The Last of The Trilogy: Sonic Advance 3 (Game Boy Advance, 2004)
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
Anyhow, here’s my review on Sonic Advance 3.
Background and History
Like the previous Sonic Advance games, Sonic Advance 3’s development was split between Sonic Team themselves and Dimps. Although Yuji Naka didn’t have a lot of involvement with this game’s development, he did conceive the “team” idea for the gameplay. The game was announced by THQ in 2003, shown at E3 2004 and released the following June.
Like Advance 2, nothing too interesting here.
Personal Experiences
And also like Advance 2, my experiences with this game… aren’t too interesting either. Like the other Advance games it was one I had wanted to try but never really got around to it until later on. I believe I got the game at some point over summer last year, although I didn't really end up playing it until now as I was still progressing through other Sonic games I had to review.
Other than that, I really don’t have anything else to say.
Plot
Prior to this game’s events, Eggman builds another robotic assistant called G-merl, using parts and data from a previous robot named Emerl, who had been previously destroyed in... Sonic Battle.
...god damn it not playing that game is coming back to haunt me.
Anyway, while experimenting with the Chaos Emeralds to study Chaos Control, Eggman manages to split the world into seven dimensions, where the game’s levels are set. Amy, Knuckles and Cream are also split from Sonic and Amy and captured by Eggman, leading them to travel these dimensions, find their friends and stop Eggman.
It’s not the deepest plot or anything, but I will say this does feel like more of a step up from Advance 2’s plot, which alone was still somewhat of a step up from Advance’s plot. There’s definitely a bit more going on here, and does provide continuity with other Sonic games - namely Sonic Battle with the introduction of G-merl and Sonic Adventure 2 with Eggman studying Chaos Control. Presentation of the story feels a bit closer to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, albeit with text boxes, where characters run into others - largely when unlocking a new character.
There is also a final story that is unlocked by getting the Chaos Emeralds but I didn’t get around to it for the time being for… well, reasons I’ll talk about later.
Presentation
When it came to the presentation, I did say that while Advance 1’s graphics and music were pretty good on their own, Advance 2 was definitely more interesting in this department - where levels were visually more interesting and the soundtrack was all around more memorable.
As for Advance 3, while it didn’t necessarily push beyond what Advance 2 did well, still felt visually pleasing to look at. Like the previous games, Advance 3’s characters use the Adventure designs but are also sprite-based - nothing really new there. But the levels still really stand out - being full of color, having unique environments alongside setpieces that feel well integrated with the level themes - for example the Panda ride and “piggy bank” enemies in Toy Kingdom. There’s also some touches to the game’s visual style I like - the “aurora borealis” background in Twinkle Snow, the sunset in, well, Sunset Hill (giving said level more of it’s own identity outside of being another Green Hill clone), and the outdoor and indoor features of Chaos Angel. Cyber Track was another level that really stood out to me visual-wise, too - feeling like I was inside a computer or something along those lines.
The soundtrack is also pretty nice - I will admit there weren’t any tracks in particular that stood out to me but playing through the game I did feel like the themes generally went well along with the levels. Nothing much to add there.
Gameplay
Comparing this to the previous Advance games again - I feel Advance 1 more or less provided a spiritual successor to the classic games in terms of level design, having multiple pathways to traverse and levels that incentivized replay value. Advance 2 was more linear, more or less emulating the Sonic Adventure 2 speed stage philosophy with levels that incentivized maintaining speed and mastering the flow of the level, just in 2D.
I bring this up because I feel as far as level design is concerned, I get the impression that Sonic Advance 3 is sort of designed around combining these two philosophies in different ways. Levels are still designed with speed, yet also feel expansive - having various pathways you can go through, making levels feel more replayable. And I will say this - my favorite games in the series are ones that tend to combine speedy platforming while also having expansive level design that offers various pathways to traverse through, making the level feel new even on repeat playthroughs to some extent. This is the case I feel with games like Sonic Generations and Mania in particular - my two favorite games in the series.
