Sonic Battle Review

Sonic is one of the best known video game characters of all time, and for good reason. As the mascot of a company that was at one time one of the two biggest in the business, Sonic also has a long history. Back in the days of his creation, Sonic was to be Sega’s answer to Mario, but the ironic thing is that they both are on the same consoles now, as is the case with this game for the GBA.

Sonic Battle is, for all practical purposes, a fighting game. Borrowing elements from Sonic games, traditional fighting games, and the Super Smash Brothers games, Sonic Battle is unlike anything I have ever seen in a fighting game before. However, the combination of all these things, as well as some things not borrowed leaves the game feeling unlike any of the things it borrows from.

The basic concept of the game is simple. Two to four characters enter an arena and beat each other up. Borrowed from traditional fighting games is the life bar system, but there is also the multiple life system from the Super Smash Brothers series. The characters are all from the Sonic franchise, with the exception of one who was created for this game, and the stages are isometric, meaning this is a three dimensional type fighting game.

The story for the story mode seems a bit contrived I guess. Sonic finds this robot, which assimilates attack maneuvers and proceeds to enlist the help of his friends to teach the robot everything that all the other characters in the game can do. Each character has their own story mode, unlocked one at a time as the one before them is completed.

For a GBA game, the graphics aren’t half bad. It is easy to tell who is who and the environments are done decently. To be honest, I think they could have been done somewhat better, but they are certainly done well enough to not detract from the gameplay.

There are about ten characters in this game. Unfortunately, they all execute about the same way. The only differences really are in their midair action and their special moves, although their normal attacks do look different in an appropriate way for each character. The special moves can be somewhat tailored to the playing style of the player, but it really makes no difference how you choose to allot them.

Essentially, this game is nothing more than a button masher so far as gameplay is concerned. My only complaint is that there is no way to attack up or down, and in an isometric game that would certainly be nice.

I have no major complaints about the sound. Each stage has its own song, and each character has different warm-up music while they choose their special move allotment. They also each have some phrases that they may say under certain circumstances during the battle, and one that they say at the end if they win. I have no major complaints in this category.

Even without other people with GBA’s and the game, this game might last about ten hours. Between the story mode and the challenge mode (which is basically the same as SSBM’s classic mode) you might get some hours of gameplay out of this game alone, but I imagine that the battle mode with other human players and the mini-games which can be unlocked and played with others would be the brunt of the fun of this game (I can’t verify that as nobody else at Pillsbury has the game).

If you are a Sonic fan, this game might be worth a purchase. If you are a fan of fighting games, this game is at least worth a look. Don’t go expecting it to be as addicting as SSBM though.

Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Gameplay: 7
Creativity: 6
Replay Value/Game Length: 8
Final: 6.8/10