Skill Tier List #1: Video Games vs Comics

[GlaceonGamez471]

But even common bad ins are stated to be capable of killing Sonic's friends, and other "fodder" Badniks are capable of injuring and causing harm to Sonic as stated by him in IDW.

Just gonna leave some stuff that I nipped from a couple pages here:

Sonic saying that dealing with a full company of Badniks is a little dicey
Standard Buzz Bombers can cause extensive damage to the Eggmobile, make Sonic dodge their attacks and retreat, and could "fry" Tails.
Basic Egg Pawns can cause trouble for Sonic and Amy
Shellcrackers harming Sonic

 

[LaserPrecision]

Just gonna leave some stuff that I nipped from a couple pages here:

Sonic saying that dealing with a full company of Badniks is a little dicey
Standard Buzz Bombers can cause extensive damage to the Eggmobile, make Sonic dodge their attacks and retreat, and could "fry" Tails.
Basic Egg Pawns can cause trouble for Sonic and Amy
Shellcrackers harming Sonic

The last two links are the same scan

 

[GlaceonGamez471]

The last two links are the same scan

Whoops, corrected

 

[Scathan_The_Celestial]

Was a hard decision because current Task is so ass, no writer respects this dude, recently Cap's sidekick just destroyed him. Logan isn't portrayed as a martial artist by many authors but he has a lot of good feats.

It's more so imo he doesn't use it much, still a expertly trained combatant (it also helps he old)

 

[Smashtwig]

I know y'all didn't read Zero's skill essay but I guess I can elaborate on the most important ones.

• Mega Man X had 200+ Years of experience, +100 from X Era to Zero Era. Copy X is a perfect copy of X physicals and skills, and Zero quite literally dogwalks him and calls him "weak". Copy X goes into his second phase, and Zero still shows no sign of struggle when beating him. Copy X also just straight up calls Zero terrifying when it comes to combat skills not highlighting anything else about him like his strength. Oh yeah, he also had amnesia
• Is overall X's rival in the X Series, who can 2v1 almost every Maverick in the series, most impressively X can fight an even more powerful Ultimate Armor X (which would upscale from Ultimate Armor, which upscales from his other like 10 armors he has) and an Awakened Black Zero (which is stacking two different forms together) at the same time in an enclosed space- and still win with just his dinky Base X-Buster with no upgrades, oh and some hover boots
• Zero is also the only reason why the Resistance puts up a fight against Neo Arcadia (basically think a group of rag tags versus what is literally the entire world) and wins
• Zero is then dumbed into a vast desert fighting countless enemy Reploids that can damage him and could be comparable to X as during the Elf Wars, all Reploids were equipped with a copy of X's X-Buster. This is during a Neo Arcadia made sandstorm which is designed specifically to screw Zero over with debuffs like- paralysis, being unable to see, along with ECM effects (electronic countermeasures, which are basically "false signals" to technology to trick their detection methods). So for an entire year, Zero was unable to see- his primary method of looking at the world without any other (relatively good) means to sense the enemies he fights, was being constantly being bombarded by a sandstorm which leaves him with a malfunctioning arm, while quite literally being gaslit into thinking he actually CAN detect enemies only for it to be false ones. And by the time we pick up with him in Mega Man Zero 2's intro stage, he says "This isn't fun anymore". And they sent their ENTIRE ARMY like on some Zack Fair versus Shinra crap.
• Like a lot of other people, can pick up any weapon and just use it masterfully, sure okay
• Has fought like, I swear like five different people that clone themselves to jump him.
• Beat Illusion Manipulation from Phoenix Magnion which absolutely worked on him by attacking at his illusion to bait him into attacking with his real self so Zero can hit the guy
• Beat time stoppers that launch danmaku
• Beat stat stompers like Gate who are just invulnerable to Zero's attacks by managing to hit him with his own self-launched attacks
• Beat one-shotters like Blaze Heatnix who manipulate large AoE flames that one shot him
• Outskilled Deathtanz Mantisk, who was so skilled with a blade that he can defeat 20 other bots as skilled as Magma Dragoon jumping him who has mastery of all martial arts (gonna have to check for scans on that, he might only have general martial mastery)- who had higher range that Zero
• Washes Sigma, who is always typically portrayed as stronger than Zero in most games. In their first bout, Sigma was decked out at full power with his Saber while Zero had nothing, and was also a rabid beast. So Zero just rips off a piece of rebar metal to contend with Sigma and ripped his entire arm off. Sigma is also top 1 of the Maverick Hunters at the time, Maverick Hunters are able to contend with a whole bunch of Mavericks with varying powers, and they use the aforementioned Magma Dragoon as a dummy for their combat training
• Upscales from Mega Man, who has fought against 88+ Robot Masters all with some serious hax and abilities like Time Stop, overall speed blitzing, and using air vibrations to predict his every move, and all with just his Mega Buster (technically)
  • I don't do much Classic RN so I'm not gonna input many of the feats in and just focus on X and Zero series for now
• Defeats Omega, who has three different forms and an a Dark Elf Amp. The 1st Form without the Dark Elf Amp stomped Fairy Leviathan and FIghting Fefnir, both of which are comparable to Zero- those two almost died. Then it got it's Dark Elf Amp, which is stated to be tremendous (literally the whole plot of MMZ3 is to combine Omega and the Dark Elf together to be really strong). From there it seemed like it took actually zero damage from Sage Harpuia, the strongest of the Guardians (like Leviathan and Fefnir). Zero doesn't get any noticeable attack or speed amp during this game, and he walks up to 1st Form Dark Elf Omega, and beats him- and then there's a 2nd form that is way more powerful than that (protrayed to be the full power of the dark elf on its own if I recall) and beats that too- and then there's a third form, which is Zero's original body that's just even more powerful than anything in the series- and then being amped by the Dark Elf on top of that, and Zero had to beat him (and the rest of the Zero series) with a crappy fake copy of a body.

bruh

 

[Armorchompy]

Sonic is also quite well known for dodging... like 99% of games involves him dodging stuff with his speed. You have Frontiers where he pulls a Tohou and dodges bullet hell from someone stronger than him (The End bossfight), you've got the opening to Unleashed where he 1v1000+ an entire army while also easily dodging artillery fire, etc.

Is that so impressive when he gigablitzes 99% of the things he fights

• Mega Man X had 200+ Years of experience, +100 from X Era to Zero Era. Copy X is a perfect copy of X physicals and skills, and Zero quite literally dogwalks him and calls him "weak". Copy X goes into his second phase, and Zero still shows no sign of struggle when beating him. Copy X also just straight up calls Zero terrifying when it comes to combat skills not highlighting anything else about him like his strength. Oh yeah, he also had amnesia
• Is overall X's rival in the X Series, who can 2v1 almost every Maverick in the series, most impressively X can fight an even more powerful Ultimate Armor X (which would upscale from Ultimate Armor, which upscales from his other like 10 armors he has) and an Awakened Black Zero (which is stacking two different forms together) at the same time in an enclosed space- and still win with just his dinky Base X-Buster with no upgrades, oh and some hover boots
• Zero is also the only reason why the Resistance puts up a fight against Neo Arcadia (basically think a group of rag tags versus what is literally the entire world) and wins
• Zero is then dumbed into a vast desert fighting countless enemy Reploids that can damage him and could be comparable to X as during the Elf Wars, all Reploids were equipped with a copy of X's X-Buster. This is during a Neo Arcadia made sandstorm which is designed specifically to screw Zero over with debuffs like- paralysis, being unable to see, along with ECM effects (electronic countermeasures, which are basically "false signals" to technology to trick their detection methods). So for an entire year, Zero was unable to see- his primary method of looking at the world without any other (relatively good) means to sense the enemies he fights, was being constantly being bombarded by a sandstorm which leaves him with a malfunctioning arm, while quite literally being gaslit into thinking he actually CAN detect enemies only for it to be false ones. And by the time we pick up with him in Mega Man Zero 2's intro stage, he says "This isn't fun anymore". And they sent their ENTIRE ARMY like on some Zack Fair versus Shinra crap.
• Like a lot of other people, can pick up any weapon and just use it masterfully, sure okay
• Has fought like, I swear like five different people that clone themselves to jump him.
• Beat Illusion Manipulation from Phoenix Magnion which absolutely worked on him by attacking at his illusion to bait him into attacking with his real self so Zero can hit the guy
• Beat time stoppers that launch danmaku
• Beat stat stompers like Gate who are just invulnerable to Zero's attacks by managing to hit him with his own self-launched attacks
• Beat one-shotters like Blaze Heatnix who manipulate large AoE flames that one shot him
• Outskilled Deathtanz Mantisk, who was so skilled with a blade that he can defeat 20 other bots as skilled as Magma Dragoon jumping him who has mastery of all martial arts (gonna have to check for scans on that, he might only have general martial mastery)- who had higher range that Zero
• Washes Sigma, who is always typically portrayed as stronger than Zero in most games. In their first bout, Sigma was decked out at full power with his Saber while Zero had nothing, and was also a rabid beast. So Zero just rips off a piece of rebar metal to contend with Sigma and ripped his entire arm off. Sigma is also top 1 of the Maverick Hunters at the time, Maverick Hunters are able to contend with a whole bunch of Mavericks with varying powers, and they use the aforementioned Magma Dragoon as a dummy for their combat training
• Upscales from Mega Man, who has fought against 88+ Robot Masters all with some serious hax and abilities like Time Stop, overall speed blitzing, and using air vibrations to predict his every move, and all with just his Mega Buster (technically)
  • I don't do much Classic RN so I'm not gonna input many of the feats in and just focus on X and Zero series for now
• Defeats Omega, who has three different forms and an a Dark Elf Amp. The 1st Form without the Dark Elf Amp stomped Fairy Leviathan and FIghting Fefnir, both of which are comparable to Zero- those two almost died. Then it got it's Dark Elf Amp, which is stated to be tremendous (literally the whole plot of MMZ3 is to combine Omega and the Dark Elf together to be really strong). From there it seemed like it took actually zero damage from Sage Harpuia, the strongest of the Guardians (like Leviathan and Fefnir). Zero doesn't get any noticeable attack or speed amp during this game, and he walks up to 1st Form Dark Elf Omega, and beats him- and then there's a 2nd form that is way more powerful than that (protrayed to be the full power of the dark elf on its own if I recall) and beats that too- and then there's a third form, which is Zero's original body that's just even more powerful than anything in the series- and then being amped by the Dark Elf on top of that, and Zero had to beat him (and the rest of the Zero series) with a crappy fake copy of a body.

This is good but I'd put Sonic a bit above him

Updated. Also here’s the new applicants.

Arguments for Blade, all scans on his profile : )

Blade is the best vampire hunter in the world, feared by vampires all across it and master of an incredible variety of weapons. Capable of skillfully throwing any object he gets his hands on. Is as skilled with his knives as any martial artist is with his hands. Defeated a vampire that had beaten the best fencing masters in Europe. Shot two bullets into another gun's barrel. Slashed dozens of spiders off himself before any of them could bite him. Knocked a flashlight and a handgun out of a man's hands with two simultaneous knife throws, and pinned a guy to the wall by his clothes without spilling blood with a similar attack. Can throw knives with enough accuracy to send them down a laser weapon's thin barrel or to break off a vampire's teeth as he's attempting to bite down on a victim. Could have easily tagged the size-shifter Micromax with a knife throw, boasting that his precision was such that he could amputate a spider's legs. Defeated many GI soldiers with his bare hands, learned how to fight just by watching martial arts movies (Though he would go on to properly learn Krav Maga and MMA in later years). Dodged over an attack by hooking a ladder with his axe and vaulting over it. Kept up with Gambit in a mid-air clash. Cut through someone so cleanly they only fell apart after he sheathed his weapon. Defeated a large amount of flying vampires in mid-air despite being unable to breathe. Can fight evenly with Wolverine and Spider-Man and defeat Deadpool fairly easily. Can kill someone in twenty-six different ways that wouldn't make them even feel it. Sneaked his way in and out of the Pentagon, stealing top-secret documents. Sneaked his way into an enemy fortress, can disappear in the middle of a conversation Batman-style and is a very skilled pickpocket, being able to steal the keys to his handcuffs while cuffed and under several people's eyes.

I'd personally say he's Wolvie/Taskie tier, maybe a bit higher than Wolverine though granted I don't know his feats too well so I may be wrong on that. Note that he's fought roughly evenly with both Wolverine and Spider-Man.

 

[Smashtwig]

This is good but I'd put Sonic a bit above him

I’ll be back

 

[LaserPrecision]

Is that so impressive when he gigablitzes 99% of the things he fights

Yes:

They're not really that fodder. Their durability is fodder tho. But even common bad ins are stated to be capable of killing Sonic's friends, and other "fodder" Badniks are capable of injuring and causing harm to Sonic as stated by him in IDW. Their combat speed scales closely. Sonic's advantages over them is travel speed, and far superior acrobatics. Thus why he could run around them and easily evade every attack to sweep them all. But they posses the ap and combat speed to actually pose threats to Sonic in undesirable settings.

Just gonna leave some stuff that I nipped from a couple pages here:

Sonic saying that dealing with a full company of Badniks is a little dicey
Standard Buzz Bombers can cause extensive damage to the Eggmobile, make Sonic dodge their attacks and retreat, and could "fry" Tails.
Basic Egg Pawns can cause trouble for Sonic and Amy
Shellcrackers harming Sonic

They're fast enough to tag Sonic pretty consistently. He does have way higher travel speed though. Almost no robot can catch up to his. Combat speed is another question though.

 

[TheKingStrategist13]

As a famous Mii Costume once said

What the hell is this?

Fr though I have a terrible feeling about this thread

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

They're fast enough to tag Sonic pretty consistently. He does have way higher travel speed though. Almost no robot can catch up to his. Combat speed is another question though.

My own issues with scaling fodder that high aside... That's not even what the profile says?
although im probably a hypocrite considering where touhou fodder speed is scaling rn
Also keep in mind that precision is a factor here; Unless those enemies are all master marksmen, they're not gonna compare to what Marisa regularly dodges, which includes danmaku from people who can do shit like this or this.

 

[Smashtwig]

This is good but I'd put Sonic a bit above him

I'm back

Looks like Sonic is apparently the definition of what "skilled" means in this thread, so I'll give my own take on his feats- but I'll also double down and say that Zero can do almost everything seen in this thread about Sonic

I think Armor is typically a pretty cool guy but I'm sorry when you said that the Mega Man server was looking like this trying to hold me back





I don't care if Zero is bottom 10 on this list, but I will die on the hill of him being more skilled than this blue bowling ball lmao- and I'll try to not to sound like I'm glazing him, but uh, I probably will sound like I am because I'm not joking about any of this. Considering Armor only said Sonic is only a bit above him- this should do something to that viewpoint



Shake- you also sound like a cool guy, but I'm sorry but I cannot return the same courtesy because I gotta use your feats as collateral damage because those are the main feats used in this thread so far. I don't mean to start another Sonic vs Mega Man war, but I gotta do it man

Because I'm gonna explain how every one of these feats are completely overshadowed by Zero, (nearly) ALL OF THEM- on top of everything I already have listed (though I think I will repeat on of them)


APOLOGIES. NOW RUN YOUR HANDS.