And as far as Sonic Advance 3 goes, I’d say it does it pretty well, although isn’t perfect. I think one thing that’s worth touching upon is a somewhat new feature in the game - the “partner” mechanic. It has been something that has been tried off and on in previous Sonic games - Sonic 2 and 3 & Knuckles had Tails following behind you if you chose to play as Sonic + Tails, even making him controllable if you have a second controller and player, but there in those games it was pretty under-utilized. There was also Knuckles’ Chaotix. No.
But just before Advance 3 came out in particular, there was Sonic Heroes - a game that pretty much revolved around the concept of teamwork and gave you multiple characters to swap between. I’m not necessarily sure if Heroes’ approach to it is really comparable though - in that game you had four teams that mostly shared the same abilities and aside for the level design they played mostly the same.
In Advance 3’s case, you choose a playable character and a partner character. At first you only have Sonic and Tails to choose from, but as you play you can unlock Amy, Knuckles and Cream the Rabbit. And what makes Advance 3 most interesting to me from a replayability point of view is that your abilities change depending on which two characters you use. I don’t just mean this in a similar vein to the previous Advance games where each character had their own unique set of abilities and playstyles, but depending on who you choose as your primary/playable character in addition to your partner, your abilities won’t necessarily be the same even if you chose that same primary/playable character with a different partner.
Let’s take an example of this and say you pick Sonic as your playable character. When picking Tails, he plays similarly to how he did in Advance 1 while having the air trick abilities he had in Advance 2, albeit losing his insta-shield and jump dash abilities. But when you unlock Knuckles and choose him as your partner character instead, Sonic gains more aerial moves, his insta-shield is brought back and his somersault becomes stronger. This sort of thing is present with each character combination - using Amy as your partner with anyone gives your main character a hammer albeit doesn’t allow them to curl up into a ball when they jump. Playing as Tails with Cream as your partner gives Tails a more powerful flight ability, and so on and so forth.
In addition, you also get some partner-based moves - in particular, the “tag” action where you hold down R to allow your partner to come to you and from there allowing you to gain an enhanced ability depending on who you play as - for example, as Sonic where you’re given a temporary boost of speed.
And while I can’t really compare Sonic Advance 3’s partner/teamwork approach to Heroes, I will say that as far as 2D Sonic games in particular go with incorporating different playable characters and partner systems… Advance 3 definitely did it the best. You don’t necessarily need to know all the partner abilities to beat the game, but it does make the game more interesting and fun to go back to - giving the player the ability to experiment with different character combinations and seeing just how the levels play out with them. Combine this with gameplay that does allow the player multiple ways to traverse through… and you get a game with a pretty good amount of replay value.
Although I will say one thing that did kind of annoy me with the partner system is that… well, there are various platforms in this game that you need to stand on to move, but sometimes the AI will stand on one of those before you do and if you’re not quick enough you’re pretty much screwed over. This didn’t really happen to me very frequently, but when it did it was kind of annoying to fall to my death and start from the last checkpoint.
And while I do like Sonic Advance 3’s level design for the most part, there are still places where I do find it a bit… rough around the edges. I guess the first thing I could really talk about is that it does have some of that Sonic trial-and-error bullshit here and there. I don’t feel like it’s as much of an issue as in Advance 2, but there are still times where I found myself going at a good pace only to be hit by an enemy or hazard I had little time to react to. You would think the fact that the GBA’s screen being in a wider ratio would help this, but I guess Dimps still wanted to find a way to fuck over the player at some points where certain hazards - like boulders in one level drop from the very top of the screen while you’re on a moving platform.
