Level Up: Sonic Adventure 2 Battle

I think it’s about time to review a Sonic game. I think I’m going to start with Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the Nintendo Game Cube. Why this one? No real reason, it’s not my favorite, but its not the worst one there is. As a matter of fact, some consider it to be the last great Sonic game. So let’s look at the good and the bad (that’s a joke by the way) of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.

As the title would imply, this game is a direct sequel to the first Sonic Adventure. The “Battle” on the end however, allows us to distinguish the Game Cube version from the original DreamCast game. But, I have very little experience with that game, and I’m not 100% sure what changed, so I’ll be talking exclusively about the Game Cube port.

The game’s plot follows the usual one where Eggman is trying to take over the world (Clip:”OF COURSE!”), this time trying to use the power of the space colony ARC, something his discovered while researching his grand-father’s notes. When he breaks into GUN headquarters (who plays the role of the neutral party fighting everyone in this game) he finds something surprising: Shadow, a black hedgehog with power and speed to rival Sonic. He also eventually finds a female bat named Rouge, and the three team up together to take over the world. Of course, that won’t happen if Sonic, Tails and Knuckles have something to say about that.

Know what’s cool about the story and this game? You get to see BOTH sides! Taking a page from it’s predecessor, which allowed you to play as 6 characters to get a more complete story, this game lets you play as both heroes and villains. However, unlike the first Sonic Adventure, there are only the two stories, heroes or villains (even though you play as 6 characters total). Also unlike the first one, the two modes are quite similar. You see, in Sonic Adventure, each person’s levels had a theme: Sonic was normal level, Tails was a race, Knuckles was hunting, etc… But in this game, each person has been matched up with someone on the other side: Sonic with Shadow, Knuckles with Rouge and Tails with Eggman. So that means there are only three kinds of levels: platform styled, shooting and hunting.

Now I’ve told you all of that to tell you this: the really bad thing about playing the stories is that you have no control over what type of level you play next. This means if you don’t really feel like hunting for emerald shards, you might have to anyways if you want the plot to keep going. You do have the option of trying the other side of the story, but there’s a 33% chance that you might get the same one. Sure you can play whatever type of level you want in level select mode, but that doesn’t move the plot along.

The graphics are pretty good. Not great for what we later saw the Gamecube could do, but considering that this is technically a Dreamcast port, it’s still really good. This is especially true when you compare it to Sonic Adventure, but I have more on that game later on. Anyways, the graphics are good with no real harshness taking away from enjoying the game, just nothing spectacular either. However, I love the music in this game. I honestly think that this was the first game (or rather, the original Dreamcast version) that I was ever able to sing along to and even downloaded tracks from some of the levels to listen to without playing the game. If you have to know, my personal favorite has to go to Eggman’s Theme song.

This game is really good, and I can why some people say it’s the last great Sonic game. Though personally I liked the handheld Sonic games and Sonic Heroes even better, this really does feel like it was before over popular and just to make money. Maybe this game caused that popularity, but there’s good reason to that. It takes an interesting twist on Sonic and gives you some fun levels to play with. You also do get extras in the game, like the battle mode and the chao garden (that I had to skip over due to time), that just add to how you can enjoy this game. The only bad side is that while playing this Sonic game, you’ll have to play levels that just aren’t Sonic, so be ready for that. I give Sonic Adventure 2 Battle 8.5 Levels out of 10.