/vr/ - Retro Games

LIVE AND LEAAARRRNNN!!

>>10387214
2/3 awful levels. Some cool music. The best 3D Sonic but still shit

Pretty shit but zoomers seem to like it. I think it loses something without the open world segments the first game had. The 3D Sonic games as a whole are bad and Sonic fans honestly have possibly the worst taste across all gaming fandoms. The 16 bit games and Mania are great though.

>>10387214
The lyrics to the theme of that boss is pretty fuckin’ dark.

https://youtu.be/lybrmZsr67k?si=-U03ZwrDumOX0x5g

“To the future, everything is just lies”

>>10387214
Disappointing overall. Shadow was bad then and he's bad now.

>>10387214
worse than the first

>>10387214
I hated it the first time I played it. I loved it the second time I played it. From third to 7th time I kept loving it. It feels like you only enjoy it when you already know the levels and the mechanics.
I feel like 1 has more soul and better graphics overall (If we don't count the dx version), but this one has better controls, gameplay, and story.
Also the chao garden was very entertaining.

>>10387248
Not retro but Colors was mostly good.

Mid-tier 3D platformer alongside the first game, not much else to say really. Neither bad nor really all that good. Also the sound mixing is as bad as 2000s Youtube.

>>10387538
>Also the sound mixing is as bad as 2000s Youtube.

The amount of people who played shitty Gamecube version and thought that OG game suffers from the same issues is saddening.

>>10387538
>>10387578
>The amount of people who played shitty Gamecube version and thought that OG game suffers from the same issues is saddening.

Only played the original SA1 and SA2 on DC.

>>10387248
>>10387434
>>10387504
This. I went and bought it on the release date. I was hoping it was an improvement over SA1, but it was much worse. Every installment thereafter was more and more terrible.

>>10387214
Ian Flynn tried too hard to fit Frontiers after SA2 and all subsequent games, when in reality, SA2 is a perfect ending to Sonic timeline as a whole.

There is just some... sense of completion in the game's ending, like all the important plotlines are finally resolved. Sure, they could go on because characters' lives won't just end there, they'll keep having adventures. But there's a solid stopping point and you can easily leave the rest to your own imagination. Like with the last strip of Calvin and Hobbes, which just ends like every other strip could.

I hate it. Ive legitimately kept coming back to it because apparently theres something Im doing compeltely wrong when playing the game and its jsut miserable. Knuckles stages are horrible. rouge's stages are horrible. tails sections are horrible. the camera is horrible. the lock on attack is horrible. Most sonic stages are good but theyre linear as fuck and allow for little exploration in the stage unless you specifically know to shoot off a ramp at a specific angle in a specific spot to land on some level geometry that you'd never guess even existed unless you were just randomly flinging yourself off until you found it

>>10387263
>“To the future, everything is just lies”
I'm trying not to take this as an personal attack.

>>10387695
Sounds like you're doing something completely wrong anon

You know, there are games which you just can't play properly because your brain frequency isn't tuned to it. Like you're genuinely can't catch the flow and it hinders with your enjoyment.
SA2 isn't one of these games because a kid can figure out and master controls. Homing attack literally serves for making your 3D Sanic experience less miserable and allows you to auto-aim everyone. Same with mech levels, blowing up shit and racking up score points is great fun.

>>10387504
Nah, it's way better than 1 with its godawful hubworlds

>>10387719
nice projection, asshat. I know how its SUPPOSED to work. I played Sonic 2 religiously as a kid. I played 3&K on fusion repeatedly in high school. The homing attack is nice when it works, which is roughly 60-70% of the time. Other times it ignores your target completely and you dly off a mile away from the enemy

>>10387725
>Other times it ignores your target completely and you dly off a mile away from the enemy

Have you tried to not press buttons like a moron and actually pay attention for timings?
Because, you know, it's all about *momentum*.

I play the game for half of my life and I rarely have homing slip off.

>>10387732
If I literally said it works 60-70% of the time, CLEARLY I KNOW HOW TO DO THE HOMING ATTACK

you even just said yourself it doesnt work all the time

>>10387737
>you even just said yourself it doesnt work all the time

Yes but not 60-70%
More like 95%. It's pretty rare and happens more often if you haste too much, like the game can't adjust and lock you onto proper target in time

On other hand, I've heard many tales saying SA1 is wallclipping galore, but almost never experienced it myself. Tf must be a magic protecting me from the game's shittyness.

