A good 3-D Sonic experience.
Dr. "Eggman" Robotnik is, of course, up to no good once again. This time he is destined to collect the seven mystical chaos emeralds and feed them to the mighty water god Chaos so that it could destroy the city of Station Square and build his empire. So of course it's up to Sonic and company to once again stop Robotnik and save the day.
The gameplay is different for each of the six characters. You'll start out playing as Sonic, but once you progress you can unlock the other characters. Once you complete all of the character's stories, you can unlock the hidden last story. Sonic's stages are by far the best where you just run and jump as fast as you can to the end of the level to either collect a chaos emerald or destroy a capsule and freeing the animals trapped inside. Tails' mission are stripped down versions of Sonic's levels in which you race against another character, mainly Sonic, to obtain a chaos emerald. Tails' stages include giant rings for you to fly through as short cuts.
Knuckles' stages have you going through one area where you need to look around in search of the pieces of the broken Master Emerald, which is what he is supposed to protect. Amy is a little like Sonic's stages, but she focuses a little more on platforming and she's painfully slow. You need to reach the end of the stage to grab a balloon to escape a robot that's out to capture you. E-123 Gamma has you going through short levels where your objective is to destroy badnicks to increase the time limit you have (though it's never really explained why he has a time limit). At the end you'll usually fight one of your other E-Series brothers. I actually found his stages to be pretty fun. Then there's Big the Cat, who is by far the worst character. He really doesn't serve any sort of purpose to the story. His frog friend, however, is important. As Big you need to go through a mere five levels to fish for your frog friend, which are, simply put, boring. So as we can see the gameplay is varied, and while not all of the gameplay styles are work well it's nice that they tried to add variety.
New to the series at the time were the addition of emblems and Chao Gardens. There are three different objectives for each stage and they vary for each character. Take Sonic for example. Your first mission is basically what you do in his story; getting to the end of the level. But you can go back to the level to do a different twist on the objective, which is you have to collect at least 50 rings and then destroy the capsule. The last mission is the most difficult, in which you have to destroy the capsule in a certain amount of time. By completing each mission correctly, you'll earn an emblem.
The Chao Gardens are one of the most recognizable features in the Sonic Adventure titles. It's a life-simulation type of feature in which you raise and grow these cute little tear drop-shaped creatures. Throughout the game you collect little animals. By giving a chao one of these animals, you can alter their appearance. You are also responsible for feeding your chao. Depending on how you raise these creatures will determine what type of attitude and features they'll have. Over time they'll be able to walk, swim, dance, and have more overall energy. With a VMU, you can transfer your chao to other people and the VMU includes other added features as well, like a Chao Adventure game. It's definitely an interesting feature and it's a nice add-on in the end.
Graphically, Sonic Adventure definitely begins to show it's age as the years go by. That isn't to say that the game looks bad. The environments are colorful, very detailed and well designed, the character models look rather good, and the CG is rather impressive. Unfortunately, the game does tend to show off a distinct lack of polish since there is plenty of pop-up, it's occasional glitches, and bad character animations. The music is certainly something that has aged better, mainly in terms of stage themes. There are many varieties of music and they sound great and fit the game nicely. A majority of the character themes, however, aren't that great (with the exception of the main theme and Sonic's theme). The voice acting in this game is a lot like Resident Evil's, so bad it's laughable.
To sum things up:
PROS:
-Good graphics for their time
-Great music
-Good control
-Well designed stages
-Variety in the gameplay
CONS:
-Lack of polish
-Big and Amy
-Annoying camera
-Bad voice acting
Despite it's aging Sonic Adventure still holds nostalgic value for me. This game certainly fitting for Sonic fans, but for everyone else you may want to approach with caution.