Martial Experience

Has a specific fighting style complimented by both his high speed and ability to curl into a ball, tailored towards utilizing momentum from both his attacks and techniques. But on top of this, Sonic shows knowledge in other styles; several of his moves and attacks mimic Capoeria (Advance series), boxing, was deemed the successor to the secret Linshao Kung Fu, and can defeat Espio in battle despite his training in Ninjutsu (Sonic Generations).

Refers to Knuckles' moves as easy to read when teaching Emerl how to fight, despite Knuckles being verbatim referred to as a master martial artist.

• Zero also has his specific style of mixing buster and saber combat, and even has knowledge of Street Fighter moves, some of which can one-shot others
• First off, the fact that Emerl needs to re-learn how to fight tells me that his 4000 year feat doesn't even scale even if it was true. But Sonic is much faster than Knuckles, and no matter how skilled you are if you're slower, you just have a huge disadvantage, so of course Knuckles would be easy to read from Sonic's POV. But I'll give the benefit of the doubt.
  • The amount of Skilled Martial Artists in Mega Man is quite decent, and I'm missing likely a lot of them. Yamato Man is a skilled spearman and skilled martial artist, Buster Rod G is extremely skilled in Chinese martial arts in general, including ancient ones and ones that use staves, Knight Man bodied 1000 Robots all of which competed in a combat tournament- so they'd all be at least heavily competent. Torch Man straight up created his own martial Arts. Magma Dragoon is a combat obsessed superlative (master) martial artist. And Zero upscales from ALL of this
• oh also Zero is part of the 0th Shinobi Corps and beat both Phantom (an actual ninja), Hanumachine, and Tech Kraken also from a similar stealth unit for the ninjutsu stuff

Easily thrashed the Egg Dragoon, a machine with years of research on his movement, while in a transformation that stripped him of that trademark speed and many of those related techniques. He later did so again, this time as his usual self. Even his Classic self, who is years less experienced than Modern Sonic, is able to do this.

• Oh boy. OH BOY. There is a man named "Doctor Weil" in the Mega Man Zero series. He does this exact thing for Zero's Original Body which he uses for Omega. FOR A CENTURY. He was studying, GLAZING this man's body and every detail of it for figuring out how to best use it and find a way to rule Neo Arcadia. And not like he was asleep most of the time, bro was scheming, planning from the Elf Wars a century before and throughout the entire MMZ series. And more importantly he juiced up Omega up in Zero's original body to be even more powerful (well, more of unleash its full potential). So Weil knows EVERYTHING Zero can do, and both Omega and him STILL got skill issued by Zero

Outskilled alternate versions of Shadow (Lancelot), Blaze (Percival), and Knuckles (Gawain) that have dedicated their lives to swordsmanship as the Knights of the Round Table, being the greatest Knights in the world excluding King Arthur whose illusion Sonic also bested in combat (Black Knight). This was after less than a day of training in swordsmanship. Combined with the above, he quickly mimicked and mastered not one but three different styles of swordsmanship. Knight Style for balance of power and speed (used by Lancelot), Paladin style for power (used by Galahad), and Cavalier style for speed (used by Percival) after fighting the Knights who used them.

• The fact that he can pick up a sword and cook is pretty good. Zero has a similar feat where he picked up the Recoil Rod and used it with as much profiency as he does with his Z-Saber, which at this point he has regained all of his skill with back- the Recoil Rods are dual tonfa- which are actually kinda complex to use compared to a sword, and he called these "easy to use". On the otherhand, Zero is quite literally not just a master of weapons anymore. He can straight up rip off body parts of other Mavericks and use them as effective weapons using his Z-Knuckle's grip strength, for example, he can rip out a cannon from a... cannon enemy, and use that as an effective weapon as if it was his own Buster- it doesn't even have a TRIGGER and he can still figure out how to fire it, let alone fight effectively with it. That's like if you ripped out an iguana's tounge and used it as an effective whip (sorry for putting that image in your head)- which Zero actually does with a frog or if you tore off a railgun's barrel and use that on its own to fire. Additionally when it comes to swordplay, Zero upscales from Sword Man who specializes in Iaido- as well as Blade Man who reportedly has an encyclopedic level knowledge on just swords- and almost every single one of Wily's robots are designed for and programmed for combat and combat only since MM2- and X has only known combat and depressing war for his entire 100/200+ year timespan. As for switching styles, Zero has done so for almost every game, he's always using new techniques, always switching from primarily buster to saber to both- to not using either in favor of something else- to using other people's limbs as effective weapons

Consistently fodderizes Metal Sonic, a robot designed to match him in all regards which is constantly repaired and upgraded. It's a joke at this point tbh.

• If you're talking about rivals- Zero fodderizes Copy X in specifically skill, even though Copy X would have more experience upscaling from original X, than he does and just calls the perfect copy of his rival ”weak”, and that the "real X" was stronger despite Copy X being a perfect physical and skillful copy of X. When Copy X comes back from death, he specifically addresses that Zero is scary because of specifically his skill, calling them "terrifying"- so it's definitely a skill feat, and Zero just comes back to annihilate Copy X AGAIN even though Copy X now has knowledge as to how skilled Zero is. He also upscales from Mega Man beating Bass also designed to be better than Mega Man in every way, just like Metal Sonic, and is also constantly being upgraded by Wily.

Thousands of Years Experience

First off I'm going to outline something you people already probably know, experience is impressive, but it is not much without good feats. I can spend a quintillion years learning hand to hand combat, but when I see a glock i'm through. General skill is overall more valuable than being honed in one thing when we're dealing with fiction versus debates where there are far more scary positions to be in than a hand to hand fight (like dealing with Sharingan or A Stand)

I'll be grouping Zavok and Emerl together here

Thrashed Ultimate Emerl in under 30 seconds when nobody else was capable of doing so, to Shadow's admittance, and who had all of Sonic's own techniques alongside all the techniques of his friends on top of 4000 years worth of combat experience. This not only includes their moves and abilities granted from Sonic's friends, but things down to their specific ways of running and their stances when remaining idle during combat (Sonic Battle).

Let's look at the scan that justifies Emerl's 4000 years, because this just ain't true.

"Though it is difficult to believe, this robot has been watching my movements, and mimicking all that I do. I was amazed by my scans of this being. Surprisingly, reams and reams of data scrolled and caused my most powerful computer to crash. More intriguing was that the data was all about melee combat and weapons of that age. Eventually, if this being is ever restored to its former state, it will put all that data to use, and recreate all the weaponry and combat abilities that it once had... And that's not all. If my guesses are correct, it will also have the ability to absorb modern weaponry as well."

Even looking at this very scan on its own merits, this subterfuges its own rating. The data is vast, no doubt, but it's all about melee/weapons combat of that age- the age of 4000 years ago, specifically. There's the issue with this feat right there. It's not gaining more information to be up to date, it only has knowledge of that age. None of this even scales properly to Sonic, otherwise Sonic wouldn't need to teach him how to fight- and also, he was just awakened recently in the game let alone 4000 years of activity. Even if the guy was awake for all 4000 years the guy only has known and learned things from his time and his time only, otherwise Eggman, the smartest man in the world would note that Emerl has more than that.


Bested Master Zik, the oldest member of the Deadly Six, who is over 1000 years old and has trained the other Zeti. Oh, and he also basically stomped each member of the Deadly Six twice (Lost World).

• Okay, so he's old- skill doesn't do you much when you're that frail, Sonic could have easily just used his raw AP and Speed (speed being the most important thing in a hand to hand contest, which Sonic will have in spades even if the Six can technically keep up with him), we also don't know how long he has actually spent fighting- but aside from that, even if he trained the other Zeti, there's simply no way a person can pass on 1000 years of experience (technically you can't really pass down experience), so we'll go with Zavok's 146 years (assuming he was taught for all 146 years), compared that to X's 100 years (yeah my bad I got that wrong), it's not all that bad except for the fact that Zavok (and also Emerl) has only done martial arts, and nothing else, making his skillset virtually limited to hand throwing exclusively, whereas Zero experience covers all sorts of different baddies that one shot him, that time stop him that, duplicate a gazillion times and jump him, that teleport sneak attack him, that control the very terrain itself, that have a homefield advantage that nerfs Zero's mobility (such as an ice field), that make the entire area dark so that Zero can only fight back by seeing where enemy's attacks are coming from.

Even if you ignore the arguments here, Zero STILL has something for both of these feats. The Stardroids which Wily found and had re-programmed to fight for his side are from an ancient civilization, more than at least 1000 years ago- and they came equipped with weapons, so they've been fighting for that long too. And also, he should be scaling to Mega Man who fought Ra Moon- something that is 20,000 years old- and a bloody SUPERCOMPUTER- which would have direct command over beings like Ra Thor (3x stronger than Guts Man who is superior to Mega Man, and 2x stronger than Quick Man who is superior to Mega Man) and Neo Yellow Devil who was 10x Mega Man, Mega beating at least the former and arguably the latter with skill alone.




Evaded attacks and minorly assaulted Dark Gaia in his Base, an eldritch being of Darkness who has been fighting Light Gaia every few tens of millions of years since the beginning of time in a constant cycle of Light and Dark, and outfought it completely alongside Light Gaia as Super Sonic (Unleashed).

• Bruh. Okay technically I don't have an argument for this. But I don't see how colliding energies or this feat is really all that good. It's good to have a rival to push you, but if they're fighting for millions of years and that's a skill feat I should expect them to be doing flips hitting each other with 25 way mixups as efficiently as John Wick. I want to see strategies never before seen in this world where they predict the path of an asteroid in four hundred years and kick the other dude into it directly on time for a wall bounce into a suplex. This ain't a skill feat if they have nothing to show for it aside from... energy ball... attacks? Okay, sure experience- against ONE DUDE- and specifically against that one guy.

Other Arguments
1 vs 1000+ in Sonic Unleashed: I feel like Zero's section STILL hasn't been read after all. Like not even a little bit- and honestly it genuinely pisses me right off. So I'm gonna say it again and hopefully it won't get overshadowed this time

• First off, I'm pretty sure Sonic lost this 1 vs 1000 fight in Unleashed, he needed Super Sonic to break out of a big badnick. Zero has no such flaw
• Zero has done this feat, but with WAY WAY more numbers and with conditions that nerf him to oblivion. First off, his fodder were all equipped with Zero Era X-Busters, so they're definitely comparable to him in AP and definitely pose a threat since. Even if you don't accept that, keep in mind that Zero's Buster Weapon is comparable to his Saber, and his Buster weapon... IT SUCKS- literally picked off the corpse of a random NPC, the standard weapon for the Resistance group that can't even take out all that many fodder enemies before being overrun.
  • The number is Zero- AND ONLY Zero, against the entirety of the Neo Arcadian forces, Neo Arcadia is the only civilization left on earth, and they mass produce fodder and mechanoids all the time, but even if the initial number was less than Sonic's feat for some reason, Zero was constantly doing this for an entire year STRAIGHT, with no breaks. How do I know it was their entire army? Because we see in Zero 2 that the Resistance has been building up their forces thanks to Zero's efforts and is in a much better place in terms of military power- yet when they attack Neo Arcadia in the weakest state they have ever been they were completely wiped out in mere seconds. If even a small fraction of Neo Arcadia were to attack the Resistance at all in this one year timeframe, the Resistance wouldn't have recovered at all like we see in the game.
  • And that's not the worst part, the worst part is POCKET SAND

Track 3) Departure

The track of the opening stage, the wild lands. Zero departs towards these grounds of battle once again. After the collapse of Area X, Neo Arcadia’s countermeasures program was perfect. Zero soon has to become a fugitive. This desert doesn’t only steal his sight, it’s actually scientific weapons which contained micro magnetic lines that cause ECM effect and paralysis on Repliroids, and turning these lands into the stage of the battle was the core of the siege operation by the “Sand Seas” Task Force.

• I already mentioned this but it seems like no one gave a crap about it at all. Technically, Zero does have enhanced senses, but only really seeing in the dark which I can straight up do myself- and his other senses are situational to detect Sigma's evil specifically. However, his eyesight has nothing against physical obstructions like the sandstorm (yes it's a sandstorm as seen in the opening of MMZ2).
  • HE CANNOT SEE
• In addition, it supposedly paralyzes Zero so he cannot fight properly with magnetic effects which are obviously quite effective on robots. This is shown where Zero cannot even use most of his BASIC moves like a charge buster or a multi-saber slash combo in the Intro Stage Opening. He also has a visibly malfunctioning arm in the intro stage.
  • HE CANNOT MOVE PROPERLY
• The sand can also causes ECM effects, ECM stands for Electronic Countermeasures. In real life- An electronic countermeasure (ECM) is an electrical or electronic device designed to trick or deceive radar, sonar, or other detection systems, like infrared (IR) or lasers. It may be used both offensively and defensively to deny targeting information to an enemy. The system may make many separate targets appear to the enemy, or make the real target appear to disappear or move about randomly (Wikipedia). So effectively, all of Zero's senses, even if he had more than just sight, are being fooled with false information or no information at all.
  • HE IS BEING FOOLED TO THINK HE IS SEEING SOMETHING
• The engineer of the Resistance noticed that Zero had broken nearly of his weapons, and was unable to again, use most of his basic moves
  • HE HAS NO PROPERLY FUNCTIONING WEAPONS
• And after all of that, whereas Sonic was saying that Badnicks were "dicey" to deal with, Zero eventually just said this as he was destroying enemies: "This isn't fun anymore". Even though again, every enemy he faces in this is capable of Zero Era X attacks- being comparable in AP
  • HE WAS B O R E D

Able to mimic abilities after seeing the technique used once, such as Chaos Control, and did so even when the Emerald he had was a fake with weaker energy. This extends to his own refined techniques, as displayed by Classic Sonic being able to quickly master the Homing Attack and Boost.

• We'll talk about Zero's Learning System. It allows him to learn new techniques after a battle. Sometimes this can be as simple as copying such as his Dark Hold time stopper (yes it's listed as a "Weapon" but it's achieved through the Learning System, that's our bad)- but more importantly Zero is able to adapt or straight up create new techniques to fit into his specific style. Like Bruce Lee said, keep what works and throw out what doesn't- or something like that. Copying a technique that doesn't fit how you fight or can't be applied and used very often (like when was the last time you seen Sonic use Chaos Control- pretty much never) is almost useless if you're never gonna use it, making something your own is. Given how Zero’s Learning Skill works and how he’s reported according to the X Challenge legions of Mavericks (legions being around 4000+), he’d basically have accumulated skill of at least hundreds of Mavericks or if you're going by just the games you've seen at least around 80+.

