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Description
This is gonna be a long review, so hope you got something to drink, like Pepsi or beer or something.
I really should play more games to diversify what I cover with my video game reviews, but I might as well keep reviewing the Sonic series, and what better game to cover than Sonic’s official jump into 3D? Well, here’s Sonic Adventure. I didn’t play the Sonic Adventure games until around 2007, which kind of bums me out when considering that I played Sonic 06 before even touching the Adventure games. Yeah, I’m aware of how pathetic that sounds. Anyway, Sonic had a lot of success on the Sega Genesis, but when it came to Sega’s next console at the time, the Saturn, Sonic was kind of struggling with having a game on that system. Sure, there was 3D Blast (which was on the Genesis, but I didn’t really care for that game very much), Sonic R (which sucked) and Sonic the Fighters (which I haven’t played, but it’s on PSN so maybe I’ll check it out one of these days), but there wasn’t a real 3D Sonic game on the Saturn. If there was a good Sonic game on the Saturn, then maybe it would’ve lived, but because the Saturn was dying out, Sega shifted development on Sonic Adventure to the Dreamcast. There was going to be a 3D Sonic game on the Saturn called Sonic X-Treme, but that game never happened, mainly because Yuji Naka was being a douche to Sega of America, whom were developing X-Treme, and because of some shit that was going on with development, the game was never made. But finally, in 1998, Sonic Adventure, as well as the Dreamcast, came out. Well, in Japan, anyway; America and Europe wouldn’t get it until around 1999.

While Sonic Adventure was well-received by critics and gamers at the time of its release, and was the killer app for the Dreamcast, its success was not enough to keep the Dreamcast alive in the end, especially with the Playstation 2 coming out the following year and ultimately curb stomping the Dreamcast, killing off Sega’s hardware ambitions. A lot of people like to say that Sonic started going downhill around the time SA1 came out, and I strongly disagree with that notion. In my opinion, Sonic didn’t start going downhill until around 2004, after Heroes came out. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Sonic Heroes, but I can understand people being turned off from the series when that game came out, but I’m not talking about Heroes here, at least not yet. Anyway, time to go into what I think about Sonic Adventure nowadays.

Graphics: The graphics haven’t really aged well in the slightest. They were good for the time when the Dreamcast came out, but on the DX port on Gamecube, as well as the HD port on XBLA and PSN, they don’t really look that good. The character models look pretty shiny and while their gameplay animations are decent, I’m not really a fan of how they move in the cutscenes. Their facial animations look pretty wonky, and their lips don’t really match up to the English voice acting, only synching up with the Japanese voice acting, and this is a problem with the series until Unleashed came out, which started synching mouth movement to the English voice acting. The levels looked alright back in the day, but they don’t look very good nowadays, since I can see quite a bit of geometry tearing on the textures and some of the objects in the levels. There are a few cutscenes in this game that still look really good because they were able to show what the game could’ve looked like had the developers push the Dreamcast to its potential, but those are few and far between.

Sound/Music: The voices fit the characters nicely for the most part, but they don’t really do a good job with making the characters sound expressive, almost like they were reading off the script rather than acting. I like Sonic and Eggman’s voices in this game, Amy’s voice actress in this game, Jennifer Douilliard, is probably my favorite Amy voice, Gamma’s voice is good since it sounds like an actual robot, Knuckles’ voice actor doesn’t even sound like he’s trying, and I can’t stand how Tails and Big sound in this game. The music, however, is probably one of my favorite soundtracks in the Sonic series, since not only does the stage music have a lot of variety and they suit the level they’re in, but the character themes are pretty good, especially “It Doesn’t Matter,” “Believe in Myself,” and “Unknown from M.E.” I also really like the main theme “Open Your Heart,” which was something we haven’t heard before in the Sonic series at the time, and even today it still sounds pretty iconic.

Controls: They haven’t really aged that well but I still like how the controls still work decently enough. I know there’s an action button, but it’s not as pronounced or uses as much as it is in Sonic Adventure 2. For this review, I did play it off of the PSN port, so I’ll use Playstation 3 controls; X jumps, Circle and Square are pretty much the same function, and L2 and R2 control the camera, but more about the camera later. Anyway, you have six different characters to play as in Sonic Adventure, and each one controls very differently.

Sonic is the fastest character and he can jump pretty high. Pressing X in midair does the Homing Attack, and while it works fine in this game, it’s a little wonky and not as accurate as in later 3D games, but it does a good job in keeping the speed going. Holding down the action button does the Spin Dash, and I like how not only can you do it on the fly, but this is probably my favorite version of the Spin Dash since I use it a lot to find a lot of huge shortcuts in Sonic’s levels. He has a couple upgrades, but I didn’t really find them very useful. Charging up the Spin Dash long enough lets you do the Light Dash near rings and the Light Attack near enemies, and when you have the Crystal Ring, the charge time is decreased. I prefer the Light Dash in Adventure 2 much more than here because it really slows me down doing this move with little payoff.

Tails is almost as fast as Sonic, and he can fly. This is probably the best Tails gameplay in the series, since after this game, Tails’ playable appearances seem to nerf him in some ways, like give him a mech, make him lug around Sonic and Knuckles when flying, and so on. I really like how Tails controls in this game, since he’s just as fast as Sonic when flying and when you get the Jet Anklet he can fly even faster and further. His Tails Attack is okay but outside of boss fights, there’s no real use for attacking enemies on account of his gameplay mechanics, but more on that later.

