Sonic Adventure (1998)

(Played on Steam with Better SADX mod) A beautiful disaster that is falling apart but put a smile on my face.

• Levels are refreshingly wide-linear, platforming mechanics do a good job of rewarding skill (when they work). You have pretty uninterrupted control over your character -- this elevates it compared to newer 3D Sonic games which tend to magnetize you and stick you in animations a lot.
• Hub-world plus parallel campaigns is a great structure for a platformer, maybe the thing that elevates this game the most.
• Extremely janky, virtually no polish, story and pacing is a fever dream. Somehow this sort of works in the game's favor because it's really funny.
• Some of the levels are bewilderingly bad but generally they are all easy and short enough to not ruin the game.
• In spite of everything, a little nugget of fun shines through and the game was surprisingly enjoyable.

Calling Sonic Adventure a bad game would be insulting for bad games everywhere. Some bad games can be sorta fun because they try too hard. No one involved in Adventure's development tried anything beyond "meh, it's Sonic, they will buy it no matter what".

The controls are barely functional, the camera has its own life and hates the world, the levels are ugly and confusing, the bosses are complete jokes, the plot is nonsensical and full of filler to justify the multiple points of view, and Big the Cat exists.

It only has two redeeming qualities: the music is great, and it is mercifully short.

I really want to like Sonic Adventure. It's big and weird. It looks great and sounds amazing, with some of the best music I have heard in a video game. I love the hub world. The environments are littered with NPCs to talk to. They have their own little stories, and it is always amusing to see them interact with a cartoon hedgehog. I genuinely hope that one lady is finally able to talk to her crush at the burger shop. I really want that kid's mother to stop spending so much time at the casino. The environments outside of Station Square are lush and atmospheric. Crumbling ruins hidden within a maze-like forest, a lengthy wooden bridge leading to an ancient altar on a floating island, with a broken stone bridge reaching out to somewhere that no longer exists. There's something about these areas I find incredibly compelling.

However, I really don’t like Sonic Adventure. They make an earnest attempt to translate Sonic’s gameplay into 3D. It’s fast but looks better than it is fun to play. You run forward, collecting rings and avoiding hazards. You bump into a wall and stop suddenly, so you rebuild momentum and start again. I don’t feel any connection to the impressively designed stages because they fly by so quickly. They're quick, fun on-rails set-pieces, that ultimately feel hollow. I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment and would rather watch them on YouTube.

There are five other character campaigns that range from retreads (Tails), to surprisingly enjoyable (Knuckles, Gamma), to outright painful (Big Cat, Amy). Structurally, the game feels disjointed. I would prefer if it made you alternate between the characters. They all feel different, so bouncing between them could have been fun. Gliding around as Knuckles feels smooth, while zipping around the hub world as Tails is incredibly efficient. It is fun to move around open spaces with an array of such fast, versatile characters. My absolute highlight of the game was dicking around as Knuckles when you have access to the Ancient Ruins in their former glory, complete with echidnas milling around.

There are other things I don’t like. The camera sucks. It isn’t much worse than other 3D platformers of the time, but other games didn’t have you moving at such great speeds. It feels broken and is annoyingly close. I also couldn’t handle the cutscenes. I felt my brain shutting down. It takes itself a little too seriously and when it goes for laughs the humor doesn’t land. Also, due to the multiple campaigns there is too much repetition. I felt like I was fighting the same bosses again and again.

Ultimately, there’s a kernel of a game I really like here, and I am hoping that game is Sonic Adventure 2. We’ll see, I guess. I want to play more of these games for some reason.

Sonic Adventure is a very interesting title in the Sonic series. Reason being that it is riddled with stupid nonsense... But the game is so good because of it that I can't help but love it

Sonic Adventure was the first real 3D Sonic game to ever be created. It was an extremely ambitious title in the franchise with the goal to redefine and reimagine Sonic as a character and the way he plays.

For starters, Sonic and every character have been redesigned in some minor/extreme ways. All the characters are slimmer, taller, and have colored eyes as well as other changes.

Sonic is now taller, darker blue, and has green eyes.

Tails has lighter yellow fur and has blue eyes

Knuckles has slightly different shoes and has purple eyes

Dr. Robotnik is way taller, has a different designed uniform and is less round

And Amy has the biggest change. Her eyes are blue, she has a new outfit, and her hair is completely changed

None of the redesigns look bad in my opinion and though I prefer the classic designs, I don't hate these redesigns and It helps differentiate the classic and modern feel. This entire game feels extremely different in presentation compared to the previous

The music is drastically overhauled. Like the previous games, the music is great. But this game includes vocal music that screams 90's. Knuckles has rap, Tails has soft rock, Amy has jazz, E-102 Gamma has techno, Big has classic jazz, and Sonic has heavy rock music. All of which fit the characters amazingly and are generally catchy. The main theme, "Open Your Heart" by Crush 40 is by far my favorite vocal Sonic song.

