic final battle. The story concludes by revealing that Chaos wasn't inherently evil but misunderstood creature that was a victim of xenophobia that made him resentful. It's a pretty satisfying ending to this game, but after playing through all the milquetoast non-Sonic stories, it feels a bit disjointed playing as Sonic again.
The shift from 2D to 3D proved to be quite a daunting one for many game franchises. It proved well for Mario and Zelda, but what about the blue blur? In my opinion, not only did Sonic make the jump to 3D with flying colors, but it is the most exceptional offering that Sonic has. However, it's also a game that is a product of its time as people were still figuring out the staples we take for granted these days like character animations and voice acting. It's also a very ambitious game that bit off more than it could chew. A shitty game misses the mark completely, and judging by Sonic's gameplay alone, they translated Sonic very well into the burgeoning 3D gaming world. This is a game that I feel a great amount of warmth with, and I don't think it's just regulated by nostalgia alone.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
Sonic Adventure is certainly flawed for sure, but I've heard so many people regard this game as the proverbial guillotine to Sonic's run as a beloved video game character. This game's bad reputation is due to what Sonic became of after the Adventure games rather than the direct point of it. I'd fervently argue that the early Sonic Adventure games are exceptions to the unexceptional 3D Sonic games (with Generations and Colours being a few exceptions, but Sonic has had tons of bad 3D games at this point, so the exceptions are very few and far between). Am I defending this game from the barrage of negativity because the Sonic Adventure games were the Sonic games that I grew up with and bear a great level of nostalgia for me? Yes, admittedly so, but nostalgia only goes so far. The heightened feeling of nostalgia only works if whatever it is that you're being nostalgic for still upholds some sort of quality. If it's complete shit, then you just laugh and feel like an idiot for liking it. Nostalgia aside, Sonic Adventure, in my personal opinion, is one of the best Sonic outings to date and a marvelous jump to converting 2D Sonic gameplay to 3D. Still, there are plenty of deterrents that also make this game a flawed experience. I guess I'll play devil's advocate trying to defend my favorite Sonic game from its bad reputation in this review.
The late 1990s were a revolutionary period in video games. The radical shift from 2D to 3D became the norm, and franchises from the 2D era needed to adapt to this change or become outdated relics. Super Mario 64 is probably the most notable example of this shift to 3D because it was one of the first to make this transition and laid out the design on which almost every 3D platformer of this era was based. Sega developed a Sonic game for the Sega Saturn, which didn't see the light of day because the Sega Saturn was a short-lived console that got beat out by the competition. A few years later, Sega released the Dreamcast, which also became a short-lived console and the console swan-song of the once almighty Sega. For the short time that the Dreamcast was the exciting new thing, Sega decided to use Sonic Adventure as a stepping stone for the desired success for the console, just like Nintendo did for Super Mario 64 for the N64. As far as I'm concerned, Sonic's first 3D outing has aged much better than Mario's initial stepping stone into 3D. Is this probably because the Dreamcast was technically a much more advanced system than the N64? Probably, but this still holds to be true. Sonic Adventure looks better, feels better, and was much more ambitious than Super Mario 64 in several other aspects as well. Sonic Adventure, at the time, was the cornerstone of what the 3D platformer could do and was also a great shift for Sonic into the prevailing 3D world.
One of the most ambitious aspects of Sonic Adventure was the story. In previous Sonic games, the plot mostly revolved around Sonic stopping Eggman from building a robotic empire made from fellow animal creatures from his homeworld, Mobius. This was generally the plot of every 2D Sonic game with maybe an additional character or another kooky Eggman invention to shake things up. In Sonic Adventure, Eggman is searching for the seven chaos emeralds to feed Chaos, a creature entirely made out of water standing on two legs. Eggman's objective this time is to use all of the chaos emeralds to achieve Chaos's full destructive potential to take over Station Square, the city in which the game is set. It's funny to me that after so many attempts to conquer entire worlds, Eggman decides to downscale in taking over some nameless city with a casino, an amusement park, and a beachfront. It's like a mad scientist trying to conquer Atlantic City. I guess having your diabolical plans constantly being thwarted by a blue hedgehog isn't exactly a confidence booster. Sonic's objective is to stop Eggman from getting all seven chaos emeralds while he learns about the history of the creature Chaos in the process. Already, the story sounds like the standard Sonic fare of Sonic stopping Eggman's evil deeds from coming to fruition, but the story itself isn't ambitious; it's the way that it's presented that is. Besides playing as Sonic, you also get to play as five other characters that you unlock as Sonic's story progresses. These characters consist of familiar faces like Tails, Knuckles, and Amy while introducing new characters like Big the Cat and E-102 Gamma. I'll get to each of these characters' individual stories eventually, but the entire game as a whole presents these stories as interwoven sub-plots that connect ala Rashomon. I thought this plot mechanic was brilliant when I was a kid. Even though I've seen other media that have this interwoven style of plot presentation (like the previously mentioned film Rashomon), I can still appreciate the bold choice of presenting the plot of a 3D platformer like this. Is it presented consistently well? Not really. There are several cracks in the story due to trying to keep the interwoven stories connected, which leads to needless repetition. If you see three or four different characters in the same scene, you will be seeing this scene two or three more times guaranteed. I could've gone without fighting Chaos 4 three different times, believe me.
