Sonic Battle

"Sega's return to glory"

I'm a person who grew up on Sonic. Back in the Genesis days I used to play these games for hours and had much fun. However when Sega started making games for Nintendo systems, they seemed to have lost their spark. I mean the Sonic Advance games were OKAY, but not great. They tried to recapture the old-school 2D style that I know and love but just didn't do it they way they used to. So I needed a good title to keep my faith in Sega and Sonic Team. Sonic Battle did just that.

Now while it's not the great platforming game they needed, it is a Sonic game and a very good one at that. I always liked the concept of a Sonic fighting game and never got a chance to play Sonic Championship, so I made sure to grab this.

The Good:

There are a lot of pluses, but I think I'll begin with the minor details. First, Sega did something in this and the last game or two that I wish companies did a while back. They let you choose between English and Japanese in the Japanese version. Now Sonic Battle is more than likely going to be released stateside and in Europe, but just in case something went wrong and it didn't, it would be nice to have that in there for the people that will have to import it to play it. At least they can play in English. Now I'll go to the advantage of making this a fighting game. This is a for fun game, really. I feature the most popular character as all playable which is hard to do in a platformer.(unless you divide them into teams like in Sonic Heroes) In a fighting game, you can have many characters playable. This game has 10: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Cream, Rouge, Shadow, a new character, Emerl, and two hidden characters.

Now lets talk about this new character. Emerl is another plus for the game. If you've ever played Megaman or Kirby, you'd know that you can gain powers from enemies in those games. Well Sega took this idea and made it more advanced. Emerl can learn moves from battles. Every time he fights, he'll get a randomly chosen move from each other fighter in the battle and those can be loaded into his memory. Battle also increases Skill Points which you need to load moves.

Now what really makes this game enjoyable is the story mode. Some fighting games just put you up against random characters with a half done storyline. Sonic Battle has a well developed story with vibrant character personalities. The dialouge had me laughing more than a few times with how Knuckles falls sucker for Eggman's tricks, Amy's obsession with Sonic, and various other things.

Some people make the mistake of thinking this is a B button masher. If you only press B the whole game, you'll NEVER beat it. You have to know when to use specials and when to block. You also have to heal appropriately. Some people also think that since you can use specials at any time that you can just do that and take away more damage cheaply. This is also wrong, especially against the computer. The computer will start blocking specials if you use them too much. It takes skill to fight effectively.

The Bad:

With the limited characters, you'll find yourself fighting the same fighters over and over in Story Mode. It might get repetitive, but when you fight with a different character, you have to use a different style, so that might help you get through it. Also Shadow is extremely strong and extremely fast. This makes him a pain to fight against. He's easily the best non-boss in the game, so that lack of balance might hurt you. There also are some extremely challenging battles to do with characters that aren't that good. *coughKnuxcough* Sega should have balanced the characters better, although they did a better job than some games...

The Ratings:

Graphics: 7- pretty much what other GBA Sonic games have. Good style, nothing TOO impressive, the animations are good enough for the most part.

Sound: 8- the sound effects are good and the music is catchy. It's decent enough for battling, but not super pump-up music. Great overall, though.

Gameplay: 6- control is a little funny for some characters. There is a good selection of game modes including multiplayered mini-games.

Line Span: 6- well, it's a fighting game, so you'll come back to play it once in a while like you would any fighting game. The story mode adds a bit to it and it'll take a while to get the best moves for Emerl and the room to use them.

Overall: 7- a solid title from Sega. It's just the game they needed to get back on the path to greatness. Lets hope they can continue this with platformers.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/12/03