The main gimmick of Sonic Adventure is that you play as 6 characters who each have their own story going on alongside each other. Each playthrough follows that character's perspective. Sonic's story is about stopping Robotnik, Tails' story is about becoming less dependent on Sonic, Knuckles is about finding the missing pieces of the Master Emerald, Amy's story is about protecting a bird from Zero (One of Robotnik's Robots), new character, Big The Cat (A Large not so intelligent cat who is best friends with a frog) is about finding Froggy, and other new character E-102 Gamma (One of Eggman's robots) is about becoming self-aware and trying to save its friends by killing them.

All of these stories come together as a story about stopping the immortal god, Chaos from destroying the world. The story is very cheesy mostly due to the awful writing and hilariously bad voice acting. But it's so stupid that it's great. The story is fun and that's all that matters.

As for gameplay... Tails is about racing Sonic to the finish of the level. It's fun but too easy and horribly designed, Knuckles is a treasure hunt and I enjoy it quite a bit, Amy is about running from Zero. It's fine but too short, E-102 Gamma is an on-rail shooter under a time limit. It's ok but could be better designed with the controls, Big is fishing. Do I really need to say what's already been said. It's awful. Easily the worst part of the game...

Sonic has the best gameplay. They perfectly captured the momentum paced platforming and speed of Sonic and (Maybe besides some bugs) it's fantastically designed

Sonic Adventure is a game with such a cheesy story, music, bad acting, and bad writing. But the gameplay and lack of self-awareness makes the game so enjoyable. The problems in the story is what makes the game so good. Just dumb fun

3/5

Would Recommend

Played the original Dreamcast version

• 1st Playthrough: Finished Sonic's Story
• 2nd Playthrough: Finished all other characters' and Super Sonic's story

Final thoughts: Wow I remember when I blown back by this game when I first saw it on the Dreamcast.

I've only just completed it now, and my god this game has aged poorly with terrible camera controls, jank physics, and terrible-to-the-point-it's-meme-tier cutscenes and voice acting. Really good songs though.

Overall, the game plays like a 2/5 stars, but I've boost it to 3 because of good music for its era and meme-able early voice acting charm

Giving this like my dozenth or so replay, and yeah it's good fun. But here's what I'm really taking note of this time around: the NPCs. I hardly ever bothered with them before, but this time I'm trying to talk to them between each level. Absolute riot. These subplots may have drawn me in more than the actual Sonic Adventure story.

• girl standing in front of the train station, waiting for her father to come home from work... the entire game
• owner of the building that leads to Speed Highway, who really loves his giant skyscraper and telling you all the time that he owns it
• a mother who is hopelessly addicted to gambling at the casino -- she is oblivious to this, but her son is fully aware
• train station employee who really hates his job... and at some point the workers actually go on strike
• random businessman who always has something negative to say -- at some point he's jealous of a happy couple... and later notices the man has a new girlfriend the next day
• stalker lady who won't stop staring at the burger shop guy

But at the end of the game I have to wonder how many of them even survive the whole city getting destroyed and flooded by Perfect Chaos? Now the ending of this game is depressing for me...

Sonic Adventure is truly one of the funniest games of all time. It's a creamy blend of shoddy writing, poor translation, dead-pan voice acting, glitchy gameplay, unintentionally creepy furry gaze, weird non-committal gameplay decisions and frustrating pacing. And yet, somehow it's enjoyable. It may be the strangest AAA flagship franchise game ever made, but it's a game with a whole lotta heart and there's certainly a lot of fun to be had sifting through the strangeness.

FROGGY!!! WHERE ARE YOU???

So yeah, I bought a Dreamcast. I don't know how it happened. One minute I am browsing Gumtree for cheap treats, and then all of a sudden I am in my car driving an hour across the city to meet a stranger in his home where he had a room overflowing with boxes of games for every console imaginable. I came home with a Dreamcast, a copy of this game and Re-Volt (which is not the children's racing game I imagined it to be - so damn difficult). I thought Sonic would help me get used to the behemoth of a controller.

It wasn't necessary. The controller is oddly comfortable and the VMU is delightful and adorable. This game so far has been a mixed bag. The camera is awful. Really really awful. It hurts my soul trying to maneuver it about. And yet, when this game clicks it is a whole lot of fun. Zipping through loop-de-loops is as exhilarating as the 2D originals. I haven't had to play as other characters yet, which is something I am dreading. I can't think of a protagonist better suited to a Sonic game then Sonic himself.