Looking for the perfect Sonic game to start you off? You've come to the right place.
Story: 7.5
While the story isn't perfect, it's pretty good considering the game is more about gameplay than anything. Basically, Eggman finds Chaos, which is some kind of shape shifting water like creature who can consume chaos emeralds to become stronger and change forms. Once he has all 7, he turns into the powerful Perfect Chaos. The story starts with sonic standing on a building when he suddenly sees Chaos standing surrounded by police in Station Square. He rushes to the scene when the police retreat after realizing that their weapons have no effect against it. Sonic fights the beast, and it goes down a drain. The next day, he witnesses Tails crashing in his plane, and rescues him. Tails tells him it was a test flight of his new prototype. He says it runs on chaos emeralds and show Sonic that he found an emerald during the test. They head off to his lab in Mystic Ruins to do... something, when they are interrupted by Dr. Eggman who attacks them. They defeat Eggman, only for him to send a metal claw out of his machine to nab the emerald. He gives it to Chaos who grows into Chaos 1. Sonic and Tails continue chasing Eggman throughout the game until the final showdown with Perfect Chaos, where we find out Chaos only used the "Negative" power of the emeralds and that Sonic can still use the "Positive" power to become Super Sonic and defeat him. Sonic defeats Perfect Chaos, saves the day, and sends Tikal and Chaos into the Master emerald again. Time for an explanation. Tikal is I guess a spirit who was once the daughter of the leader of the tribe that protected the Master Emerald in the past, who's name was Pachamac. Pachamac wanted to use the Master Emerald to allegedly "protect the tribe", but really he was just greedy for power. Tikal tried to stop him, but he didn't listen, and stormed the place, killing all the chao in the shrine and setting it on fire for some reason. Tikal felt horrible and offered to seal herself into the emerald to restore balance to the Chaos Emeralds and control Chaos, the enraged spirit of the Master Emerald. Then, years later, Chaos awakens and first breaks the emerald into pieces, then tries to destroy everything out of hatred and suffering. Tikal emerges from the Emerald as a spirit to help sonic calm down Chaos and seal herself and Chaos back into the Master Emerald. Hopefully that wasn't too confusing. There are also other stories, but they mostly consist of this: Amy gets chased by a robot, Tails has the same story of sonic until the ending where he defeats one of Eggman's robots and disarms a missile before it explodes. He learns to believe in himself. Knuckles thinks Eggman is good again (what an idiot) and tries to stop Sonic, thinking that Sonic is trying to steal the pieces of the Master Emerald. Big wants to find Froggy. Go figure. E- 101 Gamma, on the other hand, has quite an engaging story. It starts off with him being the 2nd in a line of robots Eggman created to find Froggy since he swallowed one of the Chaos emeralds. He tests both him and his big brother, the prototype, in a duel to see who should come with him. They both end up tagging alone, with Eggman stating he could always use some spare parts. Gamma finds out that Eggman is detaching his big brother's parts and creating a new robot, which saddens him. He meets Amy, who Eggman demands makes her hand over a bird because it is carrying a chaos emerald, and even when Amy says no, the bird flies up to Gamma which makes him suddenly remorseful, and he lets her go. He then finds out that the other robts have birds in them, so he destroys them one by one to release the birds, and then defeats the new model of his big brother. The father of Amy's bird flies out. Then, Gamma kills himself, releasing the mother bird. The birds fly away in harmony. It's quite emotional.
Gameplay: 9.0
Sonic is fast paced and fun, Tails has fun race based gameplay where you fly around racing Sonic and one time Eggman in the last stage, Knuckles uses a beeping emerald detector to find pieces of the master emerald, amy runs through stages being chased by a giant robot while stunning him with her hammer and attempting to frantically solve puzzles as he chases her, Big... fishes..... *sigh*.... Wow is he terrible, and Gamma runs around shooting robots with his lock on gun and hovering over bottomless pits. For the most part, it kicks ***. The camera has issues as well.
Graphics: 9.0
Stellar, groundbreaking visuals with comical animation, greatly rendered textures, colorful levels, and great character models.
Music: 10
Absolutely amazing. You'll consistently find yourself rocking out to each nostalgic tune while speeding through your favorite- and least favorite- stages.
Overall: 9.0
Overall, Sonic Adventure ushered sonic into a lush new era with style, and further cemented Sonic into gaming's history as one of the most memorable franchises of all time.