>>10387263
>>10387696
That part is misheard:

>Lead me out with your light
>I have breathed in the disgusting air of darkness
>but I never lose [spoilers]to the pressure, everything's just like,[/spoilers]
>an illusion, I'll be losing you
>before long...

>>10387263
That part is misheard:

>Lead me out with your light
>I have breathed in the disgusting air of darkness
>but I never lose to the pressure, everything's just like,
>an illusion, I'll be losing you
>before long...

>>10387214
It sucks, SA1 is better.

>>10387241
>but still shit
Its better than any 3D Mario platformer. I also disagree with you on it being the best 3D Sonic since SA1 exists.

>>10387214
Inferior to the original in every single way but still a good memorable game.

>there’s actual autists on here that prefer to play as a fat fuck cat with down syndrome than SA2.

>>10387963
Blow it out your ass. If you can't understand why others enjoy it you're the autist.

A clusterfuck of a game that even at the time had major problems most other platformers didn't

The good:

Sonics action stages are perfectly servicable
The art direction and aestetic has a very early 2000s to them (Admittably a good or bad point, I choose to think its good)
The OST lyric tracks has a cheese and "so bad its good" quality to them

The bad

Both the shooting levels and treasure hunting levels range from mediocre to straight up awful. This is compounded by the fact there are far more of these than there were in SA1 and they go on for much longer - The treasure hunting levels in particular feels like the game is dicking you around since it uses RNG for where the treasure is hidden. This would be fine in theory if the moment to moment gameplay was fun, but it isnt; Its a horribly dull scavenger hunt and the RNG needlessly prolongs it

Shooting levels are completely unexciting despite everything going on in them. There's no real depth since the game autotargets enemies for you and you just end up mashing shoot constantly. All flash and no substance.

1/2

>>10388003

2/2

Overall lack of polish: The game localization has lines constantly cutting into one another, lip sync is terrible, and its text uses Comic Sans font. These aren't dealbreakers, but they are amateurish things that makes the whole game feel cheaper.

Story tone is all over the place and makes no sense.
Knuckles punches the emerald and the shattered pieces of it somehow end up inside a closed pyramid and the far side of the moon?
Team Dark is constantly zipping back and forth between the moon and earth when the whole point of the heroes is finding a rocket to get there?
Tails randomly making a fucking FAKE CHAOS EMERALD that still allows Sonic to Chaos Control (??????) so what the hell is even the difference to the real one at this point
(On that note, how does time stopping allow Sonic to escape a closed room? Heroes shows Chaos Control to be time stopping)
Eggman is now a bloodthirsty maniac who takes hostages and threatens to shoot them, and then ten minutes later has a heart-to-heart with Tails as they look at the starry sky together and he reminisces about his grandfather while evidently everyone forgives him for everything he's done during the game, including blowing up the moon (I'd almost put this in the good category since its so hilariously tone deaf)
That one bit where Eggman tells Rouge she has 5 minutes to escape the base and she goes "Lmao I'll do it in 3" and the level timer actually ends up being 3 mins - Implying Eggman actually changed the bomb timer based off that one boast

SA1 is superior in every way and I don't even think that highly of it to begin with. To this day I'm convinced Adventure 2 is fondly remembered only by people who played it as impressionable ten-year olds and the anime bullshit plot combined with the edge and autism-friendly characters completely spellbound them to the point they didn't realize just how half baked the game was

>>10387980
You're more than welcome to elaborate.

>>10387214
I liked SADX as a kid but I definitely remember not liking SA2 back then. Live and Learn is a 10/10 final boss theme though.

>>10387214
SA1 was better and even then it's not that big a compliment since SA1 is riffled with issues.
>>10388003
>>10388012
Pretty much this.
>To this day I'm convinced Adventure 2 is fondly remembered only by people who played it as impressionable ten-year olds and the anime bullshit plot combined with the edge and autism-friendly characters
Agree. I guess people never forget their first introduction to shonen and thinking it's the coolest shit they've ever seen.