Like Super Mario 64, Sonic Adventure implements a hub world that the action stages stem. The hub world is divided into three different areas: Station Square, Mystic Ruins, and the Egg Carrier. Station Square is a relatively bustling metropolis with the aforementioned amusement park, beachfront, casino, etc. As I said, think Jersey City without the used needles washing up on the beach's shores. Mystic Ruins is a forest/jungle area directly based on real-life ruins in Latin America and is probably the most sprawling area of the three hub worlds. This isn't always to its benefit, as the deep jungle area where Big the Cat lives is like a maze. Unless you're a character that can glide/fly, good luck trying to find your way around it. The Egg Carrier is Eggman's giant flying ship equipped with a swimming pool, an arcade, a very "Lost in Space" 60's space station, a retro-looking bedroom pad, and a smattering of defense weapons, including several turrets and a giant laser. Essentially, it's Eggman's bitchin sky crib, and the blue fucker Sonic couldn't let him have that either. I used to like the hub-world in this game when I was a kid, but that was back when I used to have fun dicking around as all of the characters were without a concise objective over my head. As an adult, I'd rather jump into the action immediately. I can see why the hub world was implemented because of the intricacies of the interwoven stories, but the hub world as a whole feels awkwardly small, empty, and geographically inconsistent. For a Sonic game, it's merely adequate.
Another ambitious, albeit hilariously bad, aspect of the presentation in this game is the voice acting. I can't exactly confirm this to be true, but apparently, there was little to no direction during the recording sessions for the voices in this game, so the voice actors just winged it. It's not like it's any worse than the voice acting from many other games during this time, but it still isn't very good. I'm convinced that no one can pull off Tail's voice without sounding like a crackly pre-teen, and Knuckles is about as wooden as a cardboard box. Bless John St. John for taking on the role of Big the Cat. I definitely wouldn't want to be him during those sessions. The only voice that stands above the rest is the voice of Eggman. The quality of the graphics can be excused, but the character animations tend to be choppy and heavily exaggerated. The overall dated presentation of this game tends to be the most common criticism, but I think that it stems from being a product of its time. The other common and egregious criticism I see about this game is the glitches. I've had this game for 17 years now, played through the story so many times, re-played the levels hundreds of times just for the hell of it, and have NEVER encountered these glitches, not even on accident. I know the glitches these people speak of from watching videos, but they must be exploiting these glitches with some effort. If I couldn't activate these glitches by accident, it is not a valid point of criticism.
The game's story is divided into seven different parts, one for each playable character and a finale that is unlocked after beating each character's story. Sonic's story is naturally the one you can access first, and it is also by far the best section of the game. I've mentioned before that this game might be the best Sonic game there is, but I say this with confidence under a technicality. If this game was only Sonic's story, it could rightfully be considered the best Sonic game. Sonic's gameplay translated marvelously into 3D to the point where I believe it's much better than the gameplay in the older 2D games. One thing that I never cared for in the classic Sonic games was the trial and error type of gameplay that is presented. I'm not sure if this type of gameplay was intentional in the classic Sonic games, but it comes naturally when you're in a 2D environment with several obstacles with a character that moves so blazingly fast. Sonic's speed in the 2D games is always compromised with all of the blindspots present in every level, which I never thought was fair to the player, considering Sonic is supposed to be going as fast as possible. In a 3D environment, there is much more spatial awareness. Sonic's speed isn't compromised, and the player isn't punished for trying to take advantage of what Sonic is supposed to excel in. To aid in this, Sonic now has a homing attack to lock onto a chain of enemies, which greatly aids with the pacing of the fast gameplay. Sonic also has access to most of the levels in the game, and every level in his story is excellent (except maybe Sky Deck). There are rarely any awkward pace-breaking obstacles that punish the player for going too fast, and they are all varied and versatile. I'd state my favorites of the bunch, but they are all so good.