Knuckles is fairly decent in this game, but I prefer how he controls in Adventure 2 a lot more. He can glide and climb walls, and in my opinion, Knuckles is better in 3D than in 2D since his climbing and gliding is done very well in 3D. While he’s not as fast as Sonic and Tails, he can get a lot of distance with gliding. He also has punching, but I’m not a fan of how his attacks control in Adventure 1, since they seem to slow him down quite a bit. He can also dig but I only use it to find pieces of the Master Emerald, and his Fighting Gloves ability is probably the most pointless move in the whole game, since I never use it.

Amy’s controls are fine, although I do wish she was a little faster, but I still think she was sort of fun to play as in Adventure 1, but I prefer her Heroes gameplay more. While Amy is slow, she can jump pretty high and can attack with her hammer. Her hammer works much better when running at full speed because you can use the hammer to vault really high in the air. She gets the Warrior Feather, which lets her spin around with the hammer, but like Knuckles’ Fighting Gloves, this upgrade is pretty useless.

I know a lot of people who played Sonic Adventure really hated playing as Big the Cat, and I sort of agree with them, because he’s my least favorite gameplay, and his controls don’t really help me at least try to enjoy Big. For one, Big is slow as hell and can’t jump high, but at least he can climb ladders fast. Big’s gameplay is fishing, hold down the action button to cast the lure, use Left Analog Stick to aim the lure, and when the fish catches the lure, hit down on the Left Stick to hook it in (a lot of people have trouble figuring this out) and use either X or Square to lure the fish in, but if you reel in the fish too fast, the lure breaks and you lose a life. Yeah I definitely see why a lot of people hate Big, myself included.

Gamma is pretty good, since his gameplay is shooting a bunch of shit in the levels. Hold the action button to lock onto enemies and objects and then release it to fire at and destroy them. Gamma is a little on the slow side, but his gameplay is pretty easy to get used to, especially when you get a hold of his hover ability. I can say that after Sonic and Tails, Gamma would be my favorite play style in Sonic Adventure.

Even though all six characters control pretty differently, they each add their own unique flair to the game, but the controls are not without problems. For one, the camera can be pretty bad at times, especially in areas where the camera changes angles at times. I can understand trying to make the camera a certain angle for a set piece or memorable moment, Sonic Team really went overboard in some instances. The camera’s fine for the most part in boss battles, but for levels and occasionally in the hub worlds, they can get pretty wonky. For two, the game has the occasional glitch that may make you get disoriented or die the cheap death, but I haven’t come across very many glitches whenever I play SA1, but it can happen. And for three, sometimes the controls are a little loose, which can be a little problematic whenever you’re moving at high speeds, like in some of Sonic’s levels. But for the most part, the controls are fine, although they do feel pretty archaic, but that’s just me.

Gameplay: While the controls haven’t aged well, the gameplay mechanics certain have. Just like there being six different control schemes, Sonic Adventure has six different gameplay styles, and (with the exception of Big the Cat) all of the characters do a good job with making their gameplay fun and nicely presented. Sonic’s gameplay is high speed action, where all you need to do is get to the end as fast as you can, so this is basically classic Sonic style gameplay. Sonic has the most stages and gets the full stage, which can last anywhere from 3 to 7 minutes in length, although you can speed run some of the stages by knowing how and where to Spin Dash jump. However, many of Sonic’s levels are pretty linear, like Lost World, Final Egg, and Casinopolis being good examples of linear stages, although there are some levels like Speed Highway and Emerald Coast which feel pretty open where you can take more than one path to the end, but I do want more of Sonic’s levels to be more open like these two.

Tails’ gameplay involves beating Sonic to the end of the level, and his gameplay is probably the easiest of the six because you can easily blow through levels using his flying ability, and if you get the Jet Anklet at the start of his story, you have no excuse for losing against Sonic in Tails’ levels. Tails gets 5 levels and only goes through half the stage Sonic does, and most of the time you can easily finish a level in around a minute, except for Ice Cap where you have to outrace Sonic on a snowboard. Knuckles’ gameplay has him searching for pieces of the Master Emerald, and the radar does a pretty good job finding more than one piece at a time, although I wish the range for the radar was a wider radius. Even though Adventure 2 nerfed the radar, it at least had a decent range for whichever piece the game wanted you to look for. Knuckles gets the smaller sections of the stage, but some levels like Sky Deck and Red Mountain are pretty big and open, and his gameplay is perfect for exploration.

Amy has to run away from ZERO, and she only gets three stages, but she goes through some parts of the stage that others can’t go to. While Amy is pretty slow and there isn’t much reason for you to explore her levels, Amy’s gameplay is more platforming orienting, which is fine for what it is. Big’s gameplay is the most unlike what you would expect from a Sonic game, although he has the shortest game, only going through the shortest parts of the stage, having only 4 levels, and each of his levels can be completed really quickly if you can get a hang of his controls. Gamma’s gameplay is finding and destroying an enemy or an object within the time limit, so you don’t have any time to explore his levels, but his gameplay, like Amy’s, is more platforming based with some focus on combat, which works for me well enough but I digress.

The Adventure fields are also pretty nice since they do a good job giving you the sense that you’re going on an adventure, and these hub worlds are great for exploring no matter who you’re playing as, except for Big, naturally. However, I think Sonic Unleashed did hub worlds in the Sonic series the best, but Adventure 1’s hub worlds are still pretty good. The boss fights are pretty good, with the exception of the character battles since they’re always pretty one sided and can be beat in literally no time at all. And there are some mini-games you are required to play occasionally, like Sky Chase and Sand Hill, which are fine but I do wish these were optional instead of required to advance the story, but that’s just a nitpick since they do a nice job transitioning between areas for the sake of the plot.

