Sonic Battle

"There are no losers in Sonic Battle!"

Sonic Battle!! Okay I must admit that just sounds strange but this is a nice game, if you are interested in something other than just running forward. As the name implies this is a fighting game with Sonic characters tossed into the mix, with a great story line and voila, you get Sonic Battle! I really did not know what to expect when I played this game but there was only one thing to do which was play, and so I did.

Story 10/10
Is this the first good Sonic game that has a story that does not involve Robotnik, now named Eggman going around and taking all seven of the Chaos emeralds? It may be, but that will not matter once you pick up the game. When you first start you find Emerl, a robot with untapped potential that has been abandoned by Eggman and left to rust at the beach. Luckily Sonic finds him and uses him as a sparing partner. You soon learn that Emerl emulates or mimics the abilities and personalities of the people around him. So he is a mix of Sonic and friends. You play as different Sonic characters throughout the game and sometimes you even play as Emerl. You basically go around fighting to learn new abilities and to find all the chaos Emeralds in order to awaken Emerl’s hidden power. (Sounds similar to Dragonball Z.) And of course there are obstacles you must overcome before that happens, and along the way Emerl emulates more and more abilities, so the better your victory the stronger and faster Emerl will learn.

Gameplay 8/10
I am very addicted to this game, the controls and the game play just blend in so great they make me want to play more. Using four buttons you go around kicking but. There is jump, chain combination, special attack, and block which if you hold down turns into heal. All the characters have nine different specials, but you can only use three at a time. One for the ground, one for the air, and one to counter attack someone else’s attack. You just beat them up until the goal has been set, the best way to do that is to juggle them and not let them him the ground. But of course not all characters play the same so different characters have different ways to win which is good. What would be the point of everyone fighting like Sonic? For instance Sonic is fast and has great speed, so his healing power is lower because if he had high healing he would be almost god like. White the slow robot has high power, slow speed, and fast healing because with statistics like those you will find yourself healing a lot with the robot. And if you play as Emerl you can mix and match every attack and attribute you have emulated. Which I believe is around two hundred, so you have a lot of options and you also have three styles of Emerl so that you do not have to change each and every statistic depending on your opponent you can just change his style.

Graphics 6/10
Nothing looks amazing but the characters are well done, and I believe they are taken from an earlier Sonic Advance game but that is acceptable. Each character has many attacks that are easily distinguishable from one another giving you proper time to react. The out of battle graphics are nothing to brag about though. The are just simple designs that you can not interact with, and even in battle there is nothing to snazzy, just some walls and more walls.

Sound 9/10
The sound in this game is great, you will enjoy the sound. It does not matter where you are in the game, you can be reading text, fighting, or just walking around aimlessly you will learn to love the music in this game and their sound effects are very nice. You will no when a character is defeated because of their sound, and you will also know when they are powering up because of their grunting and the annoying healing sound that is in the game. There are some nice touches done in battle to make you want to play again and again. And you will be playing again and again.

Replay Ability 10/10
This may just be the longest Sonic game (not including the Adventures or Hero games) if you play it from start to finish without trying to get everything. Not only that but each character you play with takes about thirty minutes to an hour of playing time. And even more if you try to unlock all of their abilities. Even if you do tire of the game there are many mini games to be played and there are about three multi-player mini games that you can link up with your friends to play. And there is a practice mode. But if you like Chao that is bad because they are not in this game.
Not only is there much to do after finishing the main part of the game, there are also challenges with high scores so you can brag to your friends, that is if you have any left after humiliating that in this game.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/12/04