Gotta Go Fast... A Bit Too Fast: Sonic Advance 2 (Game Boy Advance, 2002)

 NOTE: This review is part of a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective

Yes, I am still doing this.

Background and History
Like the first Sonic Advance game, Sonic Advance 2 was developed by Dimps over a period of eight months. With this game came updates to the Sonic Advance engine that, along with the game’s level design, allowed for a greater emphasis on speed and a faster pace for the game in general. Cream was also added to the game - originally planned to be introduced for Heroes but was added to make the game easier for newer players.

And that’s about it, I… really don’t have much to say regarding the game’s background and history.

Personal Experiences
Like the first Advance, I don’t have too many personal experiences with this game to share. Along with the other Advance games, this was just one I wanted to play but never really got around to it until earlier this year - when I found a copy of the game on eBay and ordered it for myself.

That said, I do remember this game for one weird thing. And, well,
Does anyone remember Ultimate Flash Sonic?
If you don’t - Ultimate Flash Sonic was a flash game created for Newgrounds in 2004. I remember playing it as a little kid - I don’t really think I ever managed to beat the game or anything… or even just get past level 1, but it was kind of what introduced me to the Sonic franchise. Keep in mind, while my brother did have a GameCube and original Xbox at one point I don’t remember him having any of the Sonic games Sonic Adventure 1 or 2, Heroes or any of the compilations that existed. He did eventually get Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 on the Xbox 360, and in addition I eventually got Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis on the Game Boy Advance but that wasn’t until a couple years later.

And the reason why I bring up is that, from what I remember, Sonic Advance 2 was a big influence for that game - it at least used the same style, in fact one of the level themes were brought over from Sonic Advance 2, and in the disclaimer screen the creator even put a line of text telling people to buy Sonic Advance 2, and declares it “the best game ever made.”

In more recent times though, I do remember watching The Geek Critique’s video on the game, and I was surprised that this game actually received some mixed reception from the fandom when it initially came out. From the forums and sites I went on it seemed like this game had a good reception. I wouldn’t say there was really many people calling it one of the best Sonic games ever, but like the other Advance games, I was under the impression that this was considered at least a solid game.

Going into this game, I didn’t really know what to expect with it. I won a bid on it on eBay during the summer and played it for the first time, and my thoughts on it, well… that’s what the rest of the review is for.

Plot
As per usual, Eggman gets up to kidnapping animals and putting them into robots to build his empire. But this time, he also kidnaps Tails, Knuckles and a new character named Cream. After hearing about his friends being kidnapped, Sonic of course goes off to save them and in the process saves and meets Cream the Rabbit, who is looking for her missing mother.

Again, it’s not a really deep plot - definitely has more substance than the first Sonic Advance game and I like that, but it’s definitely not a deep plot or anything. There is an extra level and secret ending you can access using the Chaos Emeralds but for the most part I really don’t have much to say about it, and considering I don’t really put that much stock into Sonic story lines regardless, let’s move on.

Presentation
Sonic Advance 1, being on a more powerful system, was definitely a step up from Sonic’s previous handheld titles. But in terms of both music and visuals, I think Sonic Advance 2 manages to be even better than its predecessor.  The art style on it’s own is pretty similar, but the character animations here are improved and characters definitely feel more expressive here. Environments generally look better and more unique than in the first Advance game - whereas the first more or less tried to emulate the look of the classic games with it’s environment I feel this game at least has more of it’s own style.

And the soundtrack? While the first game’s was fine, I would definitely say the soundtrack here was overall more memorable to me - Music Plant in particular being my favorite theme of the game, but I definitely got the impression that this game’s level music stood out to me more than Advance 1’s.

So the presentation overall is really good, but the gameplay of course is where my opinions get a bit more… interesting.

Gameplay
So let’s go back to Advance 1 for a second. When talking about Advance 1’s gameplay, and in particular, level design, I talked about how Advance 1 was sort of a modern take on the classic game design - levels with open, branching pathways that incentivize replayability to get the most out of each level. This core design philosophy was present in the classic games and was what Advance was ultimately going for - and I think it did it pretty well.

But on the more powerful home consoles around this time, the series had entered the third dimension with Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, originally for the Dreamcast but ported over to the GameCube around this time. Adventure 1 did try to translate the classic gameplay into 3D - having the same sort of design philosophy with open levels that allowed for replayability. And Sonic Adventure was of course a solid game - but there were definitely a few things holding it back. With the game’s sequel, Sonic Adventure 2, they streamlined the game by cutting down on gameplay elements that just did not work well, and in the process, the game sort of brought a new design philosophy for the Sonic series - being more based around speed and putting the challenge more on the mastering of skills and flow of each level.

