Whats was the best Sonic Advance or sonic game for the GBA?

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nitro_the_hedghog said:
luis90 said:
What about the sonic 1 GBA remake? That was pretty good, IMO.
NO!
Sonic Battle was my favorite.

It was too repeitive in story but fun if your just battling.

but Emel was wwwaaaaaayyyyy too weak for most of the gameplay unless you repeat every story 2-3 time.

but it was fun yes.
 
TrueTenguMan said:
nitro_the_hedghog said:
luis90 said:
What about the sonic 1 GBA remake? That was pretty good, IMO.
NO!
Sonic Battle was my favorite.

It was too repeitive in story but fun if your just battling.

but Emel was wwwaaaaaayyyyy too weak for most of the gameplay unless you repeat every story 2-3 time.

but it was fun yes.

Weak? -_-

He was the strongest character,you can equip every move at max. P_P
 
Only if you have the skill points to equip everything.

Me, I'd say Sonic Advance 2, solely based on the fact that Sonic Advance 3 has crappy teamups. I mean, why should Amy take away the spin jump? That's the most basic and effective attack. And why can't Sonic do that mini-thok that he does in the previous two? And Sonic Advance is just SEGA fooling around with their graphics, in my opinion. And the characters don't even match up to Sonic Advance 2 (I'm not sure about Amy because I'm too lazy to earn her)
 
Sonic Advance 1 had decent level design all across the board. Egg Rocket needed some work, but it was still a decent level.

Sonic Advance 2 was a horrible drop in quality. I really didn't notice this until after playing SRB2, but yeah, stages like Hot Crater Zone are like 2/10. The Special Stage Ring system is retarded.

Sonic Advance 3 had a minor step up in level design, most noticeably with Chaos Angel Zone Acts 1-2, but it still can't compare with Sonic Advance 1. The tag team system was really lame. I really like the platforming challenges presented in the zone maps themselves.
 
Angelus_the_echidna said:
Only if you have the skill points to equip everything.

Me, I'd say Sonic Advance 2, solely based on the fact that Sonic Advance 3 has crappy teamups. I mean, why should Amy take away the spin jump? That's the most basic and effective attack. And why can't Sonic do that mini-thok that he does in the previous two? And Sonic Advance is just SEGA fooling around with their graphics, in my opinion. And the characters don't even match up to Sonic Advance 2 (I'm not sure about Amy because I'm too lazy to earn her)

Same as sonic. This time she doesn't suck for once.

Check youtube for proof
 
luis90 said:
What about the sonic 1 GBA remake? That was pretty good, IMO.
If you live in some sort of perverted world where "pretty good" really means "OH JESUS CHRIST THIS GAME IS THE WORST PIECE OF CODE EVER PUT TO CARTRIDGE WHO THE HELL PLAYTESTED THIS BS", then I agree!

First one by far. It's the only one that actually plays like the Genesis games. The other two are too fast for their own good.
 
Shadow Hog said:
First one by far. It's the only one that actually plays like the Genesis games. The other two are too fast for their own good.

Isn't that kind of the point of Sonic games? To get through the level as fast as possible while getting all 7 chaos emeralds? (Well, minus Battle) The speed boost just makes it harder for those who don't have good hand-eye coordination.
 
Angelus_the_echidna said:
Shadow Hog said:
First one by far. It's the only one that actually plays like the Genesis games. The other two are too fast for their own good.

Isn't that kind of the point of Sonic games? To get through the level as fast as possible while getting all 7 chaos emeralds? (Well, minus Battle) The speed boost just makes it harder for those who don't have good hand-eye coordination.

No, Sonic games, as they were originally intended, are first and foremost platformers, the speed was added to make it interesting and to stand out from the crowd.

Unfortunately, this ideology has now been abandoned and Sega have opted to play the "lol speed" card (seen at its worst in Advance 2, but examples of it can be seen in all the newer titles) in favour of actual gameplay.
 
Sonic Advance. It seemed like the best throwback to 2D Sonic games. Two and three were straight garbage.

Sonic Battle was also fun. I haven't played it in a long time, though. I wonder how it held up.
 
