Review #170: Sonic Battle

 The GBA ain't dead. It ain't dead!

 Back in the PS2 era, when Sega abandoned ship with the Dreamcast and became a third party developer/publisher, Sonic's games had hit an all-time low. I mean, Shadow the Hedgehog driving a bike and wielding guns. However, the GBA was graced with some phenomenal Sonic games. It also received Sonic Battle, a 4 player fighting game based on the Sonic franchise.

 There's four main modes in the game, Story, Battle, Challenge and Mini-games. Sadly, Mini-games require three other players, so I couldn't try them. Battle mode is self explanatory, you and up to three other players duke it out in any of the game's arenas, and you can tweak the rules. Challenge Mode is an Arcade-like ladder, but it's actually a real bore, as you have to score 10 points on every stage, it gets pretty boring really fast. Then there's Story Mode, which has Emerl, a Gizoid(A sort of robot) fall on Sonic's town, and Sonic and friends make it their job to raise them... and eventually collect all 8 Chaos Emeralds. The story is pretty dumb, characters are badly written as well, but at least it has a story mode, and it's pretty lengthy. Sometimes it suffers from the same fate as the Challenge Mode, this mode can get long in the tooth, particularly when they make you fight the same enemy more two times in a row.

 The game offers some neat twists to the arena fighting, for starters, each character has access to 6 different special moves, however, you can only equip 2 before starting a match, and every time you die, you are allowed to switch them up before respawning. You fight by using the A button to land your basic combo, although you can use the directional pad for strong attacks or uppercuts, B allows you to jump, L is used for your special moves, and R is used to block/parry or heal if held. Receiving enough damage, parrying hits or healing also charges a green bar above the health bar, once filled, it will make your next Special move a 1-hit kill, if it isn't blocked or parried. The developers managed to make a pretty solid system despite the GBA's lack of buttons, that's not to speak of the game itself, which is fast and pretty fun, however, the game doesn't feel very balanced, Shadow and Chaos are incredibly strong, Gamma can be a pain in the neck, and Cream's only saving grace is her heal.

 One thing that did bother me was the camera, fights take place on rather large 3D arenas witch multiple objects, usually in the form of walls, and characters can be completely covered by these walls. The game allows you to turn the camera while blocking, but in the heat of battle it can be hard to pull off, and the camera will revert to its default position whenever you respawn. The obstacles, walls and platform in the arenas are appreciated, but they shouldn't have made the walls so damn high!

 The previously named Emerl is unique among the other characters due to the fact that you can customize him, which sounds really cool, but it's a bit of a chore. Firstly, getting moves from the other characters is completely random, fighting a particular character ensures that you'll get one of their moves, but here's the kicker... you can get repeat move cards. It actually makes a bit of sense, since you could, if you have friends that own the game, trade moves with your friends, but seeing how I couldn't, it made it fairly annoying on my end. Another issue I had, is that grinding for skill points, the ones that allow you to equip different moves, takes a long time. You can only earn them in story mode, and in 1, 2, 5 and 10 increments, and moves can take up anywhere from 5 to 30 skill points. It also makes Story mode a bit of a pain when you get to the forced Emerl fights, a poorly equipped Emerl(Be it due to luck, since you couldn't find good cards or lack of skill points to equip them) can have a hard time on some fights. So... yes, it's a good idea, you can make a Emerl with the best moves from every character, even switch up his battle pose and colors! But making a custom-tailored Emerl takes a while.

 The game looks beautiful, not only do the sprites look very stylish and vibrant, the animations are, mostly, really good. Stages are fully rendered in 3D, and I think it's one of the best uses of 3D I've seen on the system. The music is pretty forgettable, and the sound effects lack a certain oomph, truth be told, I found myself playing with the system muted and my own background music... except when fighting the cheap, cheap Gamma, who likes to self-destruct, but he's at least nice enough to tell you when he's gonna explode.

 I think my biggest issue with Sonic Battle is the point in time I chose to play it in. Now a days, nobody uses their GBAs or Link Cables anymore, so since I didn't have other people to play the Battle mode with or to trade my repeated cards, it wasn't as fun as it could've been. Regardless, it is pretty fun when brawling just for the sake of battling, all 10 characters are pretty unique, and the fighting system is pretty solid.
 6.0 out of 10.