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Can someone tell me why SA2 is so highly regarded?


kdotj24

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Over-rated as it was, Sonic Adventure 2 is still the last good game Sonic had on consoles before Generations.

Nah, that would be Sonic & Knuckles, not counting spin-offs.

Anyway, the reason why most people like Sonic Adventure 2 is really just nostalgia. If a Sonic game like it were released today, even with all of the technical problems like the faulty camera fixed, it would be thrashed.

The Sonic and Shadows stages are mostly fine. But the rest of the game is atrocious. Shooting and treasure hunting have no business in a Sonic game.

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Shooting and treasure hunting have no business in a Sonic game.

According to who? 

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The majority of critics, numerous gamers in general as well as myself.

Do you have any evidence which supports/represents the majority of critics/gamers? 

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Sorry, but it is true. Adventure 2 was a good game, even if it was over-rated.

Also, being good doesn't mean it's legendary. Also, stop counting S&K as a separate game, that god damn thing is just the second half of Sonic 3.

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The majority of critics, numerous gamers in general as well as myself.

And who made you the grand authority of what goes in this series and what doesn't?

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According to who? 

People who dislike those gameplay styles? 

I mean, as far as I am concerned, they're pretty horribly designed. Clunky and slow, and they never fail to disrupt the flow when you've had a couple back to back Sonic/Shadow stages.

It would take a lot of refinement (read: A significant overhaul of a number of mechanics) for me to find them enjoyable. They would also need to be exceptionally well designed to not upset any rhythm a player may or may not build up when playing a given gameplay-style (i.e, they need to complement each other in addition to functioning well in isolation).

Many reasons as to why I think Mechs and Treasure hunting shouldn't be in a Sonic game. Not everyone will agree of course.

This all being said, "According to who?" can be used to 'counter' a number of arguments or opinions with regards to what should or should not be in a good Sonic game , because of course, there hasn't been a truly great one in a very fucking long time.

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Sorry, but it is true. Adventure 2 was a good game, even if it was over-rated.

Also, being good doesn't mean it's legendary. Also, stop counting S&K as a separate game, that god damn thing is just the second half of Sonic 3.

Only about 1/3 of Sonic Adventure 2 was good. The rest was trash.

Sonic & Knuckles was released as its own game and has enough material on its own to be considered its own game.

Edited by Diesel
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This all being said, "According to who?" can be used to 'counter' a number of arguments or opinions with regards to what should or should not be in a good Sonic game , because of course, there hasn't been a truly great one in a very fucking long time.

The guy who I was replying to then went onto say...

The majority of critics, numerous gamers in general as well as myself.

4 hours later we're still waiting for evidence/source to this.

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I wouldn't expect it to be hard to find critics and gamers who agree, it's not exactly a terribly controversial opinion.

But it shouldn't even matter who says it in the first place. Both authority and popularity are pretty terrible measures.

Mechs and treasure hunting simply have nothing to do with Sonic gameplay, so they never should have been forced into the series.

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Not the way it was implemented at least. Nothing wrong with mech and treasure hunting so long as they complemented the Sonic gameplay rather than changing the fucking genre.

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I'm honestly not gonna pull up sources. One of the biggest criticisms regarding the Adventure games were about their alternate gameplay styles. This is blatantly obvious. Suggesting that the alternate gameplay styles weren't widely criticized is completely delusional.

And who made you the grand authority of what goes in this series and what doesn't?

Did I say I was the grand authority? All I stated was that the treasure hunting and mechs have no place in a Sonic game, and that a lot of people would agree with me. Stop being so confrontational.

Edited by Diesel
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I'm honestly not gonna pull up sources. One of the biggest criticisms regarding the Adventure games were about their alternate gameplay styles. This is blatantly obvious. Suggesting that the alternate gameplay styles weren't widely criticized is completely delusional.

Then you shouldn't find it hard to find a source or something to backup your claim? 

Also the irony here is huge, demands people posts sources/evidence to anything counter to what he says... refuses to do the same for something which is apparently 'blatantly obvious.'

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I'm pretty biased, but the treasure hunter stages were my favourites. I really loved playing them over and over again and getting as fast a time as I possibly could. The shooting stages weren't as fun, I thought, but personally I liked them.

 

See, what I don't like with the mindset that 'treasure hunting and shooting doesn't have a place in Sonic' is that if you look at the things that surround the games(i.e. the comics and TV series) you find that Sonic isn't the only character who exists, nor is he the only one who gets off his behind and gets stuff done. So I, personally, thought it was nice that both Sonic Adventure 2(and Sonic Adventure) reflected this.

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You're conflating characters and their gameplay. Having other characters be active and relevant doesn't require each of them having radically different kinds of gameplay.

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Aye, you are right that one doesn't have to mean the other, but Tails and Knuckles(to use the heroes as example) aren't Sonic, so it makes sense in some ways that their stages wouldn't be the same, and wouldn't be about over coming challenges in the same way. At least that's what I think.

