Sonic Battle/YMMV

• Character Tiers: Two tiers in particular are such outliers that it basically becomes:

1. Emerl at the end of the game^[1]

2. A couple of tiers of everyone else, depending on their healing skill.

3. Emerl at the beginning of the game.

• Ear Worm
• Funny Moments: The end of Cream's chapter, where Sonic compliments a frozen, angry Eggman on "his new dance".
• Game Breaker:
  • Cream's heal restores the Ichikoro Gauge by ridiculous amounts. It's not so bad as health goes, either.
  • Tails and Rouge have Set supers that track the opponent. When charged to instant kill, they remove an entire plane from where one can safely stand before dying.
  • Character Combo supers are almost guaranteed to kill the opponent.
  • Emerl himself ends up being absurdly powerful, able to floor any given opponent in a single combo and pursuit attack.
  • Between movement capabilities that allow him to run circles around his opponents and powerful attacks that can quickly beat his opponents, Shadow is one of the best of the "regular" characters. This was supposed to be balanced by his weak defense and healing abilities, only Shadow is so fast that he'll almost never be in battle unless he wants to.
  • Rouge's standard aerial attack allows the player to deal noticeable damage to an opponent while still being able to stay in flight. As a result, little damage can be done to the player and they're free to continue attacking from above until the opponent loses.
• Hell Is That Noise: Chaos Gamma's death animation. "Initiate Recovery Mode."
• Iron Woobie: Emerl.
• Nightmare Fuel: Emerl's stated purpose when he finally obtains all the Emeralds.
• Paranoia Fuel: When in distress, or receiving an upgrade, Emerl sometimes looks directly at the player, gains a Third Eye that looks realistic and stares out of the screen, is shaded ominously, and speaks in a strange, stilted voice. Tails Doll's got nothing on this.
• Player Punch: After spending a huge amount of time learning about Emerl and training him to be an amazing fighter, Sonic has to destroy him.
• Tear Jerker: The end of the game. Fortunately, Sonic Advance 3's true ending responds with a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming.
• That One Boss:
  • Eggman, at the end.
  • The Guard Robots as Knuckles. At first it's not bad, with just one. Then you fight two. Then three. No breaks in between. If you're not good with Knuckles, this is a nightmare.
  • Any Phis copying Gamma, especially late-game.
  • Ditto with the Guard robots. Since they don't talk, it's difficult to dodge Gamma's Recovery Mode with no audible cue.
  • The Sonic and Shadow fight before the final chapter. Sonic and Shadow, who have huge handicaps to make them competent fighters, against an Emerl player who's still trying to find the perfect moveset to stick with. Not even the unlockable combo attacks will guarantee a kill.

1. ↑ the character combos and instant kills were game breakers, as was Ultimate Emerl, who had all the Ultimate skills, when there was no way to get that many points as a regular player