A flash-in-the pan experience marred with frustrating gameplay make Sonic Rivals 2 forgettable.
In Sonic Rivals 2, you have a story mode which consists of 8 possible playthroughs in 4 storylines. Somehow, they all wind up defeating a legendary beast known as the Ifrit and saving the world. What's most interesting, is that I have yet to play a Sonic game where the Chaos Emeralds, a big staple of the series, fail to show up in gameplay. Sure, in a story mode you're gathering them... but you never actually see them.
Gameplay is very straight-forward. The D-Pad controls movement, while the four shape buttons control jumps, boosts, item and signature move usage. It doesn't matter if you're racing or battling another rival, the controls go unchanged. It may be accessible to a large group of people, but it's uninteresting and cries for a change up of some sort.
Speaking of crying, let's weep for the soundtrack shall we? I had heard that recent Sonic games had a bland rock soundtrack... but only one level has such a track, while the others are just barely there: known but forgotten before the level is even over. Otherwise, the standard Sonic sound effects like rings being picked up and victory fan fares remain.
Graphically, for the kind of game it is, it's not terrible, but it's not great either. In fact, my biggest issue as far as graphics go comes from the story itself. A back drop with text and spoken dialogue with character cutouts does not make a cutscene. While I can be slightly forgiving if there wasn't enough space on the disk to allow for even in-engine cutscenes, these storyboards only alienate the player and fails to draw you into Sonic's world.
Apart from the story mode, there are a variety of play modes. Involving time attack, free play and 6 different battle modes for you alone or with another through Ad-Hoc multiplayer or Gamesharing. While the number is certainly nice, I found it increasingly difficult to find a reason to keep playing these modes as time went on.
Sonic Rivals 2 most of all seems like another missed opportunity in a line of Sonic racers (Sonic R comes to mind). This game would probably be best for a Sonic fan or as a safe game for a kid.