>>10387248
>zoomers seem to like it.
lolno zoomers wouldn't put up with SA2 shit.
The only people that enjoy janky 3D Sonic games are people who grew up with and have nostalgia for them. I know this because I'm one of them.

>>10388003
Fuck you I like the treasure hunting stages. I agree with the TPS stages though.

>>10388012
Honestly this explanation makes the game sound so much worse than I remember but makes me love it even more. SA2 is peak schizocore.

>>10388012
Exactly this.

>>10388062
>posts reviews
Good lord.

>>10387725
>roughly 60-70% of the time. Other times it ignores your target completely and you dly off a mile away from the enemy
It won't lock-on if you're descending. Time your attacks before you fall

>>10387695
Do you also enjoy the homing attack missing those big airborne chunky GUN robots 7/10 times? I love that missing a homing attack puts you in a helpless state from which you can't recover if it's over a bottomless pit.

>>10388012
>closed pyramid
Rouge probably stashed some shards there.
>far side of the moon
There’s a cutscene where Sonic dumps the shards into space to avoid a meteor.

>>10387214
I liked it a lot more as a kid because of the story, but having replayed SA1 and SA2 back to back several times in the past few years, 2 is such a downgrade in terms of overall design and control responsiveness. Too many of the Sonic/Shadow stages just feel like moving in a straight line with few alternate paths aside from mission-related objectives, or a 20 box behind a rock/1up on an out of the way platform. That isn't to say there aren't any, but a lot of them almost come across as developer oversight than intent. Mechs are significantly slower and more difficult to maneuver compared to Gamma in SA1. The conventional health bars are fine, but are a less interesting a solution for a failure state than Gamma's soft time limit may have been in longer stages. Treasure hunting benefits a bit from dedicated stages, but the arbitrary radar lock means you may potentially need to double back several times over areas you've cleared to find the second and third pieces. Additionally, while the dedicated stages work well for their own sake, it deprives opportunity to use the repeat playthroughs on shared levels to suggest alternate paths or encourage the player to explore for secrets/faster routes/etc. Knuckles's exploration-focused treasure hunting mode in SA1 was a good opportunity to scout areas which other characters may be able to access, so putting him and Rouge (and all other characters by extension) into their own compartmentalized levels feels like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

>>10388639
Oh and I'm not even gonna get into the meat of the controls, but I ant to say that this series has been screaming for a Genesis-style 'roll' button since the first 3D game. Spindash spam is retarded in SA1, but 2's feels so fucking ass comparatively. Just let me turn into a ball and let gravity do the rest pls.

I hate SA1. The hubworlds suck, the cutscenes lacking any kind of direction makes them insanely boring, and everyone is so god damn slippery I hate controlling them. SA2 is still only half a good game but the Sonic and Shadow levels are all fun and the presentation is greatly improved.

>>10387214
the fucked up part about SA2 is that the first level is one of the best first levels in any game ever made. City Escape is exactly how you want a Sonic game to play. it's what you want the entire game to be. then, the other 95% of the game is kart racing or shooting things in chicken-legged mechs. wasted potential. still played the fuck out of this game as a kid, though.

This and SA1 seem to live and die by your willingness to replay them and engage with the ranking system and level shortcuts as well by the music. So far I beat Adventure 1 twice and 2 once and the controls didn't really click with me in the way Crash, Mario 64 or Ape Espcape have, they're not bad but I get a bigger kick out of almost every other big 6th gen platformer I can think of. Even other 7th Gen Sega plaformers like Shinobi and Billy Hatcher, with problems of their own, were more engaging to me and I'd rather revisit them than SA 1 or 2.

That being said, Sonic Heroes controls so horribly and it's such it made me miss these games so much, they got the feel 3D Sonic so much better in their first try, I don't know why they neede to muck it up so bad in that sequel.

