This post was originally part of my "Sonic Frontiers and beyond" post, but I decided to split it into its own post. A little backstory: Sonic Adventure DX on the GameCube is one of the games I remember most fondly from my childhood. It had it all: Sonic, Tails, 3D gameplay, hub worlds, action stages, and Game Gear games. As for Sonic Adventure 2, I have seen plenty of gameplay of it but have held off on playing it until this past week. This review discusses the Xbox 360 version of the game, in which I make comparisons to Sonic Adventure DX, also on the 360.
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Gameplay - It's been a while since I played the first Adventure, but from what I can remember, the two games play similar enough that it should't be a problem, and so I'll discuss the playable characters and their objectives. Sonic Adventure 2 has 6 playable characters during story mode, of which there are two variations of each play style. Sonic/Shadow use the typical gameplay you'd expect from a Sonic game, that being a point A to point B affair; Knuckles/Rouge explore their stages by climbing on or through walls to find secrets, just like Knuckles' stages in Adventure; Tails/Eggman has gameplay similar to E-102 from Adventure, where a robot is used to shoot targets. In general the gameplay is similar to 1, and that goes for any quirks that existed, like how hard it can be to control the characters at times, or how they sometimes stray off the scripted path, and these apply to all characters. Each character has upgrades, most of which act as ways to restrict access to certain parts until later. I will go over the character unique ones below.
Sonic/Shadow plays almost exactly like how Sonic played in the first Adventure. You can run, roll to go faster, jump, and you can make a homing attack onto various objects by pressing jump again in mid-air. The differences come from the upgrades. There's the light speed dash, which works in a similar fashion to Sonic's upgrades from the original where you press a button and Sonic automatically follows a trail of rings, except you don't have to charge it beforehand. There's also one which similarily to the Drop Dash from later entries works like a ground pound, stopping all side momentum and allowing you to reach the ground quicker (and safer if you're over ground). The only other new thing seems to be the rails, which allow you to go faster easier, all without having to steer. The challenge with these come from their small size and when there are multiple rails. You've go to be precise when landing on them, especially when there is no floor beneath to catch you if you miss. In regards to multiple rails, you can hold the move stick in the direction of a rail you want to go and then jump which should make Sonic jump over to the other rail. It doesn't always work and you more often than not fall to your death when trying. The rails in general are fun but should have had more time spent refining them to work better.
Knuckles/Rouge's gameplay is nearly identical to Knuckles' from the first game. You try to find hidden items as you explore a more open area by gliding around in the air and climbing on walls. While you could dig into the ground before, you can now do it from the air from essentially a ground pound. Compared to the first game, this time only one item is tracked at a time, but you can still collect them in any order. This can create situations in which you're standing by an item without knowing, effectively making the search take longer. With the exception of this, it's my favorite type of stage as it's fun to explore a more open area.
Lastly, Tails/Eggman's gameplay remind me of E-102 from the first game. You run around shooting things with a mech, and if you hold down the shoot button you can lock onto things, and doing so will launch a homing projectile toward your targets that moves slower than usual. Holding down to lock-on will give you reduced maneuverability, which is already somewhat poor to start. There's an upgrade which allows you to hover, giving you more airtime with the potential to gain some extra height. The stages are long and tedious, making them my least favorite to play. Especially with regards to Tails, whose gameplay in 1 was superb.
Other types of gameplay include kart racing (which works fine for what it is), a multiplayer mode where you can play each character type and compete with your friends in the their respective stage type, and the much revered Chao Garden. In the Chao Garden you raise your Chaos by giving them food and animals, which increase their stats. With increased stats, they have a higher chance of winning the karate and racing tournaments that are available. In these, you watch your Chao compete while all you personally do is give them encouragement when they're down on their luck. You can customize your Chao: Depending on how you raise them they can turn into a Hero, a Dark, or a Netural Chao, and their highest stat will determine what type they evlove into, like a runner or a swimmer. There are also accessories you can purchase and give to your Chao to make them stand out a bit more, and each animal turn the Chao's body parts into ones resembling them. I personally don't care about the Chao Garden, it's too much investment for very little reward, and the gameplay being nearly non-existant here doesn't help.
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Story - I didn't catch all of the story, but it's your typical "Eggman wants all the Chaos Emeralds to control the world" story. The Hero story was all kinds of messy, with a lot of information left out and some scenes seemingly taken out of order. How the Dark story was told was much better than how the Hero story was told and actually formed a cohesive narrative.
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Graphics - I prefer the graphics and general presentation of Adventure over Adventure 2. I think the models looked better, the cutscenes weren't as impressive but also didn't have poor-looking mocap, and I prefer the shiny look over the diffuse one in 2. It could just be the nostalgia talking, but it's what I believe.
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Hub worlds - Don't know where else to put this, so here it is. Hub worlds in the first Adventure were great. An open area to explore in between missions gave room for the missions to breath, while also allowing you to play the game without having to focus on objectives. Having the upgrades be located here rather than in stages gives it more of a treasure hunt feeling, for lack of better words. The Mission Mode from the DX upgrade even gave you things to do in the hubs, giving you even more reason to explore the worlds. Now that you know how they work in Adventure 1, I'm not happy to say they don't exist in Adventure 2. The Chao Garden exists yes, but to access them you need to find a key within a stage or else you're sent to the next mission. Even then, there isn't much to do in there from a gameplay perspective. The area isn't large enough for you to freely move about in, and there are no missions to do, so if you're not interested in what the Chao Garden has to offer, it's essentially a glorified pause screen.
As a whole, Sonic Adventure 2 is more Adventure, but with only half the gameplay styles as the first game, no hub worlds, and an overall poorer presentation, it doesn't feel as good. One could say it's been more streamlined, but I wonder if that's a good thing. It's still a fine game and probably one of Sonic's better 3D outings, but I'd recommend 1 over 2.