"I’d heard time and time again that Adventure 2 was Sonic’s magnum opus. [...] But it hasn’t aged well. Hell, I don’t even know if it was considered good at the time. Reading about frustrations I had on old forums, I found people from two decades ago moaning about the same things, but the slither of good seems to have washed away the rest as time marched on. [...] The speedster levels are incredible, and easily some of the best 3D platforming out there. But that only makes up a third of the game. The rest is split between frustrating treasure hunting, in which you follow a janky detector in wide-open levels that take an age to complete, and a clumsy tank shooter that, when it tries to sprinkle in platforming, falls at the first hurdle. [...] [Playing as] the other characters [is a grating chore] that you have to push through to get to the good stuff, which is a strong way to sour the entire experience considering they make up two-thirds of it. [...] Many boss fights are just the equivalent character from the opposite story, i.e. Shadow vs. Sonic, which is pretty dull since you can just spam leap on their head to win most fights."