Sonic Adventure 2 Battle Review

Chao
Everyone loves the Chao, right? Chaos’ are little creatures, which you get to take care off in Sonic’s world. Kind of like a virtual pet. To get to the Chao garden where you take care of your Chao’s it’s required to find the Chao key in a stage. Once you’ve found it once you can go to the Chao world anytime you want to. You take care of the Chao’s as they grow up by feeding them, giving them animals, giving them Chao drives, petting them and picking them up. To acquire Chao drives you must destroy/kill enemies in the 1-player game and touch the Chao drives with your character. Same thing with the animals except you just need to find them, no destroying of enemies is necessary. Chao drives are used to raise the various abilities such as strength of your Chao. Same thing with animals except animals cause your Chao to acquire animal parts such as rabbit ears. You can also purchase stuff at the black market such as special food and Chao eggs to acquire more Chao’s. You can also go to the Principal’s Office to obtain tips on how to raise your Chao(s) and the Health Center to check out what your Chao likes and how he’s doing. To name your Chao you have to take him to the Fortune Telling House and you can also take your Chao to school to teach him how to do different things. If you’re going away on a trip somewhere you can just transfer your Chao to Sonic Advance. This is a great way of having fun with your Chao when away from your GCN, although there isn’t much to do in Sonic Advance’s Chao garden except for raising your Chao’s stats. Once you think you’re ready you can enter your Chao into a race or karate against the game’s Chao’s, another one of your Chaos or a friend’s Chao by having their memory card. Both Chao race and Chao karate are very amusing to watch but you control very little of what your Chao does in both as it usually comes down to your Chao’s stats. Only two events for your Chao’s to compete in will leave you wanting more. The whole Chao raising part of this game is excellent overall but a few more features wouldn’t hurt it.

Graphics

Since it is a Dreamcast port, you shouldn’t expect anything extraordinary from Sonic Adventure 2 Battle but that doesn’t stop it from having some quite decent graphics. The characters are well detailed and look really good for the most part but not as good as they could look obviously. The stages look nice and please the eyes for the most part but some of the things in them such as posters on the walls could be improved quite a bit. The enemies are mostly fine but once again not top notch. Some of the backgrounds look great while others should be significantly improved. One thing that did impress me lots was the look of the Chao’s and the Chao garden. The Chao’s look really good and so does everything in the Chao garden and kindergarten including the animals you find in the action stages and give to your Chaos. The game looks good but it’s not anywhere near where it should be.

Sound

Most of the sounds in this game are excellent and accurate. You won’t hear a sound you don’t expect when something happens. From collecting rings to destroying enemies, everything works well. The background music really differs from level to level, some like the first level in Hero are superb while others are plain annoying and belong somewhere else like the second level in hero. The voice acting can’t be judged to well; it really depends on what you expect the characters to sound like. For example some people like Sonic to sound like a hedgehog with lots of attitude while others want him to sound like a small and cute animal. I personally find the voice acting to be excellent. Overall this game’s sounds and music are really good for the most part.

Control

While there are different controls for the different types of game modes, most of them work well and are easy to learn. Sonic has his classic moves while still learning new moves as you progress through the adventure. The other characters are also very good when it comes to controlling them but you may be angry at the amount of weapons available for Tails and Dr.Eggman. Controlling the characters isn’t perfect but it is extremely good. Now here’s the part where this game loses marks, the camera is extremely annoying and hard to control. It can often cause you to go tumbling into a bottomless pit or get struck by an enemy suddenly without being ready for it. Other than the camera, which can sometimes make you feel the need to throw your GameCube across the room, the controls are really good.

Lasting Appeal

In Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, there are five missions in each stage and for every mission you finish you receive an emblem. You also get emblems from doing some other things. There are a total of 180 emblems so you shouldn’t expect to get all of them fast. Also lots of them are quite hard to get and some of the levels are just really fun to play causing you to play them over and over again. Then there’s multiplayer for you and your friends (you do have friends, right?). Who could forget Chao? There’s a whole lot to do in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle but you might get bored before you finish it all. Expect a good amount of time playing this game though.

Final Say

A great game for most people if you can stand the mediocre shooting stages and in some people’s case the hunting stages. A good game to play with friends and raising a Chao is loads of fun. This is one title you should consider especially if you’re a Sonic fan.