I say this because, while Advance 1 was closer to the design philosophy of the classic games, Sonic Advance 2 is pretty much the first 2D game to adopt the sort of thing Sonic Adventure 2 was going for. And this is where some of that early contention within the fanbase spawned from - Sonic Advance 2 practically redefined the 2D formula and fit more in line with Adventure 2’s approach to game design.

Now, in my posts, I’ve made it pretty clear that I generally hold a preference towards the design philosophy of the classic games - in general I feel having levels that are more open and allow for branching pathways are just more replayable. I’m not entirely against Sonic Adventure 2’s game design philosophy, I can definitely find it fun, but to me, the classic design philosophy was kind of what really brought me to this series and is part of the reason why I find the series as a whole to be so replayable, and in the case of faster but more linear games I don’t really feel as incentivized to replay the levels as I do in the classic games outside of the rank system that many Sonic games with that design philosophy throw in. In general I’d probably say games that balance a faster-pace with having more open levels with alternate paths and whatnot are the most appealing to me - Generations and Mania are my two favorite Sonic games as both of them I feel do this pretty well.

But anyway, onto Sonic Advance 2. As stated, this game goes for more of Adventure 2’s design philosophy, just translating into 2D. And I don’t think on it’s own this is a bad thing - sure I definitely prefer what Sonic Advance was going for, but I can at least give Advance 2 credit for trying something new with the 2D games. But it really asks the question of how well did they translate that gameplay to a 2D game?

Well, I think one issue is that Sonic Advance 2 highlights a problem with translating SA2’s speed stage design approach into 2D. With Sonic Adventure 2, the game is in 3D - you can generally see what is coming in front of you and have more of a chance to act accordingly. Sure, the game did throw some cheap hits out here and there (especially in the mech stages at least) but for the most part as you can forward you could generally see enemies and obstacles coming towards you - you weren’t limited to what side scrolling camera showed you.

But I feel Sonic Advance 2 is where that issue comes to play. With the more fast-paced focus, they still had to compensate for some level of difficulty. And I think one of the biggest issues I have with Sonic Advance 2 is that it feels full of trial-and-error level design. That isn’t to say Sonic Advance 1 had some annoying level design, especially in the case of Egg Rocket Zone, but with Sonic Advance, it sort of feels like every level has some level of annoyance just to throw the player off.

I think an example of this is that there were often times I found myself going up to a spring or whatever and being chucked into spikes or an enemy with pretty much no chance to react to it. And even when I could memorize where those enemies were, I would still find myself running into them because frankly I couldn’t figure out a way to avoid it. From what I can tell you don’t have as much control when being launched from a spring or going through the air, and sometimes when I was being launched into an obstacle I didn’t really have any opportunity to react. And it made the game all the more frustrating at points.

I think the limitation of the view also comes into play here. In Dimps fashion, this game is full of bottomless pits, and there were times where I would try to go somewhere, thinking that was along the path of the level, only to wind up falling into a bottomless pit and dying. Sometimes I felt too I was making blind jumps and leaps of faith in places to see if there was a path below or not.  I remember one point in Sky Canyon too where there was a part where you had to travel up a bunch of floating springs, but if you messed up and missed the spring, you just ended up falling into a bottomless pit with pretty much no chance to recover.

It reminded me of a common criticism I’ve heard towards the Sonic series - that the games in the series emphasize going fast, but then punish you for doing so. And well, I kind of got the impression that Sonic Advance 2 is what those people think every Sonic game is. I definitely got the feeling of that trial-and-error annoyance factor when playing this game.

And I think another aspect worth mentioning is that, while the levels are technically bigger than Sonic Advance 1’s, I actually found them to be more… shallow. I’ve talked about how much I like Sonic’s approach to game design and how much I enjoy having alternate pathways to make replays feel more interesting, but this game doesn’t really have that. And in general I can’t say I really feel as incentivized to replay these levels - most incentive there is is for the special stage tokens but… well, I’ll get to that in a bit. Doesn’t help either that the levels are mostly on a downward slope, and ultimately they don’t really feel as interestingly when compared to other Sonic games, including it’s predecessor.

