Sonic Advance (2001)

Sorry Sonic fans, but this game is a mess. Sonic games have always been a bit notorious with the off screen gank attacks, where you are running super fast and suddenly end up hitting a random fireball or enemy that always pops up at the exact second you land, and unnecessary bottomless pits, but this game takes the cake. You can argue forever if the Sonic game(s) designs are bad or not with the "Sonic go fast" but can't actually because of hazards that intentionally force him to slow down. I am pretty firmly in the middle that I don't actually hate slowing down Sonic's pace to match the game hazards, but this game is completely unbearable.

Time after time, there is bottomless pits that randomly appear if you don't follow through on a spring jump hard enough. And there is no way to tell except for trial and error of like "well fuck, I guess I'm just dead again". You like keeping your rings? Well good luck because every time you are speeding up a ramp, that fireball will time to hit you EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Its like the game has been fully programmed to fuck you as soon as you get on screen in a new spot.

Let's talk about special stages. I played through the entire game as Sonic, and didn't find a single one. It actually left me thinking, is there actually special stages in this game? Oh yeah, there sure is. But unlike other Sonic games, where they are introduced to you in a way where the first one or two are pretty much unavoidable and you have to search for them afterwards, there is nothing intuitive about finding the springs needed to get to the special stages. Sonic games are no exception to me; I usually take different paths, explore and jump around like I would in other games, yet I had to literally internet search after beating the game to see if they even exist.

Sonic Advance gets two stars, only because it looks pretty darn good, and the first 2-3 areas are actually pretty fun. After that, it's a horrible, grueling, grindy mess. I don't know why the casino/carnival theme has to make an appearance in every single game. They aren't fun after Sonic 3. And whoever had the idea of putting a boss where Sonic perpetually needs air, but you have to do floaty jumps in water to get that air, and also prioritize hitting the boss by jumping on platforms that drop from the ceiling.. honestly get fucked.

You can play as Sonic, Knuckles, Tails or Amy in Sonic Advance, so if you get through the game with one, you can always go back and try someone else, however I cannot see why you would ever choose to load this up again after finishing it once.

This is one of my childhood GBA games and to be honest, I'm glad that it is, this is a really fun game that is an absolute blast to play, it plays much like the originals and I love that for it.

The graphics here are great, the soundtrack rocks and the stage design is for the most part stellar.

I only really have two complaints about this game, the first is that there's a huge difficulty spike at the end of the game that makes the last two zones frustrating to get through, so much so that I had to use save states.

The second complaint that I have about this game is that not all characters are created equally, I made the mistake of playing as Amy, who was very clearly put in as an after thought and often actually gets stuck at various parts of a few stages. I could replay the game as a different character but since the stages aren't different between characters there isn't much reason to.

I don't have as many fond memories of Sonic Advance as I do Sonic Pocket Adventure, but replaying it today I'm not sure why. It's a really good 2-D Sonic game with appealing sprites and fun levels.

There are certainly flaws. There's a pretty dramatic difficulty spike in the last two zones, and while it's fun playing as additional characters (especially Amy with her hammer), they don't change the gameplay enough to warrant consecutive playthroughs.

If you're a fan of the Genesis games (as I am), you'll probably dig this a lot.