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[Village]

I agree with Blaze in your statement; she felt like a really great new character for the Sonic series. Will go into this in a lot of depth when I cover Rush, but I love her design, her general character arc and how she was a hybrid of Sonic (fast character) and Knuckles (guardian of Soul Emeralds).

She is a great character and they used her well in both Rush titles .

Shadow......is a lot more mixed to me :l. I love how he is the 'dark' Sonic and his personality in Adventure 2 and Heroes was strong. But Shadow the Edgehog came out and.......ugh X(. They ruined him .

06 ironically did a good job portraying Shadow as it was HIS game in many respects. He had the big foe, he did the most action, and he faced the most backstory.

I think he's great. Because like knuckles, he's a failure of a rival character. I'm not going to pretend His game was perfect by anymeans, but what it did was actually exspand his character. The only canon path in his game is the one to the true ending, which is the good path, so basically the only canonical missions in that game, is helping other sonic characters. Shadow despite going through inner turmoil put that asside to basically help people and help the planet he resides on, to the extent of basically killing of his real father and his whole family. Or most of it, eclipse exists in the comics.
He joined the organization that threaten to kill him, so he could watch them and help people. He's like this socially inept super good person.

But back to my orginal point, he's sort of a complete failure of a rival character. I mean yes hi m and sonic fight, but even in sonc adventure 2. Shadow doesn't give a cold shit about sonic, people often compare shadow to vegeta , but all in all besides being kind of grumpy, and hell a lot of times shadow isn't even grumpy, he's just soft spoken. Its even in a lot of his character descriptions, he's just .. reserved. He actually doesn't care about sonic, heck in sonic generations they have to time displace shadow from sonic adventure 2, to make that fight happen. He a lot of the time feels no need to prove himself.. because really strong. He's a character that is billed as a " rival" but all in all, He kind of doensn't care. He's the cody travers of sonic too, because well, dude fights with inhibtor rings on.

Heck when they tried to make shadow vegeta in sonic boom, folks got pissed and they have changed his character 3 times.

I'm rambling but my point is. I like shadow because he goes through this arc and becomes a generally way better person at the end of up. And extreme powerful, no vegeta gimmic, no nothing.

 

[RK128]

I think he's great. Because like knuckles, he's a failure of a rival character. I'm not going to pretend His game was perfect by anymeans, but what it did was actually exspand his character. The only canon path in his game is the one to the true ending, which is the good path, so basically the only canonical missions in that game, is helping other sonic characters. Shadow despite going through inner turmoil put that asside to basically help people and help the planet he resides on, to the extent of basically killing of his real father and his whole family. Or most of it, eclipse exists in the comics.
He joined the organization that threaten to kill him, so he could watch them and help people. He's like this socially inept super good person.

But back to my orginal point, he's sort of a complete failure of a rival character. I mean yes hi m and sonic fight, but even in sonc adventure 2. Shadow doesn't give a cold shit about sonic, people often compare shadow to vegeta , but all in all besides being kind of grumpy, and hell a lot of times shadow isn't even grumpy, he's just soft spoken. Its even in a lot of his character descriptions, he's just .. reserved. He actually doesn't care about sonic, heck in sonic generations they have to time displace shadow from sonic adventure 2, to make that fight happen. He a lot of the time feels no need to prove himself.. because really strong. He's a character that is billed as a " rival" but all in all, He kind of doensn't care. He's the cody travers of sonic too, because well, dude fights with inhibtor rings on.

Heck when they tried to make shadow vegeta in sonic boom, folks got pissed and they have changed his character 3 times.

I'm rambling but my point is. I like shadow because he goes through this arc and becomes a generally way better person at the end of up. And extreme powerful, no vegeta gimmic, no nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I love Shadow's character in Adventure 2 and Heroes! Its just.....Sonic Team badly managed him and its a shame that is the case for me :l.

Agree with your points though; he is a cool character and I appreciate what Sonic Team tried to do in fleshing out his character. Just a shame it was badly handled in his self-titled game.

Even on the true hero path he was a bit of a prick. Two of the games more infamous lines "Its like taking candy from a baby, which is fine by me" and "Where is that DAMN fourth chaos emerald" stem from the true hero path way; in many ways hes more of a prick down this path way then the other ones in the game.

But I digress, I can tear apart the Ow the Edge story when I get to it :').

I like Shadow for his design and character but latter games shows that Sonic Team and SEGA have no idea what to use him for. The Boom cartoon did a good job with Shadow though :').

 

[MrBadger]

God no, Shadow and Blaze exist. The robots are cool to though. Emerl was weird in SA3, emerl felt like this thing they wanted to catch on , but it just never happened. I found that for many being forced to be him and to contruct his moves set was quite annoying in sonic battle. Which was odd for me because I liked him, then again I like seth from Street fighter, so your mileage may vary.

I do really like Blaze and...Shadow's okay, but I think the difference is that Gamma and Emerl had a self contained story that ended with their deaths. Then both characters got replaced with Omega and Gemerl (who I suppose is still Emerl). Shadow's debut was...okay, (as a kid I thought he was a lot cooler) but he was run into the ground faster than you can say Symbiote, as well as Shadow the Hedgehog turning him into a joke.

