Does SA2 still hold up for you?

I think it's aging better than SA1, though that's not saying much. Doing my mega-playthrough on 6/23, SA was the only game that felt like an absolute grind.

With that said, this reminds me of a discussion a friend and I had several years ago. We were debating whether Sonic 3 & Knuckles or the SA series were better games.

He kept bringing up all the memorable moments in the SA series; running down the building, running from the whale, getting caught in the tornado, flying on the rocket. And it reminded me of how, around S3's release, the magazines were all treating it like some impressive technical marvel that Sonic was able to run up the inside of the tree trunk in Angel Island. But that's the last thing the game is remembered for today.

The SA games were phenomenal for their time, but they relied more on spectacle than gameplay. As time goes on and those spectacles become less impressive, the games lose more and more of their shine. It's a common problem for earlier 3D titles.

 

When I first played SA2 in late 2001 I believe it was, I had liked it slightly less at first than SA1 for the reasons that they had taken out Adventure Fields and the story didn't seem as well-done and "epic" enough for me. But as time went by, it edged itself over SA1 for me because I really liked how Sonic controlled and loved the cool little touches like Sonic and Shadow doing a misty-flip when you jump out of a roll. I thought that the the skate-punk style really worked for the game, and even now, I think it could work if done right. SA2 I actually feel did it right in gameplay, but not in cutscenes.

But as time has gone on, SA2 has really cooled for me. A lot of that is a change in how I play the game. As a kid, I was much less reckless with my playthroughs and more exploratory in my playstyle. Now that I'm older, I try much more for speed runs and when I do that, the game really starts to break when it comes to collision and camera, especially the latter. I don't know how I didn't see all this when I was growing up. The camera was tolerable when I was a kid, but now the fact that the camera automatically rotates to face the initial direction even if you flipped it is frustrating to me. The cutscenes that I though were very cool when I was growing up (even to the point of me and my then-best friend re-enacting the Sonic and Shadow exchange before their final confrontation on the playground... constantly) are now only their for laughs, and something that only recently began driving me crazy since college (as I just graduated as a graphic designer) is the freaking Comic Sans everywhere.

But most importantly, now there's really no drive for me to go back and play it if I'm not playing through the story. The game has no replay value for me; I don't really care about A ranks in the game at all, and after the drive of the story is over, I don't have any interest in playing except for when I want to show off my speedrun time for Final Rush for my friends.

However, I think it used to be my favorite for a reason, and that reason holds up: Sonic controls like a dream (save for glitchy as crap grinding when it comes to switching rails). He has just the right amount of weight to him that everything feels solid, and very responsive jumps, as well as, low-speed maneuvers. In fact, I still hold that if you use SA2's controls in conjunction with Generation's high-speed maneuvers (quick-step and drift) then you'd have the most responsive 3D Sonic out there.

Tl;Dr:

I loved it when there was nothing better, but after being spoiled with Colors and Generations, SA2 is more of a nostalgia piece in everything except for the majority of its Sonic/Shadow controls.

 

I LOVE THIS GAME. I won't deny that it's aged horribly, but its soundtrack is still amazing (albeit with a lot of guitars), the story, while a bit dark for a Sonic game, makes sense and keeps some continuity with SA1, and this game pretty much put me where I am today (my life is blue, literally; if I can have anything in a color, I get it in blue.) I have very heavy nostalgia goggles for this game, but I love it.

 

Sonic & Shadow gameplay has held up very well, even if the levels were incredibly linear.
That, the soundtrack, the multiplayer and the Biolizard boss are the things I shall remember.

 

Ah, "Supporting Me." I would play that over and over on the sound test, so good! In actuality, all of Shadow's songs hold up super well.

 

I only wish there were more lyrics, since half the song is repeating ''Supporting me'' with awesome music.

 

I actually like the game better now than I did when I first got it. Back then, I was an all-E player, only playing the stages to try to beat the story. Presently I find all of the stages (except Death Chamber and Mad Space - I hate them to pieces) and types of gameplay to be good and simple fun for the purposes they serve. I try to do every possible trick as Sonic or Shadow, light-dashing across every line of rings in my way and then otherwise speeding through where possible. Finding random shortcuts or long-ways is a neat bonus whenever I'm goofing around, since to this day I still haven't done all things doable. The Shooting stages are fun most of the time, but can be quite aggravating if you are not aware of everything going on or don't know what you're doing. Remember those things on Eternal Engine that sucked you, sucked you hard? I of course mean those holes you could blast open in the walls or floors. They were no fun, especially if you had the upgrade that made explosions chain. The goal of getting as many points as possible isn't that bad a thing, though losing your lock-on to Artificial Chaos and other things that shoot madly at you is a bit frustrating. As for the Treasure Hunting stages, they're fun to me now because I like to try to speed-run them. I actually used to hate them, but it was for the simple reason that I was nearly always lost, or the fact that I was playing on Mad Space; I still do hate that one. Now I'm to the point where I can memorize every Emerald spot, making getting higher ranks much easier. On that note, I'm not exactly great at games, so pushing myself to get every A rank adds quite a bit to the experience since I still don't have a good chunk of them yet. It might be of note that I have never had any problems with the controls, and the camera has never irritated me unless I was doing something I wasn't meant to do.

