SHORT VERSION: It's by no means terrible, but the game really hasn't aged well.
Whenever I talk about Sonic with friends, this game isSHORT VERSION: It's by no means terrible, but the game really hasn't aged well.
Whenever I talk about Sonic with friends, this game is usually brought up. Most of them have fond memories of playing Sonic Adventure 2: Battle on the GameCube. I never grew up with a GameCube, so I was never able to experience it for myself. So I decided to finally give it a try with the Steam release.
GAME-PLAY: Levels are made up of three game modes: high speed platforming with Sonic or Shadow, treasure hunting with Knuckles or Rouge, and controlling a mech while shooting everything in sight with Tails and Dr. Eggman.
Sonic/Shadow: These parts are pretty fun when you have a good flow as you're speeding through the level, performing homing attacks on enemies, etc. However, I'd sometimes run in to cheap deaths which can get pretty obnoxious, but it was still overall fun.
Knuckles/Rouge: These would have to be the ABSOLUTE WORST parts of the game! You're supposed to look for three items in often extremely large areas making them very tedious to find. To make matters worse, the locations are completely random and the radar only tracks one item at a time.
Tails/Eggman: From what I hear, a lot of people hate these parts either a little less or just as much as much as the Knuckles/Rouge stages. But surprisingly, they're my favorite parts of the game. It's just you in a mech shooting everything in sight as you platform your way through the level, simple but fun. Apparently people have trouble platforming, but I was playing it just fine. The camera angles and the beeping noise when locking on to enemies can get annoying at first, but I got used to it.
STORY: From what I hear, I a lot of people really like this story. But I think everyone's starting to notice how cheesy and flawed it is. It's actually pretty fun to roast on it by noticing all the plot holes and how inconsistent it can be with what to focus on. This is all topped off by the hilarious voice acting that's absolutely terrible. But it gets better! Since the cut-scenes were made to follow the Japanese voices, the English voices often seem like they're speaking over or interrupting other characters. There's a scene where a space shuttle is about to crash and you can't tell if everyone's supposed to be freaking out on purpose or just unintentionally interrupting each other!
I'm not ranting on it like I did with my admittedly large LBX review for two reasons. One: I already knew what I was getting myself in to thanks to a review I saw. Two: I feel SA2 is so hilariously bad in terms of story and voice acting that it's more then deserving of someone to buy it just to make fun of it (it also helps that it's just $10, even lower during a sale).
FINAL THOUGHTS: Unfortunately, I don't think the game is as good as others claim. It can still be really fun to play, but I feel it's pretty dated in terms of some game-play decisions like cheap deaths and the dreadful Knuckles/Rouge stages. I have a feeling I would've loved this game if I grew up with it like everyone else, but it just feels dated by my modern standards.
If you're willing to get this game out of curiosity, just keep in mind that you may get frustrated at the parts that feel dated. If you want to make fun of the story, I'd say it's worth the ten dollars, but you should also keep the dated parts of the gameplay in mind.… Expand
