Sonic Battle

[Ferno]

The game was loads of fun, I still play it from time to time.

...

I also think a sequel on the DS wouldn't hurt, though I don't think that's possible story-wise.

[FTA]

If you thought that was funny...

Lost in translation, those were.

http://www.theghz.com/sonic/battle/battle.html

Lol, those are classic. Damn dirty bastards!

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Amy: "She's [Cream] been acting weird lately, maybe she's going through some changes."

0.0 Did Amy just reference Cream is going through puberty?!?!?! She's 6 for Christsakes!!!

Edited April 17, 2009 by FTA

[Gabz Girl]

I really liked Sonic Battle! :3 Great music, cool battle system and stuff...also, it had one of the best scripts written for a Sonic game ever. O.O Ohhh, and I really liked the ShadRouge scene. <3

*giggles* I remember those pictures, saw them years ago. XD I can actually imagine Rouge saying something like that.

[SuperStingray]

To me, it's an underrated title. I mean sure, the gameplay was a bit repetitive at times, but being able to switch out special moves with each death and the ability to create a learning, custom fighter kept me engaged. I find it funny how Emerl started out as crap, but now he's the most overpowered character in the game. Plus, I feel it had the best writing and story of any Sonic game to date in all honesty. Plus, it didn't end with Super Sonic. Not that I don't like him, but it's just to predictable now.

Sonic battle's plot:

Tails: Sonic, this robot destroyed an entire civilization!

Sonic: Let's give it chaos emeralds!

In all honesty, I think this is the sort of plot I'd want in a Sonic game: a simple excuse plot with emphasis on character development.

Shadow is massively overpowered in this game, and I love the way the game knows it. All of Shadow's moves cost more than average to have Emerl use. The typical pursuit attack is some kind of axe kick, Shadow teleports across the screen and Blodia Kicks (what I call any massive diagonal kick) his way down.

Shadow is one of the easiest kills in the game to me.

0.0 Did Amy just reference Cream is going through puberty?!?!?! She's 6 for Christsakes!!!

Those are rabbit years.

[Sean]

Oh right

Not gonna write an essay on what this game's detractors have already said in this thread, but Sonic Battle depends entirely on repetition. Not only is there no strategy involved (no, not even if you tried, because using any attack other than spammed heavy attack is liable to get you killed in a matter of seconds, even at full health, so you better run the fuck away), but it's all the same shit over and over again in order to progress through the game. The majority of battles toss you against an opponent who has 5 lives and upon winning, you need to do it again, this time against 10 lives. It's the same fucking battle, why do I have to fight my opponent again? Imagine how you would feel if you had to play a single zone in the Genesis games four times in a row without actually intending to do so in the first place, that's how I felt every time I entered any battle in this game. I tried to measure how long it took for Tails to fight Gamma in his storyline - it was over 20 minutes because I had to stop and recuperate from pressing Right+B over and over again. Oh and it doesn't help that you have to fight like a billion Gamma copies in order to progress, why the hell is that Gamma fight near the end even necessary at all after I've already killed him 50 times?

Honestly, the fighting sucks. Characters are given a lot of abilities so you're tricked into thinking that the game has depth and strategy, when in fact heavy attack is the only ability you need to and, often, can use. I've beaten this game once before, and as this is my second go through the game (or it would have been, had I not given up already), but all that extra shit just does not work. I risk dying and getting my opponent ahead of me simply by trying to use some move that isn't my heavy attack, such as trying to 1-hit KO other characters with those lightning specials.

Playing Sonic Battle makes me feel like I'm playing through the entirety of Wacky Workbench twelve times in order to complete the game. It's just that abysmal.

[Sega DogTagz]

I’m not gonna lie and say camping on the heavy attacks won’t yield succsess, but some of you are making it sound like that is the only way to win. That is not the case. The heavy attack is just one of many tools in your arsenal. In retrospect, unless you have an overpowered gizoid, starting with the heavy attack is foolish because your just making it harder to land a 1 combo KO.

The most effective combo string in the game does not start with a heavy attack. It starts with a base attack 1. Behold

Base 1 > Base 2 > Base 3 > Heavy > Chase > Slam > Combo (before recovery)

This is practically a kill combo for any character in the game. You don’t need to spam the heavy attack to win. Com is too stupid to not run right into your combo chain, so its not like its difficult to land the initial hit. Many of the characters specials and fighting moves offer a great variety of ways to end your opponent.

