A Long Fight
Ever wanted to be friends with a robot? In this game, you play as various characters going on little misadventures with a new and mysterious robot nicknamed Emerl. This robot is a (super) fighting robot that has the ability copy fighting moves and techniques from others and utilize them in combat. Along the way, more and more is discovered of what this robots was made for. As you might expect for a GBA game, the game is presented with text with voice clips with the characters represented as still images of various emotions. The combat is taken place on an isometric field, with everything made out of sprites. Each character has various attacks unique to them, but the game has a simple formula to follow. Usually the story fights involve defeating your opponent, but there are a few unusual fights included to keep things interesting. The biggest flaw about the game would be that the player when controlling Emerl is limited to slow and weak versions of Sonic's attacks. Because of this, I would recommend utilizing the shooting attack your given where there is no shooting. The only thing you can utilize is the ball form, but it’s so effective that it almost seems like the intended. Plus the ball form itself is immune from the auto-guard mechanic, where when the fighter enters the battle (or reenters after the fighter loses all of his/her health), the player is allowed a shooting, power, and bomb attack. The first selected is its ground variation, while the second is the air variation. Third is guard. That is perhaps the best means to advance the story at the beginning of the game when you’re first starting the game. Another flaw about the game would be that it is arguably the hardest Sonic game to achieve a technical 100% on it. Most of the collectibles are entries for a new attack for Emerl that the player earns after defeating a copyable character in a match with Emerl present in the fight in some form. Only two earned are scripted while the rest are RNG-based. To make things worse, there are "rare" skills that are even more infrequent. There's even this one challenge involving an invention of Tails where you have to defeat opponents until they run out of lives, with each increasing level giving them an extra life. The annoying part is that you always have one life, and if you lose it you have to start over from the beginning. But aside from achieving 100%, the game's not bad. Just beware one thing: fun. It can sneak up and surprise you. With what? Glee! :)!
Reviewed by: Ryan P from Edwardsburg, MI on 12/22/2018
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