Customer Reviews

Sonic Battle

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

That Dr. Eggman is at it again with more plots to overthrow the world. Meanwhile, Sonic is wasting away a boring afternoon at the beach and finds a top-secret super robot that can learn its enemy's moves. Is it the perfect weapon to foil Dr. Eggman or a ticking timebomb that will destroy the world? Of course, if you don't want all that plot getting in the way of your good time, you and three friends can choose from eight well-known franchise characters (or select your customized robot from Story mode) and duke it out over link cables in true Smash Bros. style. The characters' unique fighting techniques enhance the enjoyable fast-paced action in Sonic Battle's pseudo-3D arenas. While it's definitely one of the best implementations of the z-axis yet to appear on the GBA, the camera doesn't always rotate when it should. A big part of strategy unintentionally becomes staying out of blind spots.
The game's strongest point is its graphics, which look great on the GBA and scale up beautifully when played through the Game Boy Player for the GameCube. Music and sound effects are whimsical and provide appropriate accompaniment to the action. The controls are intuitive and well executed, except for the blocking command. It's annoyingly difficult to time blocks correctly, but as Mel (the cook on Alice) says, "The best defense is a good offense." The biggest problem with Sonic Battle is the poor game design in Story mode. Earning Skill Points, and thereby new abilities for Emerl the Robot, is a grueling ordeal. Most battles reward Emerl with a single Skill Point. All the cool abilities cost upwards of 20 Skill Points, leading to a detrimental imbalance in the effort/reward system. A good game will make players work for their upgrades, but Sonic Battle asks too much. Still, the game can be enjoyed in multiplayer mode with the eight preexisting characters until you put in the long hours to build up Emerl.

(How long have a played this game, I think the record place said 96 hours or something like that!) I was suprised to hear that Sonic was getting a fighter for the Gameboy Advance, quite different from the "run to the goal" Advance series. Personaly, I like fighting games (not the bloody ones, but you know, the Super Smash Bros. types), and had very high expectations for this game. It satisified them with high action fighting and a challening story mode. In this game you can play as a variety of characters from the Sonic universe: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge, Amy, Cream, and the unlockabel E-102, and Chaos. You can also play as Emerl. One thing I like about this game is that there seems to be no "Strongest" character (excuding a super experianced Emerl), it all depends on fighing style (Tails and Cream work best for me). The fact you can actuall heal is cool too, as is the fact you can customize your special attacks. In Story Mode, you have to follow the story line and battle set characters, in battle, you earn cards whihc represent different attacks from the characters you fought, and skill points. If you press R to go to the customize screen you can teach Emerl these attackes if you have enough skill points. There are even altra rare ultimate attackes! When you first boot up Sonic Battle, you can only play "Sonic's story" in Story Mode, once you beat it however, you earn Tails "episode", then Rouge's episode, ect. Every character has an episode except E-102 and Chaos. Battle Mode is my fav. Play a battle on any stage, with any characters, with many customizable rules. Challenge mode is where you battle five set rounds to earn the most piont possible. Minigames are also included, though only one is single player. My only complaint is that you can't do the "virtuall training" you encounter in Emerl's episode with anyone but him. The reason I gave duribility (can you even see that rating, it made me do it and educational value [which this game does not have] when I reviewed it - it didn't make me with any other game, weird) 3 stars is that it has a variety of bad gliches, having special attacks and healing stop working is the most often occuring one. Once however, it almost deleted all my data by itself. But, these gliches could be (and probably are) a result of my playing for 96 or so hours. i recommend this game to anyone who owns a Gameboy Advance, whether you're a sonic fan or not!

This game rocks! Now let my tell you why.

This game is very similar to one of my alltime favorite games, Super Smash Bros. Melee. Only its characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog games! Also, when you lose a life, you dont fall off the screen like in SSBM. You just fall on the ground and dissapear. Buy this game! Its awesome!

As a former video game zealot from my childhood and who became increasingly disillusioned at how grim, and violent that so many video games have become (Men of Honor? Give me a break! That's just something to turn our kids into possible soldiers) but 2003's "Sonic Battle" however is a major relief and gives me hope of more of the harmless fun that made video games so much fun and great escape entertainment!

