I’ll start this review by saying that I’m a huge Sonic fan. I grew up with the classic trilogy games (& Knuckles), I had a great time with some of the less loved ones, such as Sonic 3D Blast, and even pre-ordered Sonic Frontiers! Do you know how dumb it is to pre-order a Sonic game, knowing that there is a great chance for it to be mediocre and have a massive price cut one month later? I’m that type of fan. However, I’d never played Sonic Adventure until the end before. For some reason I never got very far in my previous attempts, losing interest after the first couple of stages. This time around, I decided to give it a real chance and find why many other fans have it in such high regard. After completing all the six different campaigns present in the game I was able to understand why, but only thanks to hefty doses of context and resilience.
It’s all about Chaos
Sonic Adventure was possibly the biggest pivot in the series history and consequently one of its most important games. When it came out in late 1998 for the Sega Dreamcast, a system that was a generational leap comparing with the Playstation and Nintendo 64, it was a graphical showpiece with large 3D environments, realistic textures and detailed character models. The characters themselves also received an extensive re-design and voice acting, allowing Sonic Team (the development team behind this game) to give them proper personalities and create more ambitious narratives. Gone was the Classic Sonic, this was the beginning of the Modern Sonic era.
Speaking of narratives, the one presented here is definitely the backbone of this game. As soon as we boot it up, we are presented with six different playable characters with distinct campaigns, although only Sonic is available at the start. As we progress in Sonic’s campaign, which is the main course so to speak, we progressively unlock the other ones as their paths cross with the main character during the game events.
Sonic’s story follows the same line of previous games, but with a new threat. Eggman wants to steal the Chaos Emeralds and use their power to conquer the world. To achieve it he uses a strange liquid creature named Chaos, that has the power to absorb the aforementioned emeralds and become even stronger. By facing Chaos multiple times during Sonic’s campaign we get the feeling that there’s something to uncover about it, but his story ends before reaching any conclusion. It turns out that defeating Eggman it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real meat of it (yes, I’m using another food analogy in this article for no reason) is hidden in the other five campaigns. Pretty much like season 4 of Arrested Development (the original one, not the awful remixed version), each character provides an unique POV on a narrative where all of them participate together. Uncovering the truth behind Chaos is a game on itself, as the pace and deliver of this story is quite unconventional. Even so, in some part is less frustrating than playing the actual game.
Big problems
As I mentioned before Sonic’s campaign is the main focus here, and it shows. It’s the longest one in the game, composed of ten stages with the typical goal of going from A to B as fast as possible and a few boss battles in between. For the most part the stages are very well designed for Sonic’s precise and satisfying momentum-based controls, but it’s not too difficult to find issues. Quite often during my playthrough Sonic got stuck in some environmental detail, being it a wall, a rock or even the floor, causing him to glitch for a few seconds. This issue, usually called “clipping”, is a common thing in video games, but ideally it’s something very ocasional. Here it happens all the time. Maybe it’s a skill issue, but it’s a bad sign when the game breaks so easily when we go off rails. Speaking of that, I also have to mention the dynamic camera system of this game. Some specific points of each stage trigger a camera position and angle change, in theory to help the player see where they need to go next. But there is one problem. While the stages aren’t 100% linear, the camera only follows a single route. Exploring alternative paths while fighting the camera is beyond frustrating, even more so with a blazing fast character like Sonic.
The Sonic portion of Sonic Adventure has its problems, but its highlights almost overshadow them. I could end up here my review with this positive note, but unfortunately there’s much more to it. The other five campaigns to be more specific. To avoid bore you to death, I’ll keep it short and sweet and summarize each one of them in a few sentences:
- Tails: He tries to overcome his dependency on his best buddy Sonic by racing him on a few stages, but Tails flying ability is so OP that not even the speed of sound is enough to overcome it.
- Knuckles: His campaign consists in boring treasure hunts on stages that clearly weren’t designed for that purpose.
- Amy: Another character who wants emancipation from Sonic (good for her), but at least her story is a bit more interesting. Oh, and she has a hammer to destroy some Eggman’s robots.
- E-102 Gamma: One of Eggman’s robots. It has the best story in the game to be honest, it’s just a shame it’s so short. Its gameplay isn’t bad either, be it all about shooting targets with a lock-on mechanism.
- Big the Cat: Hope you like bad fishing mini-games, because that’s all we do here. I was this close (imagine me pinching my fingers) to give up at this point. To add insult to the injury, his story contributes in absolutely nothing to the overarching narrative. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?
One thing in common with all campaigns is a freely explorable overworld. A cool idea in theory, but very poorly executed. To advance from stage to stage we first need to figure out where should we go or what should we do. It turns out that more often than not it isn’t exactly clear. We have a few hints spread around the overworld, but sometimes not even those are enough. I had to consult a walkthrough in several ocasions as I wasn’t thrilled to figure it out on my own.
The most positive aspect of Sonic Adventure is that Sonic Team undestood what worked and what didn’t, resulting in a much improved sequel, without overworlds or fishing mini games, in Sonic Adventure 2. But that’s a story for another day.
Pros
- Layered and complex narrative across all the campaigns
- Sonic’s precise controls
Cons
- Too many clipping issues
- The objectives to progress in the game aren’t always clear
- The most obnoxious dynamic camera I ever saw in a videogame
- Big the Cat campaign
Okay✦✦✧✧✧
Sonic Adventure had the merit of pushing Sega’s mascot into a new dimension and defining much of what the series is to this day. However, as a videogame on its own, it has too many rough edges to be an entirely enjoyable experience.
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