Story: Sonic Adventure probably has my favorite story in the series, next to Unleashed and Black Knight, but the way Adventure 1 presents its story pushes it ahead of the other two in my book. At some time before the events of the game, Eggman finds some ancient shit that tells of a powerful water god called “Chaos” which has the power to destroy the world, so Eggman wants to harness the power of Chaos to conquer Station Square to build Eggmanland. I should probably say that this was the game that started referring to Robotnik as Eggman, but I call him Eggman instead of Robotnik, and people keep saying that the name “Robotnik” sounds more threatening, but I disagree. It sounds pretty dumb to me.

Anyway, Eggman destroys the Master Emerald on Angel Island one night, releasing the god Chaos as well as a pink ball of light (I’ll talk more about who that ball of light is later), causing the pieces of the Master Emerald to scatter, sending Knuckles on his quest for the Master Emerald in order to restore Angel Island. Also, Big’s pet frog Froggy swallows a Chaos Emerald and gets possessed by Chaos’ tail and runs away, sending Big on his quest, and personally, Big is probably the only useless story in the game. Also, this is the first game where the Chaos Emeralds are not hidden away in Special Stages anymore, and also the first game where they become plot devices, which a lot of people complained about, but I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world. I think we can all agree the Sonic fanbase are incredibly fucking annoying about pointless shit that shouldn’t matter in the long run.

Chaos lands in Station Square and Sonic fights Chaos, then the next day he rescues Tails after crashing in Emerald Coast, because Tails was testing out a Chaos Emerald being used to power up his plane. They go to the Mystic Ruins where they face Eggman and lose their Emerald to Eggman, who feeds it to Chaos since the ancient tablets say that Chaos gets powerful after absorbing a Chaos Emerald and once he has all 7, shit will get real. Sonic and Tails then go on their quest to find the rest of the Chaos Emeralds before Eggman does, but are ultimately unsuccessful. After the two and Knuckles face off against Chaos again, Eggman and Chaos gets away on the Egg Carrier, so Sonic and Tails give chase in the Tornado. Also, this causes some bird to fall off the Egg Carrier, which sends Amy on her quest as she and the bird she decides to take care of get chased around by ZERO, one of Eggman’s robots. The main story splits in two when Sonic and Tails get separated after being shot out of the sky by Eggman, with Sonic landing in Station Square and Tails landing in Mystic Ruins.

Gamma gets activated around this time, where he is trained by Eggman and then becomes part of his elite robot army, and then Gamma goes to Station Square to find Froggy. Knuckles, after parting with Sonic and Tails, goes looking for Emerald shards in the mysterious ruins in the jungle, where he gets a vision from Tikal, which gives some insight about Chaos’ origins as the guardian of the Chaos Emeralds. Tikal’s father wages war with the surrounding areas and decides the Echidna tribe should steal the Chaos Emeralds from Angel Island, but Tikal doesn’t want her people to go to war. Knuckles gets warped back to Angel Island, and around this point in the overall plot, we see a very big inconsistency with Gamma, Big, and Knuckles’ stories. Gamma takes Big’s frog back to the Egg Carrier and Big chases Gamma back to the jungle base in the Mystic Ruins, but after Knuckles attempts to restore the Master Emerald, he notices Gamma going through Angel Island and follows him to Eggman’s jungle base, and both he and Big do not run into each other on the way. You’d think that inconsistency would be large enough, but there’s more. Gamma gets the frog, but in his story, instead of being chased by Big and/or Knuckles, Gamma gets warped to the past by Tikal and then warped back onto the Egg Carrier awaiting orders from Eggman. Yeah, this is a pretty huge plothole when you consider this big inconsistency, but aside from that, the main story remains fairly coherent.

Anyway, Amy gets kidnapped by ZERO after getting lost while Sonic looks for her, so Sonic follows the two to the Mystic Ruins where they get beamed up to the Egg Carrier. Around the same time, Tails goes through some character development while looking for another Chaos Emerald in the jungle to power up the Tornado 2, and everybody meets up on the Egg Carrier. Amy convinces Gamma to let her go, and Sonic and Tails eventually fight Gamma, but then the Egg Carrier starts to fall out of the sky. Tails, Amy, and Gamma leave the Egg Carrier while Sonic faces off against Eggman and Chaos, whom transforms again after absorbing 2 more emeralds. Sonic follows Eggman off the Egg Carrier while Big flies Tails’ plane back to his hut which ends his story, and Knuckles takes the 6 Chaos Emeralds with him off the Egg Carrier as it gets destroyed and falls into the ocean. After Tails and Amy land in Station Square, they split up with Amy going to Eggman’s base in the Mystic Ruins and Tails rescuing the city from Eggman’s missile and goes to defeat Eggman. Knuckles restores the Master Emerald ending his story. Gamma finds and frees his brothers, the other E-Series robots, and faces off against E-101 Beta on the Egg Carrier, destroying both the robots, but releases 2 birds which turns out to be the family of Amy’s bird. Amy defeats ZERO and has her bird reunite with its family, ending Amy’s story. And finally, Sonic follows Eggman to his base in the Mystic Ruins after going through some ruins and getting a Tikal vision, and kicks his ass one final time, ending his story.

After playing through all six stories (I’m almost done with this section, just be patient) you unlock the Super Sonic story, where Chaos steals the Chaos Emeralds from Knuckles after he restores the Master Emerald. Sonic and Tails meets up with Knuckles, who tells Sonic that Chaos will bring destruction once he gets the seventh emerald, but before Sonic can do again, he gets a final vision from Tikal, which shows the Echidna tribe attacking the Emerald altar and the Chao that are there, which upsets Chaos, whom uses the power of the 7 Emeralds to destroy the Echidna tribe, and then Tikal seals both Chaos and herself within the Master Emerald, where they’ve been for thousands of years until the beginning of the game. Sonic and Tails fail to get to the last Emerald in time before Chaos, whom uses the Chaos Emeralds to become Perfect Chaos and goes to destroy Station Square. Sonic uses the Emeralds to turn into Super Sonic and defeats Chaos, turning him good again and both Chaos and Tikal depart back to the afterlife or some shit like that.

