Punching Sonic in the Face: A Review of Sonic Battle
Released in 2003 for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, Sonic Battle at first may seem like a strange fit for the Sonic franchise. Yet, it wasn't Sonic's first bout of fisticuffs. That honour goes to the arcade title Sonic Fighters, which also received a port to the Saturn and Xbox consoles.
While Fighters feels like something thrown together by the Virtua Fighter team for a bit of a laugh, Sonic Battle is more considered and the team behind it clearly thought hard about how a Sonic fighting game might work.
While Sonic Fighters is a slower one-on-one affair, Battle is a fast paced brawl that sees you running around an arena, quickly ducking in and slogging someone in the face before nipping off again before they can respond. Often multiple characters are on screen at once providing a lot of wonderful chaos to the action. It's fast, it's kinetic and it fits surprisingly well into the overall Sonic theme of speed.
The story in Battle is a thing of near non-existence, but the gist is Sonic befriends a robot called Emerl (I have no idea how you're supposed to pronounce that) which has been discarded by Robotnik. However, it turns out that when Emerl watches people fight, he can learn their moves, Taskmaster style. Obviously the story is just a good excuse for Sonic and friends to kick each other in the nethers, but at least there is some reason behind all this violence.
The game’s visuals and presentation are quite nice. Story scenes feature large, colourful representations of characters and the game's overworld map, which you navigate between battles, is well illustrated. During battle, Sonic and his mates are represented by cute little sprite versions of themselves. Similar to those seen in the Advance games, they are impressively animated given their diminutive size with lots of different animations, including lots of unique moves for each character. The real stars, though, are the arenas. Each arena is a 3D space in which the 2D combatants fight. Given the technology of the GBA, it's pretty impressive seeing these arena's realised as nicely as they are. I was constantly surprised how well the camera kept up with the action, rotating and panning so you always have a decent view of the pummelling.
Each character has an impressive array of moves. Apart from your regular punches and kicks, there are also special moves that can be performed, each matching well with the personality of the combatant. For example, all of Sonic’s moves revolve around speed and quick movements, while Knuckle’s is a bit slower and uses power-based moves. Tails, on the other hand, uses gadgets to help him fight, such as Inspector Gadget-like mechanical arms that uppercut foes into the air.
Even with all these moves, the combat is very simple compared to many fighting games. You have attack, jump, special attack and block/heal buttons…and that’s it. A wall slam move can be performed when pushing a direction and the attack button at the same time, but outside of this there are no Street Figher-type inputs required. The various special moves are based upon where you are when the special button is pressed; in the air or on the ground. Combos are pulled off simply by continually pressing the one attack button.
This method of simplified fighting might at first sound like a detriment, but it plays to the speed of the game. The gameplay is too fast for complicated inputs, and trying to pull something like a Shoryuken off would leave you vulnerable. Also, as Sonic is a series that tends to skew younger, it makes sense to not require multiple button presses to pull off moves. The biggest issue with this is the block/ heal button. Tapping the L button will have your character block, but the timing has to be absolutely perfect for it to be of any help. Holding the L button will have your character heal up as well as raise their special gauge. This means you can keep yourself in a round for longer, and once the special gauge is filled the next special move that connects is a one-hit kill. Unfortunately, I never found actual blocking much use, as the timing is so strict you’re better off just trying to get out of the way.
The depth of the combat comes from the attacks that Emrel learns. Each attack he learns is represented by a card, and each attack has different properties. Some are powerful but slow, some are fast but weak, and others are either utterly rubbish or overpowered. You can then have Emerl use any of these moves as long as you have the energy to use them. Energy is earned through battles or finding Chaos Emeralds. It’s a cool idea that allows you to customise Emerl to your preferred fighting style.
It's a shame, then, that it doesn't take long for the cracks to appear. It is extremely easy to become stun locked in Sonic Battle, and this takes a lot of the fun out of fights. This can be mitigated a little by constantly being on the move, but inevitably you'll be slammed into a wall and your enemy will catch you as the bounce back animation plays, not allowing you to even get back on your feet. This is made exponentially worse when you've two or more foes standing against you.
As for Emerl's move-learning abilities, skills points are meted out so slowly that you'll constantly be gimped with Emerl's crappy base move set. These are so weak and slow you'd be better off poking enemies with soft cushions than have him fight them. To add to this insult, you can learn the same move more than once. The idea is that you'd trade these duplicate moves with friends (pfft, as if I have friends) who also play the game via the GBA link cable. But you are constantly re-learning the same moves. I learnt the same kick from Sonic FIVE TIMES! Not only does it take an age to earn enough points to use moves, the game constantly "teaches" you ones you've already got.
The battles can be ridiculously long, too. Some fights require you to KO characters up to ten times, and sometimes you’ll then have to fight them all over again. This is another big issue with Sonic Battle; fights repeat constantly. The first truly difficult fight, which is when you meet Knuckles for the first time, you have to beat him in five rounds. Then, after just managing to get through this as Emerl is so rubbish at this point, you have to fight him again, but this time for 10 rounds. The game does this over and over and it gets old faster than Sonic in a pair of Speed Shoes.
And then there's the difficulty spikes. During Rouge's story (each character has their own little story, Adventure-style) I reached a battle where I had to fight both Sonic and Amy at the same time. The difficulty here shot up faster than a rat out of an aqueduct. Constantly stun locked as both ganged up on me, every single one of my attacks blocked perfectly, and no time given to heal. After several tries at this, I decided I'd had enough.
Sonic Battle is a game similar to many average-to-low Sonic games; there's the kernel of a good idea in there, even some really nice steps towards it, but too many edges have been left rough for the game to be worth playing. It's not a terrible game, and people with more patience than I may have a better time with it, but it's a hard one to recommend. I think it's interesting as a curio and to get a glimpse of what might have been, but you'd be better watching a Lets Play rather than suffering through it yourself.