I liked Sonic Advance and Sonic Battle myself. Advance is solid but unspectacular and Battle had an enjoyable story.

2 is too quick and 3 is awkward but does have good music and "epic" final level

I've got roms of Battle and all three Advance games. 1 is okay, 2 is sweet and 3 is pretty cool except for the whole system where you get paired up with another character. I wasn't a fan of that system. Overall, I'd say 2 was the best. Best stages, best music. Oh yeah, and Battle sucked.

Hush your mouth, you can't hope to experience Battle to its ultimate beauty on an emulator. Sonic Battle was great. The fighting system was simple but fun (but occasionally repetitive, esp. with Knux). The plot was the best the series has had since the Adventure games, and is full of great character moments for everyone, with a total tearjerker of a finale. Great locations, good music, great style, and a great plot. I love it.

The only Advance I played was 2. It's... not your classic Sonic, that's for sure. The Dimps approach to making a Sonic game is to create a sense of speed by putting Sonic on autopilot. Speed boosters everywhere, pursuit boss battles, downright stupid approach to special stages... It's a little mindless fun, but it's not great. Although Cream's kamikaze chao was freaking awesome.

The Sonic Advance games were pretty good, albeit short. 1 was so-so, 2 was much better except for Mushroom Hill Zone-style-chase-the-boss fights. 3's pairing system seemed a tiny bit lacking, but it was still very enjoyable. It's still just as short as the other ones, but at least the levels had better design and were also longer. The music is easily the best of the series.

Sonic Battle's fighting system is simple enough to get into and enjoy, but as TTG said, it gets repetitive. The story was great, as well.

I would definitely recommend Sonic Advance 2, 3, and even Sonic Battle. If you've got one of the Adventure games for Gamecube, then 1 is useful for its Tiny Chao Garden (it's unlockable in Sonic Advance 2) though if you get a used copy and delete the save data, there's a weird glitch where you won't be able to get rings from the main game for a while.

Yea Battle owns. I might actually...replay that sometime. And Sonic Advance 2 is most definitely fast, but oh my gosh...is it awesome. I enjoyed 3 as well. Don't remember much about, sadly. But 2...yes...go buy that and Battle my man.

All of the Advance games are pretty bland in their own little way, but Advance 1 is probably the least offensive in that it tries to ape classic Sonic as close as possible. Advance 2 is a broken prototype of the Rush games complete with a deluge of pits and frustrating bosses, and Advance 3 has a useless team gimmick where one or two of the possible 20+ combinations are actually useful. So if you had to pick one Advance game, I would get the first one.

I never played Battle.

Sonic Advance 2 was my favorite of the Advance Trilogy. It is rather unforgiving towards inexperienced players, but time attack is a blast once you get good enough to play though every act without getting killed.

I prefer Sonic Advance 1 myself. It felt the closest to me to the Genesis games.

---the-Krayon

Well it looks like I'm getting Sonic Battle.

I'm also still interested in Advance. Could you tell me just which Advance game you think is the best?

Sonic Advance 1 was good enough at the time since it was the first 2d Sonic game in ages and first one on a Nintendo system, but it is really a template of a typical Sonic game, so there's nothing really there for me to go back to over the Mega Drive games.

I wouldn't recommend Sonic Advance 2. It's faster and looks good, but i remember there was some bad level design that had me dying a lot, and it's the only game where i've found it practically impossible to get all the chaos emeralds. If anyone here managed to get all 7 then i bow to you.

The third Advance was good,had some cool levels, nice music. I'd recommend this over the other two if you want something different.

Sonic Battle was good at the time and i wasn't even expecting much from it. I dont know if it would still be good though... it was kind of repetitive, but the story mode was decent enough.

...it's the only game where i've found it practically impossible to get all the chaos emeralds. If anyone here managed to get all 7 then i bow to you.

You mean 35, right?

Thirty-five emeralds.

Yeah, you had to get all seven with each character.

Just to get to "bonus" stuff like the freaking CHAO GARDEN.

WHICH WAS FREE IN THE FIRST ADVANCE GAME.

