Sonic Advance 2
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An awesome sequel of Sonic Advance for Game Boy Advance? Count us in!
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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.
Plot
Taking place on an undefined island, Dr. Eggman has again begun kidnapping Animals and turning them into robots so that he can build the Eggman Empire. This time, however, he has kidnapped Tails and Knuckles too. Learning of his friends' kidnapping, Sonic rushes off to save them.
Why It Rocks
- The first appearance of Cream the Rabbit and Cheese the Chao, two of the most adorable characters in the entire franchise!
- Solid controls, the controls are even more fluid than the first Advance game, and they are very fast, as you expect, the controls are extremely tight and responsive and will never fail to respond to your d-pad.
- 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.
- Sonic is once again the fasted character, very fun to play as and is very useful if you want to beat the game as fast as possible.
- Cream, despite BQ#5, is still a decent character to play especially that she is overpowered and is the only one to had a peojectile attack, with it being Cheese, in fact it is the best character to play as when fighting the bosses.
- Tails is as fun as ever, and here he is much faster than in the previous games, even in the first Sonic Advance he wasn't as fast.
- Knuckles is also a fairly fun character as usual, but he mostly the most useful when exploring the levels, howewer he is one of the slowest characters as usual, but still not the slowest character of the game.
- Amy, while still slightly slow, is much more fun to play than in the first Advance game, and she can attack with her hammer.
- 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.
- Great story that is easy to understand yet still good.
- A few funny moments are present in some of the cutscenes, such as where Sonic left even before the characters he saved could have finished their conversation.
- Beautiful graphics for the time, and they are even an improvement over the first Sonic Advance, as they are very colorful, detailled and had an amazing sprite work as usual who would be one of the most iconic sprites in Sonic history.
- The sense of speed has been dramatically increased from the first game, as now the game play much faster and is as fun as ever.
- 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.
- 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.
- Fun bosses.
- Beautiful true ending.
- 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
- 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.
- 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 Emeralds 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.
- At times, it gets too focused in speed and has trial and error sections.
- 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.
- Also, the levels in that zone are quite cheap because there's a lot of pits and you can fall in them very easily, it doesn't help that it wasn't designed with the fast-paced gameplay in mind, making the zone even more tedious than it's already is.
- Cream can be a nuisance to play as at times, especially since she isn't as fast as Sonic.
- Despite this, Cream is incredibly overpowered, as you can just button-mash B to kill nearly every enemy and defeat bosses in just a few seconds, making the game way easier.
- Cheap enemy placement, as they can be placed right after a platforming section, although they not nearly as bad as in Sonic Advance 3.
Reception
The game received positive reviews and has a Metacritic score of 83 out of 100.[1]
It is considered by many to be the best game in the Sonic Advance trilogy due to it's fast-paced gameplay and the improved level design from the last game, howewer the special stages and the length were criticized.
Trivia
- This is one of the few 2D games in the Sonic the Hedgehog series not to have a water-themed Zone. Only a few parts in Leaf Forest have small water sections and none of them have air bubbles. Characters like Tails and Cream cannot perform any movement abilities by tapping A button underwater, making it also one of the only games where Tails cannot swim.
- This game marks the fourth game in the Sonic series where Knuckles has been tricked into fighting Sonic by Eggman. The others are Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, Sonic Triple Trouble and Sonic Adventure.
- Cream replaced Amy's role in Sonic Advance in many ways. For instance, she is the only female of the main four, and she is present at the Sound Test screen, holding a tambourine.
- As the player progresses further in the Single Player mode, the music track in "Select a Zone" screen changes from regular track into two different variations.
- This is the only 2D Sonic title where pressing up on Directional buttons does not make the camera scroll up. Also, part of Knuckles' appeal animation includes him punching the air in front of him; doing this close to a Badnik can in fact destroy it.
- Tails is referred to as "Tails the Fox" in the US instruction booklet.