Sonic Battle

The Good
What's good with Sonic Battle ? First, it's the second fighting game featuring Sonic, Knuckles and their friends (after Sonic Championship on arcade, which looked a lot like Virtua Fighter) and you'll experience the same thrill when you'll see Sonic fight against Tails that you felt in Smash Bros when you saw Mario fight against Luigi ! The game itself is very well done, and you will soon forget you're playing on your GBA because of the nice 3D backgrounds. The gameplay is quite simple but addictive, and you can set special attacks for 3 positions : Ground, Aerial and Defend. Sonic Battle has a good choice of modes : "Challenge" for the good old "tournament" mode, multi-player mode, multi-player mini-games... And last but not least, the "Story" mode will itself keep you playing for hours. The story is quite simple : Sonic and friends must train Emerl, a robot that can learn their combat moves, and prevent him for being captured by evil Dr. Eggman. As you play, Emerl gains new moves and you can customize his skills just like in a RPG. And once you have complete this story mode, you can use your custom Emerl in multi-player games. A very good move, Sonic Team !

The Bad
Well, there are a few things... The most striking is the difficulty of the story mode. It becomes very hard at times, and you really can't escape some battles (even to save and quit !) Turning off the GBA seems to be the only way. Each time I tried to get the menu and press "quit", I went back to the adventure map to see the enemy saying "Attack ! Attack !" and the battle started again. Very annoying. The second thing is the music. Music has always been a big part in Sonic games, and the music in Sonic Battle are quite a letdown. They should have put some music from old Sonic games, it would have been nice (just as Smash Bros did).

The Bottom Line
If you like Sonic and friends, the concept of Smash Bros, and fighting games, Sonic battle is definitely a game for you !