A great 3D Sonic experience from beginning to end.
Once again, Dr. "Eggman" Robotnik is up to no good. This time he is in search of a top secret project created by his grandfather. It is said to be the "ultimate life-form". The ultimate life-form appears in the form of a black hedgehog named Shadow. He thanks the doctor for releasing him and agrees to carry out his plans. Shadow goes out in search of the chaos emeralds and initially everyone confuses him for the famed hero Sonic (Seriously? How can you confuse the two?). Sonic is in fact framed by the military because of Shadow. Sonic now has to set out and clear his name and stop Robotnik and Shadow. There are a few noticeable plot holes to be found in here, but you're not going into this game for the story.
If you played the original Sonic Adventure, you should be familiar with how Sonic and Shadow's levels are. You just need to run really fast to get to the goal ring. Sonic is now faster than his original counterpart as well as newcomer Shadow. These definitely the most satisfying levels in the game. Tails and Robotnik are going through stages in mechs. Going back to SA1, the levels are similar to E-102 Gamma's levels, in which you need to get to the goal ring and shooting a ton of stuff along the way. But unlike Gamma's stages, you don't need to worry about a time limit. Knuckles and Rouge's levels are exactly the same as Knuckles' levels in SA1. You need to collect three pieces of the shattered Master Emerald scattered throughout each level. The biggest issue to be had with these treasure hunting levels is that most of them are overly large and you can spend more time than necessary looking for the emerald pieces. Not only that, but the radar has been changed from the first Sonic Adventure to where you can only find the emerald pieces in order. Unlike the first game there are no hub worlds to go through to progress the story, so the action continues along with only the occasional cutscene. The controls for each character work very well for the most part. The camera, however, can be frustrating in certain areas, but it shouldn't affect your gameplay too much.
Graphically, it improves upon the first game. Despite its age it's still a solid looking game for the Dreamcast. The environments are much more detailed this time around and the character models have greater polygon counts so they're smoother. The game also contains top notch level design and they are varied in their location. The music in the game is also great. Though not a fan of the theme songs (aside from the main theme) the songs found in the stages are top notch and are certainly more rock-heavy this time around. Despite some improvement from the first game the voice acting still isn't that good and the lip sync still looks awkward, but thankfully the character models sport better animations than in Sonic Adventure.
PROS:
-Graphical improvements from the first game
-Nice sound effects
-Great music
-Decent story
-Smooth controls
-More fast-paced this time around
-No exploration in here so you will continue to stay in the action
-No Amy or Big to play as.
CONS:
-Acting and lip sync is still pretty bad
-Overly large treasure hunting stages
-Camera still presents as a problem
Sonic Adventure 2 a solid sequel that shows some notable improvements from the first game and is one of the many reasons to still keep your Dreamcast.