All of the individual stories have their own benefits and deficits and it varies on how you want to play the game. I would recommend reading this Pastebin by @Labrys although bear in mind that it is entirely written for the Director's Cut port of the game: https://pastebin.com/WZX8CJn7
Fundamentally the runs are similar between Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast) and Sonic Adventure DX so this Pastebin is still a good start to decide which character you want to start with. Bear in mind that the Dreamcast version has convenionally-unskippable cutscenes, however there are some tricky cutscene skips you can utilise to save time. These can vary in difficulty, from simple memu manipulation to very tight deaths during cutscenes.
Generally speaking (subjective opinion), the two "easiest" categories are Super Sonic, and Gamma. Super Sonic has simple enough hub world movement, a cutscene skip and a straight-forward boss fight. Gamma has a very linear and simple route with simple tricks, probably barring Hot Shelter.
Technically speaking, Big's Story is the simplest story with very linear progression and minimal skips/tricks.
Tails' Story is also fairly simple with fast movement and fast levels. Knuckles' Story features on-the-fly routing and knowledge on the Emerald shard pools and can be daunting to learn as your first story, however the satisfaction of mastering Hunting is a great feeling to some as they can endlessly improve at it.
Sonic's Story might be one of the tougher ones to learn simply because there is a lot to learn and it is a lengthy run. Cutscene skips can also vary from fairly easy, to extremely difficult and tight. Amy's Story is also quite hard to master, but probably has the best feeling movement in the game. Twinkle Park Castle Skip is also much easier on the Dreamcast version which is a big plus for going for a top time, however its super long cutscenes make it not very enjoyable to run on Dreamcast.
At the end of the day, all things considering, just pick a character you like and learn the run. If you don't like that character's story but you enjoy the game, try learning another character's story. The choice of 7 very distinct stories allows for a wide spread of choice and you can decide which one is the best pick for you.
Once again, to reiterate a previous point, this was posted on the "Sonic Adventure" forums. If you find the flow of cutscenes not to your liking, or dislike cutscene skips, consider running the Director's Cut port, found at https://speedrun.com/sadx. I hope this forum post helps, ask away in the Discord to hear many others' opinions on it as well as resources to learn from.
Hello runners!
While it is a few weeks late, I wanted to congratulate everyone on the BONKERS amount of runs and all the effort put in through the first ever year of SA1's fully independent leaderboard!
in our first year, we've already seen well over 80 runs added to the board across every si
