Submission #8971: KusogeMan's GBA Sonic Battle "Story Mode" in 2:43:50.13

(Link to video)
Game Boy Advance
Story Mode
bizhawk 2,9 x64
587129
59.7275005696058
36022
PowerOn
Sonic Battle (USA) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es,It).gba
Submitted by KusogeMan on 3/29/2024 8:19:41 PM
Submission Comments
All stories done in Sonic Battle, the game forces you to play mostly all characters except for Gamma and Chaos. Controls: A for jump, or special jump in air B for combos 3 attacks and then a launcher upwards while holding back or a launcher at the direcion of your preference UP DOWN or forward L for block, if you hold the button you heal, and if you press twioe you change the camera R for specials, which differ depending of the selection.
Characters in this game have a meter they can fill, when they fill this meter they can instant kill their enemies with 1 hit. The main strategies to get meter are: use the heal mechanic, which is really good for Cream and Knuckles, get hit or block enemies attacks. Gamma the robot has a mechanic in which for each death, he explodes dealing heavy damage, which is abused to fill meter faster.
Sonic and Emerl have a glitch with the meter mechanic. They end the animation by trading hits or touching ground earlier and the meter is not spent.
Emerl is a character you can equip with attacks and skills from other characters, he needs to get points to equip more moves.
The main question in this game, why not repeat the same move over and over? Because of the special move system and your partners!
The special move system allows you to assign for the ground and aerial positions each a special move, the move you select for ground won't be available for aerial special selection, and the third move will become an autoguard against that type of move. This means you can be in the air, which doesn't allow for blocking, or getting hit and you would still block with autoguard if that type of move is used. Example: i select ground projectile and aerial power move, the third option, which is the trap move, i'll have full immunity against it. I also use this to fill enemy mete, block their instakill move and get the full meter to use my own instakill.
Another aspect is different battles have different hp and damage settings for some chracters so what is a great combo for a weaker characters might not be for a stronger one. Allies sometime make a wall or ground bounce shorter so you can combo the enemy earlier.
Aggresion tactics from AI also influence my decision to go for more meter building or just attacking as fast as I can. Finally, a mechanic I abused alot at the start with Emerl and then realized was useful with Knuckles as well is the trade damage double hit. When Emerl is fighting, if i'm not trying to go for instakill abuse, i'll surely use this strategy. Should you hit your enemy as it hits you, there's a tendency for the attack to hit twice both. This makes knuckles special punch much better if I can use it as trade interaction.
Improvements: better control of RNG, more damage taking to boost meter at the tails to Rouge Stories, trying to manipulate Knuckles HEAL very early for better emerl fights, not equipping Amy Heal maybe,a run in which the player actually understands card drops for better equippable moves can trounce this, but the main improvement surely would be earlier cream or knuckles heal, I did get a special action for Emerl which turned out to be really fun but i don't wanna spoil.
Thanks to my family and gf for their support, and obviously the Sonic battle Discord: https://discord.gg/VcuHJRV.

nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Ok...I've been having a hard time with this TAS for many reasons. For one, it is very long and very tough to analyze everything that may have issues. Another, I don't know this game very well, which took some time to see how a speed-runner approaches it. I ended up watching your run, side-by-side. The only problem with that, is the version I was comparing it to was the WR run of the Japanese version. LOL Obviously, that is not a good comparison, since the English language is much slower. Only when you are doing your fight scenes...do it seem faster.
So, I've come to a conclusion without looking at the discussion thread. (I usually like to see if my thoughts agree with the audience). This time, they do. Yeah, there are some places that could be faster...but they are probably noticeable to speed-runners. So I think this run is good enough for a baseline here.
The other thing that left me scratching my head is...any% or 100%. This is "All Stories", so I would imagine there are some things that need to be clarified, but I'm going to call out for our "Standard" completion goals of "Full Completion". If this has to change in the future, we'll worry about that when the time comes.
So...great job. Accepting to "Standard" as "Full Completion".

despoa: Processing...
Last Edited by despoa 17 days ago
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