Sonic Adventure DX vs Sonic Adventure 2

[♡ Katalina Aryze ♡]

Which is the better game and why?

[Raden <3 Rezqx]

Ill give you the gameplay from every character so you can see it.

At first Sonic Adventure 2 isnt a good PC port, it crashes so many times and some users (like me) cant really play it.

Sonic in SADX: He is really fast and good to control, the Stages are really cool designed and makes lots of fun. Many says that the Ringdash is a piece of ♥♥♥♥ in this game, because you have to load it up. But with an Item (Just google it) it loads fast. There are 11 Stages with Sonic and 6 Boss fights

Sonic in SA 2: The Levels are like an parcour, not bad but sometimes Sonic or Shadow feels a little bit to slow. The Homing Attack is a little bit too short in my opinion. But at the stage Crazy Gadget there are problems with the Homing Attack (He do it at the gound, mybe you will die because this).

[Raden <3 Rezqx]

Next Tails

Tails in SADX: You races against Sonic, and you have the same bosses like him. Its cool and makes fun. Of couse you can fly and so there are some shorter ways to finsih the stages.

Tails in SA 2: You are sitting in a robot and have the same gameplay ass Eggman (or E-107 Gamma, is the anme right?) The stages are really terrible, I hate them. The from Eggman are better.

[Raden <3 Rezqx]

Now Knuckles

Knuckles in SADX: You have to find the parts of the master emeralds. You dont have to find em in the right line. So you could collect the second. then the first and then the third. When you are close too one emerald, the game gives you man signal ,(sry cant really explain it). It makes fun.

Knuckles/Rouge in SA 2: Like SADX, but the radar wont give you the signal of the second or third emerald part if you didnt collect the first one.

[Raden <3 Rezqx]

Now the other chars in Sonic Adventure DX

Amy: You have to run away from a robot, she is tooooooooooo slow.

Big the Cat: ..... What you dont know him, but how...no just google the greatest character in Sonic Adventure DX, everyone loves him.

E-107 Gamma: Like Tails and Eggman in SA 2

After you beat every story you get the final stories.

In my opinion Sonic Adventure DX is better, because Sonic is faster there and the stages are better than in Sonic Adventure 2. I like it more to run in Sonic games. But Sonic Adventure 2 is good too. But the PC port, oh god. Dont buy it on steam play it on a emulator or something like that. And in Sonic Adventure 2 Tails and Knuckles/Rouge arent really fun to play.

[iceH]

E-102 gamma*

[iceH]

btw SA/SADX is really better.

[Kart]

Get both if you can.

[♡ Katalina Aryze ♡]

Thanks guys! Bought the Sonic Franchise pack while it was in sale :)

[KaZudra]

SADX: Though very quirky, it has seemed to age well, especially with a "Better" patch out, just know what your doing when emblem hunting with the sub games.
vs. Dreamcast; vastly superior, many bug fixes
vs. Gamecube; Identical but I suggest the Better SADX patch for widescreen and better controls and overall a better experience

SA2B: Baffling how this is a bad port, on top of that they removed the original Chao Lobby music in play of SA1's original race menu theme. Aged rather bad, Treasure hunting went from fun to a tendious chore, if you spend more than 7 minutes on a stage in a Sonic game, it's just bad level design.
vs. Dreamcast; Audio mixing is horrible and that "new" SA1DC chao lobby is an ear sore.
vs. Gamecube; Still worst Audio mixing, a notable feat is that the emulated version has better HD textures.

[Dr. Steve Brule]

Arent they the same game, I had sonic adventure dx or whatever it was on my Dreamcast and loved the ♥♥♥♥ out of it, I used to beat it as a kid all the time, best place was when youd board the train and arrive at that jungle island :P

[jimbox114]

The thing I disliked about Sonic Adventure 2 was the adventure mode part. IT just felt like a bunch of random stages thrown together. At least in the original you traveled from place to place.

[dub1434]

neither sonic adventure dx has bad graphics but sonic adevnture 2 doesnt have a good storeyline

[Syogren]

--SONIC--

Hm...well, from my experience playing both recently, 1 definitely feels a lot more unstable and prone to glitching than 2 does, which doesn't make me that comfortable playing it. Not a fan of 1's homing attack or spindash, they're a little bit too finicky for my taste. And while the levels in 1 are overall far more open, it's also easier for me to crawl to a hault getting though places like that stone snake water level where you have to find all the switches. And this happens every time I play the level, even though I've been doing it for years.