While the games I played were historically adventure games (which I generally prefer), this game combines the adventure genre with battle genre and this game almost combines the X vs. X styles of "Mortal Kombat" minus the blood with the light-hearted fun of the Sonic games of old and the results are absolutely amazing! The music is awesome as well and if I could hook it up to a stereo, one could possibly get better music than what radio stations can offer these days.

There are many modes. The first is the story mode where the game starts in Emerald Town with Sonic and Tails finding a mysterious robot on Emerald Beach. Little do they know that this robot is actually a product of the evil Dr. Eggman (Dr. Robotnik from the old games but now known as Eggman) who threw it out believing that it was just a piece of junk. But this robot is powered by Chaos Emeralds. The game just gets more fun from here onwards. More characters eventually come in including some that I've never even seen or heard of before.

Battle Mode is a different mode where you can select any character to play including 'evil' characters to battle against three competitors including 'clones'. "Battle Mode" can be played alone or against other players as well. This one is a lot fun.

Challenge Mode involves making lots of points when taking into account how quickly the competitor is defeated, how much damage is done, rate of offensive attacks hitting it's target, etcetera.

Mini-games is a totally separate area from the otehr modes in which miniature games are played. The only solitary player game in this area is the Mine-Dig starring Knuckles the Echidna and it is played in the same what that the computer game Minesweeper is played in which Knuckles must uncover the squares but not the ones containing mines.

"Sonic Battle" is a welcome return for my favorite video game franchise ever. Go and buy it today! Even adults might enjoy this game as well.

When I first got a chance to play this game, I thought after seeing the intro (which was really none) that this was going to suck. Boy this shut me up. In this game, you can battle up to 3 other people with punches, kicks, and if you're Shadow (who really is something else), fire energy pulses. The action is fast-paced, but one problem I had is that the special attack meter takes too long to fill, the AI seems to hunt the player down every game, and its relatively easy to defeat an opponent with a combo into a wall-then slam to the ground-then a knockback attack. But either way, this game is rather addictive and worth the buy.

I've had this game 5 days now, and I've played it as much as possible. Battle is what Sonic Battle is all about! Lots of action!

Sonic Battle is a new fighting game by Sonic Team. I have been interested in it ever since it was shown at E3 2003. When it came out in Japan, I made sure to get my hands on it.

Graphics: The graphics are actually quite good. The character sprites are detailed and well animated plus there are even some cool polygonal environament effects. 4/5

Sound: The sound effects (especially the voice overs in the Japanese version) are very good. The only problems I have are that the music is isn't all that great and the English voiceovers are annoying. Normally, the music in a Sonic game is good. In here, it just this awful, old-school MIDI sound (well, okay, maybe I just don't like the music at all). Some of the tunes are pretty catchy though, such as the practice menu music or the Library music. 3/5

Gameplay: Oh my God, this game is lots of fun. It brings back alot of memories of Power Stone on the Dreamcast, although the combo system in Sonic Battle is deeper. The multiplayer battles and minigames are fun but mastering all the skills for the robot Emerl is even more fun and adds tons o replayability to the game. You see, you can let him learn the skills of all the other characters in Sonic Battle. The skill system in SB is somewhere between the AI training in Virtua Fighter 4 and Soul Calibur's weapon master mode. Playing challenge mode is also pretty fun. 5/5

Overall: Should you buy this game? If you like fighting games and/or Sonic games you will DEFINITELY want to play this game. It's not just some simple button masher but has alot of strategy.

Final Score: Thus is a good game. But after awhile, after you've mastered all the skills and played the heck out of the multiplayer, it becomes one of those games that you should only play every once in a while. 4/5

My very faveorite Sonic game for gameboy advance! This is not your normal "Run through the zone and get to the goal ring" Sonic game. It is a battling game. It has tons of great adventures. The graphics are awesome, and so is the sound. There is a new Sonic charecter named "Emerl" the robot. You can customize his fighting skills and make him very powerful. This game is another A+ Sonic game to add to the collection!

The "mysary fighter" is chaos.He is very slow.But Emeral is a robot that can learn opponets moves.It is the best game i ever played.Play as Sonic,Emeral Amy,Cream,Tails,Rouge,Knuckles,and Shadow.

This is a fun, action-packed game that I really liked . Sonic and Shadow are obviously the best characters to choose. If you can't buy you should at least reant it. Kicking every body's butt rules! You can't stop playing it.