INTRO
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, a great game. In this review, I'm not going to go into how good this game is too much in this review, because frankly, I didn't find it as good as everybody told me it was. People always said that it was a great game to start off with, and that it's got heaps of fast-paced fun in it. So I bought it in a deal with my GameCube and I loved it. But now when I have a wider range of games, I hardly ever play it. Although it did take hours and hours of my spare time when it was the only game I owned. Don't be put off by what I say though, if you're fan then you'll like it. And if you're not, chances are you'll still get a kick out of it.
GAMEPLAY
As I mentioned before, everybody said that SA2B was very fast-paced. They were right. Once you pass the (confusing) menues, you will be shown a movie and placed on a piece of metal that is used as a skateboard. Many times in this game will you be running or boarding very quickly through a course which I find very fun. Once you�ve finished the boarding, you can run around for a while. You will meet a slow-talking friend called Omochao, he will often help you and give you tips throughout the game. There are various moves that Sonic can use to kill the enemies through the game, you can do super fast rolls or you can jump into the air and home in on your enemy killing them by flying into them. The level is won by getting past/killing the enemies and reaching the big coin saying GOAL at the end of the level. Sounds simple? Those aren�t the only types of levels you�ll encounter. Sonics friends will have different kinds of levels, such as running round in a machine or trying to search for gems. I found the gem searching very repetitive and sometimes I didn�t want to play just because I was up to a gem-searching level. The gameplay in this game wasn�t exactly the type that I fancy but I found it quite entertaining and I can see how other people will like it.
CONTROLS
I always find the controls section of a review hard to write. What is there to say? One special thing I can say here is that they're very easy to learn, and once they're learnt then you definitely won't forget them. The A button is always jump and most times has an extra feature like attacking or hovering. The B button is for special moves. The B button has an interesting feature in this game, the action that B is assigned to can be changed by the Y button, there is quite a limited selection to change to (the selection grows bigger through the game) but I like the idea. Each different character has different moves for their A and B button, and these moves are used to get around the types of levels that they�re in. Before I mentioned that the list of buttons for B gets bigger. By that I meant that if you�re patient and you take the time to look around the levels then you can find a new item that will make the game a little easier, some items are totally obvious whereas some don�t need to be found so they just sit there in a corner of a level. Sometimes it takes a little while to get into the feel of a new character after playing with someone different for so long, but, as I mentioned, the controls are very easy to learn, and once learnt they won�t be forgotten.
GRAPHICS
There are some people that are misguided by the graphics in games. When they see early screenshots they might look at the graphics, and if they don't like what they see then they're first impressions aren't very good. And they're first impressions will shape what they eventually think of the game. I didn't ever see any pictures of SA2B before I got it, so I really didn't get many impressions to help me buy. But to tell the truth, graphics don't really bother me. I would really be reading the Gameplay section of this review to see if it�s good or not. As graphics don�t matter too much to me, I tend not to think to hard about them. So describing how good/bad they are is usually hard for me. In SA2B I would rate the graphics about average. I didn�t ever see anything that made me say �wow!� and I didn�t ever see anything that I thought was disappointing. Although I do think that the GameCube could have handled quite a bit more.
SOUND
OK, I'll just say it. I was horrified by the voice-acting in this game. The text was sometimes thee or four sentences away from what the voice was saying! I don't know why they didn't do anything about it because it was plain bad. On a happier tone, I found a lot of the background music very good. The songs were easy to follow and got stuck in my head very easily. Although when I was playing the first level I found it a little weird that there was a song from a real band playing in the background. It did give the level more of the atmosphere it was supposed to have, but I think that they could have done that by making a song. Sometimes the sound effects would get in the way of the song, such as huge amounts of coins being collected, but it�s no biggie. I think the voice-acting did take away from the game but overall, the sound section of this game is good.
REPLAY
Although this isn't my favourite game, it has fantastic replay value. There's just so much to get done! Most of the things to do I haven�t mentioned so far, so I�ll take this opportunity to mention them. The first thing that comes to people�s heads when they think of replay value for SA2B is Chao�s. Omochao is a variation of a Chao, and when you see them, you�ll most likely think Pokemon. When you finish a level, you have the chance to go to the Chao Garden in here you will find two eggs. When you use the B button to shake them open, out pops a cute little blue creature. Throughout the level you collect animals and robot parts, if you give these to your Chao then it might get faster, stronger or become a better swimmer. You can use the skills that your Chao has in races and karate, both mini-games involving your Chao. There is also a schooling centre that your Chao can visit. Along with the Chao Garden, there�s the multiplayer which includes various games such as races or machine fights. Once you�ve got bored of them (who knows when you will) you can attempt to get an A rank on every mission for every level. By mission I mean that every level has five different scenarios which you must complete. Although I didn�t thoroughly enjoy SA2B I found that it has enormous replay potentials.8 GAMEPLAY:
No special reasons here.
8 CONTROLS:
Quite simple, could have used some more moves for the characters though.
7 GRAPHICS:
A little more effort needed.
7 SOUND:
Solely because of the horrible voice acting. Maybe it's just my copy...
9 Replay Value:
8 Overall:
I don't think all of the other scores have much to do with the overall score. A game might have what looks like all the right ingredients. But sometimes they're missing the most importnat one, fun. SA2B was fun for a few weeks, but then when I bought SSBM I just didn't play it as much. Now I have Pikmin, and I played SA2B even less. I think that although it has such great replay value, it just didn't click for me. There will obviously be a lot of different views about this game, and the game itself is also quite flexible. But for me, it will always remain the game that just didn�t work. I�ve never been a fan of Sega so it�s understandable that I�m not a fan of this game either. If you�ve been following the series for a long time then this game might be just as good as the others, but that�s opinion for you.