Playable characters also make an appearance like in the first game but… again, with how the levels in this game are designed I don’t really feel any incentive to play as them. I feel like what made having multiple playable characters work in games like 3 & Knuckles, Advance 1 and Mania was that the level design provided incentive to utilize their abilities - there were always different paths that could be taken by using a character like Tails or Knuckles that just couldn’t be accessed as Sonic with the lack of abilities he has compared to them. Tails and Knuckles have their abilities, but after playing through the game as Tails, the most I can say I used his flight for was getting me out of trouble a few times. Either way, it actually feels their abilities just manage to slow down the game and get in the way of the faster-paced feeling of this game.

Although if there was any character that provided incentive to replay as, I would definitely say it was Cream - the new character introduced in this game, who can throw her Chao and cause damage to enemies and bosses over a distance. She also has the ability to fly, and ultimately she is the game’s easy mode. But with how the level design is she was definitely the most unique. Amy Rose is also playable, but you have to play through the game as all the characters to unlock her this time - which admittedly I didn’t do (just played through as Sonic and Tails while trying Cream and Knuckles for the first couple levels). I do kind of wish she was unlocked from the start as she was my favorite character to play as in Advance 1 although it does seem like they tweaked her playability here to fit in with the new design approach.

And also worth mentioning is that, unlike the first Advance game where everything’s unlocked from the start, all the characters have to be unlocked by playing through the story. Although to be honest I didn’t find that to be anything to be upset over - obviously Sonic Adventure 1 did the same sort of thing - but if you liked having the option of multiple characters from the get go… well, you’ll probably be disappointed.

Oh yeah, and the special stages.
I… didn’t play any of them so I can’t really say anything for how they play.
To be honest the main reason why I didn’t play any of the special stages is because… well, accessing them is kind of a pain in the ass. The first game was also bad about this - requiring the player to find a special spring within one act of every stage - but this game somehow manages to be even worse. I will give it the benefit that you can at least access the special stages from every stage this time, but with this game, you still have to look for 7 special stage tokens in one act to access the special stages. And that doesn’t mean if you collect a few in one act you can continue to collect them in the next - you have to find all of them in a single act - if you don’t you just lose them and have to try again. And frankly this is kind of a pain in the ass - you pretty much have to memorize the map and chart your course, and if you screw up, you’re pretty much left with no other choice but to start again. It pretty much contradicts the whole point of this game design approach in my opinion - with how these levels are designed you’re incentivized to go as fast as possible, but at the same time, if you’re going to go for the good ending and true final boss, you have to go out of your way to explore the levels and take your time. It just adds another layer of tedium to the game for me.

So, it’s pretty clear this game wasn’t exactly my favorite. I definitely have my share of criticisms towards it and overall I’d say I definitely preferred the first Advance game.

But…. I would also be lying if I said I didn’t have any fun with this game at all. Sure, there were frustrating moments, a lot of them, and they definitely drug down the game as a whole for me. But at the same time, I could still have fun here and there. Some stages were actually pretty fun to play through - my favorite definitely being Music Plant. And in cases where the level design didn’t feel frustrating, it still felt pretty satisfying to beat a stage here. That feeling of speed the game gives you still felt good and with the more fast-paced gameplay and level design compared to the previous game I guess that was one thing the game was aspiring to do.

I could also talk about the bosses - I didn’t really care for them. Pretty much all of them except for the final boss pretty much use a similar formula of running infinitely and waiting for a chance to hit them, and there was one boss I really disliked - the Sky Canyon one with the hand that feels inconsistent - I swear that when it hits you it sometimes just makes you drop your rings and other times was a straight-up one hit kill. Granted bosses have never really been this series’ strongest suit but these ones definitely felt repetitive to me.

Conclusion
Well, I don’t really have much else to say about this game. To be honest I didn’t think it was the most pleasant experience all the way through - even when considering what it was going for I still don’t really feel like it did what it was trying to do very well. The level design feels pretty shallow to me - full of trial-and-error annoyances and lacking much substance altogether. Overall I definitely preferred the first Advance game.

But at the same time, I also didn’t think of it as a bad game entirely. For what it is, there were still moments of fun here and there - some levels were actually pretty fun to play for what they were. And overall, when ranking this among other Sonic games, I’d probably put it at a C-tier. Meaning that overall it was a game I could enjoy… but had serious and major problems. The game was overall just more of a mixed bag to me… but I mean, not terrible at the same time.