Precision

• First off, I'm not even sure if that feat really was kilometers away, if so, I don't have much of an argument. Except that Tomahawk Man exists. To get the obvious out of the way, he is a Wily Number specifically made for combat, which is exactly what Zero is who would easily upscale. Tomahawk man is able to extinguish a candle light from 100 meters away with a Tomahawk Throw. The precision of doing that without destroying the candle itself (otherwise the scans would say he can destroy the candle) is definitely impressive, if not just as impressive as Sonic's precision feat. Also note that plenty of the Robot Masters from the game Tomahawk Man was from were built for combat, where Mega Man is a damn HOUSEKEEPER BOT. Zero is superior to all of them by a wide margin in every catagory.

Referred to by Dr. Starline as the only person who can stand up to Dr. Eggman through sheer skill alone.

• Doesn't seem all that good of a feat to me, if I was the only active hero with powers and skills around against whatever evil technological mastermind, then yeah I think I'd be the only guy that can stop him. Skill in this case would simply just be how well you use the tools you have.
• Zero is the only one that stands a chance against Neo Arcadia, the ENTIRE WORLD at this point- with combat skills alone, SPECIFICALLY- because Copy X, the leader of Neo Arcadia goes out of his way to highlight his "terrifying combat skills" rather than any other quality that Zero may have.
  • Neo Arcadia is so much vastly stronger than the Resistance that mere seconds after the Resistance launched a full force attack at their peak military strength with all of their resources against the weakest Neo Arcadia has EVER been, they got completely wiped out, not a single survivor left. Even Zero was like “nah” bro we gotta outwit them. And Zero was the ONLY guy to make a difference in the entire series against Neo Arcadia- which is again, the entire world

As Frontiers shows, Sonic can even hack Eggman's technology.

• First off, that was Sonic with Tails right there, and secondly bro was playing GALAGA how is that hacking bro.
• I don't know how this is skill, but I'm game. Zero can repair X's Buster, a technology that despite everyone around them having similarly powerful tech- was straight up confusing scientists on what they were even looking at, they were simply confused as to what the heck X's buster even was, and Zero just comes in and just... repairs it.

Has triumphed over Eggman over 227,000 times despite his intellect, legion of mechas and robots, constant preparation, and downright reality warping-level of technology.

• Sonic is 15 years old. Giving the benefit of the doubt that he was stopping Eggman for his ENTIRE LIFE as an infant. Eggman would have to fit that many plans in those 15 years. To do that, Eggman has make and execute 34.7312775 plans per MINUTE. Sonic would never even have time to "relax" on a bed of grass if that was the case because his every minute of his entire life would be him literally just walking in and out of Eggman's room. You have to make up and hypothesize methods to make that make any logical sense- otherwise, these plans will simply just boil down to "Eggman keel sonic" and must be the most simple plans ever because there is Eggman can make that many complex and widescale plans in a minute. In fact, if this is true, then every cutscene with Eggman in it should have Sonic intrude in it and just beating his ass when he was minding his own buisness. I seriously think this is just either an outlier or a feat where the creators have no idea how improbable that is.
• Even counting this, Cyber-elves, which Neo Arcadia use to abuse their powers, specifically warp reality of Cyberspace to have an effect on the real world. So I guess Zero can compete with this feat somewhat

Unrelated arguments

• Keep in mind all of the Zero feats take place when Zero hasn't picked up a weapon or even fought in a century (that was X), yet he's still the most skilled person in the verse, the Deathtanz Mantisk feat included was that too
• Every feat involving Classic series Mega Man who Zero upscales from is from a dude who has like, half of Zero's actual mobility options.
• I've mentioned this before but again I feel like my entire thing was ignored so I'm gonna say it again. X Era X, with his buster only and at best a crap version of his Ultimate Armor (really just its hover boots and nothing else), fights against a stronger than ever Ultimate Armor X, and an Awakened Black Zero (which again as mentioned before, is stacking 2 of his strongest amps), at the same exact time. This is by all means a skill feat that I don't think Sonic has ever done, at best he's only contending with one primary villain at a time and winning, maybe except the Deadly Six(?), except that the Six were weaker than Sonic, and X here is going up against two people way stronger than he is. And Zero would upscale from this as he calls Copy X out for having skill issue as said before, who'd have these experiences

Overall I think Sonic's skill is mostly contributed to his martial skill, which is good and all, but I think it really isn't all that great when compared to the grand scale of fiction and all of the powers it has, Marisa definitely outskills him because all of her skills are much more tailored to fighting everything than simply what Sonic is good at. Likewise, Zero has fought so many varying opponents of all different types of haxes under some of the worst conditions imaginable like NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE AND MOVE PROPERLY- and still feel confident enough to continue. So I definitely think he is overall one of the more pound for pound skillful characters around.




I'll shove in more scans later if you guys think I'm glazing that hard

 

[Arnoldstone18]

WHERE IS THE MANGA CATEGORY.... MAVVVVVVVVVVERRRICKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

That's a pretty good skill wall for Zero ngl. Guess I'll wait and see what Sonic supporters have to say about Marisa beating his ass.
whoever wins, @Kirbonic_Pikmin loses

 

[Shmooply]

sees caitlyn, tracer, and scout on the list

 

[BayonettaxMinaj]

Bayonetta should be placed in the top 5 or Top 10-(bare minimum) when it comes to Combat Skill.

Bayonetta Skill Feats:

•Cereza never received any formal training. She learned the entirety of Umbran Skillset, the Dark Arts & Bullets Arts by watching other Witches-In-Training and copying them.

•Can wield firearms and melee weapons with her feet, quadruple-wielding weapons.

•Tamed some of the strongest Demons in Hell.

•Instantly masters any weapon she picks up.

•Instantly knows which Demon to use for whichever enemy & situation.

•Umbra Witches receive skill boosts in moonlight. It canonically makes higher-level techniques easier to do.

•Umbra Climax boosts Bayonetta’s skill in Demon Manipulation to the point where she can control them as if they were her own limbs.

•Instantly remastered Witch Walk despite the fact that most Witches die in training for this skill.

•Skilled Time Manipulator. During Witch Time, she grabbed multiple rain drops and turned them into a javelin.

•She is unbelievably proficient with Gun-chucks, and can even use Gun-chucks when on ice skates.



•She’s a supernatural markswoman:

-Landed headshots on multiple Angels from strange angles while in midair.

-Calculates & knows where every bullet will go once fired.

-Shot a child-sized angel statue that was several yards behind her in the crotch (right up the shaft) from a lower position without even having to aim.

-Can accurately shot enemies with her feet while doing a handstand without having to aim. Even if they’re behind her.

-Cleared a path through lava with a volley of bullets.

-Outlined Rodin’s silhouette with bullets.

-Shot a hole through the head of the character on Loki’s card mid-throw.

-Instantly recognized & dodged gunfire immediately after a time stop.

-Can accurately shoot targets while breakdancing.

-Shoot past allies to hit enemies. (Rodin, Viola, & Beta3 Jeanne.)

-Can shoot a volley of bullets at once simultaneously and in a heart shape.



•Blocks sword/blade attacks with her guns on numerous occasions.

•Caught a building-sized sword and stopped it with her bare hands.

•Beat a Joy in a dance battle and again in a fight moments later. Joys are free of physical bonds, can copy anything/anyone, and transcend physical reality on a conceptual level, yet still couldn’t beat Bayonetta.



•Skilled in Iai-Jutsu.

•Highly skilled in evasion.

•Can receive a skill boost via the Immortal Marionette which can turn novices into the deadliest fighters.

•Casually avoided cars flying at her.

•Casually kills 2nd Sphere Angels whom are incredibly dangerous even against Umbra Witches.

•Rode Gomorrah & Phantasmaranae across Tokyo with great ease despite Iridescent warping space, dimensions, and reality to catch them.

•Evaded attacks from Stratus Homunculi on a table without ruining or stepping on the food.

•Fought on top of missiles without causing them to explode.

•Controlled the Valkyrie-(the giant super plane) while simultaneously fighting Jeanne.

•Evaded Jeanne’s Wicked Weaves & Summons in a tight space with no warning.

•Defeated Aesir’s Golem. The Golem analyzes it’s prey, their threat level & abilities, and morphs into the organism best suited to kill them as soon and efficiently as possible. It ran away from Bayo the first time it fought her.

•Aesir can see the past, present, future, and infinite possibilities of anyone he looks at, watch their entire life in an instant and remember every detail, and observe the entire multiverse all at once. Bayonetta not only kept up with Aesir but even caught him off guard.

•Defeated Jeanne, Balder, and Rodin, equally gifted combatants all of whom have hundreds, thousands, and even billions of years more combat experience.

•Beat Gomorrah & Phantasmaranae. Gomorrah has 150 Million Years of Combat Experience, & Phantasmaranae has 1 Billion Years worth of Combat Experience.

•Adapted in skill to fight Aesir after being overwhelmed by Right-Eye Loptr.

•Adapted to fight Singularity Definition after undoing Trinity Masquerade fusion. Her attacks where weaker and being nullified, but later were effective. She was also able to keep up with Arch Adam Origin Luka in a weakened state.

•Fought Beta-4 Bayonetta to a draw and beat Mictlantecuhtli while holding back. Mictlantecuhtli has Over 3,000 years of experience.



•Controlled a pilotless fighter jet like a surfboard.

• MEDIOCRIS Homunculi can read enemy attack patterns to predict their moves & dodge them. Bayonetta can kill them without issue.

•Controlled her demons while they were in a berserk state.

•Defeated the Cardinal Virtues consecutively while piloting an Umbran Armor for the first time.

•Can shoot & tag Irenic Angels while they move at infinite+ speeds.

•Mastered Witch Time on her 1st attempt and can use it on other Umbra Witches despite their natural immunity to it.

•Rodin himself stated that breaking out of Bayonetta’s control is incredibly difficult for demons.

•Expert Time traveler.

•Skillfully suplexed 18 Angels & grappled with Grace & Glory.

•Became so skilled in Demon Masquerade that she can partially fuse with Madama Butterfly. Up to half her face.

•Completely humbled Strider in their first encounter despite not having fought a Faerie in centuries.

•Fought Angels & Lumen Sages for a century in the Clan War.

•Beat up Alraune twice in her own palace. The 1st time Alraune was already a Semi-Rodin level threat, the 2nd time she was amped by Jeanne’s soul.

•Performed 2 Deadly Sin rituals at once.

•Summoned Queen Sheba & Omne, despite the fact that the attempt alone of summoning the former is guaranteed to kill a witch and no Lumen Sage or Umbra Witch could ever summon the latter.

•Surpassed her Master, Morgana as a child.

•Matched her mother Rosa whom was documented as the strongest Witch in the Entire Umbra Witch clan’s history.

 

[DaReaperMan]

Saw this just now and... Agent 47 is basically what you'd call "Normal Superhumanly skilled", he's basically batman in the terms of he's got every martial art, he's got perfect precision in gunplay, and has some nuts stealth scaling, but like, he's not really a contender for #1 in a straight up fight. And this seems to be melee-based so yeah...

Oh and Tracer, Scout, and Little Mac should just be removed from contending on the list lol, Tracer abuses her powers in combat meaning that even skill scaling to Widow physically isn't all that good, and Little Mac is your "Peak human" skill contender, though if you had to ask me about melee skill specifically for those I know...

Scout<Tracer<Little Mac<47

 

[XSOULOFCINDERX]

Bayonetta should be placed in the top 5 or Top 10-(bare minimum) when it comes to Combat Skill.

Bayonetta Skill Feats:

•Cereza never received any formal training. She learned the entirety of Umbran Skillset, the Dark Arts & Bullets Arts by watching other Witches-In-Training and copying them.

•Can wield firearms and melee weapons with her feet, quadruple-wielding weapons.

•Tamed some of the strongest Demons in Hell.

•Instantly masters any weapon she picks up.

•Instantly knows which Demon to use for whichever enemy & situation.

•Umbra Witches receive skill boosts in moonlight. It canonically makes higher-level techniques easier to do.

•Umbra Climax boosts Bayonetta’s skill in Demon Manipulation to the point where she can control them as if they were her own limbs.

•Instantly remastered Witch Walk despite the fact that most Witches die in training for this skill.

•Skilled Time Manipulator. During Witch Time, she grabbed multiple rain drops and turned them into a javelin.

•She is unbelievably proficient with Gun-chucks, and can even use Gun-chucks when on ice skates.



•She’s a supernatural markswoman:

-Landed headshots on multiple Angels from strange angles while in midair.

-Calculates & knows where every bullet will go once fired.

-Shot a child-sized angel statue that was several yards behind her in the crotch (right up the shaft) from a lower position without even having to aim.

-Can accurately shot enemies with her feet while doing a handstand without having to aim. Even if they’re behind her.

-Cleared a path through lava with a volley of bullets.

-Outlined Rodin’s silhouette with bullets.

-Shot a hole through the head of the character on Loki’s card mid-throw.

-Instantly recognized & dodged gunfire immediately after a time stop.

-Can accurately shoot targets while breakdancing.

-Shoot past allies to hit enemies. (Rodin, Viola, & Beta3 Jeanne.)

-Can shoot a volley of bullets at once simultaneously and in a heart shape.



•Blocks sword/blade attacks with her guns on numerous occasions.

•Caught a building-sized sword and stopped it with her bare hands.

•Beat a Joy in a dance battle and again in a fight moments later. Joys are free of physical bonds, can copy anything/anyone, and transcend physical reality on a conceptual level, yet still couldn’t beat Bayonetta.



•Skilled in Iai-Jutsu.

•Highly skilled in evasion.

•Can receive a skill boost via the Immortal Marionette which can turn novices into the deadliest fighters.

•Casually avoided cars flying at her.

•Casually kills 2nd Sphere Angels whom are incredibly dangerous even against Umbra Witches.

•Rode Gomorrah & Phantasmaranae across Tokyo with great ease despite Iridescent warping space, dimensions, and reality to catch them.

•Evaded attacks from Stratus Homunculi on a table without ruining or stepping on the food.

•Fought on top of missiles without causing them to explode.

•Controlled the Valkyrie-(the giant super plane) while simultaneously fighting Jeanne.

•Evaded Jeanne’s Wicked Weaves & Summons in a tight space with no warning.

•Defeated Aesir’s Golem. The Golem analyzes it’s prey, their threat level & abilities, and morphs into the organism best suited to kill them as soon and efficiently as possible. It ran away from Bayo the first time it fought her.

•Aesir can see the past, present, future, and infinite possibilities of anyone he looks at, watch their entire life in an instant and remember every detail, and observe the entire multiverse all at once. Bayonetta not only kept up with Aesir but even caught him off guard.

•Defeated Jeanne, Balder, and Rodin, equally gifted combatants all of whom have hundreds, thousands, and even billions of years more combat experience.

•Beat Gomorrah & Phantasmaranae. Gomorrah has 150 Million Years of Combat Experience, & Phantasmaranae has 1 Billion Years worth of Combat Experience.

•Adapted in skill to fight Aesir after being overwhelmed by Right-Eye Loptr.

•Adapted to fight Singularity Definition after undoing Trinity Masquerade fusion. Her attacks where weaker and being nullified, but later were effective. She was also able to keep up with Arch Adam Origin Luka in a weakened state.

•Fought Beta-4 Bayonetta to a draw and beat Mictlantecuhtli while holding back. Mictlantecuhtli has Over 3,000 years of experience.