BEWARE THE WALL OF TEXT
The best was, without a doubt or any competition, Sonic Advance 2. There are lots of analysts out there who have shared their opinions on the Advance series, but I think the fastest, most effective one was Youtuber ShayMay.
To begin with Advance 1 and 3 have some fairly prominent problems. Sonic Advance 1, in my opinion, was bland from start to finish. The real problem with it, though, was the stage design. Since you'll be punished for disobeying the level designers' rules, the game is very stifling. To me, this applies to all levels outside of the first one, which is just a few straight lines and bridges with no imagination or compelling design. Yet, in Egg Rocket, the final proper stage of the game, you're punished for actually following the level designers' rules. For a couple of examples, there's a speed booster that forces you to back-track in the level and a leap of faith over spikes that you must take in order to continue.
Sonic Advance 3 suffers from it's own problems as well. My main problem with the game was the maze-like stage design it could sometimes have. I ended up backtracking multiple times in Sunset Hill, Ocean Base, and Cyber Track in ways that couldn't be solved by simply flying back up. Again, the way the stages are designed communicates that you must follow the designers' instructions at all times, which feels suffocating. And that's to say nothing about the arbitrary puzzle solving and button pressing or the nearly pointless team mechanics that require incredibly specific scenarios to even be relevant.
Sonic Advance 2, in my opinion, is not just a better game, it's the only one I'd say is an excellent game. The boost mode is probably "the greatest addition to the core Sonic formula...since the spindash", and it came right from this game. "Unlike the later versions where you could just press a button to activate it," the original boost mode required the player to do a substantial amount of running. The time it takes to activate decreases depending on the amount of rings you collect, encouraging you to, and rewarding you for, running and collecting rings which, obviously, are pretty important to Sonic. Unlike Adv. 3, though, Adv. 2 has level design that actually compliments this mechanic. In Adv. 3, the speed sections were incongruous with the maze, platforming, and other sections of the game, and so had to exist in a vacuum. In Advance 2, speed, platforming, and effective usage of extra controls such as the trick system and character-specific abilities (Sonic's airdash, Cream's flight) all flow into one another in a really "fluid" experience, and the challenge of maintaining your speed made the gameplay compelling yet never frustrating as it was optional. The only part of the game that really seems incongruous with the rest is the exploration, which is encouraged through the SP rings that will lead to a special stage if 7 are collected. Though this slows down the pace of the game, that in itself isn't a problem as it's the player's choice. However, the fact that it's often impossible to back-track far enough to get one you missed is a pretty big problem as it defeats the purpose of slowing down and exploring entirely.
The SP rings, then, have led to a lot of playthroughs of the game misrepresenting what it actually looks and feels like to play it. The best way to forge your opinion of it is to actually play it yourself. As usual the soundtrack is amazing, though this applies to the other two as well. The stages are very inspired thematically, especially Music Plant and Sky Canyon which stick to the themes through and through. The stage mechanics and set-pieces are well integrated and creative as well, such as the fans in Sky Canyon that allow the player to build up boost mode before continuing or the percussions the player must balance on if they want to take a different route. The most important part about the characters is that their abilities actually matter and affect both the way the game is designed and the way players will approach a situation depending on which character they chose. The trick system also promotes mastery of the game and replayability. Aside from that, it's a nice feature if you just want to look cool, and it gives you points when you pull them off. The special stages suck, but they still don't give me the perspective problems of 1 and 3 (or make me wanna barf for that matter). Of course, even within the stages themselves, the game is not perfect. There are still sucker punch moments in the game but they are so few and far between that I could count them on one hand. In conclusion, while I'd say all 3 titles are good pick-up-and-play games, 2 is the best choice as a Sonic game as well as the best example of one.​
 
Sonic Advance is some ways kind of a Sonic 4 for me. Even though the level design doesn't really stick out that much, it's faithful to the classics in a lot of ways. Honestly, I think the best addition is Amy as a playable character, as her core mechanics shake up the gameplay in a unique way that refreshes the formula. The chaos emeralds are handled pretty garbage, and I would have liked to see melee attacks fleshed out into something a little more conducive to Sonic's gameplay, as only Amy's is particularly useful.

Sonic Advance 2 is basically Sonic Rush before boosting was a thing. Its gameplay is definitely... focused, but it pretty much stops being a classic Sonic game and more of a speedrun platformer. After so many years since I last played it, I can't tell you much about the levels except that there's a bouncy music level and a level with reverse gravity, otherwise they're all pretty much the same. Pitfalls are fucking everywhere though, and since you're going top speed most of the time, this means there's a load of cheap deaths whereas the first entry was pretty good about platforming fairness. Also, emeralds are even dumber this time around since you have to collect seven mcguffins in each level which is basically impossible without a walkthrough, THEN do the actual bonus stage. And the chao garden is locked behind the secret ending. Monumentally stupid game design. The characters haven't been handled any better either, since special abilities become mostly unused with the exception of Cream's ridiculous homing chao; even Amy Rose has been homogenized into a Sonic clone. The one good thing I can say about the game is that the boss battles are for most part really cool (with one obvious exception), and I'm totally on board with any 2d game that wants to revisit the "chase scene" setup as a formula for boss battles.

Sonic Advance 3 feels like an awkward hybrid between the physics of SA2 and the level design of SA1, compounded with Tails AI dumber than Sonic 2's. I like the moveset variety and the bonus/special stages, but three acts per zone AND a boss battle causes every zone to overstay its welcome, and the chao + key requirement for special stages is a little too much collectathoning for the kind of game this is. Good idea, bad execution.
 
