Speed Runner Video Game Review:

Sonic Adventure 2(Battle)(DreamCast/GameCube)

   The direct sequel to Sonic Adventure, some considered Sonic Adventure 2 one of the finest 3D Sonic games out there, some considered it one of the biggest flops the series has seen. Which ever the case, either the DreamCast version or the GameCube port was the one of the earliest Sonic games, if not the game to get them into the series, for most, and I'm no exception. So how strong is my nostalgia here? Let's find out.

   The story of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle starts with Dr. Eggman breaking into Prison Island in search of a weapon made by his grandfather 50 years prior the events of this game. Eggman soon finds out the weapon was a powerful mobian hedgehog named Shadow, who offers Eggman a favor for setting him free but requires the 7 Chaos Emeralds. While searching for the Emeralds, Shadow is mistaken by the military for Sonic, and Sonic takes the blame for stealing an Emerald from a bank vault and attacking soldiers of the Guardian Unite of Nations(G.U.N.). After crossing paths with the mysterious Shadow, getting arrested by G.U.N., and getting freed by Tails and Amy, Sonic discovers Eggman is in possession of the Eclipse Cannon, a laser cannon capable of obliterating a continent with a single blast(Yeah, that is going to problem!) and so it's up to Sonic and company to find Eggman and destroy this weapon. This time there's only two Episodes, the heroes' side(with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and on the sidelines, Amy) and the villains' side(Eggman, Shadow, and other newcomer, Rouge the Bat). The story's actually a little more straight to the point but actually has an even bigger part of the game with more twists and turns. Now, the plot overall actually revolves around this new character, Shadow, who was a genetic experiment by Eggman's grandfather, Professor Gerald Robotnik, created on the Space Colony ARK to be the "Ultimate Lifeform." Also on the ARK was Gerald's granddaughter and Eggman's cousin, Maria, who was diagnosed with a disease that enabled her to live in Earth's atmosphere and kept her on the ARK and was Shadow's only friend at the time. The bond between Shadow and Maria was very effective sense Maria was the only one on the ARK who treated Shadow as a person whereas everyone else, including his creator, treated him as a weapon, making Maria's death scene all the more sad and giving Shadow more of this driving force for revenge in the present because as it turns out, G.U.N. set up a coup back then to capture Professor Gerald and erase any evidence of this Ultimate Lifeform project out of fear, and as presented in a flashback, Shadow tried to help Maria escape this raid but ultimately failed and Maria got shot right in front of him. Maria was the only person Shadow cared about, and the humans on Earth took her life! The memories of that day caused Shadow in the present to just flip his shit and seek revenge against the humans! So how does he plan to get revenge? Remember when I said Shadow promised to repay Eggman for freeing him? Do you remember that neat little Eclipse Cannon Egghead got? Turns out other besides the Ultimate Lifeform, many powerful weapons were built on the ARK, and the Eclipse Cannon was one of them. And the Chaos Emeralds Shadow needed? They power the cannon! Shadow's promise to Eggman is the Eclipse Cannon! And being the showoff he is, Eggman announced his new weapon to the world and demonstrates the power of this weapon by--brace yourselves--blowing up half of the frickin' moon!! That is scary, and the story just has many more intense moments that keeps you at the edge of your seat and pushes you to progress to see what happens next! But what truly made the story for me was Shadow as his backstory was very interesting, his intensions were very just, and does whatever it takes to get the job done. Never once did Shadow feel like a nuisance to the emersion and after seeing Shadow's final act in the game, I was hooked on the character!

