The most detailed racing game in the PS2 platform, with probably the biggest map in a sandbox game ever.
It's amazing.
Road Trip Adventure is typically one of the cutesy Japanese racing games, but this is an exception. The game does revolve around racing, but you have a total of 11 cities to visit, and an amazingly gigantic area of land in between them. You're main aim is to collect 100 stamps, and stamps are collecting by completing missions and such. The game takes place in a world full of cars, which talk to each other when bumping into each other or entering one another's homes.
Road Trip Adventure is the best form of racing and sandbox fusion out there.
Let's start with the gameplay. You drive a car around one of the biggest maps ever, but along the way you can customise your car. Customisation is an understatement though; you can change just about anything. From every single detail of trim colours on your car, to the transmission, it all adds up when in a race. The physics can be a little dodgy at times, but then again you could call them cartoonish because Road Trip Adventure isn't a simulator - it's a true game.
For a game developed in 2001 and played on the PS2, the graphics are brilliant. You could say that there are things which need to be more detailed, but then again there is some nice work on the houses and buildings. Some of the cities look beautiful in panoramas, especially at night.
The game has a day and night system, so every 5 real second pass an in game minute passes. Not only that, every 6pm your headlights go on the sky starts fading into a deep night. Even better, the buildings are perfectly in sync, the windows lights go on after 8pm. The day and night system has extensive use too, some people who live in houses can only be visited at certain times.
Unlike most driving games, you can actually scale and visit every single pixel of land in the game. The world has a varied climate as well; you have beaches, deserts, mountains, snowy wonderlands, waterfalls and a beautiful tropical island. There are simply no limitations in Road Trip Adventure.
It is annoying that people take the box art stereotypically; this is one of the most underrated games ever. Or maybe the most underrated game ever.
You have 2 radio stations as well (even better you can actually visit the building of each radio station), one which plays some old-school but nice songs by bands such as the push-kings, while the other plays some beautiful jazz. The music mixed with the utopian environments make a great couple, especially when you're roaming about the area.
Some people say this would be a great PSP port, but to be honest, I don't think you can fit in enough data in a UMD disc! Not polishing RTA was probably due to the fact the PS2 discs didn't have enough space to fit them in.
The environments are a lot bigger than in the GTA games for the PS2, and for such an old platform and such an old age, this game is a true masterpiece.