I really like the story here, because it not only keeps the tone that one would expect from a Sonic game, but also does a good job with adding in more serious and darker elements while still keeping the plot flowing and fairly cohesive, with the exception of that big-ass plothole with Gamma, Big, and Knuckles. Granted, there are a few moments that made no sense, and maybe some of the plot elements could’ve been explained or expanded upon more, like Knuckles’ implied relation to the Echidna tribe, but for the most part, I felt the plot was pretty decent. I like how it has character development for characters like Tails and Amy, and I really felt for Gamma’s story. I also liked the whole “Rashomon”-style story-telling with the various characters, since it felt that each character was unique in more ways than just gameplay.

Length: Since Sonic’s transition to 3D, the games have become longer in terms of a lot of things. Hell, Sonic’s story takes about 2 hours to beat, which is already longer than Sonic 1 and 2 combined, and yes, that includes cutscenes. Tails and Knuckles each take around an hour to beat, Amy and Gamma each take up 45 minutes, Big only takes up around 30 minutes, maybe less if you’re quick enough, and getting through Super Sonic’s story will probably take around 20, so you’re getting a 6 hour long game. However, there are a couple things that I would consider padding. For one, some of the boss fights are repeated in different characters’ stories, like the character battles, and probably the biggest offender being the Chaos 4 boss, since you have to fight it as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. For two, but this isn’t really a complaint, is that you tend to play through the same levels. While I don’t consider this as a complaint in any form is because of the different gameplay styles. The developers still had the good grace to change up the levels depending on that character’s gameplay. A good example would be Speed Highway. Sonic gets the most out the stage with the “running down the skyscraper” set piece, and it’s probably my favorite level in the game and I clearly see why it got put in Sonic Generations. Tails gets the first half of the stage, but it’s a race against Eggman and the level design is pretty open which allows a lot of exploration and overall speeding through the stage, which I love. Knuckles gets the ending section with the daybreak, the emphasis on exploration, and probably my favorite stage BGM in the whole game. Anyway, this game doesn’t overstay its welcome while at the same time keeping me satisfied with what I’m playing.

Difficulty: Despite some of the game’s technical issues, like the camera, some of the control issues and playing as Big the Cat, the game is pretty easy for the most part. Granted there might be a few stages that can give people trouble, like Sonic’s Sky Deck and Amy’s Hot Shelter, but you can expect a pretty smooth ride from beginning to end. However, I do kind of wish there was a little more challenge in this game, because most of the challenge with Sonic Adventure would stem from camera and control issues, which feels pretty cheap to be honest.

Replay Value: Unfortunately, Sonic Adventure doesn’t have a multiplayer, which is kind of a bummer considering that the next game, Adventure 2, has probably the best multiplayer in the series, but considering how differently the characters control from each other, maybe this game having multiplayer wouldn’t have panned out very well. Thankfully, there’s quite a bit of extra content in this game. In addition to being able to play the B and A levels with each character, finding emblems in the Adventure fields, and the mini-games, they also have the Chao Garden. You can raise these things called Chao by feeding it stuff, mainly animals you can get in levels, and raise their stats to be able to have them perform in Chao Races. While I’m not a big fan of the Chao Garden in this game (I liked it quite a bit in SA2 though), I know there are still some people who like this, and I’m cool with that. Also, getting all 130 Emblems unlocks Metal Sonic, but only as a playable skin for Sonic’s stages with slightly different controls.

Originality/Innovation: Sonic Adventure took a lot of risks in terms of what direction it wanted to take the series at the time, and for my money, this is probably one of, if not the most ambitious Sonic games made. I mean, six different playable characters, having a deep and involving story, being more speed oriented than the Genesis games, vocal themes, Eggman being more of villainous, having the Sonic characters mingle with the real world, and I could go on and on. I know a lot of people have quite a few problems with this game’s direction, but I personally enjoyed it. It took a lot of risks that paid off pretty nicely for the most part. Granted it didn’t have a multiplayer, and also the stories started becoming gradually deeper and darker (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you), and it started the trend of Super Sonic only being playable for the final boss and Eggman using a god-monster or some other powerful bullcrap to do his bidding, but I didn’t mind that at the time; I still liked the game at the end of the day.

Personal Enjoyments: This wasn’t my first Sonic game, or even my first 3D Sonic game (both of those honors go to Sonic Heroes), but it was still an enjoyable ride from start to finish despite the game being old as it is. While I don’t really enjoy it to the extent of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, I still thought it was a good game in its own right. Granted there might be the occasional frustrating moment, but I still had some fun playing this game, although not to the extent when I first played SA1 all these years ago.

Final Verdict: Sonic Adventure has not really aged well, but then again, this game came out at a time when 3D games were starting to become the norm in the industry, so I don’t fault it for feeling pretty archaic, especially since quite a few games from this time also haven’t aged that well, but that’s just me. While it’s not my favorite Sonic game (Sonic 3 & Knuckles is) or even my favorite 3D game (that would probably go to Sonic Unleashed, and I’ll explain later when I review that game), it’s still one of my favorites from the series, and I would kind of recommend it, although I understand if people would get turned off it they felt SA1 was drastically different from what they were used to. Anyway, see you guys for my next review.