•Controlled a pilotless fighter jet like a surfboard.

• MEDIOCRIS Homunculi can read enemy attack patterns to predict their moves & dodge them. Bayonetta can kill them without issue.

•Controlled her demons while they were in a berserk state.

•Defeated the Cardinal Virtues consecutively while piloting an Umbran Armor for the first time.

•Can shoot & tag Irenic Angels while they move at infinite+ speeds.

•Mastered Witch Time on her 1st attempt and can use it on other Umbra Witches despite their natural immunity to it.

•Rodin himself stated that breaking out of Bayonetta’s control is incredibly difficult for demons.

•Expert Time traveler.

•Skillfully suplexed 18 Angels & grappled with Grace & Glory.

•Became so skilled in Demon Masquerade that she can partially fuse with Madama Butterfly. Up to half her face.

•Completely humbled Strider in their first encounter despite not having fought a Faerie in centuries.

•Fought Angels & Lumen Sages for a century in the Clan War.

•Beat up Alraune twice in her own palace. The 1st time Alraune was already a Semi-Rodin level threat, the 2nd time she was amped by Jeanne’s soul.

•Performed 2 Deadly Sin rituals at once.

•Summoned Queen Sheba & Omne, despite the fact that the attempt alone of summoning the former is guaranteed to kill a witch and no Lumen Sage or Umbra Witch could ever summon the latter.

•Surpassed her Master, Morgana as a child.

•Matched her mother Rosa whom was documented as the strongest Witch in the Entire Umbra Witch clan’s history.

A lot of these sound more like stat advantages compared to skill advantages, though she is indeed very skilled.

 

[BayonettaxMinaj]

A lot of these sound more like stat advantages compared to skill advantages, though she is indeed very skilled.

Which ones? List them & I’ll explain.

 

[MinecraftHater2011]

Oh and Tracer, Scout, and Little Mac should just be removed from contending on the list lol,

If you give me a couple of minutes I might be able to gather up some skill feats for Scout that'll let him stay on the list ;-;

 

[DaReaperMan]

If you give me a couple of minutes I might be able to gather up some skill feats for Scout that'll let him stay on the list ;-;

I mean, I could be wrong but ain't he also in the "Peak Human" skill bin?

 

[MinecraftHater2011]

I mean, I could be wrong but ain't he also in the "Peak Human" skill bin?

Well, to quote a part from Soupywolf5's TF2 blog, "Despite being vastly outnumbered several hundred to several thousand to one, and the latter all possessing weaponry capable of one-shotting them, the Mercs could stalemate Gray Mann's robot army and defend all of Mann Co.'s facilities from their invasions." Not only this, but the Scout while wielding a melee weapon is also able to tag and hit Saxton Hale himself, with Saxton being a master martial artist who invented several of his own martial arts (keep in mind that Saxton's also able to one-shot the Scout, even if the latter's overhealed). Also, with a speed amp from his can of Bonk, the Scout's able to dodge gunfire from the Heavy's minigun, which can shoot around 167 bullets per second (Scout is also theoretically able to dodge gunfire from 16 to 99 different Heavys at once [which would equate to about 2672 to 16533 bullets he'll have to be dodging a second], but the wiki's too scared to have Scout TF2 with shmup protag levels of dodging skill and would prob just dismiss the feat as non-canon or smth like that).

 

[Shmooply]

"Despite being vastly outnumbered several hundred to several thousand to one, and the latter all possessing weaponry capable of one-shotting them, the Mercs could stalemate Gray Mann's robot army and defend all of Mann Co.'s facilities from their invasions."

weaponry capable of one-shotting them
heavy and soldier take an explosive that was between them, heavy somehow survives an explosion that hits him right in the centre

I don't disagree with using the Robot War as a skill feat for the mercs, but the machines being able to oneshot them is wrong.

Also, with a speed amp from his can of Bonk, the Scout's able to dodge gunfire from the Heavy's minigun, which can shoot around 167 bullets per second

More of a stat advantage than actual skill.

 

[DaReaperMan]

I don't disagree with using the Robot War as a skill feat for the mercs, but the machines being able to oneshot them is wrong.

More of a stat advantage than actual skill.

Yeah, the robots in Robot War kind of were being dunked lol

 

[MinecraftHater2011]

I don't disagree with using the Robot War as a skill feat for the mercs, but the machines being able to oneshot them is wrong.

I mean, the Heavy, who is the tankiest class still got like, three-shot by those explosives; them getting one-shot might be an exaggeration, but the machines' weaponry is still a major threat to the mercs.

 

[LaserPrecision]

Martial Experience

Has a specific fighting style complimented by both his high speed and ability to curl into a ball, tailored towards utilizing momentum from both his attacks and techniques. But on top of this, Sonic shows knowledge in other styles; several of his moves and attacks mimic Capoeria (Advance series), boxing, was deemed the successor to the secret Linshao Kung Fu, and can defeat Espio in battle despite his training in Ninjutsu (Sonic Generations).

Refers to Knuckles' moves as easy to read when teaching Emerl how to fight, despite Knuckles being verbatim referred to as a master martial artist.

• Zero also has his specific style of mixing buster and saber combat, and even has knowledge of Street Fighter moves, some of which can one-shot others
• First off, the fact that Emerl needs to re-learn how to fight tells me that his 4000 year feat doesn't even scale even if it was true. But Sonic is much faster than Knuckles, and no matter how skilled you are if you're slower, you just have a huge disadvantage, so of course Knuckles would be easy to read from Sonic's POV. But I'll give the benefit of the doubt.
  • The amount of Skilled Martial Artists in Mega Man is quite decent, and I'm missing likely a lot of them. Yamato Man is a skilled spearman and skilled martial artist, Buster Rod G is extremely skilled in Chinese martial arts in general, including ancient ones and ones that use staves, Knight Man bodied 1000 Robots all of which competed in a combat tournament- so they'd all be at least heavily competent. Torch Man straight up created his own martial Arts. Magma Dragoon is a combat obsessed superlative (master) martial artist. And Zero upscales from ALL of this

• Sonic has his own fighting style plus several others he implements into his attacks. The counter argument you used for Zero seems far less impressive. It just states he's good at using a buster and saber (Which btw, Sonic also mastered three different sword styles all within a day), and when you say street fighters, I assume you mean the game franchise? And not real life street fights? Because one is far less impressive.
• What does the 4000 years stuff have to do with the argument you quoted? It just talks about Sonic viewing Knuckles moves as basic. Anyways, if Sonic's reason for being able to easily read Knuckles moves were speed, he would've stated it were easy to dodge as opposed to read. Reading someone's moves requires skills as opposed to speed. Not to mention, Knuckles can tag people FASTER than Sonic in Battle. That being Shadow (Who in the manuals is stated to be the fastest character).
  • Likewise for Sonic. Hell, one of the martial arts Sonic acquired was one known only to one family IIRC (The Linshao Kung Fu IIRC). Sonic defeats every knight in Sonic and the Secret Knights despite having years of experience and being the best of the best at the round table. Their weapons are different types of swords IIRC. Sonic himself defeats thousands of robots which can overthrow armed cities without the help of Sonic or his friends. Etc.

Easily thrashed the Egg Dragoon, a machine with years of research on his movement, while in a transformation that stripped him of that trademark speed and many of those related techniques. He later did so again, this time as his usual self. Even his Classic self, who is years less experienced than Modern Sonic, is able to do this.

• Oh boy. OH BOY. There is a man named "Doctor Weil" in the Mega Man Zero series. He does this exact thing for Zero's Original Body which he uses for Omega. FOR A CENTURY. He was studying, GLAZING this man's body and every detail of it for figuring out how to best use it and find a way to rule Neo Arcadia. And not like he was asleep most of the time, bro was scheming, planning from the Elf Wars a century before and throughout the entire MMZ series. And more importantly he juiced up Omega up in Zero's original body to be even more powerful (well, more of unleash its full potential). So Weil knows EVERYTHING Zero can do, and both Omega and him STILL got skill issued by Zero

• I'd say Eggman's (How is fairly above Weil in intellect) skill in replicating people is more impressive tbh. He hasn't had as much time, given he's only had years of experience (But nearly a million losses). However, he's been shown to consistently easily create machines with his intellect and ideologies, that can also replicate all the techniques, abilities, and moves of an opponent with a mere glance. He's also programmed robots with the collective skill of several people for a race if I'm remembering correctly and was designed to easily win, yet was still bested by Sonic. I've played two of the Zero game, I don't really remember him spending centuries on how to beat Zero though, so I'll take your word for it. But it's basically one scientist spending centuries figuring out how to beat someone, vs a scientist who's spent years learning every one of their movements and can create technology that replicates all of a character's skill, statistics, intellect, abilities, etc. (Most notably Metal Sonic/Neo Metal Sonic). It also doesn't help that on TOP of being Sonic's equal, it also posses SEVERAL abilities Sonic does not have in addition such as flight, barriers, speed amps, energy projection attacks, etc. yet Sonic wins EVERY bout with him, and has even one against him in 2v2's and 1v2.

Outskilled alternate versions of Shadow (Lancelot), Blaze (Percival), and Knuckles (Gawain) that have dedicated their lives to swordsmanship as the Knights of the Round Table, being the greatest Knights in the world excluding King Arthur whose illusion Sonic also bested in combat (Black Knight). This was after less than a day of training in swordsmanship. Combined with the above, he quickly mimicked and mastered not one but three different styles of swordsmanship. Knight Style for balance of power and speed (used by Lancelot), Paladin style for power (used by Galahad), and Cavalier style for speed (used by Percival) after fighting the Knights who used them.

• The fact that he can pick up a sword and cook is pretty good. On the otherhand, Zero is quite literally not just a master of weapons anymore. He can straight up rip off body parts of other Mavericks and use them as effective weapons using his Z-Knuckle's grip strength, for example, he can rip out a cannon from a... cannon enemy, and use that as an effective weapon as if it was his own Buster- it doesn't even have a TRIGGER and he can still figure out how to fire it. That's like if you ripped out an iguana's tounge and used it as an effective whip (sorry for putting that image in your head)- which Zero actually does with a frog or if you tore off a railgun's barrel and use that on its own to fire. Additionally when it comes to swordplay, Zero upscales from Sword Man who specializes in Iaido- as well as Blade Man who reportedly has an encyclopedic level knowledge on just swords- and almost every single one of Wily's robots are designed for and programmed for combat and combat only- and X has only known combat and depressing war for his entire 100/200+ year timespan. As for switching styles, Zero has done so for almost every game, he's always using new techniques, always switching from primarily buster to saber to both- to not using either in favor of something else- to using other people's limbs as effective weapons

• The first half doesn't sound super impressive. It just sounds like improvisation for weapons that he's used before. I've played MM Zero 3 (around 3 times, but my last playthrough was in 2022, so I don't remember everything). Most of the equipable Z-Knuckle stuff gives you access to weapons that while different, are pretty similar to stuff he's used before. Like anything gun related, of course he'll pick that up easy when he's used the Buster for YEARS. Stuff like using the tongue as a whip is good though. But it doesn't quite sound as impressive as what Sonic has done. That being mimicking and mastering 3 sword styles, beating the best knights in the world in 1 day. What makes it impressive is that Sonic became THE best sword wielder by picking up a sword for LESS than a day. The people Zero outskils he's had YEARS of experience over. Of course he'd be better. He's one of the biggest sword users in the Mega Man series period. Sonic on the other hand uses nothing CLOSE to a sword and picked it up and became the best at it effortlessly. Zero from what I've seen wasn't shown to pick up a weapon, and with less than a day of training, become the best in the world at using it. Eggman similarly creates robots meant solely for combat, so I don't know why that's too important. Sonic has also picked up weapons from corpses and used it. Like in the scan earlier where he picks up a lance from an Egg Pawn and uses it to decapitate all the robots around him and tosses it like a spear to punch a gaping hole in a battery. Sonic's style switches up in most games too. He's most known for his recurring speed moveset like boost, homing attack, rolling attack, etc. But in games like Sonic Battle, 90% of his moveset is comprised of hand to hand combat, technological gadgets (Explosives), and speed based projectiles. In Frontiers, you spend the whole game unlocking new moves. He's wrestled with and used hand to hand combat a few times in Forces, etc.

Consistently fodderizes Metal Sonic, a robot designed to match him in all regards which is constantly repaired and upgraded. It's a joke at this point tbh.

• If you're talking about rivals- Zero fodderizes Copy X in specifically skill, even though Copy X would have more experience upscaling from original X, than he does and just calls the perfect copy of his rival ”weak”, and that the "real X" was stronger despite Copy X being a perfect physical and skillful copy of X. When Copy X comes back from death, he specifically addresses that Zero is scary because of specifically his skill, calling them "terrifying"- so it's definitely a skill feat, and Zero just comes back to annihilate Copy X AGAIN even though Copy X now has knowledge as to how skilled Zero is. He also upscales from Mega Man beating Bass also designed to be better than Mega Man in every way, just like Metal Sonic, and is also constantly being upgraded by Wily.

• If Zero called the copy as weak compared to X himself, it probably means he's not as impressive. I do still think Zero > X though considering years back, X and Zero (and maybe Axl?) needed to 2(3?)v1 Omega, yet in their rematch in the Zero series games he won in a 1v1 while Omega was amped. Already covered Metal earlier though, so I'll just brief stuff about him. On top of being Sonic's equal in every way, he posses several abilities unique to only him that give him inherent advantages over Sonic, AND has the ability to copy other peoples abilities simply with a glance (Scanning), and has yet to defeat Sonic once. Even when Sonic is outnumbered.

Thousands of Years Experience

First off I'm going to outline something you people already probably know, experience is impressive, but it is not much without good feats. I can spend a quintillion years learning hand to hand combat, but when I see a glock i'm through. General skill is overall more valuable than being honed in one thing when we're dealing with fiction versus debates where there are far more scary positions to be in than a hand to hand fight (like dealing with Sharingan or A Stand)

• Emerl isn't honed in one field though. The now non-canon game (That was canon when it came out) explained that Emerl was built for war against several other races in a war for power. He has built in experience of hand to hand combat, weapons, and hax.

Thrashed Ultimate Emerl in under 30 seconds when nobody else was capable of doing so, to Shadow's admittance, and who had all of Sonic's own techniques alongside all the techniques of his friends on top of 4000 years worth of combat experience. This not only includes their moves and abilities granted from Sonic's friends, but things down to their specific ways of running and their stances when remaining idle during combat (Sonic Battle).

Let's look at the scan that justifies Emerl's 4000 years, because this just ain't true.

Even looking at this very scan on its own merits, this subterfuges its own rating. The data is vast, no doubt, but it's all about melee/weapons combat of that age- the age of 4000 years ago, specifically. There's the issue with this feat right there. It's not gaining more information to be up to date, it only has knowledge of that age. None of this even scales properly to Sonic, otherwise Sonic wouldn't need to teach him how to fight- and also, he was just awakened recently in the game let alone 4000 years of activity. Even if the guy was awake for all 4000 years the guy only has known and learned things from his time and his time only, otherwise Eggman, the smartest man in the world would note that Emerl has more than that.

