It has a few drawbacks, but it's overall one of the Blue Blur's better 3D outings.
Story - 8.5
What's this? A Sonic game with a good plot? Blasphemy! Teh world iz gonna end!!1 But seriously, the plot is actually pretty good. The story in a nutshell: Eggman discovers Shadow and has him do evil crimes for him, and people think it's Sonic who's behind everything so the Military captures Sonic, and he breaks free and discovers Eggman has a sinister plot to destory the world, so now Sonic and friends must save the world. You can also conquer the world if you play the dark story.
Graphics - 7.5
The graphics may have looked good on the Dreamcast when the game first came out, but the graphics simply don't look as good now. They don't look terrible by any means, but they do show their age in some ways. They still look nice overall though.
Sound - 8.5
This game actually has a pretty good soundtrack. Although some songs will annoy you, there are plenty of good songs to find here. The songs match the themes of the level for better or for worse, and the soundtrack is generally nice to listen to due to its catchy tunes.
Gameplay - 8.5
The gameplay is a bit of a mixed bag. Sonic's stages and Shadow's stages have that fast-paced goodness we play Sonic games for. Tails's stages and Eggman's stages focus mainly on shooting enemies while jumping from platform to platform, and they're not bad, but the problem is they feel a bit clunky. Knuckles's and Rouge's stages focus on collecting emerald shards, and collecting can be fun , but sometimes the emerald shards can get very difficult to find in the large stages, which make the levels drag on for a lot longer than they should. This can make the collecting stages very tedious and boring at times.
Luckily, the game is challenging (unlike Sonic Adventure), and it can actually get pretty tough at times. The camera generally doesn't present too much of a problem, but it can be a bit funky at times in the collecting stages, but it isn't too bad overall like most people exaggerate it to be.
There's a ton of replayability offered in this game. You can go back and re-play each level after you beat it in the story mode and do special missions that present different types of challenges in each level. The missions can actually be pretty fun, too.
One of the biggest things I have against this game is its length. It's relatively short, and you can beat it in a day or two. The replayability helps mask this problem a little bit, but it still would've been nice to have longer story modes.
Summary:
The Good:
-Sonic and Shadow's stages have a nice sense of speed
-The story isn't bad
-Great sountrack
-Lots of replayability
-Fairly challenging
The Bad:
-Shooting levels are clunky
-Collecting levels can be very tedious
-Story modes are too short
-Rouge's boobs
Overall: If you're a Sonic fan and you never had the chance to play Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast, then I would highly recommend getting this.
The verdict:
8.5/10