>>10388003
>forgiving Eggman
This is fucking hilarious and I've always got a huge kick out of how he's just there with everyone in the final cutscene. Adventure Eggman was so terrible lmao

>>10387214
Pretty great. The ranking system was a good idea for those who wanted more of a challenge and goals to follow. The gameplay styles were mostly fun, I’m not sure where the complaints are coming from except autistic people screeching that Sonic games must only be about running fast. Shooting gameplay is more fun when you get good enough to start chaining enemies for a better rank, and the emerald hunts are mostly fun, I just wish they had left in the multiple active radars from SA1.
Bosses are pretty bland and probably the worst part of the game, the only boss with any depth is the Biolizard, and unfortunately the boss fight over stays it’s welcome by being too long and punishing with the hardest segment at the end.
Chao is a nice diversion, although I can see it not being everyone’s bag. There’s a lot of depth there for people who do enjoy it.
I don’t know if I’d say it’s better than SA1, but it’s still a great game with a few great improvements.
I’m not sure where all this hate comes from other than the edgy story, but it’s a fucking Sonic game, the story shouldn’t be the reason you’re playing it anyways.

>>10388012
>shattered pieces of it somehow end up inside a closed pyramid

Knuckles don't search for M.E. pieces in the pyramid, he searches for keys so the gang can enter inside

> far side of the moon?
They lose all collected shards while flying on rocket there, because Knuckles wanted to be mighty space captain and took the steering wheel from Sonic, resulting in shards being thrown out

> Team Dark is constantly zipping back and forth between the moon and earth

They don't? Once they're on the ARK, they stay there. Even if they do, Eggman obviously have tech to ensure fast earth-space travels (i remember he had a teleporter in one cutscene). Sonic & team doesn't.

> so what the hell is even the difference to the real one at this point

"It has the same wavelength and properties but the less powerful than real one" - Tails literally explains that early
I suppose you can Chaos Control like, once, before it simply turns into dust. And if Sonic was somewhere farther away from colony, he wouldn't be able to pull out that escape.

>time stopping
That's the green Chaos Emerald's ability, not yellow one.

> Eggman is now a bloodthirsty maniac who takes hostages and threatens to shoot them, and then ten minutes later has a heart-to-heart with Tails as they look at the starry sky together and he reminisces about his grandfather

"Vegeta and Piccolo.jpg"
And they all worked together to stop global danger. So, a little moment of redemption is justified, I guess.

tldr the game is criticized by people who won't spare a minute of their precious time to look up into control scheme and story details.
Many such cases.

>>10387263
>>10387696
>>10387807
"Supporting Me" is a genuinely great song, and it's in service to the worst fucking boss fight in a game with a dozen really shitty bosses.

>>10388868
I kinda love/hate how he has that little moment of introspection over his grandfather, then Tails immediately kills the moment with,
>All I know is, we did it togetherrrrr~!

Incredible game.

It's overhated these days because it's a Sonic game. If it was some random new IP it would still be pretty hyped as a cult hit. I like how the dialogue in the game is very "catchy".

>>10388012
>Tails randomly making a fucking FAKE CHAOS EMERALD that still allows Sonic to Chaos Control (??????)
It's implied this is what Gerald's chaos drives are. Presumably, he just reverse-engineered whatever they're made out of to make a cheap knockoff that would short out the eclipse cannon.

>>10387214
Tails/Robotnik levels had no business existing

I like the morons who claim SA1 was better and never elaborate. For fuck's sake, does a single person on the internet have an original thought? Is there any reason at all for me to believe that people like this haven't basically copy-pasted their terrible opinions from other idiots?

>>10389278
>>All I know is, we did it togetherrrrr~!
Picrel energy.

>>10389275
Vegeta's a horribly handled shitsmear of a character that by Toriyama's words only stuck around because he was popular but Piccolo never did anything evil 'cept for beating up Krillin and killing Goku with his permission he was a bit of a villain wannabe turned grumpy ally, which is way, way less than can be said about SA2 Robotnik.

Funnily enough they did both blow up the moon lmao

>>10389330
The only thing SA1 really has going for it is aesthetics. If anything, its levels are even more janky and linear than 2's.

Genuinely the game bizarrely holds up well as a pseudo metroidvania if you play it on that archipelago randomizer that locks levels behind emblem totals and upgrades behind omochao touches/obtaining emblems. Bizarrely the game structure works very well by gating off areas/emblems behind upgrades. Bizarre as the game is blatantly not even slightly designed to work as that type of game but it does. Recommend it for anyone looking to play the game in a new way.