• You forgot the part about it being able to copy modern weaponry as well. Emerl was awakened 50 years ago by Dr. Gerald (The genius who created Shadow The Hedgehog), and was able to copy numerous of the weapons he had aboard the ship, and had to shut him off when he started getting out of control. So he's not limited to super far back, and even ancient technology in Sonic is shown to be vastly more impressive than what we have in current days. Hell, they had stuff that even scientist like Tails and Eggman have trouble fully grasping with their computers who are currently treated as more intelligent than the likes of Wily or Dr. Weil on their profiles. And the feat in question is talking about the end of the game where Emerl gained access to ALL data he had ever recorded throughout his lifespan. All 4000 years. This isn't referring to the beginning of the game as you seem to be mentioning.

Bested Master Zik, the oldest member of the Deadly Six, who is over 1000 years old and has trained the other Zeti. Oh, and he also basically stomped each member of the Deadly Six twice (Lost World).

• Okay, so he's old- skill doesn't do you much when you're that frail, Sonic could have easily just used his raw AP and Speed (speed being the most important thing in a hand to hand contest, which Sonic will have in spades even if the Six can technically keep up with him), we also don't know how long he has actually spent fighting- but aside from that, even if he trained the other Zeti, there's simply no way a person can pass on 1000 years of experience (technically you can't really pass down experience), so we'll go with Zavok's 146 years (assuming he was taught for all 146 years), compared that to X's 100 years (yeah my bad I got that wrong), it's not all that bad except for the fact that Zavok has only done martial arts, and nothing else, making his skillset virtually limited to hand throwing exclusively, whereas Zero experience covers all sorts of different baddies that one shot him, that time stop him that, duplicate a gazillion times and jump him, that teleport sneak attack him, that control the very terrain itself, that have a homefield advantage that nerfs Zero's mobility (such as an ice field), that make the entire area dark so that Zero can only fight back by seeing where enemy's attacks are coming from.

Even if you ignore the arguments here, Zero STILL has something for both of these feats. The Stardroids which Wily found and had re-programmed to fight for his side are from an ancient civilization, more than at least 1000 years ago- and they came equipped with weapons, so they've been fighting for that long too. And also, he should be scaling to Mega Man who fought Ra Moon- something that is 20,000 years old- and a bloody SUPERCOMPUTER- which would have direct command over beings like Ra Thor (3x stronger than Guts Man who is superior to Mega Man, and 2x stronger than Quick Man who is superior to Mega Man) and Neo Yellow Devil who was 10x Mega Man, Mega beating at least the former and arguably the latter with skill alone.

• Zavok's leadership is also something that shines. He's also shown to be able to sneak into one of Eggman's bases, and combat opponents with various abilities that go beyond close combat. Heck, I'd argue him fighting opponents with the versaility of what he faces with MOSTLY hand to hand combat is more impressive than winning with LOTS of versatility since it puts you at a large disadvantage. And everything you've mentioned, Sonic has unironically dealt with already. Don't recall Zero fighting someone that can one-shot him though. He's faced time-stop, time slow, paralysis inducing beams, space-time distorting, etc in the form of Shadow who already shares Sonic's speed and strength. Enemies that can create a shit ton of copies (Eggman or Infinite), sneak attack and spam TP (Shadow again. Shadow is really cracked tbh), control the terrain (Eggman again IIRC though it depends on the extent), fought in an area that nerfs Sonic's main asset (Speed. He was forced to fight Metal Sonic and Starline in snow, which ruined his traction and severely limited his movement) and underwater (Where he can only hold his breath for 30 seconds and his speed is drastically reduced), as for a dark area, IIRC, he dodes light beams from robots in the credits of CD, and can predict incoming attacks/projectiles without looking or knowing of the enemies presence thanks to precog.

• And Mega typically has a full kit of the robots he beats by the time he gets to the final boss. But given this is just meant to be a feat comparable to Emerl, I won't really comment much on it. Emerl's seems more impressive though given it is a war robot with 4000 years experience that copied numerous weapons and Sonic + all of his friends every move/ability down to even their fighting stances (And Shadow's space-time warping hax).

Other Arguments
1 vs 1000+ in Sonic Unleashed: I feel like Zero's section STILL hasn't been read after all. Like not even a little bit- and honestly it genuinely pisses me right off. So I'm gonna say it again and hopefully it won't get overshadowed this time

• First off, I'm pretty sure Sonic lost this 1 vs 1000 fight in Unleashed, he needed Super Sonic to break out of a big badnick. Zero has no such flaw
• Zero has done this feat, but with WAY WAY more numbers and with conditions that nerf him to oblivion. First off, his fodder were all equipped with Zero Era X-Busters, so they're definitely comparable to him in AP and definitely pose a threat since. Even if you don't accept that, keep in mind that Zero's Buster Weapon is comparable to his Saber, and his Buster weapon... IT SUCKS- literally picked off the corpse of a random NPC, the standard weapon for the Resistance group that can't even take out all that many fodder enemies before being overrun.
  • The number is Zero- AND ONLY Zero, against the entirety of the Neo Arcadian forces, Neo Arcadia is the only civilization left on earth, and they mass produce fodder and mechanoids all the time, but even if the initial number was less than Sonic's feat for some reason, Zero was constantly doing this for an entire year STRAIGHT, with no breaks. How do I know it was their entire army? Because we see in Zero 2 that the Resistance has been building up their forces thanks to Zero's efforts and is in a much better place in terms of military power- yet when they attack Neo Arcadia in the weakest state they have ever been they were completely wiped out in mere seconds. If even a small fraction of Neo Arcadia were to attack the Resistance at all in this one year timeframe, the Resistance wouldn't have recovered at all like we see in the game.
  • And that's not the worst part, the worst part is POCKET SAND

• He was caught in Eggman's hands. Or rather his mech. But he didn't lose. He still beat the hundreds of other robots right before facing Eggman directly while simultaneously evading artillery fire from Eggman's cannons. Zero himself has lost too. Most notably against X, but this isn't really a "flaw".
• Sonic did arguably fight billions of robots (Quite literally. Eggman took over 90% of the globe in Forces IIRC, with all cities being overrun by Badniks and infinite clones) in a day after being tortured for 6 months straight. And do keep in mind, the Badniks are comparable to him, and the Super Badniks in particular even moreso. He didn't fight ALL the robots by himself, but you play as Sonic and the OC to take over chunks of the globe all at once. So he'd still being beating millions to possibly billions. There's also colors where he fights off entire planets (6 planets IIRC?) full of Eggman's robots with space ships that flood space as back-up.

• I already mentioned this but it seems like no one gave a crap about it at all. Technically, Zero does have enhanced senses, but only really seeing in the dark which I can straight up do myself- and his other senses are situational to detect Sigma's evil specifically. However, his eyesight has nothing against physical obstructions like the sandstorm (yes it's a sandstorm as seen in the opening of MMZ2).
  • HE CANNOT SEE
• In addition, it supposedly paralyzes Zero so he cannot fight properly with magnetic effects which are obviously quite effective on robots. This is shown where Zero cannot even use most of his BASIC moves like a charge buster or a multi-saber slash combo in the Intro Stage Opening. He also has a visibly malfunctioning arm in the intro stage.
  • HE CANNOT MOVE PROPERLY
• The sand can also causes ECM effects, ECM stands for Electronic Countermeasures. In real life- An electronic countermeasure (ECM) is an electrical or electronic device designed to trick or deceive radar, sonar, or other detection systems, like infrared (IR) or lasers. It may be used both offensively and defensively to deny targeting information to an enemy. The system may make many separate targets appear to the enemy, or make the real target appear to disappear or move about randomly (Wikipedia). So effectively, all of Zero's senses, even if he had more than just sight, are being fooled with false information or no information at all.
  • HE IS BEING FOOLED TO THINK HE IS SEEING SOMETHING
• The engineer of the Resistance noticed that Zero had broken nearly of his weapons, and was unable to again, use most of his basic moves
  • HE HAS NO PROPERLY FUNCTIONING WEAPONS
• And after all of that, whereas Sonic was saying that Badnicks were "dicey" to deal with, Zero eventually just said this as he was destroying enemies: "This isn't fun anymore". Even though again, every enemy he faces in this is capable of Zero Era X attacks- being comparable in AP
  • HE WAS B O R E D

• The stage doesn't even completely obscure sight. There are stage mechanics that obscure sight, but it's rare for them to completely take away Zero's sight. And while you can see in the dark, that's lit darkness. There's not a lot of place aside from maybe your room in the middle of the night (Assuming you have no other sources of light in your room) that is "pitch-black". I can't even see my hand in my room at night, but I can see just outside my house just fine. It's really just light pollution tbh.
  • Can see, but sight seems obscured from what we can see. Though that is still impressive regardless.
  • It doesn't seem to **** up basic movements or anything though. Just locks access to his more useful arsenal. I also always interpreted the "arm" thing as him just being worn down. It looks more like a "tired" animation. But I can see how it can be interpreted as malfunctioning.
  • Nor can Sonic when hit by Shadow's full body paralysis inducing Chaos Spear or Silver's full body paralysis TK, yet still comes out on top of both of them. And their effects are more crippling (but don't have the same long lasting effects).
  • In the first stage of the game, he can quite clearly see fine. It seems he even exited the sandstorm in the intro. So not sure why he'd be blinded here. These effects also seem to **** up stuff that wouldn't hunder Zero significantly. Like deceiving radar/sonar/detection systems. Zero mostly sees/hears to fight.
• Were his weapons broken after the timeskip, or at the beginning of it. If so, that sounds like he had properly functioning weapons for part or most of the timeskip, and they were only broken upon meeting said engineer.
• To be fair, he thought it was dicey because he was on Eggman's ship in addition to that. And Neo Metal being there definitely didn't help. He had to fight them in an area where he was at a disadvantage. Typically badniks are childs play for him. Not that it matters since I don't think "being bored" makes a skill feat more impressive. Maybe slightly increases how impressive it is if even that.

Able to mimic abilities after seeing the technique used once, such as Chaos Control, and did so even when the Emerald he had was a fake with weaker energy. This extends to his own refined techniques, as displayed by Classic Sonic being able to quickly master the Homing Attack and Boost.

• We'll talk about Zero's Learning System. It allows him to learn new techniques after a battle. Sometimes this can be as simple as copying such as his Dark Hold time stopper (yes it's listed as a "Weapon" but it's achieved through the Learning System, that's our bad)- but more importantly Zero is able to adapt or straight up create new techniques to fit into his specific style. Like Bruce Lee said, keep what works and throw out what doesn't- or something like that. Copying a technique that doesn't fit how you fight or can't be applied and used very often (like when was the last time you seen Sonic use Chaos Control- pretty much never) is almost useless if you're never gonna use it, making something your own is. Given how Zero’s Learning Skill works and how he’s reported according to the X Challenge legions of Mavericks (legions being around 4000+), he’d basically have accumulated skill of at least hundreds of Mavericks or if you're going by just the games you've seen at least around 80+.

• This one seems more nitpicky. He doesn't implement it into his fighting style because he deems that he doesn't need it. So tosses it out as you quoted. Though there are a few times he has used it (IIRC, against Shadow in Adventure 2, and I think in a twitter takeover videos a couple years back? And maybe in the Sonic channel stories). I mean, he does technically implement it into his fighting style in Super Form, but that's Super Form. Of course he'd use it then. The learning system from what I recall also only lets him know how to use weapons/abilities. But I don't recall it stating he copies all of the experience/skill of the people he copied it from. That seems like something he has to accumulate on his own. And even so, Sonic has bested people who DO copy skill/experience/intellect on top of techniques in the form of Metal Sonic.

Precision

• First off, I'm not even sure if that feat really was kilometers away, if so, I don't have much of an argument. Except that Tomahawk Man exists. To get the obvious out of the way, he is a Wily Number specifically made for combat, which is exactly what Zero is who would easily upscale. Tomahawk man is able to extinguish a candle light from 100 meters away with a Tomahawk Throw. The precision of doing that without destroying the candle itself (otherwise the scans would say he can destroy the candle) is definitely impressive, if not just as impressive as Sonic's precision feat

• He was far further away than Little Planet which was already like, hundreds of meters away easily. I think it's easily Kilometers. Sonic improvised a rock as a weapon, and landed a curved shot to take out a moving small target from kilometers away. But yes, I'd agree Tomahawk's feat is very impressive.

Referred to by Dr. Starline as the only person who can stand up to Dr. Eggman through sheer skill alone.

• Doesn't seem all that good of a feat to me, if I was the only active hero with powers and skills around against whatever evil technological mastermind, then yeah I think I'd be the only guy that can stop him. Skill in this case would simply just be how well you use the tools you have.
• Zero is the only one that stands a chance against Neo Arcadia, the ENTIRE WORLD at this point- with combat skills alone, SPECIFICALLY- because Copy X, the leader of Neo Arcadia goes out of his way to highlight his "terrifying combat skills" rather than any other quality that Zero may have.
  • Neo Arcadia is so much vastly stronger than the Resistance that mere seconds after the Resistance launched a full force attack at their peak military strength with all of their resources against the weakest Neo Arcadia has EVER been, they got completely wiped out, not a single survivor left. Even Zero was like “nah” bro we gotta outwit them. And Zero was the ONLY guy to make a difference in the entire series against Neo Arcadia- which is again, the entire world

• Sonic ISN'T the only active hero with powers and skills around though. MOST of Sonic's friends ironically have better powers than Sonic and are equals/comparable to him. Such as Shadow and Silver to name a few (Shadow is also really skilled, Silver is younger though, but still skilled in his own right). Let alone Tails who despite having the same intellect as Eggman as stated verbatim by official manuals still wouldn't be capable of beating Eggman by himself.
• The entire globe was overwhelmed by Eggman's prototype in the very beginning of Sonic Forces. Including Sonic's friends and cities full of armed citizens (Their weapons ARE comparable to Sonic, keep that in mind). And the ONLY people who made a difference in the war between Eggman and the Resistance was Sonic and Rookie. Eggman was so advantaged, he didn't even deem using his stronger weapons (Like the complete phantom ruby) necessary. And yet said stronger weapons were also overwhelmed by Sonic.

As Frontiers shows, Sonic can even hack Eggman's technology.

• First off, that was Sonic with Tails right there, and secondly bro was playing GALAGA how is that hacking bro.
• I don't know how this is skill, but I'm game. Zero can repair X's Buster, a technology that despite everyone around them having similarly powerful tech- was straight up confusing scientists on what they were even looking at, they were simply confused as to what the heck X's buster even was, and Zero just comes in and just... repairs it.

• I'm pretty sure you can hack several pieces of tech from Eggman AND the Ancients (Who had data beyond Eggman's computation) without Tails being nearby. Not that it matters since Tails doesn't even aide Sonic in that. And come on, it's pretty clear he's playing "Galaga" for the players sake. It's more fun than actually doing stereotypical hacking stuff like tapping random buttons on a keyboard to bust into the mainframe. This can more likely just be chalked up to game mechanics because we've seen earlier that Eggman's security is top-notch stuff in-verse. People also seem to have the weird impression Sonic isn't tech savvy when Sonic created the very first plane we see in Sonic 2 all by himself. Tails didn't build that. Then after it crashed, Sonic went looking for tools to fix it in a FOREST of only trees, logs, etc. He met Tails after he came back to Tails already fixing the plane for him
• It's not really combat skill. It's more so a general skill thing. Since you can obviously have skill in other fields of course.