On top of that, you have the Gizoid’s awakened moveset. (Not the death inducing combo cheat code). They offer some sick new play styles (and unlimited Ikaruga if you’re smart with it). Even this is rounded out by cards that let you customize specifics, like Gravity.

Edited April 18, 2009 by Sega DogTagz

[stublu]

Sonic Battle. Now THAT was a fun game, even if it did deviate from Sonic's norm. One time they did right by "broadening the market".

It was more than just the fighting, but the RPG elements that made it addictive. The game rewarded you for doing well - you got more skills and then the fights got more insane. The game was great. Never got to play it with a friend and battle each other though...

[The Adventurer]

I spent the greater part of a year on that game, trying to unlock all the ultimate skills. Absolutely impossible, but I had fun failing at it. Yes, the fights were repetitive and there wasn't enough of a challenge. So what? That just meant I got to kick as much ass as I wanted with Sonic, which is something I've always enjoyed doing. Plus, they brought out Chaos Zero, who doesn't get enough love.

I want to see Sonic Battle 2 on the DS(i?).

[Crystal Kingfisher]

If you thought that was funny...

Lost in translation, those were.

http://www.theghz.com/sonic/battle/battle.html

I never knew Sega was that perverted. I love Sega and I like sexual humor, but that just doesn't fit in with the Sonic games.

[Sega DogTagz]

I spent the greater part of a year on that game, trying to unlock all the ultimate skills. Absolutely impossible, but I had fun failing at it.

I wonder if anyone was able to gain every card in the game. I’m not into that sort of thing, but for all the time I spent racking up rare cards, there are just as many there left to find.

Its also kinda disappointing that they put a cap on the Gizoid’s power. I already have more awakened moves than I can equip and there are still a ton more of them out there. They made it impossible to build a complete replica if the Final Boss Gizoid (although mine had gotten kinda close).

[Sean]

I’m not gonna lie and say camping on the heavy attacks won’t yield succsess, but some of you are making it sound like that is the only way to win. That is not the case. The heavy attack is just one of many tools in your arsenal. In retrospect, unless you have an overpowered gizoid, starting with the heavy attack is foolish because your just making it harder to land a 1 combo KO.

Spamming heavy attack is the fastest and most guaranteed way to win the game, and frankly, that's basically what managed to get me through it during my first run, because I wanted the game to end as fast as possible but somehow couldn't pull away. I tried using a variety of other fighting styles, but before I even got halfway through the game, it was frustrating and exhausting enough as it was.

[SuperStingray]

It really depends on the character. Some are more useful with uppercuts, some with shots, some with air and some with set. Frankly, I never really got much use out of the heavy attack outside of Knuckles.

[goku262002]

Sonic Battle is a fighting game in the Sonic the Hedgehog series' date=' developed by Sonic Team and published either by Sega (in Japan) or THQ (outside of Japan) for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. This is the second Sonic fighting game, the first being the 3D arcade game Sonic the Fighters.[/quote']

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgyGLvhFUds&

Does SSMB like sonic battle? Personally I love this game it doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the "Sawnik sykle" games. it was a fun, sort-of new take on sonic fighting games and its a shame it didn't continue I replay it every once in a while. Yeah it had another new character but at least emerl did one thing that other character's who "died" didn't: He stayed fucking dead! Of course now hes got a clone/rebuilt version of him named gemerl who acts more like metal sonic then emerl. and there was that whole "sonic chronicles" thing...

What are your thoughts on sonic battle? liked it or hated it?

[jonathan]

I enjoyed it. It was NOT perfect but an enjoyable portable fighting game which had a detailed storyline. Not as good as Sonic Advance one or three but I would say it is the third best Sonic game for the Game boy Advance.

Edited January 27, 2011 by jonathan

[Core]

I enjoyed it. It was NOT perfect but an enjoyable portable fighting game which had a detailed storyline.

This, basically. I also liked the customization of Emerl's moves; that was an nice concept.

[Vec]

Yeah, I had fun playing this game. I also remember that the ending almost made me tear

[Octarine]

I can't say much about Battle's gameplay other than that I enjoyed it, since I'm both inexperienced with and terrible at most fighting games. It was an interesting twist on the more standard fighting game formula, at least to me; again, I'm not too familiar with fighting games, so maybe Battle's schtick was stolen from an obscure PS1 title or something. I'd never know. Still, it was fun, it allowed for four players and it let most of the characters use their trademark abilities in interesting ways. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel (or at least a game that borrows Battle's core mechanics) with an expanded roster someday.