Description
This is gonna be a long review, so hope you got something to drink, like Pepsi or beer or something.
I really should play more games to diversify what I cover with my video game reviews, but I might as well keep reviewing the Sonic series, and what better game to cover than Sonic’s official jump into 3D? Well, here’s Sonic Adventure. I didn’t play the Sonic Adventure games until around 2007, which kind of bums me out when considering that I played Sonic 06 before even touching the Adventure games. Yeah, I’m aware of how pathetic that sounds. Anyway, Sonic had a lot of success on the Sega Genesis, but when it came to Sega’s next console at the time, the Saturn, Sonic was kind of struggling with having a game on that system. Sure, there was 3D Blast (which was on the Genesis, but I didn’t really care for that game very much), Sonic R (which sucked) and Sonic the Fighters (which I haven’t played, but it’s on PSN so maybe I’ll check it out one of these days), but there wasn’t a real 3D Sonic game on the Saturn. If there was a good Sonic game on the Saturn, then maybe it would’ve lived, but because the Saturn was dying out, Sega shifted development on Sonic Adventure to the Dreamcast. There was going to be a 3D Sonic game on the Saturn called Sonic X-Treme, but that game never happened, mainly because Yuji Naka was being a douche to Sega of America, whom were developing X-Treme, and because of some shit that was going on with development, the game was never made. But finally, in 1998, Sonic Adventure, as well as the Dreamcast, came out. Well, in Japan, anyway; America and Europe wouldn’t get it until around 1999.

While Sonic Adventure was well-received by critics and gamers at the time of its release, and was the killer app for the Dreamcast, its success was not enough to keep the Dreamcast alive in the end, especially with the Playstation 2 coming out the following year and ultimately curb stomping the Dreamcast, killing off Sega’s hardware ambitions. A lot of people like to say that Sonic started going downhill around the time SA1 came out, and I strongly disagree with that notion. In my opinion, Sonic didn’t start going downhill until around 2004, after Heroes came out. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Sonic Heroes, but I can understand people being turned off from the series when that game came out, but I’m not talking about Heroes here, at least not yet. Anyway, time to go into what I think about Sonic Adventure nowadays.

Graphics: The graphics haven’t really aged well in the slightest. They were good for the time when the Dreamcast came out, but on the DX port on Gamecube, as well as the HD port on XBLA and PSN, they don’t really look that good. The character models look pretty shiny and while their gameplay animations are decent, I’m not really a fan of how they move in the cutscenes. Their facial animations look pretty wonky, and their lips don’t really match up to the English voice acting, only synching up with the Japanese voice acting, and this is a problem with the series until Unleashed came out, which started synching mouth movement to the English voice acting. The levels looked alright back in the day, but they don’t look very good nowadays, since I can see quite a bit of geometry tearing on the textures and some of the objects in the levels. There are a few cutscenes in this game that still look really good because they were able to show what the game could’ve looked like had the developers push the Dreamcast to its potential, but those are few and far between.

Sound/Music: The voices fit the characters nicely for the most part, but they don’t really do a good job with making the characters sound expressive, almost like they were reading off the script rather than acting. I like Sonic and Eggman’s voices in this game, Amy’s voice actress in this game, Jennifer Douilliard, is probably my favorite Amy voice, Gamma’s voice is good since it sounds like an actual robot, Knuckles’ voice actor doesn’t even sound like he’s trying, and I can’t stand how Tails and Big sound in this game. The music, however, is probably one of my favorite soundtracks in the Sonic series, since not only does the stage music have a lot of variety and they suit the level they’re in, but the character themes are pretty good, especially “It Doesn’t Matter,” “Believe in Myself,” and “Unknown from M.E.” I also really like the main theme “Open Your Heart,” which was something we haven’t heard before in the Sonic series at the time, and even today it still sounds pretty iconic.

Controls: They haven’t really aged that well but I still like how the controls still work decently enough. I know there’s an action button, but it’s not as pronounced or uses as much as it is in Sonic Adventure 2. For this review, I did play it off of the PSN port, so I’ll use Playstation 3 controls; X jumps, Circle and Square are pretty much the same function, and L2 and R2 control the camera, but more about the camera later. Anyway, you have six different characters to play as in Sonic Adventure, and each one controls very differently.

Sonic is the fastest character and he can jump pretty high. Pressing X in midair does the Homing Attack, and while it works fine in this game, it’s a little wonky and not as accurate as in later 3D games, but it does a good job in keeping the speed going. Holding down the action button does the Spin Dash, and I like how not only can you do it on the fly, but this is probably my favorite version of the Spin Dash since I use it a lot to find a lot of huge shortcuts in Sonic’s levels. He has a couple upgrades, but I didn’t really find them very useful. Charging up the Spin Dash long enough lets you do the Light Dash near rings and the Light Attack near enemies, and when you have the Crystal Ring, the charge time is decreased. I prefer the Light Dash in Adventure 2 much more than here because it really slows me down doing this move with little payoff.

Tails is almost as fast as Sonic, and he can fly. This is probably the best Tails gameplay in the series, since after this game, Tails’ playable appearances seem to nerf him in some ways, like give him a mech, make him lug around Sonic and Knuckles when flying, and so on. I really like how Tails controls in this game, since he’s just as fast as Sonic when flying and when you get the Jet Anklet he can fly even faster and further. His Tails Attack is okay but outside of boss fights, there’s no real use for attacking enemies on account of his gameplay mechanics, but more on that later.