Blaze had a similar issue, with Rush and Rush Adventure being her 'story', then Sonic 06 jumbled up her backstory and these days she just hangs out completely disregarding the rules that her role set her. She's not a walking caricature of edginess like Shadow is, though.

tl;dr: (because nobody cares about Sonic lore) I like the robots more because they didn't overstay their welcome

 

[Village]

But I digress, I can tear apart the Ow the Edge story when I get to it :').

I like Shadow for his design and character but latter games shows that Sonic Team and SEGA have no idea what to use him for. The Boom cartoon did a good job with Shadow though :').

Boom shadow is shitty, or excuse me attempts 1 and 3 at boom shadow is shitty. Attempt 2 was aiight. They kind of missed the point of that character completely, which is why they keep changing him. " oh they don't like it , fuck "

Also, No. NO>

I Wanna do that game. I need to vent.

 

[RK128]

I do really like Blaze and...Shadow's okay, but I think the difference is that Gamma and Emerl had a self contained story that ended with their deaths. Then both characters got replaced with Omega and Gemerl (who I suppose is still Emerl). Shadow's debut was...okay, (as a kid I thought he was a lot cooler) but he was run into the ground faster than you can say Symbiote, as well as Shadow the Hedgehog turning him into a joke.

Blaze had a similar issue, with Rush and Rush Adventure being her 'story', then Sonic 06 jumbled up her backstory and these days she just hangs out completely disregarding the rules that her role set her. She's not a walking caricature of edginess like Shadow is, though.

tl;dr: (because nobody cares about Sonic lore) I like the robots more because they didn't overstay their welcome

Gamma, Emerl and Blaze work due to games taking the time to flesh out the characters. And when the games end, their arcs close, allowing breathing room for the characters.

Blaze is a bit more of an issue as after Rush Adventure, they had no idea what to do with her, but at least her story was complete in many respects.

Shadow's story was complete in Adventure 2.....but they brought him back with little regard to how he 'fits' into the series.

I will say my thoughts on his game when I get to it but 06 did a decent enough job with his character. He got stuff done, he moved on from his past, he had some of the games best narrative moments; it was his game. And his portion felt oddly the most polished too.

 

[RK128]

Boom shadow is shitty, or excuse me attempts 1 and 3 at boom shadow is shitty. Attempt 2 was aiight. They kind of missed the point of that character completely, which is why they keep changing him. " oh they don't like it , fuck "

Also, No. NO>

I Wanna do that game. I need to vent.

We can work together on it if you like . On NeoGaf, I want to make these series of threads .

I'm working with member Yoshi for Boom Wii U and Lost World Wii U (as I don't own a Wii U), so I would be happy to work with you on the Shadow thread !

 

[Village]

I Shadow the Hedgehog turning him into a joke.

tl;dr: (because nobody cares about Sonic lore) I like the robots more because they didn't overstay their welcome

Eh, he's a joke, in the way that naruto is a joke. He's super popular, and profitable for the powers at be and bunch of people like him. You might not and that's fine. But there is a reason they have... essentially coupled him in with all the pre dreamcast era characters. So he's a joke if you want him to be. But that is nowhere near a declarative statement.

As far as outstaying goes, eh. I don't like most versions of amy, there is only 1 good one.And it comic books, but I'm not going to say she outstayed her welcome. Because people obviously enjoy that character, and that's ok. If someone is getting something out of the charcter that's why they stick around.

 

[MrBadger]

Oh by the way, if you're planning on making a Shadow thread, you'd better play all 326 story paths

Eh, he's a joke, in the way that naruto is a joke. He's super popular, and profitable for the powers at be and bunch of people like him. You might not and that's fine. But there is a reason they have... essentially coupled him in with all the pre dreamcast era characters. So he's a joke if you want him to be. But that is nowhere near a declarative statement.

As far as outstaying goes, eh. I don't like most versions of amy, there is only 1 good one.And it comic books, but I'm not going to say she outstayed her welcome. Because people obviously enjoy that character, and that's ok. If someone is getting something out of the charcter that's why they stick around.

I just feel like disregarding a character's traits and storyline just to keep them around out of popularity weakens them as characters. Then again, it's only Sonic. It's not like Ace Attorney, which, oddly enough, (Trials and Tribulations spoilers)

Spoiler

killed off Godot, who's probably the closest thing that franchise has to Shadow. Really cool and super popular because of it, but if they brought him back, it would be cheap as heck.

 

[Village]

Oh by the way, if you're planning on making a Shadow thread, you'd better play all 326 story paths

You good fam.

Spoiler

I made that mistake a long ass time ago

We can work together on it if you like . On NeoGaf, I want to make these series of threads .

I'm working with member Yoshi for Boom Wii U and Lost World Wii U (as I don't own a Wii U), so I would be happy to work with you on the Shadow thread !

that's fine.

 

[RK128]

Oh by the way, if you're planning on making a Shadow thread, you'd better play all 326 story paths

GOD NO X(!

