Sonic Adventure 2 Battle

"Flawed, but so fun I can hardly bring myself to stop playing."

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle was the first Sonic game Sega put on the Gamecube after going starting their break from the first party console market. The game's goal was to introduce the Nintendo audience to Sonic, and basically started Sega's long line of successful Gamecube titles. It accomplished its goal, at least for me; it was my first Sonic game and I'm now one of the most obsessed (but unbiased!) Sonic fangirls on the planet.

The first thing you see when you start the single player game is a choice between which team to play as. A running theme of the game is good Vs. evil, and you have the option of playing as the hero team consisting of Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, and Knuckles the Echidna, or the dark team of Dr. Robotnik (now officially renamed Eggman) and newcomers Shadow the Hedgehog and Rouge the Bat. Sonic plays identically to Shadow, Tails to Eggman, and Knuckles to Rouge. The stories have different levels, and it's a great idea to be able to see the events happen from multiple perspectives. Your chosen path doesn't make any difference in the story though, you eventually have to play both to see the (awesome) climax.

To summarize the beginning of the story, a mysterious black hedgehog is now working with Dr. Eggman and stealing Chaos Emeralds for him. The public has mistaken him for Sonic and now Sonic has to run from the police while solving the mystery of the black hedgehog and stopping Dr. Eggman from taking over the world. It's not anything deep that will make you question the meaning of life or anything like that, but it's a simple fun story with a few twists, and if you don't like it you can always skip it with no consequences... though I've only ever met one person who didn't so you should be okay there.

Sonic and Shadow's levels are challenges to run to the end of the stage at breakneck (not compared to, say, Sonic and the Secret Rings, but compared to a regular game) speeds and occasionally stop to pick off enemies if you want. Every enemy goes down in one hit, so it's not too distracting and a fun change of pace. The levels themselves though are some of the most linear I've ever played, especially compared to the 2D games, which is a disappointment, but not enough to make them any less fun. These levels are by far the high point of the game, all but one or two of them are amazing experiences. They're as fun the 400th time through as they are the first time.

I'd compare Tails and Eggman's stages more to arcade shooters than to platformers, you... walk... through them in large anime-style mecha and get to the end, with more of an emphasis on shooting things with your lasers and racking up combos. The levels are designed to slow you down so you get more of a chance to rack up combos and therefore points. You can finish all the levels with next to no points though, the only reason the points are there is to get you A ranks (more on that later) and if you're just playing for time as you will your first time through them you can put your controller down for most on-rails segments altogether and it'll make no difference. The slow speed of the mechs is a disappointment, though. They can eventually speed up, but there's only one short point in the game where this happens.

For Knuckles and Rouge, you have to explore nonlinear!levels and gather three shards of the Master Emerald (It broke. Again.) These levels are absolutely the worst thing in the game the first time through. You WILL get motion sickness from the camera, especially in a later Rouge level... I'm getting motion sickness just thinking about it. The camera is pretty bad through the whole game, but in these levels it's much worse because you're going a direction other than forward. Once you get used to the maps and can clear one of them in about five minutes it gets to be a lot of fun, because the core gameplay in these stages is excellent, provided you can beat them before the camera turns against you. Don't get me wrong, it's a functional camera and except for a few boss fights you can always see whatever you want at any time. I swear both of the points I took off are from the first few times you play these levels.

Then there are Chao. Chao are a fun diversion that isn't emphasized at all in the story mode, but they're the single factor that elevate this game from good to great. If you've ever played a creature raising sim like Nintendogs, they're kind of like that except simplistic and relaxing. They're the adorablest little things ever and you can raise, fight, race, or breed them.

Through the levels, you collect small animals to take with you into the Chao Garden and use them on the Chao living there. They'll adapt to have features of the animal they play with and their stats will grow accordingly, which will then be applied to the aforementioned races and karate. There's much more to chao, but I don't want to ruin any of the surprises the little guys have to offer. <3

The polish in the game is nonexistent. Don't get me wrong, it's relatively glitch-free and I've never glitched to death in my hundred+ hours of playing. But, sometimes it feels like the character and the levels were designed independantly of each other. They aren't really built to compliment your character's abilities.

You do get upgrades through the game, like hovering capabilities for Tails and Eggman's mecha or a skill that carries you along a path of rings, but they're disappointing in their implementation. Most of them are just a case of getting the upgrade in plain sight and using it only in parts of the level designed specifically for it... not to increase your score but because they're the only way to advance.

After you beat the game, you can still go back to it, because each level in the level select has five objectives for you to complete and perfect your score to eventually reach an A rank, and when you A rank every level you get an awesome unlockable that I won't spoil for you, but I will tell you is awesome. There are a few unlockables before that too, but they're all for multiplayer or the chao garden and nowhere near as awesome.

Visually speaking SA2B is nothing spectacular. It is a Dreamcast game, and while I never owned a Dreamcast I've heard it's technically comparable to the PS2. So don't expect anything that will push the limits of the Gamecube, even if there are one or two FMV's in there. Some animations also look unnatural, and there's a certain Knuckles level early on where I swear I could count the polygons in the wall on one hand. They never become comparable to N64/Saturn/PS1 graphics, though.

The music varies from sufficient to excellent. The background music for the story scenes is great, and at the lowest point the level songs are catchy. There are a few stand-out songs though, like the one that plays in the first level of the Hero story. The game has some awesome vocal themes for each character though, but it's a shame they're only played once each for a few minutes. The game thankfully does include a sound test, so you can listen to them whenever you want.

If you have a particular dislike for hip-hop music, you might want to mute the game during the Knuckles stages. I'll admit though, it was this game that eventually (though not immediately) got me to have some respect for the genre. And, like all 3D Sonics, it has an every-so-slightly cheesy 80's style rock theme for you to fight the final boss to, and it's one of the better ones in the series.

Now would be a good time to mention the shortcomings of the English vocal cast. They aren't... BAD, specifically, but their delivery leaves something to be desired; they often deliver lines with a totally different (and unfitting) emotion than the original Japanese voices, and the dialogue sometimes comes off as awkward in English because of the translation. The translation is accurate, but things come off as too literal and not really clear in a few parts. The game's written in pretty simple Japanese; if you have even the slightest knowledge of the language, you could probably translate it better. For the record, the Japanese voices are awesome, as in every Sonic game.

Games like this are the reason I don't like scores. Some people will play it, get motion sick, notice its several glaring flaws and unpolishedness and return it, while others will give it the attention it deserves, love it, and think of it forever as a classic. It's an odd case in which the final product is a much better game than I can legitimately make it sound like in writing, and maybe that is my personal bias for the game talking. So I guess I'll give it an 8.8/10, but I really can't justify that either way.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/07