Knuckles is fairly decent in this game, but I prefer how he controls in Adventure 2 a lot more. He can glide and climb walls, and in my opinion, Knuckles is better in 3D than in 2D since his climbing and gliding is done very well in 3D. While he’s not as fast as Sonic and Tails, he can get a lot of distance with gliding. He also has punching, but I’m not a fan of how his attacks control in Adventure 1, since they seem to slow him down quite a bit. He can also dig but I only use it to find pieces of the Master Emerald, and his Fighting Gloves ability is probably the most pointless move in the whole game, since I never use it.

Amy’s controls are fine, although I do wish she was a little faster, but I still think she was sort of fun to play as in Adventure 1, but I prefer her Heroes gameplay more. While Amy is slow, she can jump pretty high and can attack with her hammer. Her hammer works much better when running at full speed because you can use the hammer to vault really high in the air. She gets the Warrior Feather, which lets her spin around with the hammer, but like Knuckles’ Fighting Gloves, this upgrade is pretty useless.

I know a lot of people who played Sonic Adventure really hated playing as Big the Cat, and I sort of agree with them, because he’s my least favorite gameplay, and his controls don’t really help me at least try to enjoy Big. For one, Big is slow as hell and can’t jump high, but at least he can climb ladders fast. Big’s gameplay is fishing, hold down the action button to cast the lure, use Left Analog Stick to aim the lure, and when the fish catches the lure, hit down on the Left Stick to hook it in (a lot of people have trouble figuring this out) and use either X or Square to lure the fish in, but if you reel in the fish too fast, the lure breaks and you lose a life. Yeah I definitely see why a lot of people hate Big, myself included.

Gamma is pretty good, since his gameplay is shooting a bunch of shit in the levels. Hold the action button to lock onto enemies and objects and then release it to fire at and destroy them. Gamma is a little on the slow side, but his gameplay is pretty easy to get used to, especially when you get a hold of his hover ability. I can say that after Sonic and Tails, Gamma would be my favorite play style in Sonic Adventure.

Even though all six characters control pretty differently, they each add their own unique flair to the game, but the controls are not without problems. For one, the camera can be pretty bad at times, especially in areas where the camera changes angles at times. I can understand trying to make the camera a certain angle for a set piece or memorable moment, Sonic Team really went overboard in some instances. The camera’s fine for the most part in boss battles, but for levels and occasionally in the hub worlds, they can get pretty wonky. For two, the game has the occasional glitch that may make you get disoriented or die the cheap death, but I haven’t come across very many glitches whenever I play SA1, but it can happen. And for three, sometimes the controls are a little loose, which can be a little problematic whenever you’re moving at high speeds, like in some of Sonic’s levels. But for the most part, the controls are fine, although they do feel pretty archaic, but that’s just me.

Gameplay: While the controls haven’t aged well, the gameplay mechanics certain have. Just like there being six different control schemes, Sonic Adventure has six different gameplay styles, and (with the exception of Big the Cat) all of the characters do a good job with making their gameplay fun and nicely presented. Sonic’s gameplay is high speed action, where all you need to do is get to the end as fast as you can, so this is basically classic Sonic style gameplay. Sonic has the most stages and gets the full stage, which can last anywhere from 3 to 7 minutes in length, although you can speed run some of the stages by knowing how and where to Spin Dash jump. However, many of Sonic’s levels are pretty linear, like Lost World, Final Egg, and Casinopolis being good examples of linear stages, although there are some levels like Speed Highway and Emerald Coast which feel pretty open where you can take more than one path to the end, but I do want more of Sonic’s levels to be more open like these two.

Tails’ gameplay involves beating Sonic to the end of the level, and his gameplay is probably the easiest of the six because you can easily blow through levels using his flying ability, and if you get the Jet Anklet at the start of his story, you have no excuse for losing against Sonic in Tails’ levels. Tails gets 5 levels and only goes through half the stage Sonic does, and most of the time you can easily finish a level in around a minute, except for Ice Cap where you have to outrace Sonic on a snowboard. Knuckles’ gameplay has him searching for pieces of the Master Emerald, and the radar does a pretty good job finding more than one piece at a time, although I wish the range for the radar was a wider radius. Even though Adventure 2 nerfed the radar, it at least had a decent range for whichever piece the game wanted you to look for. Knuckles gets the smaller sections of the stage, but some levels like Sky Deck and Red Mountain are pretty big and open, and his gameplay is perfect for exploration.

Amy has to run away from ZERO, and she only gets three stages, but she goes through some parts of the stage that others can’t go to. While Amy is pretty slow and there isn’t much reason for you to explore her levels, Amy’s gameplay is more platforming orienting, which is fine for what it is. Big’s gameplay is the most unlike what you would expect from a Sonic game, although he has the shortest game, only going through the shortest parts of the stage, having only 4 levels, and each of his levels can be completed really quickly if you can get a hang of his controls. Gamma’s gameplay is finding and destroying an enemy or an object within the time limit, so you don’t have any time to explore his levels, but his gameplay, like Amy’s, is more platforming based with some focus on combat, which works for me well enough but I digress.

The Adventure fields are also pretty nice since they do a good job giving you the sense that you’re going on an adventure, and these hub worlds are great for exploring no matter who you’re playing as, except for Big, naturally. However, I think Sonic Unleashed did hub worlds in the Sonic series the best, but Adventure 1’s hub worlds are still pretty good. The boss fights are pretty good, with the exception of the character battles since they’re always pretty one sided and can be beat in literally no time at all. And there are some mini-games you are required to play occasionally, like Sky Chase and Sand Hill, which are fine but I do wish these were optional instead of required to advance the story, but that’s just a nitpick since they do a nice job transitioning between areas for the sake of the plot.