Progression from level to level also isn’t linear - in fact, unlike the previous 2 Advance games where once one level ended you immediately went to the next, now you have to traverse a hub world. Now, I don’t necessarily mind hub levels in games, and if this was like Generations where the hub world is entirely linear and it’s easy to understand where to go next (unless you’re doing the missions, anyway), I wouldn’t have an issue with these being here, but Advance 3’s hub world are a bit more… complicated to go through. They’re definitely pretty big and require completing various platforming challenges or waiting for platforms to move in order to just go to the next level. And going through the hub worlds each time you get a Game Over or just start the game after taking a break over and over again can just feel really repetitive and tedious. Cyber Track’s hub world also has cannon things that take you one of two ways you can choose, but if you choose the wrong direction, you get sent back to the beginning. There were also times where I would accidentally go into level rings I didn’t want to, then have to wait for the title of the level to show and disappear then pause and go back to the hub worlds.
And not to mention, this is one case where the partner system actually becomes somewhat of a detriment to the game. I mentioned in my Sonic Heroes review that if it went about switching characters in a Donkey Kong 64 style where I had to backtrack to a certain point to do so, it would make the game a lot more annoying to play.
So guess what Sonic Advance 3 does?
If you want to change your selection of characters for a certain act, you literally have to backtrack to the beginning of the hub world, go in a giant ring, change your characters, and then walk back to that act. And boy… that was definitely annoying. I actually found it was more efficient to reset the system where I would be spawned at the start when I wanted to change my character selection, but even then I still had to go through the hub world again.
And this is especially considering that you have to use Sonic as your playable character to unlock each other character aside from Tails by completing the third act of each stage, and as someone who generally liked to use Tails or Amy in most of the levels, this did get annoying to me. I don’t really understand the need to use Sonic to unlock these characters as it is (guess they were too lazy to write dialogue for the other characters?), but having to go back to the start of the hub world to do so makes it all the more annoying. Frankly I didn’t even notice I was supposed to do that until I read the Sonic wikia page on the game wondering why I wasn’t unlocking Knuckles despite playing the third act of the second zone (which that ALONE I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t take a look at the wikia page).
And I gotta say too that I definitely feel like some levels in this game are better than others. I think overall most of the levels are well designed as I said, but oddly enough, the worst stage in the game is… honestly the first one. This was a talking point in The Geek Critique’s video in the game, and while I don’t necessarily hate it by any means, it’s a pretty uninteresting level that doesn’t really do a good job at providing a first impression of the game - which, to most people, is really going to make or break the game. This is definitely an example of a game that gets better the more you play, and Route 99 honestly has some pretty obnoxious level design and somehow manages to feel the worst with trial-and-error gameplay as far as this game’s level design goes. I also wasn’t too fond of Act 3 of Chaos Angel where you spend most of it standing on a floating platform while occasionally dodging hazards and Ocean Base I definitely found a bit forgettable compared to most of the other levels as far as it’s design and presentation goes.
Also there’s the special stages which I… honestly didn’t bother with. Like the previous 2 Advance games entering them is a pain in the ass - slightly less so than Advance 2 but still pretty annoying. You have to collect all 10 Chao in each stage, requiring some heavy exploration, but even once you do that, you then have to look for a Chao key which is in a random spot in a random act. And once you obtain it, you have one shot at beating the special stage with no chance to retry it unless you hunt down another key. I can’t really speak for the actual special stages themselves, but frankly… I’ve already been pretty slow with this retrospective series and I didn’t really bother trying to go for the “true” ending of the game. Maybe I will some day. Maybe.
Conclusion
Sonic Advance 3 is not without it’s share of flaws - it’s first level is pretty weak and the hub world can really be a pace breaker. But out of the Advance games, and honestly out of Sonic’s handheld titles so far… I would probably say this one’s my favorite. I really enjoy the overall approach towards replayability this game has with the character combos and mostly solid level design, and it’s a game I could really see myself going back to later on. It’s a pretty unique Sonic title with a lot of interesting ideas - not all of them work very well, but the ones that do make this game a pretty good time overall.
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