Sonic Advance 3

"Faster?Stronger?Attitude? Check,check,and of course!"

Wow can you say FRIGGIN awesome!?! Sonic's best adventure yet and portable at that! Sonic's back and the saying "The third time's the charm" couldn't be any truer. The first Sonic Advance game was a little too slow and the second was awesome but with a bit too many pits. This next game still has some of those pitfalls but you won't find yourself saying, but I jumped off the ramp that needed Super Speed yet it flung me into a wall and sent me falling to my grave!! It would be your reflexes fault. Also this brings me another thing. The difficulty is tuned down. Sonic Advance 2 was just too hard. And you had to get through the two acts and the Boss act in order to save. I know some people may think I'm bad but I'm not saying I didn't like it. I liked that but I know some didn't. So anyway now after each act the game saves. Basically this game saves everything which is good.

Now to the big two changes. You get a partner now and there are 20 different team combos in total. Each different combos as so many strikingly different moves that you'll want to try em all! The characters you can choose from are:Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Cream. As you can see there are no new characters but that's a good thing in my opinion. Now the second big change is how you choose acts. Each Zone is a world map. You can actually run around the Zone jumping into the three acts in whichever order you please. Yes you heard right. There are three acts instead of two. Sweet,eh? And the choice of acts is really cool too. Don't like this one, go on to that one. Other than the act rings there are two mini game portals, A warp ring to the "Sonic Factory" which is the central hub so to speak where you can choose the zones,A Boss ring, which leads to a boss fight. Oh and guess what? The chasing boss thing is in the past. Sega learned and the good old classic boss fights are back and better than ever! And lastly there is a special spring which takes you to the Special stage to earn one of the seven precious chaos emeralds. Also the chaos emerald system is better but perhaps more tedious. There are 70 chao in the entire game. 10 for each Zone. Usually one chao is found on the map and the other 9 are spewed throughout the three acts. So you have to collect all 10 chao for the zone you want to get the emerald in and then run through any level in the Zone to collect a key then find the hidden special spring in the Zone map to challenge the special stage. Sound complicated? It is kinda at first but not once you really get into the game. Every time you collect a chao it saves so don't worry. It's much easier but there's alot more work. More replay I suppose. Also the special stage is much easier as well. You are Tail's airplane and must gather rings by moving up,down,left,and right. Simple but as the challenges move on according to Zones the difficulty goes up as well. They are still a challenge but not impossible like SA2s were.

Now to the level design. Awesome stuff. Each level is filled with so many things to interact with and just mess around with especially "Toy Kingdom". My fave Zone. Speed,loop de loops,everything you could want from a Sonic game is here.
Now these might be a spoiler if you don't like to know the Zone names but for those people who want to know the environments here they are:

~Warning:Zone name spoilers~

Zone 1: Route 99:A city.
Zone 2: Sunset hill:Grassy Plains.
Zone 3: Ocean Base:Water/Factory type.
Zone 4: Toy Kingdom:Toy world. Casino esque.
Zone 5: Twinkle Snow:Ice/snow land.
Zone 6: Cyber Track:Like inside a computer.Static.
Zone 7: Chaos Angel:Final Zone. Angel Island in chaos.

Plus there is a secret Zone. Collect all the emeralds to find it.

Now for the technical stuff. Sonic is better looking than ever. NO SLOWDON despite the insane speeds you reach. It's amazing! There's a different and unique sprite for everything you can do. It's so cool. And the sound is amazing as well! Everything fits the mood and gets you pumped for speed!

A couple last things to mention. There is no Chao Garden. You don't need to collect chaos emeralds for each individual character. Grinding is much improved. Lamposts are back to their original good looking selves, same with the springs.

Graphics:10/10
Sound/Music:10/10
Story:NA/10
Gameplay/Control:10/10
Replay/Longevity:9/10
Overall:10/10

Final Verdict:BUY!

See ya! Hope you enjoyed another one of my reviews.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/30/04