Story: Sonic Adventure probably has my favorite story in the series, next to Unleashed and Black Knight, but the way Adventure 1 presents its story pushes it ahead of the other two in my book. At some time before the events of the game, Eggman finds some ancient shit that tells of a powerful water god called “Chaos” which has the power to destroy the world, so Eggman wants to harness the power of Chaos to conquer Station Square to build Eggmanland. I should probably say that this was the game that started referring to Robotnik as Eggman, but I call him Eggman instead of Robotnik, and people keep saying that the name “Robotnik” sounds more threatening, but I disagree. It sounds pretty dumb to me.

Anyway, Eggman destroys the Master Emerald on Angel Island one night, releasing the god Chaos as well as a pink ball of light (I’ll talk more about who that ball of light is later), causing the pieces of the Master Emerald to scatter, sending Knuckles on his quest for the Master Emerald in order to restore Angel Island. Also, Big’s pet frog Froggy swallows a Chaos Emerald and gets possessed by Chaos’ tail and runs away, sending Big on his quest, and personally, Big is probably the only useless story in the game. Also, this is the first game where the Chaos Emeralds are not hidden away in Special Stages anymore, and also the first game where they become plot devices, which a lot of people complained about, but I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world. I think we can all agree the Sonic fanbase are incredibly fucking annoying about pointless shit that shouldn’t matter in the long run.

Chaos lands in Station Square and Sonic fights Chaos, then the next day he rescues Tails after crashing in Emerald Coast, because Tails was testing out a Chaos Emerald being used to power up his plane. They go to the Mystic Ruins where they face Eggman and lose their Emerald to Eggman, who feeds it to Chaos since the ancient tablets say that Chaos gets powerful after absorbing a Chaos Emerald and once he has all 7, shit will get real. Sonic and Tails then go on their quest to find the rest of the Chaos Emeralds before Eggman does, but are ultimately unsuccessful. After the two and Knuckles face off against Chaos again, Eggman and Chaos gets away on the Egg Carrier, so Sonic and Tails give chase in the Tornado. Also, this causes some bird to fall off the Egg Carrier, which sends Amy on her quest as she and the bird she decides to take care of get chased around by ZERO, one of Eggman’s robots. The main story splits in two when Sonic and Tails get separated after being shot out of the sky by Eggman, with Sonic landing in Station Square and Tails landing in Mystic Ruins.

Gamma gets activated around this time, where he is trained by Eggman and then becomes part of his elite robot army, and then Gamma goes to Station Square to find Froggy. Knuckles, after parting with Sonic and Tails, goes looking for Emerald shards in the mysterious ruins in the jungle, where he gets a vision from Tikal, which gives some insight about Chaos’ origins as the guardian of the Chaos Emeralds. Tikal’s father wages war with the surrounding areas and decides the Echidna tribe should steal the Chaos Emeralds from Angel Island, but Tikal doesn’t want her people to go to war. Knuckles gets warped back to Angel Island, and around this point in the overall plot, we see a very big inconsistency with Gamma, Big, and Knuckles’ stories. Gamma takes Big’s frog back to the Egg Carrier and Big chases Gamma back to the jungle base in the Mystic Ruins, but after Knuckles attempts to restore the Master Emerald, he notices Gamma going through Angel Island and follows him to Eggman’s jungle base, and both he and Big do not run into each other on the way. You’d think that inconsistency would be large enough, but there’s more. Gamma gets the frog, but in his story, instead of being chased by Big and/or Knuckles, Gamma gets warped to the past by Tikal and then warped back onto the Egg Carrier awaiting orders from Eggman. Yeah, this is a pretty huge plothole when you consider this big inconsistency, but aside from that, the main story remains fairly coherent.

Anyway, Amy gets kidnapped by ZERO after getting lost while Sonic looks for her, so Sonic follows the two to the Mystic Ruins where they get beamed up to the Egg Carrier. Around the same time, Tails goes through some character development while looking for another Chaos Emerald in the jungle to power up the Tornado 2, and everybody meets up on the Egg Carrier. Amy convinces Gamma to let her go, and Sonic and Tails eventually fight Gamma, but then the Egg Carrier starts to fall out of the sky. Tails, Amy, and Gamma leave the Egg Carrier while Sonic faces off against Eggman and Chaos, whom transforms again after absorbing 2 more emeralds. Sonic follows Eggman off the Egg Carrier while Big flies Tails’ plane back to his hut which ends his story, and Knuckles takes the 6 Chaos Emeralds with him off the Egg Carrier as it gets destroyed and falls into the ocean. After Tails and Amy land in Station Square, they split up with Amy going to Eggman’s base in the Mystic Ruins and Tails rescuing the city from Eggman’s missile and goes to defeat Eggman. Knuckles restores the Master Emerald ending his story. Gamma finds and frees his brothers, the other E-Series robots, and faces off against E-101 Beta on the Egg Carrier, destroying both the robots, but releases 2 birds which turns out to be the family of Amy’s bird. Amy defeats ZERO and has her bird reunite with its family, ending Amy’s story. And finally, Sonic follows Eggman to his base in the Mystic Ruins after going through some ruins and getting a Tikal vision, and kicks his ass one final time, ending his story.

After playing through all six stories (I’m almost done with this section, just be patient) you unlock the Super Sonic story, where Chaos steals the Chaos Emeralds from Knuckles after he restores the Master Emerald. Sonic and Tails meets up with Knuckles, who tells Sonic that Chaos will bring destruction once he gets the seventh emerald, but before Sonic can do again, he gets a final vision from Tikal, which shows the Echidna tribe attacking the Emerald altar and the Chao that are there, which upsets Chaos, whom uses the power of the 7 Emeralds to destroy the Echidna tribe, and then Tikal seals both Chaos and herself within the Master Emerald, where they’ve been for thousands of years until the beginning of the game. Sonic and Tails fail to get to the last Emerald in time before Chaos, whom uses the Chaos Emeralds to become Perfect Chaos and goes to destroy Station Square. Sonic uses the Emeralds to turn into Super Sonic and defeats Chaos, turning him good again and both Chaos and Tikal depart back to the afterlife or some shit like that.

