12
votes
Final Rush is great for all the wrong reasons (Sonic Adventure 2: Battle level analysis)
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- Title
- Final Rush Is Great For All The Wrong Reasons
- Authors
- ZoomZike
- Duration
- 23:16
- Published
- Apr 18 2025
I saw this video in my feed at 2 am and planned to just watch a couple minutes so it'd be in my watch history to finish later, but I ended up watching the whole thing. For context, Final Rush is the last stage of the Hero story in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, so by default it should be more challenging than the previous ones. But it's not an impossibly difficult one.
This video breaks down the level into sections, showing and explaining how each part was designed to be beatable by any skill level. The level has multiple routes you can take, starting at the very beginning when you drop onto a rail and can jump to two different side rails. He shows off how there are multiple areas meant to introduce players to a new skill or mechanic with safety nets and practice them. Even the more challenging routes give players a chance to see and try a new mechanic, so they can theoretically use that route on their first-ever playthrough of the level. The camera angles are also used to give players a preview of upcoming areas, or hint at shortcuts that more daring players can take.
Watching this has given me a heavy appreciation for the amount of effort and thought into the level design of this game. I feel like it's rare to see a game that keeps all skill levels in mind to this degree. I already appreciated how cinematic the game is on a recent playthrough, and this breakdown just cements Sonic Adventure 2: Battle as one of the best designed games I've ever played.
I love this guy's SA2 videos! Always gives me a new appreciation for the level design.
Funny enough after like four playthroughs of the game I'd kinda come to the opposite conclusion from the piecemeal levels, scattered all over the place with bursts of stuff in random places and yet with no consideration for certain areas where holding a direction slightly wayward would instantly kill you. But what does feel kind of good in a silly way about it is that every now and then you stop in the middle of some cinematic moment through a loop to jump out like a madman, and there's a Mystic Ruins spot, or a Chao box, or a pipe, or whatever. It's like they knew playtesters were doing some stupid shit, but they didn't have much time, so they put them there to make it look like you were super smart for fucking around and then immediately move on.
I'm only a bit through the video at the moment, but I love Final Rush and I think it's because it feels like what would've happened if they really developed the levels to be more dynamic, with the whole tiered difficulty in earlier Sonic design more apparent. I love this goofy-ass game.
...And your comment reminded me of the fact that White Jungle has a bunch of inaccessible rings because they copied Green Forest as a template. So, the game's design is definitely full of flaws and I just got caught up in being impressed with Final Rush.
Still, they did a great job with the levels. Like you said, it's super rewarding to find all the little hidden things like the Chao Boxes and Mystic Ruins spots. Adds a small element of exploration to even the most straightforward level.
I think the biggest key here: the game is designed to be fun. There's a reason I spent hundreds of hours playing it despite being believing I sucked at "level games" as a kid. They did something really right with that game.
Exactly. I'm rehashing a review I wrote here, but it's such an optimistic product of the time and it's still a magical experience, for better and worse. There's another spot I really like in either Final Rush or Final Chase where a path goes pretty far down the level, and it's really easy to miss a jump there. Right near the kill plane, there's a 1-UP box. I didn't see a way to get back. It came across like the devs were somewhere between apologizing and congratulating that you were able to kill yourself that direction. I love it. It's so dumb. I love it.
I heavily recommend a randomizer if you haven't tried it; it emphasizes that all these ridiculous things and ideas (of which keep hitting so many little peaks in the middle of everything, and make every janky, undeserved death so worth it) are naturally jumbled and scattered so far apart that you can you play the game entirely out of order and it hits pretty much the same. But fresh!
I've always been a proponent of SA2 being far and above a superior game than SA1. Having replayed them recently... I think it's still true, but not to the extent I thought it'd be. SA1, with its exploration and more open stages, really does feel special. But man, is it dragged down by the non Sonic (and non Tails sometimes) stages. Same thing happens to SA2, but nothing in that game is as egregious as Big and Amy.