Sonic Adventure 2 finally gets its deserved port to the PC platform. It's a fast-paced action platformer that expands on the gameplay of it's prequel. It isn't the most polished game out there and it is definitely showing its age, as it was an early 2000's title. If you like timed challenges, love racing the clock and enjoy spatial dynamics in a game then Sonic Adventure 2 is great for you. Players who prefer more abstract gameplay, dislike challenges involving physics and moving objects, or otherwise have a low affinity for platform games will not enjoy this title as much.

The port itself is a mixed bag. It supports high resolutions and the 360 controller, both of which make playing on PC a better experience. On the other hand, there are issues involving loading as the game will sometimes refuse to load if certain programs are running like flux and rainlendar (anything that uses rendered overlays). The launcher is also poorly designed.

In this post-modernistic masterpiece, we follow the turbulent inner struggle of Sonic T. Hedgehog as he grapples with issues of identity, a fitting follow-up for the first game's exploration of his sexuality and search for belonging in a world he does not feel like he fits into. He is constantly besieged by a mysterious apparition known only as "The Shadow" - which, to educated players, should be immediately apparent as an overt application of Jungian psychology, as The Shadow represents the parts of Sonic that he desperately tries to not aknowledge, as well as manifesting his insecurities: where Sonic attempts to be heroic, noble, and fast, The Shadow is a cruel, villainous sort, heralding Sonic's constant inner battle against his latent nihilism and pro-capitalistic attitude, an aspect of his character that is also explored in his obsession with "Rings", the main currency of Hedgehog Earth. Worth noting is that The Shadow does not have Sonic's speed - instead opting to have his racing prowess augmented by a pair of rocket-enhanced shoes, symbolizing Sonic's constant insecurity and fear - running is all he is good at, what if he one day could not run as quickly without aid? What use would there then be for him? He literally can not see himself as anything else than someone who runs fast, and his self-esteem suffers for it. There are some Kafka-esque overtones to this subplot, punctuated by Lynchian dream sequences in which Sonic takes on the appearance of Doctor Eggman, his therapist, as he rampages through a derelict shipyard in a large robot, freeing animals from the cold clutches of other, slightly smaller robots. These scenes are often contrasted by the non-chronological vignettes wherein we play as Tail The Hedgehog; these ultimately only exist to expand upon the backstory of Sonic's relationship with Jamie Hedgehog, however, while the Doctor Eggman scenes tend to revolve around Sonic's trust issues. There is also a minor subplot concerning Knuckles The Hedgefund, and his supposedly controversial inter-racial relationship with Rogue The Boat, but this is ultimately only inserted to make the game an appropriate length (five and a half hours) and these stages were all removed in the Director's Cut.

All in all, this is a classic that you owe it to yourself to experience. I have faith that if this game had been released before Johnny "Jaws" Ebert died, he would have realized that sometimes, video games CAN be art - SEGA's creative mastermind, director Shigeru Miyamoto, has certainly proved that much with this interesting (though thematically dense) narrative.

Sonic Adventure 2 is one of the better Sonic-games out there.
The game has an incredible good story-plot and the gameplay has aged very well. Badly the gameplay fights still with many bugs/glitches, just like the original DC/GC - version. You get also a lot of variation with Speed, Hunting and Mech-Levels (platformer, puzzle and shoot em all). If you like one or even all of the game types, depends on your taste.

Rating: 4/5 over average

Way better than the first one, but it still suffers from stupid characters and an overly serious story. Pretty good gameplay for the most part though (and a better PC port).

Love Sonic Adventure 2? This port is very faithful. You need a good cpu to run it, and if you don't, you're better off emulating it.

If you don't have a sense of nostalgia for this game, the controls take getting used to, and doing the ring dash is off at times. Worse case, when you have to do a ring dash in the air as Sonic after getting the Bounce Bracelet.

You have 3 main character types. Speed (Sonic and Shadow), Shooting (Tails and Eggman), and Treasure Hunting (Knuckles and Rouge). Speed is what you expect and works just fine for the most part except what I explained a bit ago. Shooting is much slower, but pretty fun to shoot things and gain huge combos. Treasure Hunting can either go in your favor, or frustrate you, depending on your luck. All 3 have really tight control, so you can stop on a dime.

With linking to a portable device gone, the Chao system is more limited now. You can't interact with Chao from other files, Special Chao and even Maria's theme are impossible. The rest remains the same.

I recommend a controller for this. It's much more difficult to control with the keyboard, and with the amount of times I've played this game, that says something.

What's really cool about this PC version is the amount of mods made by fans. So anyone who misses the cheats from the previous versions, can use them here. Most of the mods are for looks, but there's Character Selection, Spin Dash for the alternate speed characters (Amy and Metal Sonic), and even a Super Sonic mod.

Dispite the downsides from this version and the initial game, if you can look past them, I highly recommend this game.

Here are some mods.
http://mm.reimuhakurei.net/?page=sa2mods (Install into the Steam SA2 folder)
http://chao.tehfusion.co.uk/ (A Chao Trainer for SA:DX and SA2 on Steam) [Can also be used to get Maria Theme]