AND YOU HAVE TO SCOUR THE LEVELS TO FIND ALL THOSE BS MEDALS BEFORE YOU COULD GET A CHANCE AT THE SPECIAL STAGE.

AND DO I EVEN HAVE TO MENTION THAT THIS GAME LAYS CLAIM TO THE HARDEST TO FIGURE OUT SPECIAL STAGE IN THE ENTIRE SERIES.

AND YOU CAN'T JUST GO RIGHT BACK IN AND PRACTICE UNTIL YOU CAN NAIL THEM.

AND YOU HAVE TO REPEAT THIS FOR THIRTY-FIVE EMERALDS!

But I digress; I really didn't prefer Sonic Advance 2's aproach to Special Stages.

Dangit, I'm aleady stuck on Battle.

Any tips for fighting a robot in a K.O. Battle (First 10 K.O.'s wins) that has a freaking move that will K.O. you in one shot!? Emerl is freaking IMPOSSIBLE to defeat in a ten K.O. battle, especially when there are TWO people he can easily K.O. on the battlefield. It takes forever to get 1 K.O. on that guy!

Do you have yahoo or something? I could probably help you in a PM.

Dangit, I'm aleady stuck on Battle.

Any tips for fighting a robot in a K.O. Battle (First 10 K.O.'s wins) that has a freaking move that will K.O. you in one shot!? Emerl is freaking IMPOSSIBLE to defeat in a ten K.O. battle, especially when there are TWO people he can easily K.O. on the battlefield. It takes forever to get 1 K.O. on that guy!

The only thing I can really say is you should probably make some use of guarding (which is kind of broken in itself) with L. If any of your opponents are flashing white, RUN AWAY. If they use a special move type on you that you don't automatically guard against, you're done for.

Of course, I should probably ask about what skills you have on Emerl. He does start out really weak but can become formidable depending on what skills you stick on him. Also, at what point in the story are you? I can't really provide any specific tips otherwise. I have beaten this game twice a while ago, but I still remember a thing or two.

One thing I learned early on is, if you aren't strong or skilled enough to fight man-to-man, fight dirty. Find a cheap move and abuse it for all it's worth until you can put up a fight. I beat the first fight with Knuckles using nothing but Tails' speed and the basic Power and Energy attacks by just running away and using the tiny range of those attacks to the best of their ability.

Im not fighting AS Emerl, I'm fighting against him.

If anyone here managed to get all 7 then i bow to you.

*cough*

You mean 35, right?

*doublecough*

Im not fighting AS Emerl, I'm fighting against him.

I suggest taking a look at my previous post. I did give a tip or two but I don't know if they'll help you or not. o_o

Well Im on Sonic's episode, about at the point where me and Tails fought Emerl in a ten K.O. battle, then decided we needed to go to the Emerald Beach to get more room. Then we fight him, and thats where I'm at. He's IMPOSSIBLE!!!

Not to mention he has a move that can K.O. Sonic IMMEDIATELY.

Is it Emerl or a Phi clone? Because if you are actually fighting Emerl, couldn't you just, you know, remove his cards?

*hands Psx a lozenge*

Yeah, basically what TTG said.

It the previous cutscene, Sonic and Tails monologue about how Emerl works. Tails tells you that in the overworld, pressing the R button will let you edit Emerl's cards and lets you change any of his moves to a different card, as long as said card has been unlocked.

You say that Emerl can kill you in one hit, so you probably got a used version of the game as it's impossible to have such a card that early in the game in the first story. Simply changing or getting rid of that move will make fighting Emerl more easily. It should be in his "Attacks folder" somewhere down in one of his "special attacks moves, which are the last six moves in the "folder".

Now that I think about it, Does Emerl have any skills that are instant-K.O. super combo special moves? If so, follow Chao's advice.

^ there's the rare cards you can get from the Sonic Team building that makes Emerl go Hokuto No Ken on everyone. Getting caught in one means YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD. D:

Ahhh..... yes, it was a used version. I will definitely try that, thanks!