Sonic Adventure vs Sonic Adventure 2

[Leon]

SA2, 1's not terrible but i've never been able to get into it, 2 however i played from start to finish.

 

[Graw]

It's a hard choice. Probably SA2 but I liked the first one as well. I don't really remember SA1 as well as I remember SA2. I remember disliking the cat stages in SA1. I don't really remember any of the sonic stages. I remember most of the Sonic stages in SA2 and I can't really think of any I didn't like. I remember disliking both of them for limiting Super Sonic to the final boss instead of use him in any stage after collecting the emeralds and 50 rings like in the older games.

 

[Michael Frank]

I've said it before, and i will keep saying it, SA1 was the first game i played as a kid, being 6 years old and watching that intro with Open Your Heart will be forever engraved on my brain, having said that, SA2 is my older brother's favorite games, for one reason, it was the game were his favorite sonic characer appeared...Shadow the Hedgehog, i'm more of a Knuckles/Jet/ Sonic fan, but him, nah, my older bro is a Shadow fan since day 1, Shadow Generations made him hype up in a way i haven't seen in a long time.

 

[Lena CE]

I've said it before, and i will keep saying it, SA1 was the first game i played as a kid, being 6 years old and watching that intro with Open Your Heart will be forever engraved on my brain, having said that, SA2 is my older brother's favorite games, for one reason, it was the game were his favorite sonic characer appeared...Shadow the Hedgehog, i'm more of a Knuckles/Jet/ Sonic fan, but him, nah, my older bro is a Shadow fan since day 1, Shadow Generations made him hype up in a way i haven't seen in a long time.

I legit remember seeing the SA1 intro on my dad's Dreamcast when I was just 5 years old and thinking nothing would ever look cooler than that. Going from my first video game experience with Sonic 2 just a year ago to witnessing Dreamcast-quality FMVs was something else.

Huge side tangent, but now I'm wondering if that's part of the reason that I'm fairly indifferent to graphical fidelity. My first game experiences were on 16 bit consoles, the first system I owned at my mom's house was a PS1 and whenever I visited my dad I'd play on his Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox. I was experiencing 3 different generations at the same time during my formative years depending on who I was staying with on that particular day and it never bothered me (cause what kid that young would possibly be bothered, games are games lol). Its anecdotal but I have friends a few years older that experienced the generations in a more typical "1 by 1" way and even if they still enjoy retro they tend to point out visual quirks/issues in older games. I truly wonder if experiencing so much all at once helps stop your brain from really caring so much.

 

[Michael Frank]

I legit remember seeing the SA1 intro on my dad's Dreamcast when I was just 5 years old and thinking nothing would ever look cooler than that. Going from my first video game experience with Sonic 2 just a year ago to witnessing Dreamcast-quality FMVs was something else.

Huge side tangent, but now I'm wondering if that's part of the reason that I'm fairly indifferent to graphical fidelity. My first game experiences were on 16 bit consoles, the first system I owned at my mom's house was a PS1 and whenever I visited my dad I'd play on his Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox. I was experiencing 3 different generations at the same time during my formative years depending on who I was staying with on that particular day and it never bothered me (cause what kid that young would possibly be bothered, games are games lol). Its anecdotal but I have friends a few years older that experienced the generations in a more typical "1 by 1" way and even if they still enjoy retro they tend to point out visual quirks/issues in older games. I truly wonder if experiencing so much all at once helps stop your brain from really caring so much.

For me it's the artstyle more than graphics at this point, i can play something like Baroque, Soul Reaver or MediEvil on the PS1 and go on and on in those corridors without giving a care, and you want to know why? Because the style of those games shows before my eyes that graphics never mattered in the first time, it's artstyle, music and gameplay the things that really form the base of the experience.

 

[FrootyLoopsSamurai]

I didn't play through Sonic Adventure 1 until a couple of years ago since I never had a Dreamcast when it came out and never got the Gamecube version. I was not expecting to like it that much, but it grew on me as I kept playing it. I'm an SA1 convert now. I like it more than SA2 except for the chao raising.

I thought Sonic would be my favorite character to play in SA1, but the others are honestly better except Big. It doesn't help that Sonic's later stages get kind of bad. I also like the changes between each story like they're all being told through a kind of flawed perspective. It's like everyone is their own protagonist, and dialogue and the way things play out are tweaked to make the character you're playing as look better. Some stories just seem to flat out contradict each other when it comes to the details. I think it also helps that each character's story aside from Sonic's is fairly short. Even Big wasn't that painful because it's over so quick. Gamma's story was easily the best story I've ever seen in any Sonic game. Amy's was probably the most fun to play, and I wanted more Amy stages by the time I finished her story.

I tried playing through Sonic Adventure 2 again after playing through the first game. I didn't even make it all the way through. This was in spite of having some nostalgia for the game. I think what really kills it for me are the search stages. Not all of them are that bad, but Rouge's levels in particular all kind of suck. I guess the evil path was supposed to be harder, so they made her levels more difficult to traverse or gave you a time limit. Rouge's space level is just the worst. The robot stages are also just kind of there. The Sonic/Shadow stages are generally really good. I would prefer SA2 if it was mostly Sonic/Shadow, but the other parts of the game really drag it down. There are too many lows and not enough highs for me to enjoy it like I did as a kid.

 

[petran79]

Sonic Adventure DX with mods

 

[aquova]

Sonic Adventure 2 is still my favorite game of all time. SA1 is... fine, but there's something about the second game that I've always adored. A lot of people tend to criticize its emerald hunting sections, which I've never understood personally. I find the mech stages to be by far the least enjoyable ones -- I like the free roaming exploration of the treasure hunting stages. They're the most fun to play in 2P mode, and they're the easiest to get the top rank on.

 

[Langoblian]

SA2 definitely provides some friction in the back half of its campaign that I am almost never prepared for (meteor herd and mad space specifically), and it usually sucks all the fun out of the casual playthrough I'm attempting. I feel like if I memorized those stages a bit better I'd have a lot more of a fun start to finish experience with that one, I really do love it in spite of the hiccup those two stages give me though. But, at least for me, I played so much SA1 as a child that I know it front to back and usually have a lot more fun revisiting it, and beating it in one sitting at least once a year. Not to mention the fact that I just really really like the vibes of SA1 a whole lot, the mystic ruins feel like home to me.

 

[Miles Miles]

I think SA1 is better, but both are my favourite 3D platformers.

 

[sandogma sandogma]

Owned the first one and loved it (except for playing as BiG the Cat and E102). By the the time SA2 came out, I had already switched over to PS2. But I do remember thinking Shadow was a poor substitute for Metal Sonic at the time.