Sonic Team knew how to make the best of their blue boy in 3D and made something that hasn't been beaten since.
Oh yeah, and there's the rest of the game...
I wish I could declare Sonic Adventure as the best Sonic game there is based on the Sonic gameplay, but that would be like hiding circumstantial evidence from a crime scene at a trial. The other 70% of the game experiments with other gameplay styles in the 3D environment in the form of other Sonic characters' stories. Honestly, I don't mind any of the other character's stories all that much, but some are better than others, and none of them are even worth the tattered rubber peeling off of Sonic's running shoes.
First up is Tails, a familiar face from the older games that you unlock as early as the first action stage of the game. Tails crash lands on Emerald Coast trying to use a chaos emerald as a power source for his newest flying machine. He pairs up Sonic for the first half of Sonic's story until they both crash, falling out of the sky and trying to intercept the Egg Carrier. Tails flies solo (ah-ha, get it?) for a while, trying to find his path and prove to himself that he is capable of great strides in heroism without Sonic aiding him. He proves this to himself at the end of the game when he stops Eggman from detonating a bomb in Station Square. . The concept of Tails trailing behind Sonic is heavily present in the core themes of Tails not only in the story but in his gameplay as well. The objective of every action stage for Tails is to chase Sonic to the end of the level hence proving he is perfectly capable of besting Sonic at his own game. No shit, Tails, you can fucking fly. This is probably why I've never lost a race against Sonic in this game, not even when I was seven years old. Tails can just easily cheese through levels that were designed specifically for Sonic, so they turn out to be insultingly easy. Tails' story is fine, but his stages are severely broken.
Knuckles is another series mainstay that makes an appearance in this game. Like in Sonic 3, he protects the Master Emerald on the floating Angel Island when the island suddenly crashes and lands in the sea one night. A perturbed Knuckles finds Chaos emerged from the Master Emerald as it breaks into pieces as Knuckles has a scuffle with Chaos. Knuckles' story involves him finding the lost pieces of the Master Emerald and restoring order to Angel Island. Knuckles has always been a fun character to play as in any Sonic game's a very versatile character in movement and action. He can dig, glide, and climb up walls. I would say he's also a strong character because that's what he's known for, but his strength doesn't matter in his gameplay. In the Knuckles stages, there are three master emerald pieces per level to collect with the assistance of a radar. These levels usually take about a minute or two to complete because the radar lets you know where any emerald piece is, and the levels aren't big enough, so the emerald pieces are always sort of near each other anyway. As a kid, I liked playing as Knuckles in the hub world because of his diverse move set, but should that count for anything? His story is alright, but it could've benefited from providing a greater challenge that arguably doesn't come up until Sky Deck, which is Knuckles' last level.
I generally don't like Amy as a character. She's essentially an archetype of every bad teenage girl trope but with pink fur. She's whiny, vapid, and usually serves as a damsel in distress. In her story, she finds a bluebird that seems to be lost. She is then chased down by one of Eggman's robots named Zero, whose mission is to capture the bird. Amy's mission is to then protect the bird from Zero and reunite the bird with its family. I'd argue that Amy's story is the worst in the game from a gameplay standpoint. If you don't like the other character's gameplay (except for Sonic), at least the action stages are brief. The same cannot be said for Amy's action stages which are all much longer and slog on because Amy moves like she's on quaaludes. Amy's action stages seem a bit directionless as it's hard to pinpoint exactly what type of gameplay they were going with here. Does it seem like Amy's levels were scrapped Sonic levels that fit a slower character? Amy moves like she's dragging through the mud. The gimmick of Amy's levels is that she constantly has Zero tailing her at every level. Zero makes a raucous every time he's on-screen, but he never poses a threat. He makes his high pitch robot shriek, targets you, and winds up his cabled robot arm. The only way you would get hit by Zero is if you went to get a snack and forgot to press pause. Amy's story is a total bore.
