- Excellent game but crashes at a dead end at Special Stage 7!After the fun SOnic Advance 2, the beloved franchise goes to new heights with the third SA entry in the series and man oh man is it fun or what?! But then again I've always said that about each SOnic Game when it came out. Other than that, this game doesn't necessarily break much new ground from previous games except for a new technique called "Tag action" which when using the R (button on the top right corner of the Game Boy Advance) will result in a new move altogether ranging from a superhigh jump to using Cheese the Chao yourself (When you're not playing Cream the Rabbit).
The story is almost the same as before. The world is once again in jeopardy when the evil nemesis Dr. Eggman splits the world by separate the chaos emeralds and plans to use them to create Eggmanland as well as work on a new contraption called Germil which was salvaged remains of Emeril from "Sonic Battle" and take over Mobius and create Eggmanland.
The game's music is awesome and even better than that of most of SA 2. My favorite music would be the Cyber Track zone before you enter the acts as well as the Toy Kingdom zones. A really cool suprise though is the Green Hill zone with revamped music from the original Green Hill Zone from the original 1991 Sonic The Hedgehog game.
The graphics are excellent and sharp. The colors of the Toy Kingdom act zones are beautiful and even the sometimes sickly sweet color scheme however is visually stimulating and lots of fun to play. The jack-in-the-box spring though is a major pain in the pullman though so be warned. I actually lost lives with them so be warned.
Some things though do cut both ways. This game no longer emphasizes on score anymore and thus how many rings you have is irrelevent here. Instead of collecting special rings in the act zones, you now have to collect all of the Chaos from each Zone Act in order to gain access to the special stages. While it may depende on the individual, I've found it much easier to find them than the Special Rings from the Second Sonic Advance Games.
Mind you though, the special stages which might be ridiculously easy at first can become almost impossible towards the end even for expert players but there is a major suprise at hand that you will not believe until you've managed to beat it. The seventh Special Stage is incredibly difficult and leaves no room for error so be warned. Prepared to be exasperated when playing it but you might be in for a major suprise when you manage to beat it.
While expert veteran Sonic players might have similar situtations that I did with the last "Special Stage" of this game, newcomers will find loads of fun with this game. Mind you, it's enormously difficult with the last special stage so be mindful and collect as many keys for it so you can return a lot more frequently.
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