The single-player mode, though; I've got plenty to say about that. It got a lot of things right, but it also made a few head-smashingly huge mistakes. Being able to level up and customize Emerl with different characters' abilities was a lot of fun, and giving every character their own story mode was an excellent idea. On the other hand, it was exactly the right combination of tedious and difficult to make me want to destroy my GBA on a regular basis while playing it. I mean, really, why do I need to fight everyone twice? I don't think anyone was expecting a super-long single-player experience, so it really wasn't necessary to go to such ridiculous lengths to provide one.

Battle is also second only to Heroes when it comes to character exaggeration, which is especially irritating when you consider what a great opportunity for character insight it was. A dialogue-loaded campaign for every character is a dream come true to a story buff like me, but Battle's warped interpretations of the characters tainted things a bit. I dealt with it, like I dealt with the similar problem in Chronicles, but it was sort of a disappointment.

[Glenn]

I adored it... right up until I got stuck. And I'm still stuck to this day.

Gameplay-wise, there's little to like. Everybody has a handful of moves, all mapped to the same buttons, and fights often descend into button-mashing or move-spamming. The difficulty also takes a sudden climb after the first few stories, making it quite a jarring experience. Emerl is a nice concept and retrofitting him with a bunch of new moves can be entertaining, but it takes too long to custom anything worthwhile and his early fights are usually the most frustrating. Also, in such a huge handheld game, it seems almost cruel to artificially lengthen the gameplay by force-repeating some fights over and over.

But the story (or at least, as far as I've gotten with it) features rich detail and great character moments. The graphics are gorgeous, some of the special moves spectacular and, as usual, the soundtrack is catchy as heck. It also gets bonus points for being another new aspect to the franchise, the first fighting game outside of the arcade and another book in Sonic's ever-expanding library.

One day, I'll finish it. And I'll enjoy it, too. Perhaps part of me is somewhat bitter: I was strongly recommended it, told it was one of the greatest Sonic games ever, and shelled out a large sum of money for a complete copy. Not to belittle anybody who thinks highly of it, and no offence is intended.

I should have remembered all opinion is subjective, I suppose!

[ilcane87]

Even if it's a fighting game, I consider it one of my favourite Sonic games of all time, just behind Sonic Adventure 2.

The character sprites were exagerately good, the gameplay was addicting and the single player story was superb: almost every character had spot-on characterization, there was a great balance of light-heartedness and drama, and excellent music too.

Here's hoping they recruit the same developers to make a worthy sequel some day...

[-Mark-]

It's funny, Sonic Battle seems to fall in with the other Sonic games that came out around the 2003-2004 time (Heroes, Advance 3), in that it's the kind of game I loved at the time (maybe less so Advance 3), but just can't seem to go back and enjoy much these days. Not to say I dislike it now, per se, but it's not the sort of thing I'd go back to.

That could be in part to the game's length, though. It's one of few Sonic games that are fairly inaccessible for short bursts (unless you just do random fights). The story is definitely the best aspect of the game. Multiplayer was great fun, but Nintendo had to be annoying and get rid of the GBA link cable port for the DS.

So, yeah. Great story, great soundtrack. Gameplay is annoyingly repetitive, though.

Also, fun fact; in the Japanese version, when you set the text to English (Yeah, Japanese Sonic games tend to have the English text option already there... and we get delays why? Hell, my Japanese copy of Advance 2 has all the European languages in it too), Rouge says "You dirty bastard!" at one point. Which the final English release changes to "How dare you!".

[Dr. Crusher]

I like it.

It's a fun little game for me, I'm always playing it at some point on road trips and the like. Still tend to play the Advances (and Rushes if we're counting DS Sonics) more, but Battle is still a jolly good show. Admittedly I find some of the character balances to be... far from even, but nevertheless I'm satisfied enough. I'm not usually much of a customising device person, but it's great to continuously edit Emerl's skills and making him the ultimate killing machine fighting robot. Even today I'm occasionally having a go at trying to get those pesky Ultimate Cards. This ultimate annihilator business is some serious s***, you know.

The characters were... half and half. Some were perfect, others were not. So you've got Amy, who's even more insane and annoying than she was in Heroes. (Now she's so delusional that she's able to make random "dream clones" of Sonic?) And Knuckles, even for his standards (and even if this is indeed a fighting game), is a little too rage-prone and is too eager to immediately destroy anything he doesn't like. On the other hand, Shadow seems fair enough (for once), and Robotnik for the most part is the same wacky and heartless scheming life-ruiner that we I all know and love. (Even if it bit him in the ass as usual,

him turning Emerl insane and indirectly forcing Sonic himself to kill the robot

was one of my personal highlights. Too bad for Emerl that Sonic's punch did indeed have "juice".) Emerl's ending was good in itself as well. And I'm still pissed off that the Advance 3-made G-Mel still hasn't returned since.