   As said before, the game only has two Episodes; Hero and Dark, and since the Episodes work in a similar fashion to the first Sonic Adventure, that means for the first time in the series, you can play the villains side of the game, which brings us to a little fun fact for this game: Originally, Sonic Adventure 2 was going to only have Sonic, Knuckles, and Eggman as playable characters, each character taking mechanics from the first game(Sonic's usual super speed-based platforming, Knuckles' treasure hunting, and Eggman adopts Gamma's blaster-based platforming), and Sonic's gameplay was going to have a morality system, where you will have to option to play as Sonic as the cool heroic adventurer we know and love or bring out a never before seen dark side of Sonic. However, Sonic Team was afraid fans would complain that Sonic Adventure 2 has less playable characters than the first one, so Sonic's dark side became a character on it's own--Shadow--Tails comes back as a playable character and one more playable character--Rouge, mobian bat and self-proclaimed world's greatest treasure hunter--is added to match the six playable characters from the first game. The mechanics are still the speed, shooting and treasure hunting throughout but both sides of the story has three playable characters, each using their own version of these mechanics and each parallel with the other side of the story: Sonic and Shadow have the speed oriented platforming levels, Tails and Eggman pilot robot armor with blasters, and Knuckles and Rouge search for treasure in 360 degree sandbox levels. This time, there's no overworld; level progression is more linear. While this may seem like a downgrade to the openness of Sonic Adventure, the levels for each of the hero and villain stories now alternate between the speed, mech, and treasure hunting gameplays, and the order of these styles (is) different between episodes, which I actually welcome as the order of level and gameplay styles keep the game from being repetitive, plus as appose to the mixed fun factor of the gameplay styles of the first Adventure, they not only kept the good gameplay styles, but improved on them. Sonic and Shadow's speed levels can be best described with one word: ADRENALINE! The sense of speed is greater and controls and moves are more fluent than the last game and even introducing a new rail grinding mechanic to keep the momentum going. This worked great for Shadow's gameplay debut, but it was even better for Sonic; out of all the versions of Sonic's gameplay in the series, Sonic was the most fun to play as in this game! Then there's the mech shooting gameplay; all I hear now is that Eggman and Tails in armed walkers apparently don't make a lick of sense. Okay, Eggman has been fighting in a tech pod with different modifications the entire series; how is this any different?! This would make slightly more sense in Tails' case, but just (slightly). Tails' character was meant to be a technical expert, which was in fact established since Sonic 2, and since the Heroes needed a character to parallel Eggman, by process of elimination, Tails fits the role. As for the mech shooting levels, they were lots of fun. There are more enemies in the levels than Gamma's and there are more upgrades for Tails and Eggman so the sense of combat has been enhanced from Gamma's gameplay in the predecessor(it's blaster-based platforming; wouldn't this be a benefit?), and the levels have also been expanded for more exploration and experimentation. The treasure hunting gameplay is another feature improved from Sonic Adventure One, as moves are more fluid for smoother exploration and even combat has been amplified with upper cuts, jump kicks, air slashing, and even a downward drill attack(which can also be used for digging). Now, for the bosses. Admittedly, this game's overall boss roster isn't the most impressive collection of bosses the series has seen, but none of them were bad, especially considering the character battles are actually GOOD this time! Thank God! Otherwise that would've been the worst thing ever. My favorite bosses in the game would be Tails vs. Eggman(Final), Sonic vs. Shadow(Final), and Final Hazard. This game also reintroduced the Chao Garden. This was in the first Sonic Adventure, but back then the Chao Garden didn't offer much in terms of extras, but luckily that's not the case with Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. You can now raise Chao to develop skills and enter them in mini games, and the more you raise a Chao's stats, the better they play(but that goes without). Lastly, Sonic Adventure 2 also brought back the option for multiplayer, which was absent in the first Adventure, and I have to say this is EASILY the best multiplayer in the series(at least, concerning the main series), with an excellent application of the actual main gameplay styles rather than having some dodgy quirk to the multiplayer options like later Sonic games would have.

   Just to continue how much Sonic Adventure 2: Battle improved from SAOne, the graphics and art style have gotten much more crisp, character models are smoother, and now characters have complete animation, giving the cutscenes a much more lifelike feel where the cutscene animation in the predecessor was rather limited. But let's face it, a game can have the best graphics in the world, but if the actual level design can't follow though, then what's the point? And after looking back at these games objectively this whole time, I feel I not have been giving the Sonic series enough credit for level design. Well, this review, it's different. The levels in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle can be best described with one word: DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYUM! Remember earlier in the review when I said the "openness" of Sonic Adventure One was taken out in this game? That was actually kind of inaccurate. Without the overworld of the first game, all openness is applied to the actual levels; no scenery cuts, less linear in design, and greatly expanded for exploration. The design of the speed stages allow for more momentum to build than SAOne with grind rails here and there to keep the speed going, the blaster platforming stages have more destructible environment pieces the further enhance the chaotic gameplay, and the treasure hunting stages takes up the most use of stage gimmicks to add to the level exploration. This is all honestly pretty impressive, particularly considering the levels this time around are more based off of the mere scenarios of the story. Examples of this style of level design are City Escape, where Sonic is trying to escape G.U.N. through Central City, Security Hall, where Rouge is infiltrating a security vault, Prison Lane, where Tails is trying to break Sonic out of Prison Island, two different locations in the Pumpkin Canyons where at one point Knuckles is searching for the Emerald Pieces and even at another point Shadow is riding rails in a pursuit of the Tornado plane, even Green Forest and White Jungle are purely based off of Sonic and Shadow escaping Prison Island before it explodes, which would essentially make this the most cinematic game the series has seen even to this day! There really aren't a lot of levels I didn't enjoy, but my favorite levels in the game are Crazy Gadget for Sonic, Final Chase for Shadow, Eternal Engine for Tails, Cosmic Wall for Eggman, Death Chamber for Knuckles, and Security Hall for Rouge. Now for the audio. First thing I should point out is that the voice acting actually improved from SAOne, despite being the increasingly overrated original voice cast. The voices actually show proper emotion this time around, and what should apply to the bosses and stages, the voices ranged from tolerable at worst to excellent at best. As for the soundtrack, it retains styles of rock, rap, and jazz from SAOne, but most tracks here have higher energy beats to them. Similar to the comparison between Sonic 1 and 2, whereas the first Sonic Adventure had more music to better suit the situation, SA2 has more tempo to the music, and like Sonic 1 vs. Sonic 2, I find SA2: Battle's soundtrack overall catchier with it's more frantic tracks, but what truly makes the soundtrack is the vocal themes, an obvious special mention going to Live and Learn by Crush 40, as the lyrics truly tell the philosophy of the title character, Sonic, giving the feeling of determination and hope for many days to come, especially when this song plays in the final battle, and the sound of the song just adds to the games overall epicness!

   There just isn't anything I could say about this game that legitimately bothered me! Sonic Adventure 2: Battle can be best described with one word: incredible. Nowadays people often ask "Are video games art?" Well as far as Sonic the Hedgehog goes, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle may just be the closest thing to a work of art the series has ever seen with amazing gameplay and movie quality cinematography and story telling flowing so seamlessly together into a true virtual epic. Yeah, nostalgia blind, but there honestly weren't many games that have really made feel like I was part of this surreal world with such intense dangers before or since, making Sonic Adventure 2: Battle my favorite Sonic game and one of my favorite games of all time!

Rank: Platinum