The story mode begins with Sonic finding a broken robot on the beach. As he visits friends, details about the robot are dropped and Sonic's enemies do their best to take the robot from him. That's the structure that takes you from one battle to the next, discovering a little more about your new robot at each step. There are eight sections to the story mode, each using a different character.

Before each battle you designate your character's moves as either Airborne, Ground or Defense. These designations can be changed for each battle. Sonic, for example, can jump, of course, but he can also punch, throw power waves and lay land mines. When you designate a particular power for defense, if your opponent tries to use that on you all he'll get is frustrated. Every battle can be replayed as many times as it takes to win, so figuring out which opponent attack you should be on the lookout for isn't that difficult. The power designation is one form of adding strategy to the fights, but against the CPU it isn't that crucial. Each character has their own special set of attacks, so you'll get to know them all.

The battles play out on small 3D maps which differ mostly in appearance and the amount of elevated platforms they contain. It's easy to get lost behind platforms, but the L and R buttons rotate the map just as easily. The fights are very colorful and detailed with great looking sprites for the characters, particularly their attack effects. There just isn't much imagination used in the map design, so the fights may as well be on the same board if not for the change in colors. They don't come into play during a fight or offer any opportunity for strategy. They're basically just backdrops with some raised areas.

The fights are clearly an attempt at recreating the feeling in party games like Smash Bros. But because of the non-interactive boards, they're also very reminiscent of games like the old Double Dragon, except without the weapons or variety of bad guys to beat up. The fight is you against another character, first one to get a certain number of knockdowns wins. You have to line up your opponent just right to land an attack, so there's lots of sliding around the board to get a shot without being hit. You can hold down a defend button to ward off attacks for a moment, but most of the time you're better off just getting out of the way. If you rack up enough punches in a row, you'll get a combo that does a lot more damage. Once you do enough damage, your opponent falls down and you go at it again.

Your hit points are tracked with a colored bar in the upper left of the screen. You can regenerate health by holding down the defend button indefinitely, but your defense will wear off after a few seconds and you'll be open to getting clobbered. You also built up a special power meter over time which grants a one-hit knockdown blow when it's charged all the way up.

The skill points you'll earn in the story mode are spent on your robot, Emerl. He follows you around the whole time, learning everyone else's moves, and your skill points unlock the moves you want. This makes your Emerl a very unique and powerful character for use in replay or against other people. But that's the only redeeming quality to the story mode, because it's just one seemingly endless, pointless dialogue box after another. The static character images, rotated once in a while in an attempt to fool you into thinking you're actually watching an animation, just make the whole thing that much more insufferable.

But if you can choke it down and get through the story mode, your customized robot will serve you well in battling other players through game link cables. By the time you've got enough skill points to create the Emerl you want, you'll have no doubt grown fond of certain moves. Putting all of them into one powerful fighting machine and using him against friends is probably the biggest draw of Sonic Battle. You can use your customized character or any of the stock characters against other human players (each player needs a GBA and copy of Sonic Battle, in addition to the link cable).

If you're looking for a portable party game and want to play competitively with other GBA owners, Sonic Battle fits the bill. It looks good and the fights are simple while offering just enough strategy to keep from becoming too boring. It's too bad the same can't be said for the story mode, and an even bigger shame the best part of the game, a customizable character, can't be achieved without suffering through the single player experience.