Has triumphed over Eggman over 227,000 times despite his intellect, legion of mechas and robots, constant preparation, and downright reality warping-level of technology.

• Sonic is 15 years old. Giving the benefit of the doubt that he was stopping Eggman for his ENTIRE LIFE as an infant. Eggman would have to fit that many plans in those 15 years. To do that, Eggman has make and execute 34.7312775 plans per MINUTE. Sonic would never even have time to "relax" on a bed of grass if that was the case because his every minute of his entire life would be him literally just walking in and out of Eggman's room. You have to make up and hypothesize methods to make that make any logical sense- otherwise, these plans will simply just boil down to "Eggman keel sonic" and must be the most simple plans ever because there is Eggman can make that many complex and widescale plans in a minute. In fact, if this is true, then every cutscene with Eggman in it should have Sonic intrude in it and just beating his ass when he was minding his own buisness. I seriously think this is just either an outlier or a feat where the creators have no idea how improbable that is.
• Even counting this, Cyber-elves, which Neo Arcadia use to abuse their powers, specifically warp reality of Cyberspace to have an effect on the real world. So I guess Zero can compete with this feat somewhat

• I think this seems nitpicky. He's verbatim stated to have beat Eggman that many times. It's not like SEGA worked out a timeframe for if that's even feasible. And given Eggman and Sonic's speed, accomplishing plans every 34 minutes is entirely possible. I think there's statements from Sonic that he doesn't even get that many breaks because of Eggman. Just can't recall where from unfortunately. Also, what is wrong about the super-genius reality warping dude being able to create that many complex widescale plans in minutes? That's just a feat for Eggman. most of the games OF Sonic take place in less than a year, so having years to lose 227,000 times is SUPER feasible. Eggman's also created complex schemes on a whim before. So I don't see why this is even an issue for a super genius intellect character.
• I don't think those realities warping Cyber-elves are even used in combat against Zero that much from what I remember. Though admittedly, I missed one game in the MMZ series. So maybe they did? Or I forgot.

Unrelated arguments

• Keep in mind all of the Zero feats take place when Zero hasn't picked up a weapon or even fought in a century (that was X), yet he's still the most skilled person in the verse, the Deathtanz Mantisk feat included was that too
• Every feat involving Classic series Mega Man who Zero upscales from is from a dude who has like, half of Zero's actual mobility options.
• I've mentioned this before but again I feel like my entire thing was ignored so I'm gonna say it again. X Era X, with his buster only and at best a crap version of his Ultimate Armor (really just its hover boots and nothing else), fights against a stronger than ever Ultimate Armor X, and an Awakened Black Zero (which again as mentioned before, is stacking 2 of his strongest amps), at the same exact time. This is by all means a skill feat that I don't think Sonic has ever done, at best he's only contending with one primary villain at a time and winning, maybe except the Deadly Six(?), except that the Six were weaker than Sonic, and X here is going up against two people way stronger than he is. And Zero would upscale from this as he calls Copy X out for having skill issue as said before, who'd have these experiences

Overall I think Sonic's skill is mostly contributed to his martial skill, which is good and all, but I think it really isn't all that great when compared to the grand scale of fiction and all of the powers it has, Marisa definitely outskills him because all of her skills are much more tailored to fighting everything than simply what Sonic is good at. Likewise, Zero has fought so many varying opponents of all different types of haxes under some of the worst conditions imaginable like NOT BEING ABLE TO SEE AND MOVE PROPERLY- and still feel confident enough to continue

• Most games Sonic doesn't pick up weapons either. And the times he does, he becomes the best in the world at using it almost immediately upon picking it up
• To be fair, Modern Sonic has arguably more mobility than both Classic Sonic AND Zero put together. He is EXTREMELY versatile in mobility. His whole shtick is super speedy acrobatics. Mega Man does have a better arsenal when he's fully equipped though. Though that's not accounting for Sonic when he's similarly equipped.
• Most of Sonic Forces is Sonic fighting against people who are comparable to or stronger than him despite them having a number advantage. He fought against a perfect copy of Metal Sonic, Chaos 0, Zavok, Shadow simultaneously despite all of them being ~ Sonic. He also makes Infinite struggle in his rematch even when Infinite resorts to summoning like 5 clones of himself while being >>> Sonic. Keep in mind that the clones are verbatim stated to be equal to the originals. And yes, he did 1v6 the Deadly Six. Though they aren't weaker. Someone like Zavok is outright stronger, and the rest are just comparable/relative to him. I also don't really recall Ultimate Armor X being >> Zero. Is there like a statement of that or something?

Of course, but in the grand scheme of skilled people, Zero nor Marisa come even close to the comically stupid skill gods of certain verses. And you seem to be implying Sonic doesn't fight diverse opponents when literally every game is extremely diverse in terrain, opponents, and abilities. Sonic is like, unironically one of the most diverse video-game series to a point people hate on the series for it (Rightfully so in the case of some games). One game he's fighting a super genius (who in and of themselves are super varied), in another he's fighting gods, world ending threats, ancient civilizations hyper advanced technologies beyond modern day comprehension while suffering a physical nerf in the form of cyber corruption, ancient species with magical abilities, the government, etc. So to act as if he's only skilled in one thing, and one thing only is dishonest. MOST of Sonic's rivals are literally haxy people that are by themselves comparable to him (Shadow, Silver, Metal Sonic, Eggman, etc.).

I'll shove in more scans later if you guys think I'm glazing that hard

Nah, you're good. Don't think you're glazing him at all. Though I do think you're heavily underestimating Sonic's sklls. Sonic is beyond just basic martial arts. In fact, most of the verse is something else entirely. Minority of the verse is martial arts stuff tbh. Only martial arts stuff is like Espio, Knuckles, and Deadly Six. Take some peaks into games whenever Sonic picks up new abilities, like Secret Rings where he gets Shahra who gives him access to like, an entire list of hax/abilities. Or 06 where he gets access to hax shoes. I think pretty much anything Zero has been faced with, Sonic has similarly been confronted with. Most likely due to his significantly longer run time/screen-time compared to him + several other official media's like the IDW Comics and Sonic Channel website stories.

If the two were equalized statistic-wise, I can see Sonic folding Zero. Though I think with a fair amount of difficulty. Given Sonic's arsenal ain't nearly as big (Though I guess it depends on how much of Sonic's arsenal you give him and how much of Zero's arsenal you give him, since both can have a lot or a little).

 

[Armorchompy]

I'm back

Looks like Sonic is apparently the definition of what "skilled" means in this thread, so I'll give my own take on his feats- but I'll also double down and say that Zero can do almost everything seen in this thread about Sonic

I think Armor is typically a pretty cool guy but I'm sorry when you said that the Mega Man server was looking like this trying to hold me back

it's fine mega man and sonic are both mid so i don't have a stake in this

 

[Smashtwig]

bruh we’re doing the thing where we section out parts and argue like that lol

Sonic has his own fighting style plus several others he implements into his attacks. The counter argument you used for Zero seems far less impressive. It just states he's good at using a buster and saber (Which btw, Sonic also mastered three different sword styles all within a day), and when you say street fighters, I assume you mean the game franchise? And not real life street fights? Because one is far less impressive.

That’s really not how it works tbh, when you learn to add new martial arts into your current style, that’s just your style evolving and improving, it’s not its seperate thing. Zero does the same here, he’s also constant evolving his style, learning new skills that are implemented into his combat in every game with the Learning System

It’s the Hadoken one lol. Ryu and Ken, Akuma- heck Magma Dragoon is straight up just Akuma actually. I’ll have to look around but apparently Street Fighter is an actual thing in Mega Man and it’s not just some ”haha funny refefence” thing.

• What does the 4000 years stuff have to do with the argument you quoted? It just talks about Sonic viewing Knuckles moves as basic. Anyways, if Sonic's reason for being able to easily read Knuckles moves were speed, he would've stated it were easy to dodge as opposed to read. Reading someone's moves requires skills as opposed to speed. Not to mention, Knuckles can tag people FASTER than Sonic in Battle. That being Shadow (Who in the manuals is stated to be the fastest character).
  • Likewise for Sonic. Hell, one of the martial arts Sonic acquired was one known only to one family IIRC (The Linshao Kung Fu IIRC). Sonic defeats every knight in Sonic and the Secret Knights despite having years of experience and being the best of the best at the round table. Their weapons are different types of swords IIRC. Sonic himself defeats thousands of robots which can overthrow armed cities without the help of Sonic or his friends. Etc.

The 4000 years stuff was just a prelude to the Emerl stuff. And okay I guess? The knights having years of experience shouldn’t be anything much better than Magma Dragoon or Torch Man or Fefnir or X or the ancient AF Stardroids or pretty much every Maverick Hunter ever who’ve dedicated their entire lives to running hands. Zero also tags people faster than him too like Leviathan in the water, Harpuia, etc. Also he’d upscale over Mega Man who fights speed blitzer types like Ra Thor and Quick Man and Flash Man with just a Buster

I'd say Eggman's (How is fairly above Weil in intellect) skill in replicating people is more impressive tbh. He hasn't had as much time, given he's only had years of experience (But nearly a million losses). However, he's been shown to consistently easily create machines with his intellect and ideologies, that can also replicate all the techniques, abilities, and moves of an opponent with a mere glance. He's also programmed robots with the collective skill of several people for a race if I'm remembering correctly and was designed to easily win, yet was still bested by Sonic. I've played two of the Zero game, I don't really remember him spending centuries on how to beat Zero though, so I'll take your word for it. But it's basically one scientist spending centuries figuring out how to beat someone, vs a scientist who's spent years learning every one of their movements and can create technology that replicates all of a character's skill, statistics, intellect, abilities, etc. (Most notably Metal Sonic/Neo Metal Sonic). It also doesn't help that on TOP of being Sonic's equal, it also posses SEVERAL abilities Sonic does not have in addition such as flight, barriers, speed amps, energy projection attacks, etc. yet Sonic wins EVERY bout with him, and has even one against him in 2v2's and 1v2.

It’s not that Weil spent all of those years thinking about how to beat Zero moreso studying his every atom (exaggeration) of his original body, when I say Weil glazed over Original Body Zero we’re talking like he was in love my man he was swinging the other direction, completely obsessed. He used his DNA (yes it’s called DNA) to make the Mother/Dark Elf and everything- so bro definitely knows how Zero is, let alone a copy of his bod. Whereas the Egg Dragoon has spent years and still probably hasn’t completed its analysis on Sonic, there is straight up no more room for improvement in studying Zero and how he fights.

I feel like being Sonic’s equal plus some techniques isn’t exactly as good as being equal to Zero- except all of your stats are so juiced up that all of Zero’s comparable rivals (like Fefnir, Leviathan, and Harupia, all of which modeled after Actual X’s experiences / skill) get instant AP Stomped on the first dang form, not to mention 2nd (Fusion, actually using the full might of the Dark Elf while the first form was like Frieza saying he’s only using 1% or some crap idk) and 3rd Forms (Original Body Zero, who is so powerful on his own that even without the Dark Elf he’s definitely giving Aile’s ZX Form (X and Zero’s combined might and skill combined) a tough fight). Considering that Metal doesn’t use these techniques in really all that OP ways, and Sonic being equal in stats so there’s no trouble hurting metal, I really think that Omega is just the better difference here. That AP difference is really something. And I don’t think there’s a Sonic feat where he is blatantly stomped and still comes out on top (meanwhile this if the first out of at least 2 where this has happened for the Mega Man series- See X Challenge Below)

The first half doesn't sound super impressive. It just sounds like improvisation for weapons that he's used before. I've played MM Zero 3 (around 3 times, but my last playthrough was in 2022, so I don't remember everything). Most of the equipable Z-Knuckle stuff gives you access to weapons that while different, are pretty similar to stuff he's used before. Like anything gun related, of course he'll pick that up easy when he's used the Buster for YEARS. Stuff like using the tongue as a whip is good though. But it doesn't quite sound as impressive as what Sonic has done. That being mimicking and mastering 3 sword styles, beating the best knights in the world in 1 day. What makes it impressive is that Sonic became THE best sword wielder by picking up a sword for LESS than a day. The people Zero outskils he's had YEARS of experience over. Of course he'd be better. He's one of the biggest sword users in the Mega Man series period. Sonic on the other hand uses nothing CLOSE to a sword and picked it up and became the best at it effortlessly. Zero from what I've seen wasn't shown to pick up a weapon, and with less than a day of training, become the best in the world at using it.

Zero didn’t even take a day, he just- takes the weapon (like the chain rod for example, whips being the hardest of weapons to master let’s be real- actually bad example because the level system exists that also nerfed his saber, so let’s go with V Hanger or smth), and just uses it as properly as his other weapons and learns new skills for it just as fast as he does with his Z-Saber. Same with his Z-Knuckle weapons, except that it’s not just the same as his other weapons other than visually. These are body parts not proper weapons, there’s no trigger, there’s no sights, they weren’t even designed for a humanoid to use as a weapon with weight distribution messed up all over the place, the fact that Zero can use it proficiently at all is an absurd feat in of itself let alone make use of it as well as his other weapons.

Eggman similarly creates robots meant solely for combat, so I don't know why that's too important. Sonic has also picked up weapons from corpses and used it. Like in the scan earlier where he picks up a lance from an Egg Pawn and uses it to decapitate all the robots around him and tosses it like a spear to punch a gaping hole in a battery. Sonic's style switches up in most games too. He's most known for his recurring speed moveset like boost, homing attack, rolling attack, etc. But in games like Sonic Battle, 90% of his moveset is comprised of hand to hand combat, technological gadgets (Explosives), and speed based projectiles. In Frontiers, you spend the whole game unlocking new moves. He's wrestled with and used hand to hand combat a few times in Forces, etc.

Okay uh… He can punch and throw objects. Epic. He hasn’t picked up as many weapons as Zero does like Glaives, Spears, Tonfas, Knuckles, Whips, Daggers, Shields ETC, so he isn’t as diverse, though you can argue that to be a good thing (smth smth practice one kick 1000 times or smth Bruce Lee the art of war), but I personally think being diverse in your provfincency in multiple weapons on the same level as your preferred weapon is better and just grinding on one because eventually there's gonna be a cap in biomechanical ways to apply your skill

• If Zero called the copy as weak compared to X himself, it probably means he's not as impressive. I do still think Zero > X though considering years back, X and Zero (and maybe Axl?) needed to 2(3?)v1 Omega, yet in their rematch in the Zero series games he won in a 1v1 while Omega was amped. Already covered Metal earlier though, so I'll just brief stuff about him. On top of being Sonic's equal in every way, he posses several abilities unique to only him that give him inherent advantages over Sonic, AND has the ability to copy other peoples abilities simply with a glance (Scanning), and has yet to defeat Sonic once. Even when Sonic is outnumbered.

