YMMV / Sonic Rush Adventure

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Marine has an inferiority complex and knows the other characters think little of her, so she acts proud and arrogant in order to appear tough and confident, because she's desperate to prove to herself and others that she's useful. (Ironically, she'd be much more useful if she just acted normally.)
• Ass Pull: During the True Final Boss, Marine's hydrokinesis comes entirely out of nowhere, was not foreshadowed one bit and is never brought up again afterwards.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • The Ghost Whale. It's a giant whale that, in order to damage, you have to let it swallow you whole and hit its robotic heart.
  • Every boss in that game is unique and awesome in its own right, but the ones that stand out the most are the Ghost Condor, which is fought in an on rails 3D segment, the Whisker and Johnny duel, and the final boss itself, which has Sonic and Blaze being fired from cannons in order to damage it.
• Base-Breaking Character: While Marine the Raccoon has plenty of detractors who find her to be an annoying brat who causes trouble for the gang, she does have plenty of fans and defenders, who love her energetic and adventurous personality and argue that she does grow out of her recklessness by the end.
• Breather Level: Blizzard Peaks is shorter than most levels before and both of the levels after it.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The fact that Dr. Eggman and Eggman Nega are the true villains of Rush Adventure would've been a unique inversion of what was largely the status quo for final bosses in Sonic games at the time of release... if it weren't so blatantly obvious who was really behind it all from the moment anyone laid eyes on Captain Whisker.
• Contested Sequel: While still considered to be a good Sonic game in its own right, Rush Adventure has gained a relatively more divisive reception compared to the original Rush. While the game certainly has its fair share of fans who love the game for improving upon Rush's gameplay and level design in a few ways, while adding more on top of it as well as building upon Blaze's world, others felt it was inferior due to the added padding that didn't exist in Rush, such as the longer cutscenes, the boat sections and the mandatory Item Farming.
• Funny Moments: The normally stoic Blaze turns out to be anything but when confronted with her worst fear, heights. She even resorts to shoving everyone away from the edge of Sky Babylon.
• Padding: There's no other way to really step around it: Rush Adventure can be an absolute slog. You have to earn materials to be able to build and upgrade your various vehicles to sail the seas, and you get these materials by completing stages. While a skilled player can cut nearly all of the grind down by nailing top ranks out of the gate, less skilled players will have to repeatedly play these stages to get enough materials to progress. And then there's the sailing, which are a time-consuming Genre Shift to various minigames that exist solely and explicitly to pad out playtime for all your first visits to stage islands, as well as for item and special stage hunting. Without these two things, the game would be incredibly short, but their mere existence instead drags the game out into what can potentially be an unbearable and sluggish fair if you try to play through it all in one go.
• Replacement Scrappy: Another reason some people don't like Marine is because she usurps the role of Blaze's Kid Sidekick from Cream, who otherwise had a better written relationship with the cat in the prequel.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The balloons in Sky Babylon in Rush Adventure. Like the rockets described above, they control like crap, and they are destroyed immediately upon touching a wall. They're similar to the rocket pads from Altitude Limit from Rush in that they only go up, but unlike them, the balloons need a wide space in order to turn. What makes Sky Babylon That One Level for a lot of people is one section where you need to use it to evade a series of instant-kill lasers.
  • The springy ropes in Haunted Ship. On their own, they wouldn't be too different from ordinary springs, but what makes them annoying is that once they spring you up, they immediately cancel your boost, meaning you can't just maintain it by just holding the boost button down like a normal spring. And enemies are sometimes located near these ropes, which particularly gives Sonic a hard time since his R tricks gain less height and distance than Blaze's.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Adventure is easier and has shorter stages than Rush. The level design was improved to have less cheap enemy placement and bottomless pits, so it feels easier and more fair. However, 100% Completion is harder due to Mission Mode, which has many trial and error moments to itself.
• Tear Jerker: Marine's Minor Insult Meltdown after Blaze tells her she's a nuisance. Even Blaze felt a little bad about having to be harsh with her.
• That One Level: Sky Babylon is widely regarded as the hardest stage in the game. Act 2 tasks the player with navigating a balloon with awkward controls as it moves upwards, dodging instant-kill lasers, robots and walls. One touch of any obstacle will pop the balloon, resulting in a lost life.
• The Un-Twist: The fact that Eggman and Eggman Nega are behind it all in the second game will probably only be a surprise to people who are getting into the series with this game. The signs are on Captain Whisker himself for starters:
  • 1. He's very clearly a robot, as are his minions.
  • 2. His mustache... sorry, whiskers look a lot like someone else's mustache. Dr. Eggman's, specifically.
  • 3. It's hinted after a while that Whisker probably has someone he answers to.
  • 4. He fights you a second time in a giant Mech, who tries to destroy the stage in a last ditch effort if it's become pretty clear you're gonna beat him. This alone is a pretty blatant connection to someone from the first game (who's even pulled the same tactic once or twice^* Or thrice, if we go by the games' chronology before).
  • Additionally, Mike Pollock, who voices both Eggmen, appears in the credits after defeating the Ghost Titan, yet you've encountered no character who is voiced by him at this point.
  • There's also the twist that Johnny was working for Captain Whisker, which players would've guessed upon noticing that he and Whisker have the exact same pirate symbol on them.
• Woolseyism: Say what you want about Marine, but the English translation giving her an Australian accent makes sense considering all the koala NPCs.

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