As for the game itself, I've kind of flip flopped between thinking it's mediocre and very good. In reality I think it's a bit like the classic Sonic games where it gets better on replays and your first playthrough you're likely to just die to stupid shit a lot and never really be in control of what you're doing. Honestly I think it's fine and while I think on paper it's probably not better than something like Mario Sunshine, SA2 would still be the one I'd play and have more fun with given the choice. It also has a ridiculously good soundtrack, one of the best, and I think people hyperfocus on the lyric tracks which are slightly cheesy and fail to appreciate the ridiculous range of genres in the game and how well they're all executed, even having shit like every character having their own music genre for their levels. Sadly this was going to carry over into Cannon's Core with the same stage theme being done in each genre for each character's part of the level, but actually they only ended up doing Eggman/Tails/Sonic's versions and spaced them out between all the characters. But yeah, the soundtrack in this game blows 99% of games completely out of the water and anyone disparaging it is just an idiot.

>>10389339
Let's not forget that Ken Ichinouji kicked a puppy once and everybody forgived him later

I mean "character does evil shit but turns a good guy later and everybody doesn't care about his crimes anymore" is a pretty common trope. Plus it goes with the Sonic's own philosophy, he's ready to give even the baddest guy a chance to redeem and get cool with them, if they want it. Hence why he's just offered Metal Sonic to rematch anytime right after he transformed into colossal murdering robot with intention to claim himself as real thing.

>>10389371
Woah I hadnt thought about Digimon 02 in a while. I mean fair, thinking about it I have an even bigger issue with Vegeta than with Eggman cuz he at least has the Gerald thing and he never becomes a member of the gang or anything it's just goofy in the end.

>>10389362
> I think people hyperfocus on the lyric tracks which are slightly cheesy and fail to appreciate the ridiculous range of genres in the game and how well they're all executed
This is a genuinely great thing about the game. I might not care much for the Knuckles raps but Rouge's jazz fucks, and so does guitar stuff like "That's the Way I like it" and "Soarin' over Space", it's a meme of a phrase at this point but there really is something for everybody in that soundtrack, it's awesome.

>>10388012
I'm convinced there is a lot of dropped plotlines around the end of SA2. There's a lot of stuff that seems to be setting up plot threads that just go nowhere. Feels a bit like FF8 in that way.

Like, Shadow goes out of his way to express doubt that a fake emerald could ever be used for Chaos Control. Sonic doesn't even deny it. This apparently seems to suggest that Sonic never had the fake emerald and it was all a trick, but this doesn't line up with his monlogue actually in the capsule, so it's presumably not the case.

But, it's set up that when Eggman loses (which is canon like every hero/dark boss that isn't a draw) there's a scene in the hero story of Eggman stealing the emerald. This would have set up a situation where the 'fake' emerald got used after all. But in the final product it mainly serves as a way to make the dark ending still technically 'happen' going into last story.

There's also a lot of stuff about Sonic being able to do things that specifically only Shadow was meant to do, and comments from both Sonic and Shadow at different points meant to imply that Sonic is some kind of similar being to what Shadow is...but this is only really brought up in the last few minutes of the game and never touched on in any sequel, so most people settle on it being as basic as Shadow being based on the S3&K hidden palace mural, which I think is a bit of a reach and only really explains that he's a hedgehog that can go super.

Obviously Heroes/Shadow shat all over all of this so it's blatantly not canon and kind of pointless, but my autism wonders what could have been.

>>10387963
I would rather play Big's campaign twice before even considering the possibility of touching a single mech level in SA2. Fishing is relaxing and it gives you a good excuse to drink in SA1's excellent early 2000s atmosphere while you vibe to the soundtrack.

>>10387214
Terrible camera
Hilariously bad voice acting
Decent, if cheesy soundtrack
Sonic/Shadow stages are fun but can be frustrating because of said camera
Shootan stages are mindless fun
Treasure hunt stages are a bore
Why the fuck did they get rid of the exploration sections between stages?

Overall, it's a flawed classic.

>>10389902
>Why the fuck did they get rid of the exploration sections between stages?

Because time constraints.

Also iirc people were already complaining about adventure fields back in mid-00s

> why I have those pointless huge spaces stopping me from going fast
> why do i have to explore them

one game later

> why is this game so linear and have no exploration

Sonic fans caught themselves in the endless loop where they can't achieve satisfaction no matter what. You do X, someone would be disappointed.
You remove X and do Y, someone would say, why. It's a curse, honestly. I can't think of any other franchise that suffered from the same fate.

