Sonic Adventure 2 is Bad

I won't lie: I couldn't think of something to write this week. I wanted to play Yakuza 0 and maybe try to write something about that, but I wasn't able to get my hands on a copy until two days ago, and while I've been playing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn nearly constantly, I'm at a loss as to what I could write about it. Instead of missing a week, I'm writing something quick that isn't original or good but is mostly something that I want out so I can stop thinking about it. Therefore, to fill the void: A List of Reasons Why Sonic Adventure 2 Isn't A Very Good Game.

1. Knuckles stages suck now

For those of you unfamiliar, Knuckles (and Rouge) stages in the Sonic Adventure series are based around finding three items scattered around the level, with a radar at the bottom using a cold-hot scheme to indicate when you're getting close to an object. Many maligned the Knuckles stages in the original Sonic Adventure, being a somewhat frustrating and plodding treasure hunt around open levels. Personally, I thought they were really fun. I loved getting to know the places these levels take place in, and despite length complaints I never found the levels took too long, at least not frustratingly so. In Sonic Adventure 2, however, one simple change makes Knuckles levels, and by extension Rouge the Bat levels, unbearable.

In the original Sonic Adventure, the radar worked with all three items at once. If you got close to any of the three items, it's radar would start flashing and beeping, allowing you to find the items in whatever order you wished or found them in. Sonic Adventure 2, on the other hand, limits you to one radar at a time. If you're relying on the radar to find the items, and you are unless you've memorized every possible location the items could spawn in, you have to find the first item first, then the radar for the second item will unlock, and only after finding that item will the radar for the third item unlock. It's the most subtly aggravating thing I think I've experienced in a video game. It's possible to wander the stage for 5 or 10 minutes before finding the first object, then wander around again only to discover the second object is back where you were searching for the first object originally. Then, you can wander around again and find the third object is near where you found the first! It's the oddest design choice, since as far as I can tell the only way you can see the change as beneficial is if you want a bunch of frustrated players. If that is the case, it worked: I was definitely frustrated when a level in Sonic Adventure 2 too me over half an hour to complete.

2. So do Tails' stages

In the original Sonic Adventure, Tails stages were races: you raced against an opponent, typically though not always Sonic, to the end of a shortened, speed-oriented version of levels from elsewhere in the game. In Sonic Adventure 2, however, Tails (and Dr. Eggman in the Dark campaign) takes the place of E-102 Gamma, with combat from a robot you're piloting being a major focus. The problem is that the combat sucks, literally just holding down a button to trigger auto-aim and releasing after you've managed to target a few enemies (this is also part of the reason why Gamma's stages weren't combat-focused but time trials, racing against a clock you could extend by defeating enemies).

Tails also has a health bar rather than the typical Sonic health of "If you have rings you lose them, if you don't you die". This sounds fine except it takes a ton of rings to refill your health bar after getting hit, and later levels especially will use the health bar as an excuse to throw more difficult and, at times, entirely unfair enemies at you who will whittle health down over time without providing enough rings to heal you. Combine this with the annoying whine that accompanies the auto-aim weapon, and Tails stages are frustrating beyond belief, especially once the levels become longer towards the end of the game

3. Nothing about this terrible story works

I'm not gonna sit here and claim Sonic the Hedgehog has some deep lore that is disrespected by the quality of story in this game, but even compared to its predecessors Sonic Adventure 2 tells a bad tale poorly. Let me try to recap: Sonic the Hedgehog is being pursued by GUN, a government agency which does...something, because they think he's the only barely at all similar Shadow the Hedgehog, who has been stealing Chaos Emeralds. He's doing this to help Eggman for some reason, who is trying to power a doomsday device his grandpa made so he can force the President of the United States of America to give him land to make Robotnikland I guess? Also Tails is helping Sonic and Knuckles is looking for the pieces of the Master Emerald again because it was broken during a conflict with Rouge the Bat who is a treasure hunter who is also working with Shadow and Eggman because she's secretly an agent of GUN and also Shadow is the "ultimate lifeform" except maybe he isn't.

That was confusing to read, and it's also confusing to remember and understand while playing the game, not helped at all by the baffling direction of the cutscenes in the game: Shots will cut from one place to the next during important scenes (such as the destruction of the Master Emerald, where in one shot it's fine and in the next it's exploded), and voice lines play over each other causing them to be muddled and confusing, assuming the sound mixing in that particular scene isn't so quiet that you can't even hear them. Again, it's not like we were expecting amazing things, but the game fails to cross over a bar that is basically on the ground already.

4. City Escape is a bad song

It is. It just is. I'm sorry you had to find out like this.

5. I Don't Have Nostalgia

I'm not stupid. I know the real reason a bunch of people love this game even though it holds up absolutely terribly: they played it when they were kids, they have good memories associated with the game. I'm in the same boat with the first game, actually: Sonic Adventure was one of the first games I ever played, and that is entirely the reason I'm still fond of it. It definitely isn't the controls, which are wobbly and imprecise at the best of time. It isn't the glitches, which are varied, constant, and new every time I play. Given the benefit of retrospect, Sonic Adventure isn't a good game, it's a game that's alright at best and typically much worse, popular in the moment but almost immediately starting to age. It wasn't the story, which may be told better than Sonic Adventure 2's but is nonetheless a confusing cross-section between "Eggman is trying to make Robotnikland" and "There is an ancient evil which will destroy the world".

My experience playing Sonic Adventure 2 for the first time was uniquely terrible. I tried to beat it just to say I did, and I ended up with an incredibly frustrating week and two separate existential crises. I don't see what people like about it. But some people don't see what I love about the first game. And that's fine. I'm allowed to like my bad thing, and other people are allowed to like their bad thing.

Sonic Adventure 2 is worse, though.