Sonic Advance 2 / YMMV

Anticlimax Boss: The final boss in Advance 2 (at least, other than True Area 53's True Final Boss) is the only boss in the game to be stationary rather than a chase battle, which makes it much easier than almost all the other bosses. Though it does come off the heels of a pretty difficult Boss Rush.
Best Level Ever: The best level in the entire Advance trilogy is, by most people's estimation, Music Plant from Advance 2. Its bright, colorful atmosphere plus very memorable mechanics make it a huge favorite among those who play any of the handheld games.
Breather Level: Techno Base in Advance 2 is easier than Sky Canyon before it, especially the boss battle. This doesn't mean Techno Base or its boss are easy by any means, but it has a lot less of the instant death.
Contested Sequel: The second game's absolute focus on speed made an exhilarating experience that would later be expanded on by Sonic Rush and Rush Adventure, but was also criticized for making the levels feel on-rails and repetitive.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Vanilla the Rabbit has little role besides being Cream's motivation in the second game, but she did star in the trilogy's Signature Scene and her design is considered attractive enough that she frequently gets to be fanart fodder.
Franchise Original Sin: Advance 2 is frequently cited as the earliest blueprint for the Boost Era games, which have their own share of base breaking regarding gameplay decisions ("GOTTA GO FAST!" in spite of everything). That being said, 2 was an acclaimed, popular game exactly for its exhilarating speed and flair.
Game-Breaker:
- Cream. She can fly anywhere she wants to, and trivializes bosses by sending out Cheese to attack from a distance. Tails and Knuckles are too, to a lesser extent, as since the levels are primarily designed for Sonic, their flight and gliding trivializes all platforming.
- Sonic's air dash, which was by all accounts pathetic in the first game, is massively buffed in the sequel. Not only is the input timing far more lenient, it roughly doubles his forward momentum, making it the most efficient way to reach max speed.
Heartwarming Moments: The final ending in Advance 2, in which we see a tear-eyed Cream glomping her mother upon being reunited with her after Sonic rescued her.
High-Tier Scrappy: Cream is rather infamous for her game-breaking Chao, which makes defeating any enemies, and most bosses, a simple matter of hitting the B button — as long as the enemies are onscreen, Cheese will hit them. This, coupled with the fact that her other ability is basically a copy of Tails' already overpowered flight (with the added option to cancel it at any point), gave her the dubious reputation of being basically "Tails for toddlers".
Memetic Badass: Thanks to her Game-Breaker status in her debut game, Cream is often joked as being one of the series' most powerful characters and an unstoppable force of nature that can destroy entire armies solely through her pet.
Moment of Awesome: So what if it defies gravity? The ending to Advance 2 is arguably the most badass in the series. To elaborate, if one collects every Chaos Emerald with Sonic, it opens the secret last zone. Eggman kidnaps Cream's mother, Vanilla, and takes her into space. Sonic goes Super Sonic to rescue her, and he hangs onto the capsule she's trapped in as they plummet back to earth. Sonic loses his super power, the capsule breaks open, and Sonic dives to catch a hold of Vanilla while falling faster as the music intensifies. Of course, Sonic saves her, but the buildup is perfect. Sonic saving the world and foiling Eggman's schemes is all well and good, but him saving a little bunny girl's mom from a villain who at that point is just doing it out of petty revenge makes the blue hedgehog feel truly heroic in a very personal way. That sweet Mega Man X-style guitar riff that plays when the capsule busts open adds to the awesomeness.
Padding: It requires the seven Chaos Emeralds and a full completion to get to the True Final Boss, which for Advance 2 clearing the game with all of the playable characters individually as well (besides Amy due to being a Secret Character). Clearly Dimps thought that just using unique springs to reach the Special Stages in the first Advance was too easy. However, because the second game requires finding all seven Special Rings in a stage before finishing it to take a shot at an Emerald; missing a single one requires doing the entire stage over again.
Scrappy Mechanic: Getting the Chaos Emeralds is a large pain. In the second game it's having to collect the Special Rings in order to access the Special Stages.
Sequel Difficulty Spike: Advance 2 is a much more demanding, execution-focused game than its predecessor and has some very strict requirements for reaching the final boss. Because of these, it's often seen as one of the most difficult games in the series.
Signature Scene: Ask anyone who grew up on the Gamecube and Advance era of Sonic games what they think stands out as the single most gripping moment in the Advance trilogy, and it's more than likely they'll relate the ending of Advance 2, where Sonic rushes to collect the capsule Vanilla's in while it's careening back down to the planet below after beating Eggman, shields the capsule with his body, loses his Super form as the capsule blows up and releases Vanilla following re-entry, and perseveres just a bit more to catch Vanilla as she's falling so he can save her. Does it make logical sense? Not really; there's nothing to suggest Vanilla herself can't survive the fall, given her own daughter can survive a similar drop in her ending of the game. But is it a Moment of Awesome that truly captures the character of Sonic the Hedgehog, backed by the best music and visuals the hardware could put out? Absolutely. The scene is so iconic to the Advance trilogy and the rest of Sonic as a whole that people who recognize Vanilla in Sonic Rush and other media tend to do so as a result of that scene featuring her prominently alone.
Special Effect Failure: In Advance 2, Vanilla's falling sprite animation was inserted into the scene where she was kidnapped, so despite being sucked backwards into Eggman's mech, her dress and ears are all blown forwards.
Tear Jerker: Cream's Break the Cutie moment when Eggman kidnaps Vanilla near the end of Advance 2. The fact that Eggman does it out of nothing but spite just makes it worse.
That One Boss: The boss of Sky Canyon in the second game, which is the only boss in the trilogy with an OHKO attack. And yes, you have to fight it again in the Boss Rush. It also has a unique boss theme for the first encounter, and it's rather creepy-sounding. ^note
That One Level: Sky Canyon in the second game can be a pain too with Sonic, as it's just as pitfall heavy as Egg Rocket. And if you don't know about R Button Tricks, you won't be able to beat it. And once you get to the boss, you have to hope it doesn't pull out its notorious One-Hit Kill.
That One Sidequest: Unlocking Amy in Advance 2 requires getting all seven Chaos Emeralds...as all four characters, which would already be bad enough if 2 didn't have one of the worst Special Stage access requirements in the entire series (scouring entire stages for seven Special Rings, in a largely speed-focused game). And thanks to the new focus on speed in this game, her moveset has mostly been changed to match Sonic's, so you're more or less putting all of that effort in for a palette swap of your starting character.
Underused Game Mechanic: Running over water in Advance 2. Or anything involving water for that matter, since Leaf Forest (the very first level) is the only stage to contain significant bodies of water, and even then they're still relatively rare.
Unfortunate Character Design: The Final Boss in the second game looks rather like a giant Tin Man.

YMMV / Sonic Advance 2

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