Sonic Adventure 2 is the Best 3D Sonic

Not a worthy sequel to Sonic Adventure? Yeah, right. Let's talk about that.

Music by @AccelioMusic:

[Marshal-]

Im really glad the Adventure hate bandwagon is over now. SA1 and especially SA2 deserve to be remembered as Classics

[s.kanessuperbiatv]

Though I mostly agree, I think Tails in a mech still isn't using the character to his potential. Tails is a tech guy that's always working on gadgets to make things more efficient. With this in mind, I feel like a Ratchet and Clank playstyle would work better. There would still be the shooting, but with more diverse gadget and access to Tails' agility, speed and flight.

[sheep]

Adventure 2 is awesome. The ranking system and chao garden have kept me hooked for years. Multiplayer is fun with friends, too.

[coalstocking]

Loved this video, I've always thought this but you finally managed to put into words how SA2's stages really aren't more linear than SA1. They're just exactly what you said - more streamlined.

I'm not the #1 SA2 fan in the world, but still I do always enjoy hearing people talk about their opinions on this game, positive or negative.

[Eshanthegreat]

14:34 i personally think the radar was nerfed in order to make it less of a priority than the previous game you see in previous sonic adventure radar was the only thing that could help you get the emeralds meaning the whole gameplay loop boiled down to hovering around aimlessly till it blinks and don't even get me started on hint balls however in sa 2 the hint system is much more fleshed out and pieces are hidden in very specific locations which requires great attention from player like there is a location in aquatic mine with a traingulated skull formation where emerald is hidden very often and there is only one such formation in the entire level not to mention the hints also progressively get more generous with each emerald having 3 of them thus often emphasising on following a particular direction and lastly comes the radar which pin points that said location so i feel that nerfed radar being a problem is just psychological because even with the sa 1 radar players had to hunt for those locations

[theshredshow]

As a kid I refused to use hints during levels, mainly cause most of the time they didn’t help me at all but also because I kind of thought it was cheating

[Synner]

I actually quite enjoy Knuckles and Rouge's treasure hunting stages (save for Mad Space), and I don't normally have much trouble getting As and Bs in them... but, yeah, the radar being nerfed was kind of dumb on Sonic Team's part.

Totally agree though. Sonic Adventure 2 is amazing, and is also my favorite. Frontiers is perhaps the first time in a long time I felt the series came close, but it hasn't quite it that zenith SA2 has.

[MmeCShadow]

I think the change to the emerald radar came in conjunction to the change in level design. Having all of the shards available was necessary in SA1 due to the fact that almost every level was obviously designed around Sonic first, with other characters plunked in later. This results in almost all of Knuckles levels in SA1 being poorly fit for his style of movement and being able to easily ping every shard is pretty much an anti-frustration feature.

Because SA2's levels are all individually designed for each character, Knuckles and Rouge both have levels that largely take advantage of their movement options and are also built around landmarks that capitalize on the improved hint system (which could only really work with the one-emerald-at-a-time system). And regarding the hint system, the A rank scores are designs so that you can use a monitor once on each shard and still A rank the stage. This is part of the overall methodology for how to reward each character an A-rank-- with the hedgehogs you need to focus on speed and execution, with the mechs you need to focus on maximizing your stargeting multiplier, and with the treasure hunters you're rewarded for familiarizing yourself with the level layout and navigation.

I know why it can frustrate people (having to circle back to where you just were because the shard is buried or in an enemy can feel like busywork) and there are certainly more elegant solutions in hindsight, but for what it was doing I think it works.

[bananaguy]

RIP the adventure 1 hub worlds, from my understanding they were a leftover remnant from whenever SA1 was a sonic themed RPG that had sonic and knuckles as the main characters

[JJFBlaster]

Still remember the time you spent an hour just trying to find ONE shard in a Knuckles stage...

[mike]

Adventure 2 is definitely my favorite sonic game despite the flaws. I actually really enjoy the mech and treasure hunting stages, definitely not as bad as some people let on.

[MrCalverino]

I grew up with the Genesis games and Sonic Adventure 2 was peak 3D Sonic!!!

[roodyg]

This game has a special place in my heart lol

[bennayboy]

Unpopular opinion: I really like SA2 Motion Capture animation, for some reason I think it’s so charming.

[psxfoxhound]

I never understood why people hated the adventure games or why they became controversial down the line. I have no nostalgia for these games, I was born in the 2000s so I mostly grew up with an entirely different form of sonic, and yet these games are so incredible to me. They aren’t perfect but Adventure 1 and Adventure 2 set the perfect blueprints for what the ideal 3d sonic game should be like. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Adventure style of gameplay, and although I did not like the idea of multiple gameplay styles at first, (I just wanted to be sonic) playing sonic 06 made me realize that I actually don’t hate the idea of Multiple characters in a sonic game; in fact I would hope for there to be multiple characters to play as. I feel like the way Sonic 06 handled multiple characters compared to Adventure 1 and 2 (or at least the idea that 06 had with multiple characters) was much more enjoyable for me personally, and overall a really good compromise between those who just wanted to play as Sonic and those who wanted more characters. There were still more ways to innovate upon the Adventure style of gameplay and It’s such a shame that we would never get a chance to see what a modern Adventure game could feel like until Project 06 came out. It stings even more that Sonic Team seemed to improve upon the Multiple character philosophy in sonic games with 06, only for the next game Sonic Unleashed to force a completely different gameplay style onto players once again. They literally regressed

[mikeclark]

This is the best Sonic 3D game ever.

Oh, but I’m not done.

This is the best SONIC game ever made.

[KingdomHeartsBrawler]

The Hunting levels reward skill like the other gameplay styles do. The Emerald shards/Chaos Emeralds/Keys are always in the same set locations. Instead, it's WHICH locations that are different. It's very easy and possible to collect the trinkets without hints, and, even then, it's not using hints themselves that determine a rank, but the time it takes for you to find the trinkets. I have been able to A-rank Hunting stages while still using hints. The Hunting is actually very rewarding and fun to play once you, well, get good.

[gx]

The look of SA2 just gives me so much nostalgia

[colos]

Good review. I hope some day we reach Sonic Unleashed analysis because I really think that this is one of the best 3d games in Sonic series (Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 also in this list).

[Dwelijan]

I agree. Bought Sonic Adventure 2 before the first Sonic Adventure and felt it was much more complete, challenging but also diverse (playing all those characters through the game) and it was less story oriented (never bother as I only enjoy the gameplay 😅). The music was also much better.

So stepping from part 2 to 1 felt like going backwards or stepping down.

But they’re both worth playing through.