It was more of a “character” thing, when Zero compares Copy X to the real deal, he’s mostly referring to how Copy X doesn’t have the same righteous naive heart X has, why he feels more “strength” out of X, the hero’s attacks than Copy’s. Again, Copy X has the same specifications as the real deal, strength, skill, all of it. If Zero fought the real X, the result would be the same, just that he wouldn’t call him weak.

• Emerl isn't honed in one field though. The now non-canon game (That was canon when it came out) explained that Emerl was built for war against several other races in a war for power. He has built in experience of hand to hand combat, weapons, and hax.

The scan says ALL the data is about melee combat from that specific time, and nothing in between those years, that’s all I gonna base this whole thing off of. Even the data that broke the computer was that specific data, it just meant that it was a lot of information on skill of that era

• You forgot the part about it being able to copy modern weaponry as well. Emerl was awakened 50 years ago by Dr. Gerald (The genius who created Shadow The Hedgehog), and was able to copy numerous of the weapons he had aboard the ship, and had to shut him off when he started getting out of control. So he's not limited to super far back, and even ancient technology in Sonic is shown to be vastly more impressive than what we have in current days. Hell, they had stuff that even scientist like Tails and Eggman have trouble fully grasping with their computers who are currently treated as more intelligent than the likes of Wily or Dr. Weil on their profiles. And the feat in question is talking about the end of the game where Emerl gained access to ALL data he had ever recorded throughout his lifespan. All 4000 years. This isn't referring to the beginning of the game as you seem to be mentioning.

I mean, alright sure, but how can you prove the ancient tech from where Emerl is from is = to the Ancients from Frontiers? Also, computers crashing isn’t a big deal as you think, there just happens to be that much quantity of data. Even unintelligible files like a txt just going AAAAAAAAAAAAAA will still take up space (along with data being recorded for every infinitesimal moment of a lifespan), and most of Emerl’s lifespan has nothing of note, I can’t really prove a negative, all I do know is that he was awakened in the events of the game, and those 4000 years can really just be… empty, all the statement got is what he has 4000 years ago, not everything inbetween. All we get is that all of the combat data he has will be used which refers to the ones from that age

even so, Stardroids being ancient too and Ra Moon being a 20,000 year old super computer should compete if not surpass just fine.

• Zavok's leadership is also something that shines. He's also shown to be able to sneak into one of Eggman's bases, and combat opponents with various abilities that go beyond close combat. Heck, I'd argue him fighting opponents with the versaility of what he faces with MOSTLY hand to hand combat is more impressive than winning with LOTS of versatility since it puts you at a large disadvantage. And everything you've mentioned, Sonic has unironically dealt with already. Don't recall Zero fighting someone that can one-shot him though. He's faced time-stop, time slow, paralysis inducing beams, space-time distorting, etc in the form of Shadow who already shares Sonic's speed and strength. Enemies that can create a shit ton of copies (Eggman or Infinite), sneak attack and spam TP (Shadow again. Shadow is really cracked tbh), control the terrain (Eggman again IIRC though it depends on the extent), fought in an area that nerfs Sonic's main asset (Speed. He was forced to fight Metal Sonic and Starline in snow, which ruined his traction and severely limited his movement) and underwater (Where he can only hold his breath for 30 seconds and his speed is drastically reduced), as for a dark area, IIRC, he dodes light beams from robots in the credits of CD, and can predict incoming attacks/projectiles without looking or knowing of the enemies presence thanks to precog.

Okay, but uh, Mega Man nor Zero really use their “lots of versatility”- they’ll use it if they can but note that Mega Man can fight any RM at any order he likes, not one of them is definitively canon, but much like Fate/stay, they are all possibilities that can happen and be used as feats, so Mega Man really can Buster Only every Robot Master. Same applies to Zero who upscales and uses his Saber instead (Gun > Sword) to fight

But fine, Zero does legit fight in those One Shot conditions multiple times like Heatnix and his minibosses, Lumine, and X fights Awakened Zero’s One Shot Genmu Zero attack which he spams after a certain point.

• And Mega typically has a full kit of the robots he beats by the time he gets to the final boss. But given this is just meant to be a feat comparable to Emerl, I won't really comment much on it. Emerl's seems more impressive though given it is a war robot with 4000 years experience that copied numerous weapons and Sonic + all of his friends every move/ability down to even their fighting stances (And Shadow's space-time warping hax).

Perhaps, but again note that Mega Man can fight any RM at any order he likes, so the whole “has all them weapons” point doesn’t work until you get to the cringe Wily Machines that are just mid.

again I still am not convinced that the 4000 years actually happened to be only combat or anything at all for that matter, besides Stardroid scaling and Ra Moon‘s 20,000 supercomputer experience should even it out

• He was caught in Eggman's hands. Or rather his mech. But he didn't lose. He still beat the hundreds of other robots right before facing Eggman directly while simultaneously evading artillery fire from Eggman's cannons. Zero himself has lost too. Most notably against X, but this isn't really a "flaw".

If you rely on a power up like Super Sonic, for the sake of this thread, he “lost” because this is a thing to prove his skill. Meanwhile, Zero didn’t lose at all, he just collapsed by the time he beat all of the enemies (because he was fighting for a year straight). He also didn’t lose against X. In fact he arguably won as Sigma tried to sneak them after their fight (a stalemate), Zero was the first to get up and protect X

• Sonic did arguably fight billions of robots (Quite literally. Eggman took over 90% of the globe in Forces IIRC, with all cities being overrun by Badniks and infinite clones) in a day after being tortured for 6 months straight. And do keep in mind, the Badniks are comparable to him, and the Super Badniks in particular even moreso. He didn't fight ALL the robots by himself, but you play as Sonic and the OC to take over chunks of the globe all at once. So he'd still being beating millions to possibly billions. There's also colors where he fights off entire planets (6 planets IIRC?) full of Eggman's robots with space ships that flood space as back-up.

Alright, half the population of the globe in the X Series were Reploids, most of them going Maverick, the Maverick Hunters would be handling similar numbers if we’re going with that argument as much as I hate saying that.

• The stage doesn't even completely obscure sight. There are stage mechanics that obscure sight, but it's rare for them to completely take away Zero's sight. And while you can see in the dark, that's lit darkness. There's not a lot of place aside from maybe your room in the middle of the night (Assuming you have no other sources of light in your room) that is "pitch-black". I can't even see my hand in my room at night, but I can see just outside my house just fine. It's really just light pollution tbh.
  • Can see, but sight seems obscured from what we can see. Though that is still impressive regardless.
  • It doesn't seem to ***** up basic movements or anything though. Just locks access to his more useful arsenal. I also always interpreted the "arm" thing as him just being worn down. It looks more like a "tired" animation. But I can see how it can be interpreted as malfunctioning.
  • Nor can Sonic when hit by Shadow's full body paralysis inducing Chaos Spear or Silver's full body paralysis TK, yet still comes out on top of both of them. And their effects are more crippling (but don't have the same long lasting effects).
  • In the first stage of the game, he can quite clearly see fine. It seems he even exited the sandstorm in the intro. So not sure why he'd be blinded here. These effects also seem to ***** up stuff that wouldn't hunder Zero significantly. Like deceiving radar/sonar/detection systems. Zero mostly sees/hears to fight.
• Were his weapons broken after the timeskip, or at the beginning of it. If so, that sounds like he had properly functioning weapons for part or most of the timeskip, and they were only broken upon meeting said engineer.
• To be fair, he thought it was dicey because he was on Eggman's ship in addition to that. And Neo Metal being there definitely didn't help. He had to fight them in an area where he was at a disadvantage. Typically badniks are childs play for him. Not that it matters since I don't think "being bored" makes a skill feat more impressive. Maybe slightly increases how impressive it is if even that.

Much like your argument for the 227000 Eggman Triumph statement and the Galaga situation, this one’s a game mechanic. It’s verbatim stated in the scan, Zero can’t see and is supposed to be paralyzed. At the end of the Intro Stage the sandstorm just- returns at the exact time gameplay is not longer necessary. If you had to play the whole introduction stage, the stage where you are supposed to learn the game for the first time, while you can’t see crap- that’s just terrible game design, in lore and in the scan, Zero cannot see- it’s stated to steal his sight, that’s just how it is- much like how Sonic isn’t actually playing Galaga- both situations are tailored for the player.

Similar to the sight argument, Zero cannot move properly, he’s supposed to be paralyzed- and to add onto that since you kind of want to use the gameplay elements, Zero straight up can’t even do a double or triple slash, his most fundamental form of attack. Heck even I can do a triple slash with a stick (yes I practice that combo and end it with a Ryuenjin)

Same with the ECM, first off, Sonar IS sound, second, Radar IS EM Waves, third, ECM doesn’t necessarily mean those three things, they can easily just trick Zero’s eyes, and why wouldn’t they if they know that Zero fights by seeing? The scan says the countermeasure system to make this happen was perfect- so why would it have unnecessary effects?

Even if Sonic has some paralysis, he doesn’t have to deal with it forever, he can just take the L and try not get hit next time, Zero just has to deal with it, along with every other thing he has to deal with at that time, remember he's dealing with the whole army, paralysis, blind, gaslit, and crap weapons at the same time for a year.

We don’t know, but they were at least broken earlier than his Saber and Buster which have already become so worn by the intro stage the Buster can barely hold a charge.

It’s actually a pretty big deal. The difference between bored and struggling, trying and not trying is huge. Ever seen Chess Grandmasters go around the room where they play against multiple people at one time? How they stop to think at times? Now imagine they said it was boring to take up that challenge. A more easily example to understand is the diff when gamers sit up in their chair and when they are slouched over. I had a friend who did that to me, once he sat up he absolutely demolished me in Smash Bros. In Zero’s case, he specifically said that doing the feat “wasn’t fun anymore”, implying that fighting for his life was simply fun- not a task, not scary- recreational fun. I really fail to see how this isn’t impressive.

The scans don’t lie man, the whole plan of Neo Arcadia is to do the things the scan says, the invoke the gameplay mechanics is kinda just being like... selective considering you use the Galaga and 227000 Eggman washing as statements just fine

• This one seems more nitpicky. He doesn't implement it into his fighting style because he deems that he doesn't need it. So tosses it out as you quoted. Though there are a few times he has used it (IIRC, against Shadow in Adventure 2, and I think in a twitter takeover videos a couple years back? And maybe in the Sonic channel stories). I mean, he does technically implement it into his fighting style in Super Form, but that's Super Form. Of course he'd use it then. The learning system from what I recall also only lets him know how to use weapons/abilities. But I don't recall it stating he copies all of the experience/skill of the people he copied it from. That seems like something he has to accumulate on his own. And even so, Sonic has bested people who DO copy skill/experience/intellect on top of techniques in the form of Metal Sonic.

Perhaps for some moves, but I fail to see a valid reason why a power as broken as TELEPORTATION wouldn’t fit into anyone’s combat style- in addition to swordplay, a weapon being literally just always 100% of the time a good decision to have if you don’t have anything else, but aight. Zero doesn’t copy their experiences, what my point was is that he instantly created a technique based on their abilities to work into his own style- he doesn’t let the experience go to waste and throw it out he actively uses them to improve- not just throw out what you don’t need even though it could be very useful (SONIC WTF R U DOING WHY DO YOU NOT WANT TO TELEPORT)

• He was far further away than Little Planet which was already like, hundreds of meters away easily. I think it's easily Kilometers. Sonic improvised a rock as a weapon, and landed a curved shot to take out a moving small target from kilometers away. But yes, I'd agree Tomahawk's feat is very impressive.

aight then I guess we can just drop it, they’re both dumb feats wtf

• Sonic ISN'T the only active hero with powers and skills around though. MOST of Sonic's friends ironically have better powers than Sonic and are equals/comparable to him. Such as Shadow and Silver to name a few (Shadow is also really skilled, Silver is younger though, but still skilled in his own right). Let alone Tails who despite having the same intellect as Eggman as stated verbatim by official manuals still wouldn't be capable of beating Eggman by himself.

• The entire globe was overwhelmed by Eggman's prototype in the very beginning of Sonic Forces. Including Sonic's friends and cities full of armed citizens (Their weapons ARE comparable to Sonic, keep that in mind). And the ONLY people who made a difference in the war between Eggman and the Resistance was Sonic and Rookie. Eggman was so advantaged, he didn't even deem using his stronger weapons (Like the complete phantom ruby) necessary. And yet said stronger weapons were also overwhelmed by Sonic.

aight fine for these two, Zero and Sonic are just the only guys to stand up to the entire world, sure, although Sonic has his friend’s help to rescue him and do everything else afterwards in Forces, meanwhile Zero just does everything alone with some communications that essentially are useless aside from whining to Zero about their problems

• I'm pretty sure you can hack several pieces of tech from Eggman AND the Ancients (Who had data beyond Eggman's computation) without Tails being nearby. Not that it matters since Tails doesn't even aide Sonic in that. And come on, it's pretty clear he's playing "Galaga" for the players sake. It's more fun than actually doing stereotypical hacking stuff like tapping random buttons on a keyboard to bust into the mainframe. This can more likely just be chalked up to game mechanics because we've seen earlier that Eggman's security is top-notch stuff in-verse. People also seem to have the weird impression Sonic isn't tech savvy when Sonic created the very first plane we see in Sonic 2 all by himself. Tails didn't build that. Then after it crashed, Sonic went looking for tools to fix it in a FOREST of only trees, logs, etc. He met Tails after he came back to Tails already fixing the plane for him
• It's not really combat skill. It's more so a general skill thing. Since you can obviously have skill in other fields of course.

I’m pretty sure this is a combat only skill thingie anyways

• I think this seems nitpicky. He's verbatim stated to have beat Eggman that many times. It's not like SEGA worked out a timeframe for if that's even feasible. And given Eggman and Sonic's speed, accomplishing plans every 34 minutes is entirely possible. I think there's statements from Sonic that he doesn't even get that many breaks because of Eggman. Just can't recall where from unfortunately. Also, what is wrong about the super-genius reality warping dude being able to create that many complex widescale plans in minutes? That's just a feat for Eggman. most of the games OF Sonic take place in less than a year, so having years to lose 227,000 times is SUPER feasible. Eggman's also created complex schemes on a whim before. So I don't see why this is even an issue for a super genius intellect character.

Well I guess it’s stated I just thing that it’s just stupid and not in a “that’s impressive" way, it’s just dumb lol. Besides I feel like none of them would ever surpass what we see in the games anyways- can’t prove negatives

• I don't think those realities warping Cyber-elves are even used in combat against Zero that much from what I remember. Though admittedly, I missed one game in the MMZ series. So maybe they did? Or I forgot.

Neo Arcadia uses Cyber Elves and abuses their power according to Zero 1 (Train stage), same in Zero 3 (the yellow acrobatic rabbit purple fire hoe’s stage), but I’m ngl this isn’t a big deal because from what I’ve seen the whole Eggman Reality Warp Tech thing is a pretty mid feat when I don’t think I’ve ever seen that crap abused aside from like… Null Space where sonic just ran really… fast… which I feel like isn’t skill. Ur gonna have to link me a feat where Eggman invokes some universal wave function manipulation to change fate and Sonic outskills it somehow.

