It had the potential to be a really great game... what happened to all of it? Big the Cat must be behind it...
Negative: - dreadful camera – battle system could use some help – poor sound effects – annoying enemies – Big the Cat! -
Sonic is in desperate need of a great game. Sure the Sonic Rush series has been doing well, but he still needs some kind of huge success to get him back on his feet. In an attempt to bring about that desirable future, BioWare has brought Sonic into the wonderful world of RPG's in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Does it succeed in bringing our beloved hedgehog back or does it only put him in more desperate need of revival?
Sonic Chronicles starts off by having you rescue Knuckles, who was captured by the Marauders when they invaded the earth. Upon finding Knuckles, you befriend Eggman and proceed to infiltrate the Marauder's headquarters. And that's as far as I got before I got sick of the game and started writing this review. The story didn't seem too bad but I couldn't bring myself to play it enough to find out how it ends, or progresses, for that matter.
Being an RPG, Sonic Chronicles naturally relies heavily on its battles for gameplay. In these battles you get to use four characters at once, which is cool. There are quite a few characters too but to change your party you have to go all the way back to your 'base of operations' (so to speak, the first of these is Tails' place), and this is pretty annoying.
The battles progress in rounds: you tell each of your characters what to do, then you watch them do it. Unless you have them do a POW move, in which case you will have to drag or tap circles with good timing to execute the move right. This way of doing the attacks is pretty fun and easy to learn, and overall it's not bad. There are many attacks that use combinations of two to four characters, and despite the fact that they can be really cool, they're not always worth doing as they take a turn and the amount of PP from each character involved.
One annoying thing about the battles is that your characters miss too much, and there isn't a whole lot you can do about it. Another gripe I have is about the enemies, I mean do I really enjoy fighting enemies that come back to life all the time? There are way too many self-regenerating enemies in the game that come back unless they are the last enemies you defeat in the battle, and they don't stop coming back until you end it. Too long!
Enough about the battles, now let's talk about the gameplay outside of battle. Well, actually, I'd rather not… but for the sake of a review I will reminisce. The first thing I noticed about the bird's-eye view gameplay is just how AWFUL and DREADFUL the camera is! It is CONSTANTLY shifting and shaking, not to make you lose track of your character (thankfully) but it does make my eyes hurt when I play it for very long. This is definitely one of the big problems with the game.
There are puzzles to solve outside of battle too. These involve you moving your characters around on switches to get to the next area! Uh… woo hoo? That's what I thought. Not much fun. Then there are the characters' abilities, which are good and bad. Tails' flying is fine, Knuckles' climbing is ok, and the power ability is neat, and thankfully everyone can JUMP, but what's up with Big the Cat? Why did they bother putting poison gas in the game? So they could annoy you by making Big the only character that can walk through it? Let me know if you think of a better reason.
On a more positive note, the graphics in Sonic Chronicles are excellent, maybe some of the best on the DS. They're super smooth (except when the camera is shifting) and the cel-shade effect makes the game look REALLY nice and clean.
Unfortunately not all the technical aspects of The Dark Brotherhood are good: the sound and music could use some help. The sound effects range from the classic Sonic sounds we all love to a "BOING!" when you kill an enemy… yeah, that's what I want to hear when I fight bad guys in a video game. The characters also make funky sounds when they get hit. The music isn't necessarily bad; it just isn't very good either. There's not much to describe in that section.
Overall, Sonic Chronicles isn't a bad game… it's just not very good either. It earns enough merit to make some people like it, but there's also enough bad stuff in it that can make people (like me) really not enjoy it. So I personally recommend you pass this one up, but you there's a chance you would enjoy it. All the potential the game has seemed to go to waste, and if there's a sequel I expect a LOT more.
(please note that I did not lower the game's score because of Big the Cat)
Gameplay: 6.5
Graphics: 9
Sound: 6
Value: 6
FINAL SCORE: 6.7/10