I'll begin simply by stating I own both Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, and please do not take my commentary the wrong way, I love both games but there are some things I liked better in the first installment. With all aside here it goes.
Sonic Adventure 2, from an overlook quite a wonderful game. Nothing is better then playing a Sonic game on a Sega console.. I remember playing it the first time back on it's release, there were some things I liked, but some I didn't
The first thing I noticed was you had virtually no control over who you played as, in the first sonic adventure you could choose storylines from x amount of characters, now I think Sega was trying to give the classic feel of sonic going through zones and progressing through the game.. but quite honestly I liked the free world better in the first.. I liked being able to control where I went, and choosing what I wanted to do.
Another thing.. in order to go to the chao garden, you have to find an icon in the stage.. this I kind of found annoying, not that I obsess over the chao's but I liked to go and feed, train them as I saw fit not roam around a level looking for the icon to access it...
Now on to minor things before I really get into it... Sound.. Sound in Sonic adventure 2 was wonderful, just like the first one, it had the same vocalist from the first.. which is funny because I never knew he was the singer from a group called Hardline (Will provide a link for that.)
Sound was smooth, not scratchy, the songs were catchy, energetic and just full of awesome, just like the first sonic adventure.. now Graphic wise I saw alot of smoother improvements, nothing to really be jawdropped over but it was nice to see Sega put alot of effort into it, which you would hope they would Sonic was and is their mascot.
This is my first review really so be a bit easy on me, criticism is welcomed of course, just don't be plain mean to me, dealt with that enough on other sites ha ha.
But as an overall for the story, for the classic sonic feel it was great, if you were used to sonic adventure 1 it made me feel controlled as I had no choice in what I could do.. Also the option to play as the baddies was fun indeed...
overall I would give Sonic Adventure a 4/5 with room for improvement, great game, only complaints are minor and just personal things that didn't do it as much for me as the first game. Personally though a good game to pick up and play, usually the feel you get with most sonic games that were made during Sega's hardware days..
PS here is the link with the vocalist who did the tracks for sonic adventures back in the early 90s at the end of the hair metal days.~~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ6sR0UBvDM