Months ago I put Sonic Adventure 2 on my 10 worst Sonic games. And everyday I get more and more emails about people bitching that it's their favorite Sonic game. I really don't care if it's your favorite Sonic game especially if you can't back it up saying that it's the best.
When you compare SA2 to SA1 it's completely sub par. SA1 was an adventure for each character, SA2 is an "adventure" for 3 characters at once and there's no adventure fields, how can you call a game an adventure without it. That's why SA1 felt like an adventure because you had to travel from place to place to progress the story. SA2 was just on autopilot, instead of going from adventure field to stage to cut-scene and back again it was cut-scene to stage and back again. Sonic Heroes did the same thing but it was returning to the more classic style of gameplay and wasn't an "adventure."
The voice acting for Sonic was bad, I know it was the same guy from the first SA, Ryan Drummond but he constantly pronounced emerald wrong. He pronounced it phonetically as em-ER-ald, why did he do that? He pronounced it fine in the first game.
The story was really bad too, it was a story of revenge that cops out at the end. Shadow wakes up and is pissed that Maria is dead and wants to do something that involves the ARK and the Eclipse Cannon, it's not really specified what HE wants. But we know what Eggman wants, world domination and Shadow is helping him. At the end Shadow remembers that Maria wanted him to make people happy and protect them, just because the plot says so, not due to character development.
The levels were poor, most of them were just copies of each other. Like Green Jungle and White Jungle? Come on, I know they're in the same place when this happens but that's just lazy. Sonic only have 5 stages and Shadow had 4 for a total of 9 stages. Tails had 4, Eggman had 5 also a total of 9 stages. Knuckles had 5 and Rogue had 4 also a total of 9.
Sonic and Shadow share 3 similar stages:
City Escape = Radical Highway
Green Forest = White Jungle
Final Rush = Final Chase
They're not even being subtle with the last 2.
Tails and Eggman share 3 similar stages:
Prison Lane = Iron Gate
Hidden Base = Sand Ocean
Eternal Engine = Lost Colony and Cosmic Wall
Eggman also repeats two of his own stages.
Knuckles and Rogue share 4 similar stages:
Wild Canyon = Dry Lagoon
Aquatic Mine = Security Hall (both are enclosed vertical stages just with different looks)
Death Chamber = Egg Quarters
Meteor Heard = Mad Space
There's 27 stages (the two driving stages don't count as those are more of a mini-game) 9 of them are speed stages, 9 of them are shooting stages and 9 are treasure hunting and 21 of those stages are the same.
Yes in Sonic Adventure there were 11 stages and they were repeated as well, but they were part of the story as it was all set in Station Square and the stages are retooled for each character. They weren't trying to pass off the same stages as different ones like how SA2 did. Also SA1 gave you a different experience for each character, SA2 gave you the same experience for two characters. SA1 had different upgrades for different characters, SA2 had the same upgrades for each character. And SA2 threw in a bunch of stupid advertisements most fake, some not. It's fine if there's a few, there was a few in SA1 but in SA2 they just went crazy with them and even more so in SA2 Battle.
SA2 also added the action button, the button that did everything and always did everything wrong at the wrong time. Need to light dash? Nope you're doing the bounce attack and plummeting to your death. Need to use the mystic melody? Nope you're somersaulting, spin dashing or attacking. One button that does everything is a bad idea and I'm glad that after Sonic 2006 they got rid of it because they couldn't program it right.
I pin most of the blame on Yuji Naka, because the games started going down hill when Sonic went from 2D to 3D and the pinnacle of the suck vortex was Sonic 2006 and after he left the games started getting better. Like the day stages of Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. I think Yuji Naka wanted to get fired from Sega so he was making the games progressively worse but since Sega wouldn't fire him, he left to make Prope.
But that's why I don't like Sonic Adventure 2.
I'm curious first off if you've gotten a good response as to why you're wrong from anyone else as you seem to be mostly getting just whiny 12 year olds yelling at you.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I do have a bone to pick with your problems in SA2.
I have 2 things which I agree with you on; it wasn't really an adventure game and the action button was a terrible idea. That's all, though.
I've never heard anyone complain about the voice acting in SA2 before and I certainly didn't find it bad by any means. He wasn't pronouncing anything wrong. I fail to see what is so unforgiveably bad about putting more emphasis on the 'er' in emerald.
As far as the story goes if you even want to bring it up as a comparison to SA then I think that's a poor idea. It was a great story in my opinion and, more than anything, had consistency. SA had 6 differing stories with no continuity. And when Shadow decided to spare the Earth, save it, it had already been foreshadowed earlier in the story that Maria was on his mind. It didn't just conveniently pop up at the end for plot purposes.
The levels were excellent. They did much the same thing as in SA; using a similar area pallet to give the game an overall consistency from start to finish, but changed the stages course and methods. They were similar, but that's because the characters were in the same areas, in different sub areas. Poor point.
SA definitely had different experiences for each character. Unfortunately half of them were throw away, too painful to mention but thankfully short. They whittled it down to three enjoyable play styles, came up with or carried on upgrades for those play styles and gave you a more enjoyable game to play overall.
I thought the advertisements were funny and didn't find them to be an eyesore, but that's just me.
This was the only spot that had enough characters for this reply. If you want to retort, my youtube user name is JoshuaKayle as I don't check AIM pretty much ever.