Sonic Advance 2

Sonic Advance 2
An awesome sequel of Sonic Advance for Game Boy Advance? Count us in!
Protagonist(s): Sonic Tails Knuckles the Echidna Cream the Rabbit Genre(s): Action Platform Platform(s): Game Boy Advance Release Date: JP: December 19, 2002 NA: March 9, 2003 EU: March 21, 2003 Developer(s): Dimps Sonic Team Publisher(s): JP: Sega NA: THQ EU: Infogrames Series: Sonic the Hedgehog Predecessor: Sonic Advance Successor: Sonic Battle Sonic Advance 3

Sonic Advance 2 is a 2002 platform video game developed by Dimps and Sonic Team and published by Sega in Japan, by THQ in North America, and by Infogrames in Europe. It is the sequel to Sonic Advance and is the second installment of the Sonic Advance trilogy, and runs on a modified version of its engine.

A third and final entry in the Advance trilogy, Sonic Advance 3, was released in 2004.

Why It Rocks

1. The first appearance of Cream the Rabbit and Cheese the Chao, two of the most adorable characters in the entire franchise!
2. Solid controls, the controls are even more fluid than the first Advance game, and they are very fast.
3. There are five playable characters: Sonic, Cream & Cheese, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy (who must be unlocked), and they all play differently, giving the game a lot of replay values.
4. Every character can perform a dash move; by pressing the R button while holding in a direction on the D-pad your character will air dash in that direction. This can be used to access alternate pathways, though every character has their own unique attributes too.
5. Great story that is easy to understand yet still good.
6. Beautiful graphics for the time.
7. The sense of speed has been dramatically increased from the first game.
8. Catchy soundtrack. (Hot Crater, Music Plant Zone, Techno Base Zone, and Egg Utopia Zone are great examples) The soundtrack is also somehow better than the first game, which also had a great soundtrack.
9. When you collect enough rings and maintain your momentum, your character will enter a 'boost state' (signified by afterimages appearing behind them). Maintaining the constant movement is rewarding and it feels very exhilarating.
10. Fun bosses.
11. Beautiful true ending.
12. It laid the groundwork for the Sonic Rush games, which would expand and improve upon the formula in many ways, and would also give some of the most fun Sonic games ever.

Bad Qualities

1. To access special stages, you have to find seven Special Rings in the level and get to the goal without dying. Not only is this counter-intuitive in a game that emphasizes speed, but it's also frustrating because you have to memorize the level design and it's often impossible to backtrack to a previous area. To make matters worse, you can easily die in certain levels.
   • Speaking of the Special Stages, they still are frustrating and are just as terrible as the first game since not only does the collision detection is bad but also the time limit is just awful, and the controls in these are clunky.
2. To unlock Amy as a playable character, you have to get the Chaos Emeralds with every character. This is due to the fact that each character has to collect all seven Chaos Emeralds individually, this is even worse than in the first game when you needed to get the chaos emerald for fight the true final boss, but here not only you need the chaos emerald with all the characters to unlock Amy but also you need to do this to fight the true final boss, which is incredibly tedious.
   • Not to mention that she didn't needed to be unlocked in the first game, so why here you need to unlock her in this way ? Could they just added her captured by Eggman and then when you rescue her, she's playable ? That would have been much better and less tedious.
3. At times, it gets too focused in speed and has trial and error sections.
4. Sky Canyon is hard if you are playing as Sonic, Knuckles, or Amy, until you realize that you have to press the R button and then it starts to get very easy. Also, its boss is unfair: when you get slapped by Eggman's giant hand, you will die no matter what rings you are at.
5. Cream can be a nuisance to play as at times, especially since she isn't as fast as Sonic is.
6. Cheap enemy placement, although not as bad as Sonic Advance 3.

Reception

The game received positive reviews and has a Metacritic score of 83 out of 100.

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