Overall, there really isn't a Sonic Adventure Sonic stage I can legitimitely say I enjoy now.

I prefer 2's interpretation of Sonic levels, with the trick bonus system, opportunities to rack up points if you know what you're doing, a more stable and reliable homing attack, a spindash that's less uncontrollable, more abilities, more readable level design...

That's not to say that 2 is perfect. It suffers horribly from "everything is on the same darn button" syndrome, leading to situations where you try to be cool and light dash, only for the game to think you want to somersault instead and so you somersault and come off as lame. Which is weird, because you also have two action buttons that do the exact same thing, so you'd think that this problem shouldn't even be a thing.

Also there's that one part in Pyramid Cave where you have to go to the right to grab a key and dodge a bunch of stuff that's stupid and shouldn't exist.

But overall, I enjoy the Sonic stages in Sonic Adventure 2 magnitudes more than the ones in Sonic Adventure 1.


--TAILS AND GAMMA--
Giving a straight comparison of Tails between Sonic Adventure 1 and Sonic Adventure 2 is diffficult because the Tails in Sonic Adventure 2 was clearly designed after Gamma in Sonic Adventure 1 and not Tails. I'll do my best regardless.

Tails' goal in his Sonic Adventure 1 stages is to beat Sonic in races. As such, his gameplay is rather similar to Sonic's in Sonic Adventure 1 but with a time limit attatched. Luckily, the homing attack and spindash are replaced by flight and a tail slap attack, so I overall find Tails a lot easier to control. Tails' stages also take place in the more linear sections of Sonic's stages, so I no longer have to look around and try to figure out where I'm going, which is helpful in a game about rolling around at the speed of sound.

That said, Tails' flight is not so much finicky as much as it is overpowered to the point of it being detrimental to survival in many cases. In Windy Valley, Tails can soar so high up that the ground stops rendering, making it difficult to know where you're supposed to land. Better hope and pray that it's not a bottomless pit, because there's no way of knowing unless you memorize the level design. I don't want to go out of my way to memorize the level design. If I end up memorizing the level design, it should be because I played the level because I like it so many times that memorization is inevitable, not because I need to know the map so I don't fall to my death.

Overall though, Tails in Sonic Adventure 1 can be pretty fun in his main levels. The board one in Ice Cap is a little boring though. Wish he had more than five stages.

So, Tails in Sonic Adventure 2 is in a mech, and his goal is to cause as many explosions as possible to rack up those death counters.

Wait what.

Okay, so that's why I can't compare Tails between the two. But I can compare Tails in Sonic Adventure 2 with Gamma in Sonic Adventure 1, since Gamma's mission structure was similar.

Gamma overall looks and feels lighter than Tails' mech, making movement much less of a chore in the first game. However, the combos feel more natural and satisfying in the second game. However, the first game doesn't have you plummet to the ground when you hover into the wall. However, the second game has hovering feel a little bit more free-moving. However, the first game didn't have you deal with a health system that is at odds with every Sonic health system you've ever had. However, the second game didn't have a pointless timer that would kill you that you have to worry about. Unless you did a time mission, but in that case you're willingly drinking that poison.

Overall, I can't really choose a clear winner here. You'll have to play them both yourself and come to your own conclusion.

--KNUCKLES--

Honestly, I SHOULD prefer him in the first game to the second. Knuckles gets a nonsensical nerf to his radar in the second game. Now he can't sense emeralds from as far away, which makes no sense either thematically or from a gameplay standpoint. In addition, he can only collect them in a specific order now, which is completely stupid. And the levels may be a little too big for this kind of gameplay.

So why do I prefer Knuckles in the second game?

Part of it comes back to the first game's unstable engine that feels like it'll crash and burn at any second. Knuckles' gliding animation looks a little awkward and jerky, I've found that the button inputs don't feel as responsive, and the control for digging requires you to press the jump and action buttons at the same time. Because you know, that makes more sense.

