Sonic Battle

[Andrew]

Sonic Battle

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This new offering from Sega is a “Beat-Em’ Up” Super Smash Brothers style. But while it does take large strides in trying to achieve it, Sega unfortunately falls short of its expectations where glaringly obvious problems are found. The battles are quite a lot of fun, but soon become quite stale. But lets take a more in depth look at Sonic Battle.

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The main heart of this game is the Story Mode, the first chapter of this story is simply entitled, Sonic the Hedgehog, the second is Tails “Miles“ Prowler and so on. It starts out that Professor Eggman has created a delightful new yellow Robot, which Sonic creatively names “Emerl” because it consumes Chaos Emeralds and it has rebelled against its owner. Next thing you know Sonic has found it on his beach and he and Tails set off to discover all they can about this new yellow Robot. You then have to battle from different points of view such as Sonic, Tails, and so on, but most disappointingly, Emerl. But we’ll talk about him more in depth later. Basically, you use a cursor to move to hotspots on the screen where you will then engage in another battle.

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Now the actual combat system looks and plays pretty well on the Gameboy Advance, but its only problem is that there is no “Depth” within the game. When moving quickly, its sometimes possible to be what appears to be right next to your opponent, but when you attack, you’re hitting nothing. Each of the characters have three different moves. When you start a battle or die, you firstly choose your Special Ground attack, there is a beam attack, powerful punch, or a bomb attack. Then you choose your special aerial attack, which is a slightly altered one of the first, and the third selection is the move you deem unnecessary for this bout. However, when you die, you can once again select which 2 out of the three moves you want. You then in battle use your special moves, and the b button to attack or use “Smash” attacks. You have a lifebar and when that runs out, it will end in you dying. Most matches in the game need 10 Kos to win. And with the inclusion of the healing system, you can expect a match takes a long time. When you press and hold the shield button, a data ring (Think Digimon) appears around your character and they then proceed to heal themselves.

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Emerl is a yellow robot, really, just created to watch attacks, learn them, and then reproduce them, making him a glorified photocopier. He starts out as the most pitiful creature with enough Skill Points just to stay up and running, every battle he is in, earns him about 1 extra skill point. However if you have seen an attack enough times, he Data Captures it, and through a menu you can customize his attacks and movements from any other Character he’s seen. This is a great concept, and it could work excellently, and holds a lot of weight in the game as the progressive building of your ultimate Emerl but at the rate Emerl grown his skill points, unless you’re exceptionally lucky, or exceptionally… patient and skilled by the time you build up enough points to enable him with a new move, he’ll still just plain suck. Simply because of the high skill costs of every move, including a basic jab costing 29 skill points. And when he starts with about 40 Skill points, all taken up, and you only get 1 skill point per battle, you’re going to be very frustrated with Emerls basic skills. Emerl starts off with a basic copy of Sonic’s skills, but “Incomplete” as his data chips say. So he moves slower than every character, has no knockback or “Smash attack” which every other character has and has simply no special attacks, until you earn them. By which time you’ll have gnarled fingers. It really is a great concept, and I was thrilled to find out he was customizeable so I was thinking “Cream’s jump, and Tail’s Mid Air B, with E-102’s recovery, Shadow’s Special Bomb….” But simply, it doesn’t happen, because with every Chaos Emerald, you get an amazing 10 more skill points. And you have to defeat Knuckles 20 times before he gives it to you the first and only Chaos Emerald he has.

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And the way he moves, good luck, your only real hope if your “Overdrive” bar above your lifebar. Its green and gradually charges up when you heal or give or take normal attacks. Then you glow and the next special move you do, if it connects will almost certainly KO the victim.

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All of the other characters you use at one point or another are Sonic, Tails, Amy, Cream, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge, E-102 and the unfortunate Emerl. All the characters have the Beam, Punch or Bomb attack, and all have their own strengths and weaknesses, but it seems unbalanced. E-102 is probably the slowest character, but his healing is superior to all others. But Shadow stands out as incredibly powerful, and battling against the NPC in Battle Mode, he simply wipes the floor with his just wonderful attacks, speed and whatever else he has.

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Sonic battle also has a Training Facility, which is ok… but not great, Minigames, which cannot be played alone such as Soniclash, Challenge Mode where you are outnumbered and have to fight progressively harder opponents and the battle mode where you can battle your friends on Sonic battle. It is at this time unknown if all need their own cartridge, or if all can play on one.

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Sonic battle was a great concept gone wrong with its Story Mode. Still, it has a great deal of life in battling your friends in the minigames and battle mode, so you can have showdowns between Amy and Rouge, to discover, who’s the strongest hussy in the land and finish off that classic Shadow vs Sonic battle (Shadow all the way!). The game is bright, vibrant and has a good deal of character, and will become a favourite of those wanting a quick blast on their Gameboy. The depth hoped for in Emerl is squandered but hopefully, before its US release, the story mode will undergo tweaking, (I doubt it) to make it less frustrating.

I give it a 7.5/10

Edited to make the links to the pics work

[Razola]

You've confirmed my biggest fear: That the sprites in 3D arenas would make attacking hard. The concept sounds sweet, but the characters should've been rendered or done in a Bomberman kind of way. Or maybe an isometric view.