Sonic Adventure 2 + Battle (DLC)

Sonic Adventure 2 is a 2001 Dreamcast-era action game ported to PC, bundling the base game with the Battle DLC that expands the Chao Garden and multiplayer roster. It splits its campaign into two distinct sides: the Hero story follows Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, while the Dark story gives you Shadow, Eggman, and Rouge. You play through all six characters to unlock the true final chapter, which means you are getting a decent chunk of content even before you touch the extras. The gameplay is genuinely split into three styles and that is where the game gets complicated. Sonic and Shadow stages are pure high-speed platforming - boosting down rails, bouncing off enemies, chasing or being chased in setpiece moments that still feel punchy. Tails and Eggman pilot mechs and shoot through wave-based arenas, which is slower but serviceable. Knuckles and Rouge hunt for scattered emerald shards using a radar, and this is the mode that will test your patience most - the shards spawn randomly across large stages, making repeat playthroughs feel like a lottery more than a skill check. The Chao Garden is the hidden heart of this package. You raise small creature companions by feeding them animals and chaos drives collected in stages, shaping their stats and alignment over multiple lifecycles. It is weirdly deep, time-consuming in the best way, and entirely optional. The Battle DLC adds extra Chao types, Kart racing, and expands the two-player versus mode with more characters and stages. If you have someone to play with locally or via Remote Play Together, the versus modes are genuinely fun for a few hours. On PC the port is functional but dated. You will likely want a controller (partial support means some menu navigation stays on keyboard), and the camera in Knuckles and Rouge stages in particular can work against you. There is no official widescreen support out of the box, but community patches exist and are easy to find. The soundtrack - composed mostly by Paul Shortino, Crush 40, and others - holds up extremely well and is probably the single thing this game does better than almost anything else in its genre. This is a game for players who either grew up with it and want the nostalgia hit, or younger players curious about what early 2000s 3D Sonic actually felt like before the series went sideways. It is uneven by design - some stages are brilliant, some are genuinely annoying - but the highs are high enough that the lows feel worth pushing through. Go in with calibrated expectations and you will find a lot to like. Alex, Scout Team