Sonic Adventure 2 Battle - Mini Review

This game is pretty much my childhood. And with the recent announcement for Sonic Generations, i thought i'd whip out a Gamecube controller and play this game again. When i was a kid, i struggled through this game. Thinking back on it it was kinda funny. I think my playtime was at like 40 Hours. (Then again, i did play with my Chao a lot.) So, after playing it again i thought i'd do a small review on the game. And, well here it is.

SA2B Cast. (Including 2P Mode Characters)

This game took what Sonic Adventure did and made it better. Basically, instead of having multiple characters with an individual story, Adventure 2/Battle has 2 Main stories. Hero and Dark. The Hero story follows Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and the Dark story following Shadow, Eggman and Rouge.

I Thought this was fun. As not only was it the first time Eggman/Robotnik was playable, but it also did well for the story. Seeing the story from 2 different perspectives. It also has the nifty feature to change the Audio from English to Japanese, which now that i'm older loved.

Also introduced in this game was Shadow The Hedgehog.

So, for the gameplay. There are 3 Different types. For Sonic and Shadow it's the same as Adventure. The goal is to get to the end of the level by racing through it. This was of course my favorite gameplay in this game. However, it unfortunately only made up a third of the gameplay. Just like the previous sonic game, you had the ability to use both Homing Attack and spindash but also a "Somersault" to get under small gaps or break boxes and "Grinding", allowing the character to grind around. Somersaults weren't my favorite thing. But Grinding was a lot of fun.

E.G.G.M.A.N

The second type of gameplay was similar to Sonic and Shadows. It was Tails and Eggman. The goal was to get to the end of the stage, however unlike Sonic and Shadow, Tails and Eggman were in Machines. The Tornado for Tails and...The 'EggWalker'...Maybe? For Eggman. They also had Guns on them. Well, Lasers. o-O. They were able to lock onto 10+ targets at a time to destroy enemies, along with the ability to hover. Their gameplay was fun, but definitely not my favorite.

The Knuckles gameplay returns from the previous game. Treasure Hunting, these are done on both the Knuckles and Rouge stages. These stages were fun. But i always hated them when i was younger. I Struggled to find the emeralds.  Knuckles can get Sunglasses though. So that makes up for it.




Another note about the gameplay in this game...THE CAMERA. It's unresponsive and by far the worst part about this game. Most of my death's weren't from poor gameplay, but Poor Camera control. It would often get stuck behind a wall or object so that you were unable to see the character until you move. Often accidentally moving to death.

I think the graphics in this game were superb for their time. 2001, port from Dreamcast to Gamecube and a launch title. I found the environments were very well Detailed and the character models looked nice. They looked much nicer then Sonic Adventure DX' graphics.

What was probably one of the best things about this game was the music. The entire music track is great. The Character themes of course stand out above the others. I'm sure the only reason so many people are okay with Robotniks name change to Eggman was because of his theme song, E.G.G.M.A.N. The stages also had great music. Whether it didn't have vocals; Such as Shadow's Radical Highway stage or did such as in Sonic's City Escape stage there was always good music playing, which really added to the game i thought.

Now for the plot. Both the Hero and Dark sides follow the same basic plot, but each of them see it and start it differently.

The Hero plot starts out with Sonic escaping arrest, being confused for a Hedgehog that apparently looks like him and stole a Chaos Emerald. Soon after it is revealed that Eggman has aboarded a Space Colony called "ARK" and has the power to destroy the world if they don't make him the world leader.

The Dark plot starts with Eggman releasing "Project Shadow", the Ultimate Life form created by his grandfather. It turns out to be a hedgehog by the name of "Shadow". Shadow thanks him for releasing him and reveals to him about the ARK.

It starts out like that, and from there follows Eggman's attempts to gather the Chaos Emeralds; Told through Shadow, Eggman and Rouge and Sonic's attempts to stop Eggman; Told though Sonic, Tails and Knuckles.
Much like Adventure, this game featured a final story, this time simply titled "FINAL". Or maybe it was "LAST". i can't remember. Well, This was only playable once both the Hero and Dark stories were finished, and has all of the characters, including Super Sonic and Super Shadow playable.

This game is a pretty damn good Sonic game. I Wish they would go back to the dreamcast era style of sonic games at least once more, as i think they were some of the best Sonic games to exist. Sonic Heroes comes after this game, and i might play it soon. If i do, i might just bring a review for that too.