Even if half of them had similar guitar riffs, I still liked most of the music. The Colosseum and the Holy Summit Hub are merely two of my favourites.

I will make one confession however... I hate to sound as if I previously had a "Shadow fanatic-esque mind-set", but back in 2004, one of the only reasons why I got Battle was just because Chaos was in it. Yeah. I don't know if any of you know this, but I'm a raging Chaos fanboy, which is ironic giving that he's the first in the line of those giant b**tard monsters, and we all know how I feel about the rest of them. Of course it turns out he does absolutely nothing in the plot apart from just sitting in the Holy Summit's frozen crater and being a fighting opponent, but for me it was still good enough. Too bad he doesn't show up nowadays...

Oh and along with Colours,

I enjoy the fact that Sonic doesn't go Super Saiyan. I don't care what anyone says, I'd rather Sonic do as he did here and use all his strength and skill to beat the living s*** out of his opponents than just half-heartedly dash slowly through the boss' eyeball and float in a bland void with no interesting activity.

Edited January 27, 2011 by Dr. Crusher

[Blacklightning]

3 hit combo.

Strong attack.

Chase attack.

If you're Tails or Cream, aircombo them to death with one button.

Repeat until dead 10 times.

Sonic Battle is a noble attempt at a Sonic brawler to be sure, but the sheer lack of attack variety kills it. I've managed basic combos between some normal moves and specials, and some absolutely game-breaking move combinations with Emerl, but it's pretty rare to find any incentive to use them - almost everything you do revolves around the aformentioned steps, like a game of Simon Says where the challenges never change. Needless to say, it gets fucking old really fast, which is sad because it could have been so easily avoided if the movesets were bigger and more unique to the character. That's to say nothing of the difficulty curve at times, specifically Rouge, where some fights throw you enemies with absurd reaction times that are bad enough when you're evenly matched, then throws you into a 3-on-1 disadvantage just to emphasize exactly how fucked you are.

I'm not trying to say Battle is a terrible game, I'm just bitter because it should've been a lot better than the way it turned out, and could've been with a relatively slight upgrade from what it is right now. Emerl was a pretty sound concept for what it's worth, though, just needed a bit of proper balancing and some actual consistency in regards to which moves you learn (seriously, why not just make a copy ability instead of giving you moves at complete random?)

[RidersDX]

I liked Battle, but sometimes, I felt the fighting system got too repetitive due to its simplicity. And yeah, I agree with the person that complained about how you have to fight everything twice. That's overdose right there. The highlight of Battle though was definitely Emerl's part, I LOVED customizing his moveset, was a whole lot of fun.

[Sean]

Sonic Battle is a horrible game. Much worse than even the Advance series, as it boils down to repeating the same heavy attack + jump to wall + knock down over and over. In story mode, every single time you defeat an enemy, you're forced to do the entire fight over, but with double the lives. In battles that have multiple CPU, they all have a habit of teaming up with each other and going after only you. Forcing Emerl upon the player is also a mistake, as you are likely not going to have any good battle cards in the beginning of the game, which makes fighting opponents like Knuckles fucking tedious and extremely time consuming. The music rapes the ear like no other, and that piss-poor excuse of a guitar they tried to emulate on the GBA quite literally sounds like a dying cat being mauled by a rottweiler.

This is without a doubt one of the worst games in the series, and perhaps one of the worst I have ever played. I'm not exaggerating, I am so happy I never paid for this crap; it makes my copy of Sonic Advance 3 look like gold.

[DarkLight]

I found Battle good, but it really is a forgettable game. Playing through 8 different stories only made the gameplay a bit stale for me. I found it very easy to beat, one the easiest Sonic games I've ever played even, but that just makes it feel underwhelming to me. Getting up-grades for Emerl was while decent at first, it got tiresome when trying to get the more rarer ones which you could only get by fighting more opponents and feel lucky you'll get something good. The whole game feels like a strange combination of an RPG and a beat'um up sort of game. I'm probably the only one who did not find the story very engaging and Emerl didn't do much for me as a character so I did not feel bad when he died. I swear, I practically skipped most of his goodbye speech to everyone waiting for him to die already.

Edited January 29, 2011 by DragonSoul