2-Player Battle was really fun to me back then, and still is now. Nothing beats having the other player nearly get to the goal and then you use a Time Stop to cheat your way to victory, doing things like killing them or waiting teasingly for them to try to catch back up for a miracle win. The only thing I hate is how overpowered Metal Sonic is on Grind Race. That is a nasty case of hold B to win, even if old blue and shiny lets the organic player get far ahead at the start.

 

I still like most of the Sonic Heroes levels more than Crazy Gadget though, at least if we're focusing only on Team Sonic; the ending in particular to CG just made no goddamn sense to me in terms of where the hell I was supposed to go, and it just dragged on and on and on.

 

This would be the part where I'd use Sonic Generations 3DS as a good allegory as to the Sonic series in general as the first four stages hold up and are pretty fun. Then you reach Radical Highway and the game hits a brick wall and just isn't fun anymore.

The whole allegory falls apart because Tropical Resort also sucked, and that was not the case at all for Colors.

 

Feel the same about the story. But complex plots make you think a little it's more involving then what people like in a Sonic game. The voices err... Well yes their not that great (especially the first one), but I don't think alot of games of the time had that great of voice acting. It's just obivious these days people like things dumbdown for whatever reason.

Like what has been said, between the hub worlds (first game) it's not difficult as people make out to be. It's easy to remember where you're going alot of times after a few play throughs.

Yss, I'm aware of the rawk music, but not all is in either game. A little on the over-compressed volume side, but I think looking at the fact that both games used 32 KHz 4-bit ADPCM ADX codec at 192 kbps (it's really not that great sounding and difficult to work with). The Dreamcast and Game Cube are capable of better audio, but the idea is too use stuff that sounds like CD-Quality but isn't to save space is not a far-fetched one. The albums if you bought you hear what they had to deal with or try to work with ADX codec yourself.

Yes, alot of the gameplay isn't that great, but learning how to use the analog controls is not diificult. Real of the thumb when turning on the Dreamcast (1st party recommended) or Gamecube make sure you're not holding the analog controls down and or any the sticks are held out of the home position.

It's not bad, but's not great. It's just okay. Just enjoy it for what it is.

- My two cents.

 

>implying Tropical Resort Modern is not one of the best zones on the 3DS version.


In all seriousness, it may just be the music doing it for me.

 

Does not compute

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I could never get into it, and I've not analysed it in any depth, so there's not a lot else I can add. However, I do view it as having been the harbinger of a number of bad choices that Sega are still trying to get over. There were a few good ideas, but they've taken their time in vindicating those, too.

 

Eh, not so sure I agree. I thought the lyrics sounded cooler when they were downplayed, and the strings of the original sound a bit cooler than the bit tunes IMHO.

To each their own, though, that one is still good

 

I can certainly still enjoy it, but compared to recent Sonic titles, SA2 is dog shit.

 

I still greatly enjoy playing it. At least, playing a few levels as Sonic and Shadow to get Chaos Drives to take care of my Chao. They're adorable.

 

When I first played this game in the early 2000s I loved the first stage to death, it was fantastic, however while the other Sonic and Shadow levels were enjoyable they were not as fun and as polished as the first stage felt to me. The Tails and Robotnik levels just depend on mashing the same button over and over again and it requires no skill, Rogue and Knuckles levels are a pain and always have been for me. My opinion hasn't really changed much at all, there is a lot of the Sonic fan community that glorifies the adventure games but I never thought they were too amazing in the first place. I will say this though, Sonic Adventure 1 I did enjoy back in the day but it seems like a complete mess to me now. I never loved it though. For those that did like the Adventure series I hope they are still able to have fun with it, some games just don't age well though.

 

The first time I played SA2... I think it was more or less 3 years ago on a DC emulator. I never had the chance to get a Dreamcast or Gamecube...

Sometimes I still play it, but normally only with Sonic and Shadow. Their gameplay style is the only one I really like. I find the gameplay with Tails and Eggman to be... nice enough, and Knuckles/Rouge is a little boring for me. It's still one of my favorite Sonic games though.

I don't have a XBOX nor a PS3 right now but if the re-release is coming to Steam then I'm totally going to buy it.

 

I've played through and beat all the stories on the DC version several weeks ago (I sold my gamecube copy to a friend of mine back in 2005,) and I have to say that the game aged terribly for me. The game was way too buggy, with frequent cheap deaths resulting from the go-through-walls-or-the-ground glitches. The camera glitches are also more apparent to me now, which made the experience that much more annoying. Sonic and Shadow were also harder to control, and the lack of the lock-on system for the homing attack present in Generations made it difficult to predict what Sonic/Shadow will be homing towards, resulting in a few more hundred cheap deaths due to them homing towards nothing. That's another thing, why were the levels designed so that you're inside one huge bottomless pit? It's annoying and I'm glad they fixed that in Generations. Gameplay wise, it sucks that they've dedicated 60% of the game to meaningless bullshit like shooting and "treasure hunting" levels. These levels just serve to waste time, since they're anything but fun (how in the hell did the higher ups approve of this shit anyway?) It's amazing how much we were willing to forgive 10 years ago. Overall, I can't really say that I find the game fun nowadays and if I ever play it again it'd just be for the sake of nostalgia.