(Actual score 6.75) There are certainly better Sonic games out there, but Advance 3 is in no way shape or form bad.
I actually don't know the story and I can't be bothered to go read the manual right now, but it has amounted to Sonic going after Eggman trying to get the Chaos Emeralds, no surprises.
So the gameplay is quite unique in the sense that you pick a character and then you get to pick a partner character. You start off with just Sonic and Tails, but you can unlock Knuckles, Cream and Amy. Your player character will actually have slightly different abilities depending on which parter character you pick. For example when you are playing as Tails; if you push A twice whilst Sonic is your partner Tails will fly, but if Kunckles is the partner Tails will glide whilst wearing boxing gloves. Also you have tag actions which can be exucuted by holding one if the shoulder buttons. Tag actions include, but are not limited to leap frogging up to high places and super speed boosts.
There are seven worlds in total, each with a small hub area, three acts and a boss. The level route design isn't really where Advance 3 shines. It has some okay levels which feature fast paced sprints to the end of the stage with a fair few platform sections. The levels are mostly fun, I just think SOME are quite weakly designed. The levels can be quite hard in the sense that you are lead into traps frequently. But despite my negative comments, there are some levels which really do shine and are a great blast to play.
Hidden in levels are Chao. If you manage to collect all 10 Chao from all the acts and hub area of the world, you will be given an oppertunity to collect a key. Once you have a key, you can find the secret springs in the hub world and enter the special stage to attempt to get a chaos emerald. The special stages are surprisingly fun. You are standing on the back of the Tornado Plane as your partner flies it, you have to manouver and grab as many rings as you can. If you collect the specified amount, you will be awarded a Chaos Emerald. I haven't managed to get all of them, as some of the Chao are really hard to find.
The graphics are nice and the music really great too; even featuring a whopping four remixes of the always classic Green Hill Zone. This probably has the best soundtrack of the Advanced series.
The controls really aren't great though I must say. I find them too slippery and characters accelerate too quickly, which makes precise platforming harder as you can unintentionally slip of platforms.
Just as a heads up, fake GBA games are rife. Tell tale signs of a fake cart are poorly printed (or absent) logos, wonky sticker, a generic code of agb e01 41 stamped on the circuit board (or no code at all), no number imprints on the sticker, a disordered arrangement of pinholes on silver contacts (vs a neat straight line of pinholes just above gold contacts on real games) and notorious save malfunctions such as inablity to overwrite data so you can't restart your game, random data deletion or just not saving at all
Overall, Sonic Advance 3 is a decent Sonic game. It is certainly flawed and there are much better Sonic games out there, but it is a decent game and can be a lot of fun despite this. I suggest seeing if you can borrow or rent this to see if you like it, though having said that, it does go very cheaply on places like Amazon (without the box though mind you) Good game - nice mechenics, level design could do with some work, but overall. Enjoyable
Milesprower2K9 Original reviews