If you move directly from Sonic Advance into Sonic Advance 2, the glow-up is so immediate it's genuinely impressive. Right from the intro alone, SAdv2 establishes its own style: if the first Advance was closer to a tech demo or a proof of concept, this is the real birth of Sonic's own GBA series with its distinct personality. The visual style, the animations (both the cutscenes and the spritework), the gameplay and even the presentation including the soundtrack are all a huge jump above its predecessor. And you seriously cannot praise the graphical side of this game enough, the sprites and animations of the playable characters in particular are vivid and full of charming detail, they're a joy to watch in motion.

And it's all about speed. It's Sonic so you might think duh, but the whole of SAdv2 is built around momentum - to the point that the characters start the level from a runner's pad with an immediate boost and finish on a goal track, as if it's all a big race lap. Even the bosses are fought while perpetually running, where the simple attack cues become trickier to navigate simply because you're constantly on the move. The trick moves, which were mainly a neat bit of flair in the first game, are now an essential part of the move set and especially Sonic has to rely on them to gain upwards momentum, lacking Tails' and Cream's flight skills and Knuckles' climbing and floating (Amy as the secret challenge character doesn't have much in the way of helping tricks either but if you ever unlock her you'll be a master of the game anyway). For most part this is a lot of fun - going top speed is always a joy in a Sonic game and when SAdv2 flows well, it's really fun. As mentioned it also makes the game play in a distinctive manner, certainly compared to other 2D Sonics.

The downside here - for me anyway - is that Sonic Advance 2 is difficult. The first Advance was already tricky but SAdv2 expects to test both the player's skills and patience, and it was practically built for the quick game resets that GBA allowed. The game brings back the awkward death pits and enemy traps that the player simply cannot foresee and which Advance 1 was rife with, some levels have truly arcane ways of advancing forward and the boss battles can be massively tricky simply because the constant forward movement can really mess with the precise pixel-perfect jumps you have to execute to deal damage. Lives are low and redoing multiple levels in a row isn't rare given the game only saves character progress between bosses. The special stages are once again a 3D stage in a 2D engine and largely awful to control, now with the additions of yet more speed and an unlocking process so convoluted and tricky to pull off that you basically don't even want to bother. It's a little too much at times and can easily tick from enjoyable challenge to a little bit frustrating.

If you're into a hefty set of challenge and like it so much that you don't mind grinding and endless redoing (is this the Dark Souls of GBA platformers?), then Adv2 is waiting to be conquered. For me the good parts are really good but not so much that I'd ever wish to even attempt to get into the deeper layers - especially with all the other games in the world to play. Still, SAdv 2 feels like a genuine entry of its own into the series rather than just a quick cash-in on a new portable console.