Most games Sonic doesn't pick up weapons either. And the times he does, he becomes the best in the world at using it almost immediately upon picking it up

This isn’t what I mean LMAO. This really meant that Zero hasn’t fought for the past century and has amnesia and a much more rusty and limited skillset (bro can’t even double slash at the beginning LMAO), and still washed Copy X. Actually though, he just woke up and immediately started turning the tide of the entire war without even knowing who he is. Same in the X Series where he washed Sigma who’s like the Top 1 Maverick Hunter includes every other people I’ve ever mentioned, and he was rabid, can’t even think, was straight up braindead

• To be fair, Modern Sonic has arguably more mobility than both Classic Sonic AND Zero put together. He is EXTREMELY versatile in mobility. His whole shtick is super speedy acrobatics. Mega Man does have a better arsenal when he's fully equipped though. Though that's not accounting for Sonic when he's similarly equipped.
• Most of Sonic Forces is Sonic fighting against people who are comparable to or stronger than him despite them having a number advantage. He fought against a perfect copy of Metal Sonic, Chaos 0, Zavok, Shadow simultaneously despite all of them being ~ Sonic. He also makes Infinite struggle in his rematch even when Infinite resorts to summoning like 5 clones of himself while being >>> Sonic. Keep in mind that the clones are verbatim stated to be equal to the originals. And yes, he did 1v6 the Deadly Six. Though they aren't weaker. Someone like Zavok is outright stronger, and the rest are just comparable/relative to him. I also don't really recall Ultimate Armor X being >> Zero. Is there like a statement of that or something?

Of course, but in the grand scheme of skilled people, Zero nor Marisa come even close to the comically stupid skill gods of certain verses. And you seem to be implying Sonic doesn't fight diverse opponents when literally every game is extremely diverse in terrain, opponents, and abilities. Sonic is like, unironically one of the most diverse video-game series to a point people hate on the series for it (Rightfully so in the case of some games). One game he's fighting a super genius (who in and of themselves are super varied), in another he's fighting gods, world ending threats, ancient civilizations hyper advanced technologies beyond modern day comprehension while suffering a physical nerf in the form of cyber corruption, ancient species with magical abilities, the government, etc. So to act as if he's only skilled in one thing, and one thing only is dishonest. MOST of Sonic's rivals are literally haxy people that are by themselves comparable to him (Shadow, Silver, Metal Sonic, Eggman, etc.).

That’s kind of unintentionally proving my point here, Zero does not have the mobility options Sonic has, he’s really just working with a Saber and that’s about it most of the time. And Classic Mega Man has even LESS mobility options going up against more mobile and haxed dudes with just his Buster really

Okay when I saw not as strong I mean in an overall way especially Speed which is the biggest contributor to lowering the value of skill feats, if I recall y’all said (maybe it was Shake) that Sonic washed the Zeti, and honestly it’s only logical to think that’s the case because of speed. Either way idc too much since we already are doing the whole 1v1000 argument already, your main question is the whole Ultimate Armor X >>> Zero thing, which isn’t what I mean to say:

In the X Challenge (yes that crap is canon according to a new data book or smth actually fml), X is tasked to fight a bunch of Maverick battles 1v2, and depending on your interpretation in straight up base form with no armors. One of these fights is up against Awakened Black Zero and all Armors X at the SAME TIME. Zero on his own is already superior to base X, like a complete stomp thanks to beating Vile in the intro stage of X1, let alone Awakened Black Zero (two really strong amps) along with an Ultimate Armor X who would be equal to that. X Era Base X can beat them, Zero Era X upscales, Copy X scales, Zero Era Zero dogwalks.


I’m ngl- I straight up do underestimate the hax he goes up against lol, the only real hax I really thought mattered were Chaos Control (which ends up just being teleportation spam most of the time) and Telekinesis

Nah, you're good. Don't think you're glazing him at all. Though I do think you're heavily underestimating Sonic's sklls. Sonic is beyond just basic martial arts. In fact, most of the verse is something else entirely. Minority of the verse is martial arts stuff tbh. Only martial arts stuff is like Espio, Knuckles, and Deadly Six. Take some peaks into games whenever Sonic picks up new abilities, like Secret Rings where he gets Shahra who gives him access to like, an entire list of hax/abilities. Or 06 where he gets access to hax shoes. I think pretty much anything Zero has been faced with, Sonic has similarly been confronted with. Most likely due to his significantly longer run time/screen-time compared to him + several other official media's like the IDW Comics and Sonic Channel website stories.

If the two were equalized statistic-wise, I can see Sonic folding Zero. Though I think with a fair amount of difficulty. Given Sonic's arsenal ain't nearly as big (Though I guess it depends on how much of Sonic's arsenal you give him and how much of Zero's arsenal you give him, since both can have a lot or a little).

in specifically just unarmed hand to hand or melee combat, I can see that- Zero’s skill feats are much more general and well rounded than Sonic’s is because Sonic is a close range fighter, so all of his skill development would be focused in that general area (most of his feats seem centered around the knights and Emerl’s melee combat) where as Zero just has a lot more to work with his feats just being more applicable to general combat which for me is just more valuable



there’s probably so many other robot masters and situations that I’m missing tbh-

but the two can be interchangeable cuz they both have similar feats (in concept) for the most part like handling a wide variety of hax, bodies armies with handicaps, martial masters, being studied for long periods of time, etc. based on what you responded my stuff with.

Bro did not just start a war (well actually I technically did but I’m gonna blame you anyways)





also bruh it’s 5:45 let me sleep u made me type this shit for like 3 hours

Oh right, this doesn’t include the first message I posted here and it’s feats (wait it’s mostly what was already mentioned but read it again anyways because there are some things like Gate that I didn’t mention)

 

[Maverick_Zero_X]

If the two were equalized statistic-wise, I can see Sonic folding Zero. Though I think with a fair amount of difficulty. Given Sonic's arsenal ain't nearly as big (Though I guess it depends on how much of Sonic's arsenal you give him and how much of Zero's arsenal you give him, since both can have a lot or a little).

On this note, here’s a rule to keep in mind if neither side ends up conceding on a matter:

After Sonic vs Zero is hashed out we can go on to compare the whoever wins to Bayonetta and Marisa, who seem to be the other two supernaturally skilled characters currently in discussion.

 

[Maverick_Zero_X]

WHERE IS THE MANGA CATEGORY.... MAVVVVVVVVVVERRRICKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!

That’s for part 2 dw

(Garou is obviously going to win)

 

[Smashtwig]

Tbh that's pretty hard to ask for considering that intelligence has always been a subjective thing

And also that the Sonic Supports outnumber us and have a lot more passion than us. Literally all we are doing in the Mega Man server is doing right now is playing putt party for the last half a year instead of updating poor X

In all seriousness, even though I think Zero is actually just leagues above Sonic in skill and I will die on that hill, I can concede to avoid another honestly brutal Sonic vs Mega Man war

 

[Smashtwig]

After Sonic vs Zero is hashed out we can go on to compare the whoever wins to Bayonetta and Marisa, who seem to be the other two supernaturally skilled characters currently in discussion.

Did they even contest each other for a match to be warranted tho?

 

[Maverick_Zero_X]

.

Well, to quote a part from Soupywolf5's TF2 blog, "Despite being vastly outnumbered several hundred to several thousand to one, and the latter all possessing weaponry capable of one-shotting them, the Mercs could stalemate Gray Mann's robot army and defend all of Mann Co.'s facilities from their invasions." Not only this, but the Scout while wielding a melee weapon is also able to tag and hit Saxton Hale himself, with Saxton being a master martial artist who invented several of his own martial arts (keep in mind that Saxton's also able to one-shot the Scout, even if the latter's overhealed). Also, with a speed amp from his can of Bonk, the Scout's able to dodge gunfire from the Heavy's minigun, which can shoot around 167 bullets per second (Scout is also theoretically able to dodge gunfire from 16 to 99 different Heavys at once [which would equate to about 2672 to 16533 bullets he'll have to be dodging a second], but the wiki's too scared to have Scout TF2 with shmup protag levels of dodging skill and would prob just dismiss the feat as non-canon or smth like that).

Tracer solos

 

[Dust_Collector]

TOTK Ganondorf solos in skill tbh

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Did they even contest each other for a match to be warranted tho?

I don't remember seeing anything Bayonetta has that'd rival what Marisa can do, minus some feats of precision and quad wielding.

 

[TheGatememer]

I don't disagree with using the Robot War as a skill feat for the mercs, but the machines being able to oneshot them is wrong.

They can, cause robots use vaporizing weaponry and the mods won't let us upgrade TF2 above Wall level

 

[Comicgyal]

I don't remember seeing anything Bayonetta has that'd rival what Marisa can do, minus some feats of precision and quad wielding.

Can you restate what Marisa is capable of? All I remember reading were various analytical talents, which, Bayonetta also has plenty of.

 

[ZXareo]

Bayonetta:

• Can adapt her fighting style according to the situation through the weapon 'Rodin'. Rodin changes its shape into a demonic or angelic weapon that the residents of Paradiso and Inferno use, such as; a scythe, a staff, a halberd, chainsaw swords, a trumpet and many more.

• Can coordinate her entire body into her fighting style, including her arms and legs which wield a variety of weapons, both orthodox and unorthodox, and also her head.

- • A specific case I'd like to present is that she can use Odette and Sai-Fung, which are Gun-chucks and Ice Skates. Whenever she swings Sai-Fung with bullet arts, they shoot off bullets in all directions except herself. There is no indication that there's some mechanism in place that orevents it from shooting towards herself, so she's just this coordinated to be able to do this, and on Ice Skates also.

More unorthodox weapon combinations include:
- Chainsaws on both her arms and the Chain Chomp on her leg. The Chainsaws cover most of her arms, and the Chain Chomp is an actual living creature.

- Scythe that shoots blades along with with Whips on her feet.

- A Lightsaber that can extend to a ridiculous size, and rocket launchers on her legs.

• During a fight with her rival and equal, Jeanne, she improvisationally composed a javelin of rain droplets turned to ice.

• Can enter Muspelheim, a place cut off from the flow of time where warriors train for eternity, and defeat numerous enemies whilst under severe handicaps. This means she faces opponents (angels or demons) who have potentially an infinite amount of battle experience and defeats them despite them having extra advantages. Potentially infinite experience, of course.

• Defeated Singularity, who had absorbed the souls and memories of all Arch Eves (excluding Witch in Remembrance, Witch with Discerning Eyes and Arch Eve Origin). This gives him the battle experience of the infinite multiverse (minus three), and Bayonetta beat him in both his Singularity-Chaos and Singularity-Balance forms, and eventually beat him with Strider (her inferior) in his Singularity-Definition form.

• Matched Rosa one for one, who was described as the most skilled Umbra Witch in history.

• Defeated numerous Joys at once, of which have no physical form and can adapt their shape at will.

• Defeated Golem. Golem's body is made of a liquid metal that analyzes countless biological creatures to decide the most optimal shape to dispose of its target in, and adapts its shape to. Golem rapidly switches between its forms when facing Bayonetta due to her unpredictability or having no optimal way to defeat her despite the countless variety of options.

• Defeated Rodin, who not only had a massive stat advantage over her (No-sold a bloodlusted Wicked Weave with only one hand) and resists most of her hax has also seen countless generations pass in Paradiso, and battles the most powerful of demons in Inferno to create weapons for Bayonetta. This means that Bayonetta must have defeated Rodin through sheer skill by wearing him down gradually.

• Extremely causually, she can shoot her guns in any shape she desires, such as outlining Rodin, shooting hearts made of bullets or shooting her name, all precisely.

Another thing to note is that most of what she had done in the first Bayonetta game was largely done with amnesia, meaning her feats were mostly done from muscle memory, instincts, or the like.

 

[Mad_Dog_of_Fujiwara]

Can you restate what Marisa is capable of? All I remember reading were various analytical talents, which, Bayonetta also has plenty of.

Here's a TL;DR:
-Decades of combat experience against a wide variety of foes with nearly every ability we have on the site. Noted to be a veteran who learned the smell of blood from her experience on the battlefield alone, and a world without conflict is like hell to her.

-Image trains against herself dozens of times in a row, and wins every single time.

-Can dodge rain, and consider it easy.

-Analyze and remember hundreds of danmaku patterns and their traits and ease of copying, even for attacks she's only seen a single time.

-Copy other people's techniques after facing them once.

-Dodge danmaku that appears out of thin air, even when her sense of direction is distorted or her senses are removed.

-Has combat senses that let her fight in the darkness, or detect an opponent's power level, spatial distortions, see through illusions, or even detect specific objects from kilometers away. She can even detect or analyze the attack patterns of beings described as "unreadable" and naturally unable to be adapted to.

-Completely mastered the use of fire magic despite her water affinity, which would ordinarily nullify her powers.

-Can defeat people with opposite elemental affinities to her own, including those who canonically abuse such elemental affinities as a combat tactic, despite the difference logically negating Marisa's powers and essentially deciding the outcome of entire battles before they begin.

-One of the most intelligent magic users in the series, pushing forward new theories in the field and surprising far more experienced magic users in the process. She can also analyze an oni's magic items, which nobody else has ever done since they are unfathomable by nature and gain power by remaining unknown.

-Gains new skills and resistances within a few days and hours, or even surpass master martial artists despite starting off with 0 martial arts skill.

-Can sneak past dozens of people with some of the most busted ESP/enhanced senses known to man, sometimes bordering on cosmic awareness.

-Can instinctively fight entire battles against people whose existence cannot be perceived, who constantly erase their presence or any evidence of their existence, and who can also manipulate one's subconscious into thinking her attacks aren't a threat. Can also instinctively dodge attacks from people who gigablitz her while casually sitting down and drinking.

And here's some of what Marisa scales to:
-Instinctively reflecting attacks from behind while deafened.

-Is vastly superior to fodder which train by dodging falling snow.

-Learning and mastering new combat techniques and using them to overcome 3 more experienced users of it in seconds.

-Has defeated beings whose attacks passively analyze and adapt to their opponent's weaknesses.

-Has defeated beings who are implied to have existed for infinite periods of time.

-Having enough precision to copy a dice roll's angle, force, and so on 100% identically, something noted to be impossible for a human, or throwing knives to bounce off of dozens of other knives midair, hitting the opponent between each reflection.

There's.... one other thing I could scale her to but she downscales from it heavily and I'm personally unsure about using it. I do recommend reading my original post though, since that gives a lot more elaboration.

 

[M3X_2.0]

Oh yeah

TRACER

Damn you Maverick

 

[Milly_Rocking_Bandit]

• Shang-Chi
• Daredevil
• Captain America
• Winter Soldier
• Black Panther
• Wolverine
• Iron Fist
• Elektra
• Deadpool
• Taskmaster
• Bullseye
• Crossbones
• Thor
• Blade

To not have Spider-Man here is actually crazy, lmao.