>>10389819
Not to mention some of the music tracks for Big's levels are God Teir.

Sonic/Shadow levels are fun. Tails/Eggman levels are fine. Knuckles/Rouge levels are boring. Music is quite good. Cutscenes are iconic. I'm sick of certain people treating it like the Sonic holy grail which it really isn't, just a fairly good game.

>>10389951
>Sonic fans caught themselves in the endless loop where they can't achieve satisfaction no matter what. You do X, someone would be disappointed.
>You remove X and do Y, someone would say, why. It's a curse, honestly. I can't think of any other franchise that suffered from the same fate.
Think of how different mechanically Mario 64 was from Super Mario World. There's almost no similarity, mechanically. Was it jarring at first for long lime Mario players? Yeah, a bit, but Mario 64 was so fun you accepted it within minutes of playing Mario64 for the first time. Now compare Sonic Adventure 1 to Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Much more similar to each other, mechanically, but again very different. It lost the pinball physics, and added an "epic" story line, had a world hub, etc... but it wasn't as fun to just pick up and play. Sonic Adventure 2 had the opportunity improve upon the big changes it made, and work on fun game play mechanics, but no. It doubled-down on the SA1 :formula" and made it less engaging, more boring, and more cringy.

>>10390131
Eh, i don't know. I've spent way too much time on Pinball minigame in SA1, the one with Nights, I just liked doing various card combos and tried to get all Ideya spheres to see what happens. I liked to explore adventure field hubs and see if I can get somewhere.
Even something as simple as running around as Knuckles at Speed Highway gave me joy because the level has nice early morning vibes and simply cheers you up.

S3&K is an excellent game that focuses on a single thing and does just that. Adventure games mixes up a lot of different stuff, there's something for everyone. Racing, fishing, hot n cold type of levels, shooting, grinding, etc.
But people are still not happy.
I really didn't look back when I've played them, and enjoyed them for what they were. Why can't anyone do that is a mystery to me.

SA1 sucked, Sega made up for it with SA2.

>>10390157
You're kinda making my point for me, actually.
Sonic Adventure was pretty fun for what it was, and I enjoyed all the stuff you mentioned as well. It also was a departure from the standard level by level format that the 2d platformer Sonic games had.
I'm not suggesting that's a bad thing. Mario 64 was a completely different kind of game from Super Mario World, but they made it work. It was super fun to play. Sonic Adventure was different in that it had a huge plot and story line with dialogue, and a world hub and things like that, but it was the same where all (most) the levels were linear that you had to run through under 10 minutes to reach a target, or boss, at the end whilst collecting rings. In that regard Sonic Adventure was exactly the same in form as the Genesis titles.
My complains isn't that SA was different. A lot of the differences and variety actually worked quite well. My complaint is that SA wasn't different enough.
Mario 64 was a light physics-based platformer. SA could have been this too but it wasn't. The actual mechanics of the gameplay was SA's weakest aspect.
SA2 chose to double-down instead of making any meaningful changes.

>>10390175
No its not for reasons explained here>>10388003>>10388012
>>10388149
>Fuck you I like the treasure hunting stages.
I recall spending an infinite amount of time on wild canyon. It was buggy as hell. Looking on youtube today shows it can be completed in 1 min lol.

>>10388012
This is nothing but plotshit that no one but low-functioning autists could possibly care about but
>That one bit where Eggman tells Rouge she has 5 minutes to escape the base and she goes "Lmao I'll do it in 3" and the level timer actually ends up being 3 mins - Implying Eggman actually changed the bomb timer based off that one boast
literally never happens. Take your meds.

>>10387214
i love it except for the knuckles/rouge stages, they shoul've been all about punhing shit in a beat em up style but whatever i still 100% this game with all A ranks

>>10387963
I didn’t know Big was hidden in the Dreamcast version of the game since I played battle.

I randomly ran into him in Pumpkin Hill in the PC port, and then saw him just as I fell to my death in Tail’s driving section. Felt like a creepy pasta.

>>10392835
that’s kinda the point