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The Sonic Advance series is a mixed bag for me. I like the games but they could have been better.

Sonic Advance:
This game is pretty faithful to the original Sonic formula. Sonic is speedy, Tails can fly, Knuckles can climb and Amy adds something new, refreshing the game. Each of the characters have different abilities and thus different playstyles like in S3&K wich adds a big replay value and different ways to play stages.
The zones are pretty much rehashes from older games. Neo Green Hill Zone is a beach themed Green Hill Zone, Secret Base Zone is Metropolis Zone, Casino Paradise is Casino Night/Carneval Night Zone and so on... But even though the themes feel a bit copied from the older games there are a lot of things wich are new to the zones to shake up gameplay and make it feel like something new. Bosses are also something original and often pretty fun to play against.
What is not so much fun to play though are the special stages. First of all you have to find those springs in those stages wich are sometimes located at ridiculous to reach areas. And the stages themselves are just not fun to play. The hit detection is thinicy and everything is just too small to be visible and its basically a trial and error experience.
Overall I would say it is is a decent to good title but what kills the game from being good are the special stages. They are just frustrating.

Sonic Advance 2:
I haven't played this game as much as the others. This games emphasis is on pure speed. I actually really like it but the game suffers a lot from the limited screen size for me. The screen of the GBA is tiny and this gives me little to no time to react to something that lies ahead. Combine that with pitfalls and you will get a lot of cheap deaths. Also, exploring gets kinda abandoned. You can explore them but you are often locked at some points from backtracking, be it a wall, a pit or a boost pannel. And this gets more annoying since you need to find SEVEN stupid SP rings just to get to a special stage. And I never had the patience to find 7 SP rings in any stage so I cannot say much about the special stages. Also, you need all Emeralds for the secret ending wich unlocks the tiny chao garden wich was already unlocked right off the bat in the first game.
What is fun though are the boss stages. I really love the hunting formula and it also gives a good challenge. I'd like to see more bosses like this in future installments.
The idea of this game is good but the execution could have been better. The speedrun platformer part is fun but becomes a memorization game due to the hardware limits.

Sonic Advance 3:
There are many things that could have been done better. I like the character match system. Each combination offers something different wich again gives you multiple ways of playing and exploring those stages, bringing back the exploring aspect of the first game.
The themes of the Zones are a great mix of old and new ones. I really love how much detail went into the zones and their acts. It looks visually impressive.
The stage hub system is a good idea. I like it how it introduces you to a few mechanics wich you will meet in the upcomming stages. But sometimes they just get too far carried away with the hub level design. There are some instances where you search the second act of the zone and can't find it or you have to walk and do everything again to get to a certain act just because you wanted to swap characters.
The stages themselves are okay but there is one major problem with a lot of them: their maze-like level design. I often found myself running in cycles, trying to find the right path. And then there is the switch mechanic. I like the idea but it is overused in this game and unnecessarily slows down the pace of the game.
If you want to play a special stage you will need to find 10 chaos across the whole zone, be it in the hub world or in the acts themselves. At least your collected chaos get saved and you can view wich ones are missing in wich act of the zone on the chao map. But thats not all! After finding all chaos you need to play a stage and try to find a key in it. With this key you can try the stage once. If you fail and want to try again you will need to find another key. And this is where it gets painful. Everytime you play a stage the key is going to be on a different location so you sometimes end up playing a stage without finding a key and wasting your time. This is the point of the game where you get tired of playing the same stages over and over again if you keep failing on that one special stage.
The special stages themselves are a big improvement over the first game though. It still has the same kind of problems as the first game but they are by far not as noticeable as in the first game. Objects are still small but you can see them out of greater distance and you DO actually hit the rings.
Talking about chaos, they have completely removed the tiny chao garden from the game. I am disappointed.

Overall I would say that the first game was my favourite one despite its simplicity and being more based on the classic formula. The ideas of Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Advance 3 look great on paper but are poorly executed, be it bad design or hardware limits.

Then there is Sonic Pinball Party... yeah... It's a pinball game... on the Gameboy Advance... with a Sonic theme...
There is not much to say about it except that it is a fairly decent pinball game on the GBA with a Sonic theme to it. I actually like it, but nothing special.
Also, even this game has a tiny chao garden, so why not Sonic Advance 3?

And last but not least Sonic Battle. I was kinda impressed that there is a 3D fighting game on the GBA due to the lack of buttons. But it worked and it is actually a lot of fun. The only two problems I have though is the grinding required at some parts and the ridiculous ammount of dammage some attacks can deal. Also, you die pretty quickly in this game if you don't watch your step.


After this wall of text I would say that my personal favourite on this system is Sonic Advance.
 
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