An excellent game with a few flaws
The plot to the game involves Dr. Eggman has awoken a strange beast composed of water named Chaos. Chaos is able to absorb the power of the Chaos Emeralds to grow stronger. If he absorb all seven Chaos Emeralds, he will transform into his strongest form known as Perfect Chaos. Sonic and Tails learn what Eggman is up to and set off to stop him.
Sonic Adventure gives you a choice of six characters to play as. These are Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, a feline named Big the Cat and a robot named E- 102 Gamma. Each character has a separate storyline that crosses over with the other characters’ storylines at certain points. The levels of each character are different. While Sonic, Tails and Amy’s levels involve running, Knuckles’ levels involve hunting for pieces of the Master Emerald. E-102’s levels are about shooting while Big the Cat’s level involve fishing.
Sonic Adventure introduces the Adventure Fields. These are large areas that you spend your time in between levels. To be honest, these adventure fields slow down the pace of the game considerably as you must explore the fields carefully to find the entrance to the next level. Previous Sonic the Hedgehog games have never been about exploring, they’ve been about speed so the exploring aspect does not fit in all that well.
Another new idea are the Chao. The Chao are creatures that you can raise and take care of. You are also able to enhance their speed, strength, etc. and enter them into one of the various Chao Races. You can also make your Chao evolve by giving it small animals found throughout each level to hug, causing it to take on some features of said animals. Finally, you are able to load your Chao onto your VMU and play a mini game on it with your Chao.
The graphics in this game are fantastic. The levels look great and the level design is extremely well done and is very reminiscent of previous Sonic games. The only gripe I have is with the character models. The problem is that the characters look blocky, their facial expressions are extremely weird at times and their mouths never match the dialogue.
There are plenty of pop guitar songs in the game and I suppose they fit the feel of the game so they are fine. The voice overs for most of the characters are all fine, save for Tails. Tails is a character who never seems to have a decent voice actor doing the vocals be it in this game, its sequel Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic Heroes. He sadly always sounds like a young child whose voice begins to grate the first time you hear it.
The gameplay in Sonic Adventure has one fatal flaw and that is it’s horrendous camera system. The camera system is especially frustrating when you are trying to jump onto a ledge or platform only to fall because the camera is at a bad angle. This ruins some of the game as you will die not through your own actions but because of the camera causing a lot of frustration.
So, is Sonic Adventure worth buying? Yes. The game is quite old by now and there is a Gamecube version available but you should be able to get the Dreamcast version very cheaply. Sonic Adventure is not Sonics finest hour but it is entertaining and despite the incredibly poor camera system, it is a decent effort.