“We are crusin’ open seas, can’t wait for a new venture!”
I grew up heavily with Sonic Rush, it was one of the first DS games I had when I got the system so I used to replay it over and over again, never really growing sick and tired of it. Despite my love for it though, I never really played its sequel, Sonic Rush Adventure. I demoed it like once, but I never got too far in it, and even now that I’m an adult, I still haven’t properly played it. Randomly though, I got hit with the sudden urge to sit down and play through it all, see what I was missing out on as a kid. I wish I had picked this up when I was little, because this is easily the superior game, and I adored my time with it immensely.
Sonic and Tails are busy exploring the open sea one day, when suddenly a terrible storm hits, and they get caught up in the storm, leaving them deserted on an island in the middle of the ocean. There, they are greeted by Marine, a young Australian girl who longs to explore the world and go on adventures. Not knowing what to do, Sonic and Tails decide to help her out, exploring different islands as they try to figure out how to get back home. This eventually puts them in conflict with Captain Whiskers, who wants to obtain some ancient power in order to rule the seas. It’s during this encounter too, that Sonic runs into Blaze again, who informs Sonic that he’s been stranded in her dimension, and he needs to find a way out. Not wasting any time, Sonic and Blaze set off to put a stop to Captain Whiskers, and hopefully find a way for Sonic to get back home in the process. It’s pretty standard Sonic stuff here, though it feels a bit more dragged out this time around due to the sheer amount of cutscenes here. Sonic Rush Adventure is a very talkative game, arguably too talkative at points, and a lot of your time will be spent just reading dialogue that ultimately amounts to stopping the bad guy. Not helped by this is Marine, who is just kinda annoying most of the game. She’s very immature and repeatedly rushes into danger, causing more problems for the group then they should have, so she just feels like a waste of space, I didn’t enjoy her presence much. In terms of the setting here, I really adore Blaze’s dimension. Sonic Rush is fine in terms of its level themes, but it definitely got really generic at points, a lot of levels just felt by the numbers unfortunately. Adventure has a lot more variety in it, and even the more generic places have ideas that spice them up, like giant mushrooms and dinosaurs to fight in Plant Kingdom, or snowboarding segments in the Ice zone. It helps keep the game fresh, and the idea of exploring different islands with their own habitat keeps things from going stale fast, it’s a good structure for the kind of game this is going for!
Sonic and Blaze feel about the same as they do in Rush, same moveset and all so I got no complaints here. The UI has been touched up a bit, and the trick system is more stylish, but it all still feels great to play, and the rush of speed you got in the 1st one here is kept, making things feel fast and frantic constantly. This is helped by the much better level design here, easily the best of the rush games, as it focuses so much more on the speed, and doesn't really stop to slow you down at points. They have some gimmicks that are a bit slower, such as the minecart segments, or the dolphin, but they never last too long, and they feel like a natural part of the level design, unlike Rush’s philosophy of forcing you to stop and due forced enemy encounters or auto scroll segments. Things feel a lot more connected in Rush Adventure, and it leads to much better pacing, stopping you from really getting bored. Bosses are even better here, they still require you to wait for the weak spot to show up, but you can hit them as many times as you like when it’s exposed now, and the fights don’t take nearly as long as they did in Rush, so even when they aren’t that fun, they end before it gets really annoying. The soundtrack is also so much better here, I adore the tracks Rush had, but Adventure steps it up big time, there isn’t a single track here that I hate, and each song is just constantly stuck in my head now, it’s easily one of my favorite soundtracks for the blue blur, and I find myself jamming to it constantly, even as I type out this review.
Rush Adventure isn’t just the standard Sonic levels though, it decides to change a few things up in order to spice up variety. In between levels are the new vehicle segments, replacing the standard map most Sonic games tend to have. You see, before you can hop into a new zone, you first have to discover it in the open sea by charting it on your map and making your way to it. It’s not just a simple chart though, you have to play a vehicle segment while on the way there in order to arrive. There’s 4 total vehicles here too, each fulfilling a different purpose, and each with their own control scheme, so things at least stay fresh with that. In terms of playing the segments, they’re ok, they use the touch screen a lot, and they’re basically one big autoscroller, but they have a good sense of speed to them, and they usually end before they get boring, and the game strikes a good balance between them and the regular zones, so one style doesn't overtake the other. There’s even a variety of secrets hidden on the open sea, like hidden islands that serve as extra levels for you to do. This is also how you get your chaos emeralds this time around. Throughout the map is a jet ski loving pirate known as Johnny who will challenge you to a race. If you manage to beat him, you win a chaos emerald, and these are pretty fun! They can get rather hectic though, and your base Jet Ski won’t really be able to beat him, so you’ll need to upgrade it a few times in order to stand a chance, but I did enjoy doing each one, and the final one was especially tense, basically neck in neck with who’ll get in the emerald, I adored these!
I mentioned the upgrade system earlier, and that’s another new aspect to Rush Adventure. After you clear a level, you’ll be given different amounts of materials based on your ranking, and these materials are used to build the various vehicles you need to travel the sea. If you do good enough, you won’t really need to grind them out much, but if you get more of the lower ranks, you’ll have to replay some of the stages a few times in order to get the materials necessary to progress. At first, I thought this system was annoying, it felt like obvious padding that didn’t really serve much purpose beyond that. As I played the game more and more though, I started to really enjoy this system! The idea of repeating stages normally would scream a bad idea, but for Sonic it works surprisingly well, as these games were always built around you replaying the levels over and over again in order to get better times. The way this system is implemented naturally feeds into that, and I could feel myself getting better at each stage as I tried to get more materials, and by the end I was just getting constant S ranks, it was extremely fun seeing my skills build up more and more!
Rush Adventure really surprised me, I thought I’d come into this not liking it as much as Rush, as I knew this game wasn't as well received as Rush was, but I ended up coming out of it adoring it more! The much better level design, the new variety in gimmicks that still maintain the Sonic design philosophy, the better soundtrack, the better pacing, Sonic Rush Adventure is a fantastic sequel to an already fun DS classic, and I’m mad at kid me for never giving it a shot when I was growing up! It’s one of Sonic’s more underrated adventures, and one that I’m very glad I checked out!
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