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Sonic Adventure Game Review

Sonic Adventure is a 1998 platform game published by Sega for the Dreamcast. It’s an uneven, but important part of the evolution of Sonic games.

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“Oh, yeah! This is happenin’!“

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This was the first truly 3D entry in the franchise and it earned excellent reviews. It remains respected to this day, but more so for its historical importance than gameplay that is obviously quite flawed. It’s one of those games that are so uneven in quality that you will be both impressed with and mad at it at different times while playing it.

Unlike all previous entries, this is the first one to actually feature an extensive storyline. A creature called Chaos is introduced here, so Sonic and the gang have to defeat him and Robotnik and regain Chaos Emeralds. Eggman is now officially called Robotnik for all games going forward, which was a great choice. He is just as over-the-top and fun as ever (that boss fight against him was the highlight of the entire game) and Chaos is also interestingly designed as this blob-like creature. Sonic is as “radical” as ever, Tails as endearing as always and Knuckles typically broody. I liked the characters and their arcs here, but the overall plot is quite a mess.

For a game that has so many cutscenes, it’s surprising that they didn’t have a better script to offer us. It has its moments, but most of the story is just the team losing and regaining those Chaos Emeralds with only a few different moments of grandeur and intrigue thrown in there for good measure. I played the Japanese version of the game, so I ended up watching the English-language cutscenes on YouTube afterward, and I have to say that the English dub is quite horrendous. Thankfully, the original Japanese voice acting is fabulous with every character having a memorable voice.

Sonic Adventure looked fantastic for its time. It did not age well at all, but that’s understandable for a late 90s 3D platformer. This was the first game to open up the Sonic franchise into the 3D realm with more ambitious world building and it really worked. The levels are expansive, the backgrounds are surprisingly detailed and I loved the diversity on display from island imagery to snowcap mountains to volcanic landscapes. The character designs are a particular highlight here as Sonic and others are changed into a more adult and edgy look, which made them distinctly unique and modern. It’s an influential game in terms of design.

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I also really liked the score. The sound is pretty good, but the soundtrack is the technical standout of the whole experience. Yes, too many hard rock tunes are present and I am not a fan of that genre at all, but some of those tunes were quite memorable. The highlights for me were that African-inspired tribal tune on the island. That music made the game so cozy and the soundtrack quite eclectic.

Sonic Adventure is a 3D platformer with some action and smaller RPG elements. There is a hub world where you are placed at the start of the game and you will repeatedly have to revisit it to get certain items that unlock additional levels. I found this concept pretty solid and unique for the time, but how it was executed wasn’t the greatest. Way too often I wouldn’t know where I had to go next, so I had to use help outside help multiple times. Being too confusing is never a good thing for this genre and I constantly wished for a more mainstream experience.

But having an open world of sorts this early in the new 3D era was quite remarkable, though the NPCs don’t talk all that much. But the city is cool and I also really liked the village area. When you enter a real level (which are called Action Stages in this entry), you are tasked with different objectives depending on the character. There are six characters in total and every single one of them has a different gameplay mechanic to their stages and even a different genre altogether in some instances.

This led to a uniquely varied gaming experience and it’s by far the best idea that the developers had, though I wished that the later characters got more to do as every subsequent one got fewer and fewer levels, making for an uneven runtime and structure. This game in its entirety is all like that – immensely original and cool in ideas, but beyond messy in execution.

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But going back to the characters, Sonic’s stages were the most memorable of the bunch, which they should be, so I was fine with that. His stages are all pretty liner and are all about reaching the end of the level using speed. His moves are solid and attacking with Sonic was made to feel more intuitive here, which I really appreciated. I loved most of his levels and some of them featured incredible music, designs and kinetic energy. The only issue I’ve had with these levels is that sometimes I would fly off the platform while speeding through it just due to awkward camera movements. The camera in this game is truly horrendous at times, which is to be expected from this era. Also, being in the 3D world is difficult as you have to be very precise while jumping on platforms all of the time, but the poor camera made that quite tricky at times.

Tails’ levels are similar, but focusing more on the racing element as you have to reach the end before your pal Sonic. I liked this idea quite a bit and the shorter levels were a respite from what came before. Tails attacking with his tail and being able to fly was also a nice touch. Knuckles is another standout. You have to find all three hidden shards inside each level and how you do that is with the help of the hot-cold system that really worked. These levels are all about collecting and I loved that. Knuckles can also climb walls, which was super cool.

I would say that from this point onward the other characters were saddled with much lesser and shorter levels. Amy must solve puzzles and avoid being caught by a robot. I liked her levels quite a bit, but they were on the easy and short side of things. They should have focused more on puzzles. I liked her hammer attack a lot. Big is hated by fans as this big moronic cat. I didn’t dislike him, but I do agree that his fishing levels feel quite unnecessary in retrospect. Fishing can be quite frustrating in controls and timing, which thankfully only impeded him once while other times I could finish the levels faster. E-102 Gamma can shoot laser beams and his levels are basically action stages with shooter elements. The final level was ridiculously hard and it was a timed mission, which is always frustrating. But his other levels are easier and quite short.

There are some minigames included here and most were a lot of fun. Rail shooting worked, racing was also cool and the highlights were those fun and colorful pinball stages and the sandboarding level that was very entertaining. Training these Chao virtual pets is also an option, though I didn’t pursue that myself. Every single regular mechanic is repeated here from the 2D games with rings acting as health etc and the powers are all the same. As for the boss fights, those Chaos levels were ridiculously easy, but Robotnik was a terrific boss and a couple of other bosses were also very well designed and being just the right amount of challenging.

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This game controls solidly. I did have some issues figuring out what controls to use at times, but for the most part they were intuitive. The difficulty is also mostly reasonable, though I did strongly dislike dying way too many times due to technical issues, such as that terrible camera system or not knowing where exactly to go. This is a huge game for the time and it still is quite long, which definitely made it groundbreaking. It’s a shame that the structure wasn’t the greatest, but the fun factor is for the most part pretty big.