Thats.......like someone ENJOYING getting beat to death over and over again :'(.

I got the full completion (all endings + final story), so will cover the game with my playthrough of that.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Sonic Battle is really good...

...up until the point where the CPU artificial intelligence starts cheating. I think it's around the point you're playing as Rouge versus Sonic and Amy, the CPU starts to blatantly read your inputs and all of their moves start to take priority over yours no matter how quick your reflexes are.

I actually remember testing this, too. The game is programmed with a rubber banding system that will let the CPU get free hits in if it feels like you're doing too well, and it only gets more aggressive about this as the game progresses.

There is, however, a work-around I discovered in testing this. Basically, the game also has a system in for dealing with you spamming the same move. It's been a while since I played Sonic Battle, but my memory of things is... before you spawn in, you're given the option to pick between three attack styles. It's like, Speed, strength and projectile or something?

The CPU is programmed to be a rock-paper-scissors match-up to one of those three attack styles. For instance, it will always block projectile-style attacks, but never block speed-style attacks, that sort of thing. If you spam a move from that style enough, the CPU will change, so that it will start always blocking the style you're spamming.

So the trick to winning matches as you near the end of the game is to intentionally find which style the CPU is weak against, spam it until it starts blocking it, die, respawn, and find the next style it is weak against. I think there was even a certain guaranteed order, so that once you knew when the CPU switched, you would always know which style it would be vulnerable to next.

But yeah, no, I wish you didn't have to do that. Because of the cheap CPU AI, I find it difficult to actually recommend this game otherwise.

 

[Dimitri LH]

This game is defenitly one of my top fave Sonic games, still have my copy too!

People used to play this like crazy in junior high, was fun until someone discovered the cheats for the ultimate instakill emerl attacks....then it just got stupid broken.


I loved Emerl as a character, so happy they further explained his origins in Sonic Chronicles (still wish its sequel din't get canned ... ).

 

[enzo_gt]

Damn, I saw this thread and thought this was a new title they announced at SXSW. Almost thought SEGA found a way to make me care about Sonic games again.

One of the greatest GBA titles IMO.

 

[RK128]

Damn, I saw this thread and thought this was a new title they announced at SXSW. Almost thought SEGA found a way to make me care about Sonic games again.

One of the greatest GBA titles IMO.

Had this problem with the NiGHTS thread too X(. Okay, this is part of a Sonic Retrospective I am currently making and right now I'm at the Dreamcast Era of Sonic .

Next up in Pinball Party and Sonic Advance 3 for the retrospective, with me and Village making a thread covering Ow the Edge not long after.

 

[Junahu]

This game was mighty impressive on the GBA. But the AI was virtually non-existant; you win by spamming the special move that they decided they won't block.

Spoiler

INITIATING RECOVERY MODE

 

[SimonM7]

When they went Tennis -> Racing, I half expected an All-Stars Battle next - being a pseudo Power Stone with some sort of chaos emerald device in place of power stones.

Now I dunno if there'll even be more All-Stars games. Sumo seem busy.

 

[Hero Prinny]

i really liked this game back in the day! shame we never got a sequel.

 

[Zipzo]

The thing that bothered me about this game was there was a crippling flaw in the CPU that essentially made them unable to avoid or block moves from above. Once I figured this out the narrative became an ultra snooze. It's not like it was a CPU flaw that was easy to ignore.

 

[RK128]

The thing that bothered me about this game was there was a crippling flaw in the CPU that essentially made them unable to avoid or block moves from above. Once I figured this out the narrative became an ultra snooze. It's not like it was a CPU flaw that was easy to ignore.

I guess I never noticed this when I played through the game before and recently :l. I hate it when fighting games have un-winnable fights, so I can easily understand why people got annoyed with that element to Battle.

 

[Dimitri LH]

When they went Tennis -> Racing, I half expected an All-Stars Battle next - being a pseudo Power Stone with some sort of chaos emerald device in place of power stones.

Now I dunno if there'll even be more All-Stars games. Sumo seem busy.

So did I... SEGA please do it!

 

[themagicalkitsune]

I forgot to mention the goat OST for a GBA game.

 

[NEO0MJ]

The thing that bothered me about this game was there was a crippling flaw in the CPU that essentially made them unable to avoid or block moves from above. Once I figured this out the narrative became an ultra snooze. It's not like it was a CPU flaw that was easy to ignore.

So that's why I was able to get away with all those ground pounds as Knuckles. I thought I had great timing.

 

[SparksterMeta0]

I am gonna be honest but I did not like this game, the fighting system just didn't feel fun and after I did Sonic's story I just dropped it.

It also has the honour of being one of three story arc that Sonic X took from the game and made it heartbreaking.

I felt that felt had the best story arc/chapter in the game with her relationship with Emerl.

 

[YaBish]

I LOVED the story in this game as a kid. Goes to show that good writing can elevate any game. Emerl was super fun to fight as, with his changeable moveset and customizable appearance. This game will always have a soft spot in my heart. Especially with how emerl went out 😢