I loved Sonic Adventure 1 and have replayed it so many times. The levels were pretty great and the small open world was fun to go around and find the hidden power ups.
Sonic adventure 2 was painful to get through. I hated almost every level. The only ones I enjoyed were the Sonic and shadow levels, but they did not feel well designed. So many times, enemies would just drop from the sky on you without any chance to doge them.
Hunting for the emerald pieces was so boring and tedious. I hated those stages. There was one time where I restarted and luckily found them all right near the start.
The tails levels were OK, but it felt a bit clunky to control. I think that was by design, but I didn’t care for it.
I played both of these games as a kid on the Dreamcast, so it’s not like I’m nostalgic for one and not the other.
I just replaced SA1 and loved it, playing SA2 reminded me of hating it as a kid.
Do you share my opinion? If not, what do you think of this game?
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for me it’s the other way around. i do like Adventure but it’s a game full of compromises, with most areas needing to work for multiple characters and the Adventure fields ultimately limiting the scope of the game to three relativey-close locales. then comes Sonic Adventure 2, a game with purpose-built stages for each playstyle spanning multiple continents and even space. while the treasure hunt stages were arguably worse, the mech stages were ten times better without the timer and the random tranaformations. and the speed stages, oh man. without the spam dash you really have to learn how the physics and movement options work, but when you do you’re tearing through the stages rolling on walls and making gravity-defying leaps. it’s amazing. 3D Sonic does have a trend of turning things that were challenges in 2D loops into just breather setpieces, but SA2’s introduction of rails is the one time they bucked that trend- get enough momentum going before you hop on or you’re not going anywhere! shame every game since has locked your speed once you’re on them. the extra power-ups and chao boxes scattered throughout the levels give you extra places to explore and reason to do so. to me Sonic Adventure 2 really finally delivers on everything Sonic Adventure wanted to be. it does lose points for it’s rocky voice acting and overreliance on automation- although in both cases to a degree less than Adventure 1- but it’s a great game and the only 3D Sonic i can say that about, as close as Adventure 1 and Frontiers may have came
I think they had a certain charm (of the time) like @wazzupdog@lemmy.world mentions.
But I agree (in hindsight) it’s not very good. The Sonic/Shadow levels were the only fun ones, and you forgot to mention the Tails/Eggman levels are constantly grating because of that damned weapon beeping.
Also the sound mixing was terrible, couldn’t even hear the voice acting over the loud music. It used to crash often as well, but it could be that I just had a faulty disc so let’s not count that one.
I think the only thing that kept me playing was the Chao Garden, and replaying the levels that were at least some bit of fun to grind those materials.
edit: disclaimer, I played on GameCube
I loved both games with SA2 being better in my eyes. But what kept me playing the crap out of them were the chao gardens. I had both games on Dreamcast, GameCube, and now on PC. The chaos are too addictive. On Dreamcast you could take them with you on the VMU, on GameCube you could take them to the tiny chao garden on GBA, and then PC just cut this content (boo) but at least you can easily mod your chaos with the fusion chao editor. I can’t believe there aren’t any other games with the chao gardens, just a missed opportunity. Even just a game focused on the chao gardens would be awesome.
I’ve the same opinion you do. I loved to play SA1 and the “adventure field” vs “action stage” thing was the perfect balance between the open world you could explore and the more linear gameplay.
SA1 was a very good game, then came out SA2, a poorly executed thing that forces you straight into mini game style games, nothing to explore, no hub word to make the experience consistent. SA2 kinda feels like a 2D gameboy-style Sonic game. The way thing were tied together between the story of each character, “adventure field” and “action stage” was just very well thought out-
And there’s also another problem, the PC version of SA2 is a also a piece of crap. While Sonic Adventure DX wasn’t perfect things actually worked mostly fine out of the box however in SA2 not even gamepads work.
Btw, I’m looking for this: https://lemmy.world/post/21563379
Your looking for a high res scan of the game cover?
The cached image doesn’t seem to be a scan, maybe someone got it from some source or leak. It may be of the Dreamcast version or some other release after that with the same cover. Maybe PS3 or XBOX…
At least pumpkin Hill had good music, but yeah having played it a few times I agree
I like both games, but they’ve got very different feels. I did miss the Adventure Stages from SA1, but SA2 has some great stages. I think the early Knuckles/Rouge stages are alright, but the later ones just get too big if you don’t know where to look.
If you liked E102’s stages in SA1, there’s no reason to dislike Tails/Eggman in SA2 imo! And like you said, Sonic/Shadow stages are still great.
Keep in mind that SA1 has the Big stages as a requirement for completion…haha
The only annoyance I had with the stages in SA2 was that it felt like the Dark story had too many Eggman stages and not enough Shadow stages, or at least the Eggman stages were too long and the Shadow stages were too short, where the Hero story felt more balanced.
That’s a good point. They probably gave Eggman the spotlight because he’s the leader of the Dark side. But Shadow’s stages were just more fun, lol
I liked the big stages 😅 Plus it’s super easy to cheese .
I just want another 3D game where you actually play as Tails. Like, no mech. Just like Sonic levels but you can fly.
I love both, they had a certain charm, and still do for me to this day,. Is there some tedium, sure, but I play games far more tedious so no problem for me.
I played both ports on Steam recently as I’m taken by a Sonic nostalgia wave. One thing that I like more in the original Adventure is that I can skip the characters I don’t like. But I have mixed feelings with the Sonic levels - there’s just too much camera and collision problems in the way. The second game fixes some of that, but the Tails and Knuckles levels are kinda boring.
Overall, I liked the games. My nostalgia was satisfied.
Sonic Adventure 2’s problem is that it didn’t have enough speed character stages. iirc, the dark side story only had three shadow stages and that’s it, the rest were either the “meh” eggman stages or the god awful emerald shard stages.
The hero side story wasn’t as bad since it had more sonic stages, but only barely.
I can go back to SA1 quite a bit, because despite the jankiness, the stages are really fun and you can tackle them in many different ways like you could with the Genesis games.
