How did this game get good reviews?
I love old Sega, I don't think there's another company that has as much charm as old Sega, but when I played sonic adventure I was shocked at how much this game sucked, lets begin:
The camera angles are terrible, I guess it's not that big of a flaw for the time because all platformers had bad cameras at the time this game came out, I just wish they had a button that centers the camera behind the player...
There are tons of different game modes, you can play as sonic, tails, knuckles and more, the only problem is that only sonic's levels are somewhat fun, the rest feel like launch titles for the nintendo 64.
Now, I said that sonic's levels are SOMEWHAT fun, that's because 99% of the time you don't know what's going on, sonic runs at speed and it's impossible for anyone to understand exactly what's going on on the first try, so there's too much luck involved, it's like the developers tried to create a time trial game in disguise of a platformer, if I wanted to replay levels over and over I'd play Ikaruga or some other arcade game.
Also it's very difficult to control sonic, the controls are much too sensitive and they'll get you into a lot of frustrating situations.
Except for colorful graphics, this game has nothing to offer.
To sum it all up, I've been playing pretty much only Dreamcast games for the last year or so and this is one of the worst and most over rated games that I've ran into.
If you want a good sense of speed with controls and camera that actually work, get crazy taxi.
If you want a good platformer for the dreamcast, get rayman 2.