In Sonic Adventure 2, I have none of those complaints. For the digging, now you jump and then press the action button. This causes Knuckles to divebomb down, and assuming that he'd burrow into diggable ground from there isn't too much of a stretch. Knuckles overall just feels more powerful in Sonic Adventure 2, and I feel a lot more comfortable moving around with this version of him over the prequel.

And at the end of the day, that's what matters to me. So I prefer Knuckles in Sonic Adventure 2.

-- AMY AND BIG --

Amy and Big outright don't exist in Sonic Adventure 2 as far as single-player gameplay is concerned, which I believe is a net positive, but I suppose they're worth talking about.

Amy's gameplay structure is overall very much stealth-based. Your goal is to get away from a robot that repeatedly persues you. I think this could be cool...in a series produced by a company that's not all about crazy hyper action and stuff. But here, it just feels a little odd. Vision aside, it's also kinda frustrating to play. Amy's abilities make sense given her character, but I don't enjoy actually playing as her as they're a little hard to use. In addition, dodging her persuer isn't hard so much as it is a chore that I'd rather not be doing. If you give me a character to play as, I should be moving forward because I want to, not because I have to. Especially because there's so much stuff lying around in Sonic Adventure, moreso than in Sonic Adventure 2. If I want to collect it all, shouldn't I be able to do that at my own pace, without being punished for it?

So while I can see her working, I'd rather they try something a little closer to Sonic and his buddies. And in the 2-player Mode for 2:Battle, you can see this. Amy controls like a slower Sonic there, and she's actually kinda fun to use as a result. Her not going quite as fast as Sonic makes sense thematically, as that would be a bit too large of a jump from her Sonic Adventure 1 incarnation. That happens in the next game, Sonic Heroes. And you know, despite Sonic Heroes' issues, she's pretty fun there. I especially like her little hammer spin thing she can do when you hold the A button. Cool stuff.

But all that does is make me like using her in this game even less. Oh well. At least I know she's going up from here. At least until Sonic 06, but that's not saying much.

So Big. Yeah, fishing in a Sonic game is just outright dumb. Fishing games aren't inherently dumb. But if you're gonna put it in a Sonic game, you're going to need much better justification for it than is given here. Like I don't dislike Big as a character, just his gameplay in Sonic Adventure. Like Amy, he becomes a lot more fun come Sonic Heroes. The role of a power character really suits the guy. And while I know hindsight is 20/20, I genuinely feel like Sonic Adventure would get far less complaints if Big played like he did in Sonic Heroes in that game too. Oh well, at least you only play the guy in four levels.

-- STORY AND PRESENTATION--
I like pretty much every aspect of the story in both Sonic Adventure games, and trying to find the one I think is better is, as far as I'm concerned, splitting hairs. There are a couple things that could be ironed out as far as presentation, voice acting, cutscenework, script, and conveyance go, but overall I find myself more satisfied with these plots than I do most of the other Sonic plots.

In the sense of all these aspects though, I feel like Sonic Adventure 2 is a little bit more polished. In terms of animation, Sonic Adventure suffers from "I only have ten stock animations" syndrome, while Sonic Adventure 2 suffers from "My rig isn't all that good so I move stiffly and awkwardly" syndrome, but I consider that the lesser of the two evils.

As far as voice acting goes, neither are particularly amazing, but the second game wins by a sliiiiiight margin.

As far as the actual script and directing go, It's a lot easier to tell what's happening in Sonic Adventure 2 than it is in Sonic Adventure 1.

Voice and sound mixing is one aspect of both games in which the first game clearly wins, however. Not saying it's great there, but the second game is much much worse on this front. Sonic Adventure 2 has characters constantly interrupting each other and even themselves, and that's assuming you can even hear them above the background music. And it's gotten a little worse with every port.

Overall, however, I still believe that Sonic Adventure 2 wins on this front.


-- CONCLUSION --

I'm gonna have to say that SA2 is the better constructed game.

[Saelune]

SA2. Looks better, plays better, sounds better. No fishing. I do like 1's overworld versus 2's level select, but whatever. Plus far less redundancy. Really the only bits are playing both sides of a boss fight, but fighting Knuckles twice as Sonic and Tails, then fighting Sonic as Knuckles, followed by 3 fights against fish Chaos is just aweful and tedious.