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Well it's a matter of degrees in that case. I feel like the characters' unique abilities, and the kind of level design that would best take advantage of them, would be plenty to give each character a unique feel, even if the core gameplay is still shared with Sonic. Giving them wildly different gameplay like SA2 did has, more often than not, resulted in games that I only actually want to play a fraction of.

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And I guess that is your preference, but because you don't like it doesn't mean that it's wrong*. Just like it doesn't mean that it's right* just because I did like those stages. I think a lot of its popularity might of been because of Sonic Adventure 2 being more widely accessible than the previous games on the franchise, or maybe it's because Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 had more of a story to them. I can agree with the OP that it's not the God's gift to gaming that some people make it out to be, but, personal preferences aside, it was a good game.

*Don't really like using Wrong and Right in this context, since it doesn't feel entirely accurate, but I can't think of anything more eloquent.

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The majority of critics, numerous gamers in general as well as myself.

Would that be the naive critics with very low standards who initially reviewed the game, or...

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It's interesting to see people criticizing shooty gameplay because it's "clunky", yet almost nobody seems to have a problem with the way SA1 did it. That speaks to me as less a problem with the gameplay style itself and more that characters shouldn't have been made slow and awkward to control for it, because as far as I can tell that's literally the only problems people seem to have with it, glaring as they are.

Treasure hunting on the other hand is kind of hard to comment on, but the way I see it we've essentially done that before, too:

Sonic-the-hedgehog-3_040.gif

Which is something I find intriguing when people praise this for encouraging exploration. Do people just not like not having a clearly defined forward direction or something? I'm legitimately curious.

 

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Gamma was better because he wasn't as slow and clunky as SA2's mechs, but he still didn't feel that great to play as. Also the combo system they both used made for a lot of start-and-stop gameplay that doesn't jive well with Sonic's fluidity. I could believe there's a way to make a shooting-centric character mesh with Sonic's gameplay (making the combos time-based, encouraging you to keep running in search of more enemies, rather than stopping to target big groups, would be a good start), but it would be way different from what either Adventure shooter gameplay was.

Regarding treasure hunting, I don't think the giant rings are comparable. They're optional objectives within standard Sonic levels; you're free to ignore them if you're not interested, and even if you are you're mostly just making little diversions from the get-to-the-goal style gameplay. It's a little extra wrinkle so you can choose to play differently sometimes. With treasure hunting everything's about the collecting; you're put into a relatively small, nonlinear area and you can only progress by playing hot-or-cold 3 times. There's barely any speed and none of the flow that makes Sonic fun; it's more like SM64 with OP characters and lame objectives.

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This is my answer to the original question: you had to grow up playing the game to understand it's appeal. The multiplayer, to this day, is an absolute blast to play, the story, stages, and music were incredibly iconic, and OH MY GOODNESS THE CHAO GARDEN. No doubt one of the best parts of the game! It added LOADS of depth to a game that already had plenty to do, but it was one of the main reasons we all played the game so much. There was nothing more fun than bringing your memory card over to a friend's place to show off your chao, or even transfering your chao to the GBA and bringing around with you, raising it like a digital pet! So much fun!

To be honest, it's not that SA2 is really that great of a game in any right: it's that it was an incredibly iconic game (held in high regard during it's day), and it's hard to understand the appeal if you simply look at gameplay and the production quality, because although the game was a huge step up from SA1 in so many ways in terms of performance, it had plenty of issues for sure, and as many of you have no doubt already mentioned, the shooting levels and emerald hunting levels felt a little out of place, being loved by some and despised by others. but SA2 was a great game because it truly brought people together: for the first time, people that didn't care for Sonic or didn't like the Sonic series's basic style of gameplay started getting into the franchise, because SA2 appealed to such a large audience in ways that might not of been top-quality, but were simply FUN. SA2 had tons of variety, and tons of iconic parts that everybody could be social about. The reason the game is so great is because is was really an awesome social experience while growing up.

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Yeah I really liked Gamma's gameplay in SA1, so I don't think it's incompatible with Sonic.  I think the biggest thing is that precision and timing shouldn't be a huge factor in the shooting, and of course it should compliment the game's speed as opposed to detracting from  it.  Might just be nostalgia talking, but while Gamma's gameplay was different, it wasn't an unpleasant change in pace like Big.

Treasure hunting I'm a bit mixed on.  I agree giant rings aren't comparable, but I think as a concept, it works better in 2D that 3D.

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But treasure hunting in 3D basically surmounts to being a collectathon, so I don't see how the addition of the Z-axis makes the concept problematic. Sure, things work differently in 2D than 3D, but it's still a matter of good/bad level design and mechanics regardless.

It would be like having Knuckles race to the end and finding emerald pieces as a side option.

Edited by ChaosSupremeSonic
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