I really like the story here, because it not only keeps the tone that one would expect from a Sonic game, but also does a good job with adding in more serious and darker elements while still keeping the plot flowing and fairly cohesive, with the exception of that big-ass plothole with Gamma, Big, and Knuckles. Granted, there are a few moments that made no sense, and maybe some of the plot elements could’ve been explained or expanded upon more, like Knuckles’ implied relation to the Echidna tribe, but for the most part, I felt the plot was pretty decent. I like how it has character development for characters like Tails and Amy, and I really felt for Gamma’s story. I also liked the whole “Rashomon”-style story-telling with the various characters, since it felt that each character was unique in more ways than just gameplay.

Length: Since Sonic’s transition to 3D, the games have become longer in terms of a lot of things. Hell, Sonic’s story takes about 2 hours to beat, which is already longer than Sonic 1 and 2 combined, and yes, that includes cutscenes. Tails and Knuckles each take around an hour to beat, Amy and Gamma each take up 45 minutes, Big only takes up around 30 minutes, maybe less if you’re quick enough, and getting through Super Sonic’s story will probably take around 20, so you’re getting a 6 hour long game. However, there are a couple things that I would consider padding. For one, some of the boss fights are repeated in different characters’ stories, like the character battles, and probably the biggest offender being the Chaos 4 boss, since you have to fight it as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. For two, but this isn’t really a complaint, is that you tend to play through the same levels. While I don’t consider this as a complaint in any form is because of the different gameplay styles. The developers still had the good grace to change up the levels depending on that character’s gameplay. A good example would be Speed Highway. Sonic gets the most out the stage with the “running down the skyscraper” set piece, and it’s probably my favorite level in the game and I clearly see why it got put in Sonic Generations. Tails gets the first half of the stage, but it’s a race against Eggman and the level design is pretty open which allows a lot of exploration and overall speeding through the stage, which I love. Knuckles gets the ending section with the daybreak, the emphasis on exploration, and probably my favorite stage BGM in the whole game. Anyway, this game doesn’t overstay its welcome while at the same time keeping me satisfied with what I’m playing.

Difficulty: Despite some of the game’s technical issues, like the camera, some of the control issues and playing as Big the Cat, the game is pretty easy for the most part. Granted there might be a few stages that can give people trouble, like Sonic’s Sky Deck and Amy’s Hot Shelter, but you can expect a pretty smooth ride from beginning to end. However, I do kind of wish there was a little more challenge in this game, because most of the challenge with Sonic Adventure would stem from camera and control issues, which feels pretty cheap to be honest.

Replay Value: Unfortunately, Sonic Adventure doesn’t have a multiplayer, which is kind of a bummer considering that the next game, Adventure 2, has probably the best multiplayer in the series, but considering how differently the characters control from each other, maybe this game having multiplayer wouldn’t have panned out very well. Thankfully, there’s quite a bit of extra content in this game. In addition to being able to play the B and A levels with each character, finding emblems in the Adventure fields, and the mini-games, they also have the Chao Garden. You can raise these things called Chao by feeding it stuff, mainly animals you can get in levels, and raise their stats to be able to have them perform in Chao Races. While I’m not a big fan of the Chao Garden in this game (I liked it quite a bit in SA2 though), I know there are still some people who like this, and I’m cool with that. Also, getting all 130 Emblems unlocks Metal Sonic, but only as a playable skin for Sonic’s stages with slightly different controls.

Originality/Innovation: Sonic Adventure took a lot of risks in terms of what direction it wanted to take the series at the time, and for my money, this is probably one of, if not the most ambitious Sonic games made. I mean, six different playable characters, having a deep and involving story, being more speed oriented than the Genesis games, vocal themes, Eggman being more of villainous, having the Sonic characters mingle with the real world, and I could go on and on. I know a lot of people have quite a few problems with this game’s direction, but I personally enjoyed it. It took a lot of risks that paid off pretty nicely for the most part. Granted it didn’t have a multiplayer, and also the stories started becoming gradually deeper and darker (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you), and it started the trend of Super Sonic only being playable for the final boss and Eggman using a god-monster or some other powerful bullcrap to do his bidding, but I didn’t mind that at the time; I still liked the game at the end of the day.

Personal Enjoyments: This wasn’t my first Sonic game, or even my first 3D Sonic game (both of those honors go to Sonic Heroes), but it was still an enjoyable ride from start to finish despite the game being old as it is. While I don’t really enjoy it to the extent of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, I still thought it was a good game in its own right. Granted there might be the occasional frustrating moment, but I still had some fun playing this game, although not to the extent when I first played SA1 all these years ago.

Final Verdict: Sonic Adventure has not really aged well, but then again, this game came out at a time when 3D games were starting to become the norm in the industry, so I don’t fault it for feeling pretty archaic, especially since quite a few games from this time also haven’t aged that well, but that’s just me. While it’s not my favorite Sonic game (Sonic 3 & Knuckles is) or even my favorite 3D game (that would probably go to Sonic Unleashed, and I’ll explain later when I review that game), it’s still one of my favorites from the series, and I would kind of recommend it, although I understand if people would get turned off it they felt SA1 was drastically different from what they were used to. Anyway, see you guys for my next review.