If you already know about this game's reputation, you already know that it gets worse than Amy. After Amy, the game introduces Big the Cat, aka the Jar Jar Binks of the Sonic franchise. I cannot fathom why Big the Cat was deemed a necessary addition to this game by the developers. He is a completely useless character in every single way imaginable. Firstly, he has absolutely no stakes in the grand scheme of the story. He's a lazy fat feline with questionable cognitive abilities who lives the simplest life imaginable with his friend Froggy who for some reason in a world filled with anthropomorphic creatures is just a simple frog. Froggy has an encounter with Chaos the night he breaks free from the Master Emerald and swallows a Chaos Emerald possessing him somehow (even though I'm not quite sure of that anyway). Big the Cat's story is him searching for Froggy...and that's it. Big is the only character with no stake in the interwoven story structure except for the short moment when he tackles Tails and Gamma steals Froggy from him to take him to Eggman. Do these even count as spoilers? . He's about as aware of what's going on around him as The Dude from The Big Lebowski is, except, in this case, it's a frog and not a rug. He's just a simple creature who got caught up in something that I'm not even sure he can fully comprehend. His gameplay is a poorly executed fishing game that controls horribly, but at least it's quick if you know what you're doing (point the control stick down when Froggy bites the hook, dammit). Big also has a total of one boss fight that only takes about 10 seconds to beat. Fuckin A, Sega.
After Big the Cat comes to another new character that is surprisingly a breath of fresh air and is one of my favorite Sonic characters. E-102 Gamma is a robot made by Eggman in a series of robots that look-alike named after letters of the Greek alphabet. E-102 Gamma proves to be an exceptional robot to Eggman after defeating his robot brother Beta and capturing Froggy. He is placed on the front lines of the Egg Carrier while his brothers go AWOL or are remodeled. After Amy gets captured, Amy senses a glimmer of compassion and strength in Gamma uncommon in Eggman's other robots. Amy befriends him and saves him from getting destroyed by Sonic and Tails when they fight on the Egg Carrier. After the Egg Carrier sinks, Gamma turns against Eggman and searches for his brothers to save them from Eggman's captivity in the form of destroying their robot bodies. The final fight is against an upgraded version of Beta and after his mission is complete, he destroys himself revealing that he's a bid underneath his robot form and somehow related to the bird Amy has been protecting. It's an emotional story that has its strength where the other non-Sonic stories don't. . As a kid, playing as a gliding robot with an arm cannon was a blast, but like Knuckles, his action stages are completely underutilized. Every action stage with exception of Hot Shelter, the last one, is incredibly brief and easy. It's a shame because racking up points with Gamma's arm cannon is fun.
After playing through every character's story, there is a seventh story unlocked called SUPER SONIC with a big golden question mark (as if we don't know what Super Sonic looks like). I forgot to mention another aspect of the interwoven stories because it doesn't matter until this final section of the story. In random instances with every character (even Big), they are transported to a mysterious time and place that looks like the Mystic Ruins before it became a sprawling jungle. From what I gather from these flashbacks, the Echidna civilization that used to preside over the ruins tried to forcefully chase Chaos out of their village when all Chaos wanted to do was to protect the Chao creatures that resided around the Master Emerald in Angel Island. The only member of the Echidna tribe supporting Chaos is a young Echidna woman named Tikal, who is also the voice of every glowing hint spark in the game. In the past, the Chao is killed, which angers Chaos to the point of wiping out the Echida tribe in a watery inferno. In the present day, Chaos goes rogue and finds the last chaos emerald for himself, completing the set. He becomes a watery behemoth that completely obliterates Station Square. It turns out that Eggman was never controlling Chaos as Chaos was becoming more powerful as a means to destroy humanity again, stemming from his contempt for the Echidna civilization hundreds of years ago. Tikal appears from the past and gives Sonic the ultimate energy from the chaos emeralds to turn into Super Sonic to beat Chaos. It's an easy but epic final battle. The story concludes by revealing that Chaos wasn't inherently evil but misunderstood creature that was a victim of xenophobia that made him resentful. It's a pretty satisfying ending to this game, but after playing through all the milquetoast non-Sonic stories, it feels a bit disjointed playing as Sonic again.
The shift from 2D to 3D proved to be quite a daunting one for many game franchises. It proved well for Mario and Zelda, but what about the blue blur? In my opinion, not only did Sonic make the jump to 3D with flying colors, but it is the most exceptional offering that Sonic has. However, it's also a game that is a product of its time as people were still figuring out the staples we take for granted these days like character animations and voice acting. It's also a very ambitious game that bit off more than it could chew. A shitty game misses the mark completely, and judging by Sonic's gameplay alone, they translated Sonic very well into the burgeoning 3D gaming world. This is a game that I feel a great amount of warmth with, and I don't think it's just regulated by nostalgia alone.
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