Fight on
Upon first hearing about Sonic Battle, many gaming fans thought it would be Sega's version of Super Smash Brothers, but this is quite untrue. In fact, Sonic Battle shares a lot more in common with Capcom's cult classic Power Stone - 3D arenas and four fighters, but that's where the similarities stop. The major difference is that Power Stone was a good game - Sonic Battle is not.
The main problem with Sonic Battle is the combat system. Not only is it overly simplistic, but it's seriously lacking in depth and challenge. Once you pick your character (8 of the usual suspects, and one hidden), you'll have to assign one of your three special attacks to ground, aerial or block. This doesn't give you much flexibility - the only difference between a move on the ground and in the air is that you are limited to performing that move either on the ground or in the air. Outside of their special moves, the fighters have a very limited array of moves, and there are no power ups to mix things up. Balance or lack thereof is another major problem that plagues Sonic Battle's fighting system. Some of the characters are a lot better than others, and some even have unbreakable combos, which is enough to cause any serious fighting game fan to flick the off switch.
One slightly redeeming feature of the game comes from the one customizable character in the game - a robot that can learn the moves of any fighter, and you get to choose which ones he uses. The unfortunate thing is that you have to play through Sonic Battle's extremely dull Story Mode. The Story Mode attempts to give the player some sort of reason for fighting a series of battles while getting moves to customize the robot character. The story itself isn't the least bet compelling and is blatantly repetitive. In fact, in some sequences, the characters just seem to say things like "Say, that fight was fun, let's do the exact same thing in another location". It doesn't take long for this repetition to grate.
Sonic Battle features the standard Battle and Challenge modes, neither of which really feed any sort of excitement into the experience. Battle Mode can be played with up to four players over the link cable, but the multiplayer experience is somewhat flawed due to the serious balance issues. Finally, Sonic Battle features a couple of extra mini games - one of which can be used with one cart between four GBAs - but these don't offer anything substantially good.
Black Eyes
Graphical presentation is something of a mixed bag in Sonic Battle. 3D on the Game Boy Advance is always a nice achievement, and it does look pretty here. Sonic Team decided to restrict the characters to being sprites and this 2D/3D mishmash gives the game a very tacky look. Sonic Battle has a solid framerate, which is more than can be said for most games on the GBA.
Sonic Battle provides a reasonable soundtrack despite the limitations of the cartridge. While the game cannot compete with the (admittedly terrible) voice acting of its next generation counterparts, Sonic Battle does provide the odd tidbit of speech through the game's story mode.
Did he just say "What's a Battle?"
Ultimately, Sonic Battle is a disappointing experience. While it isn't Sonic's first foray into the genre of fighting games, it certainly isn't his best. Sonic Battle is ruined by its overly simplistic and poorly balanced fighting system. A solid Story Mode could have assisted in making the game more digestible, but Sonic Battle's story mode is incredibly boring at best. Even the most die hard fans of Sonic the Hedgehog are going to have a hard time justifying a purchase of Sonic Battle. Give it a miss.
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