Sonic Adventure 2: Battle GameCube Review

Sega’s mascot, their Mario, on a Nintendo system. What’s next, PS3 with a Nintendo label on it? Who would have thought?

In this game you can choose your role-play in the game. You can be on the good side, protecting the Earth or you can be on the dark side, trying to destroy it.Sadly, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle is almost a direct port from Sonic Adventure 2 on Dreamcast to GameCube except for a few add-ons put into the GameCube version. The Sonic franchise has been going on for 10 strong years although it’s started to lose the “touch” of its successors.

Graphics

This game excels over other games in the graphics department. It runs at a perfect 60 frames per second. There are nice looking textures as well as blurry ones that could have definitely have had a better job done on. There are beautiful texture designs throughout levels that push the GameCube’s texture capability. The graphics have been improved from the Dreamcast version. The Sonic Team also added extra elements in the geometrical designs of levels and things in the background. There are added trees, rocks, buildings and other foliage. This game’s graphics will indeed please you eyes.

Gameplay

In this game you can choose to be on the Hero or on the Dark side. The Hero side is made up of Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails, while the Dark side has Shadow, Rouge, and Dr. Eggman (Dr. Robotnik). You can play to save the world or you can choose to try to destroy it. The game is basically split into four main types of game play. There is running, which is played by Sonic and Shadow, shooting which Tails and Dr. Eggman play, exploring with Knuckles and Rouge, and last but not least, boss fights. This is what gives Sonic Adventure 2: Battle a non-Sonic feeling and takes it to a poor gaming experience. Sadly, the shooting and searching missions are roughly half of the whole gam. Sonic games are about speeding through levels and Dr. Eggman trying to take over the world.

There are 150 emeralds to collect. You get these by completing levels and doing extra stuff on them, like collecting 100 coins or completing it in less than 2 minutes. Each level gives you an emerald for completing it. You can get four more emeralds off that level by doing the extra missions. You have to get 100 coins, complete the level under a certain amount of time, find the hidden chao, and complete the level in hard mode. You also get a ranking for each mission depending on how well you did. The rankings are from worst to best as follow; E, D, C, B, A. You get an emerald for getting A rankings on ALL the missions. There is even a kart racing game! The control you have over your kart sucks and the tracks where you play also suck, but the Sonic Team didn’t care, they put it in anyway! Know what? Yes, you also get emeralds for winning kart races. There are over 30 stages on the two quests combined, but the stages are pretty much the same on both sides.

You can get more emeralds by raising chao and putting them in tournaments. After you kill an enemy they leave a chao container behind. Give the chao container to your chao and he will grow stronger on a certain area depending on the color of the chao container. Throughout levels you will find animals. When you take them to your chao their skill will go up depending on the animal. Give them a bird and their flying skill goes up, give them a seal and their swimming skill will go up etc. You can enter your chao into karate tournaments or different types of races. There are three gardens at which you can keep your chao. There is the regular garden, the hero garden, and the dark garden. You have to unlock the hero and dark garden. You can take your chao to school, everyday there is a different lesson. After two chaos have been in the same garden for a long time they will mate and have a chao egg. You will know this when a ring of flowers circles a chao. The chao part

The camera is terrible, period. Many times you have trouble controlling the character due to the poor camera. As the camera moves around it sometimes gets behind a wall or a tree. Whenever your looking for something the camera isn’t at the right angle. Although you can change the positioning of the camera with the R and L buttons the camera sometimes moves back to its prior position. Other times the camera wont even budge at all no matter how many times you press R and L. The Sonic Team definitely let the camera go to the worse. Sonic Adventure Battle: 2’s camera is only suitable for blind people.

You get to use Sonic or Shadow in the running levels. Basically your timed and you have to get to the goal as soon as you can with as much coins as possible. You get upgrades like being able to bounce, having lightning fast shoes, and being able to break metal boxes. You jump with A, when you’re in midair you can press A again to make Sonic/Shadow launch into a target. This is a very good way to get rid of opponents quickly. You can hold B to make your character spin and when you let go of B they are speeding around in a ball. Unfortunately spinning into a ball doesn’t play as big a role as in the other Sonic games. You can grind up rails with Sonic’s Soap shoes to save time. Don’t worry; Shadow can also grind up rails.

Now for the shooting levels. You use Tails and Dr. Eggman, both in their armored robots, in the shooting levels. You get more points for shooting many opponents at a time. To shoot more than one enemy at a time you simply hold down the B button and you will lock on as many enemies as you can, when you let go of the B button you send missiles at all those locked on targets. You can upgrade the type of missile you fire to stronger, more powerful missiles that can break metal or lock onto more targets. You can hold A while you’re in the air to stay in the air, but you slowly come back down to the ground. The shooting levels aren’t that challenging as you can simply button smash your way through the level.

And now to the very frustrating scavenger hunts. You search around for lost pieces of the master emerald either with Knuckles or Rouge. You are required to find 3 pieces of the emerald to continue on. You have a “hot or cold” based system helping you find the pieces. When you are close to a piece it will start beeping and blinking, the faster it beeps the closer you are. You also get hints but you get a lower ranking if you use them. You can glide, swim, dig, or simply walk your way to the emerald. I would have much preferred if the Sonic Team had left the shooting and searching part out and focused mainly on Sonic.

Sound

The songs made for the levels are as cheesy and lame as possible. The voice acting isn’t too good either. They sound like teenagers. You don’t exactly get the feeling that the character is actually speaking. It sounds like someone is reading the parts right out of a script and putting it over the characters. What happened to the good old Sonic songs that gave you that Sonic feeling? The only thing I liked were the sound effects, everything else was done poorly.

Lifespan

Although there are many things to do to get all 150 emeralds, the game will get very boring after you pass the main game. I believe the only person who would enjoy beating every element of the game would be a true hardcore Sonic fan, I myself not being one, got bored of the game too quickly. There isn’t much replay value although I have to admit the multiplayer in the game is ok, and really fun at times. Trying to get all the emeralds available through raising chao feels very repetitive and isn’t very entertaining. In conclusion, this game wont last long for the typical gamer.

Overall

I truly only recommend this game to hardcore Sonic fans. If you aren’t much of a Sonic or Sega fan, believe me, this game wont be satisfying at all and will get you pissed off when you can’t find the last piece of the master emerald in a stupid scavenger hunt. I’m very disappointed that the Sonic Team haven’t decided to make a fresh new Sonic game for GameCube that actually focuses on Sonic.