Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Review

Sonic the Hedgehog and friends return to Nintendo DS with a bang. This time taken to the Bioware-RPG world.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood	Sonamy Rev Score: 7.2 Super

The Good

A good selection of playable characters/No sucky voice acting/Very pretty world maps/Good graphics/Nice Comic-art clips/Sonamy at last!

The Bad

Sound in most places are too compressed/Some characters unneeded/a frustrating battle system/some puzzles are annoying/Too easy for an epic RPG fan/Can be too jerky in story-telling

The Review

It has been 17 years since the first Sonic game has been released. The best Sonic game of all time most people think. Then came Sonic Adventure in 2001 the first real Sonic game in 3D. Most people think that’s the best 3D game for Sonic with Adventure 2 just behind it. But then, ever since Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) video game came out, Sega started going downhill with Sonic.

Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) was the worst game I ever played on a 5th Generation console, and I can say Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is probably the worst Sonic game up-to-date as it was a complete mess. Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007) came shortly after the release of StH2006, it was good but not my style. Sonic Rush (2005) is praised for 2D and Sonic actually going “fast”…that’s it. Sonic Rush Adventure (2007) is…average as it’s just a modified game of the original Sonic Rush and had Marine the Raccoon who just talks and talks and sometimes I do not understand what she’s saying.

There “wasn’t” an epic Sonic game since 2005! There wasn’t a must-have game for years! Then one day, Bioware saves the Sonic franchise by creating this game I’m going to review Sonic Chronicles.

This is Bioware’s first attempt on a handheld game and also Sonic the Hedgehog’s first RPG game. There were questions as is this another failure for the Sonic franchise. I personally thought at first this was going to be another failure myself because I really couldn’t see Sonic getting in to RPG. And boy, I was wrong.

SC: Dark Brotherhood is actually not a bad game, it’s quite a refresh! On Bioware’s first effort on a portable console, you can’t say they have done horrible at it!

This game has a great selection of characters (apart from one or two), taken bits from Sonic the Hedgehog’s universe and combined them together to make a game like this. The storyline for this game is very amazing, and it’s been years since we had a decent storyline from the Sonic franchise. I cannot forget that too, the world maps are magnificently drawn.

This game has split up in to two acts. One in Sonic’s world, that they must investigate what’s going on, look for Knuckles, trying to stop the Master Emerald from getting stolen etc., and the second act is at another dimension where Sonic and friends must collect all the Chaos Emeralds from other species and stop Ix from taking over the universe.

Well of course, this is a must get game for any Sonic the Hedgehog fan across the globe. But for an RPG fan? Nope. This is like “kiddy” stuff to them.

Sonic Chronicles is a touch game, meaning to move your characters around and to get in sync of your attacks you’ll need your touch screen. Are you better with the D-pad? Sorry I’m afraid, the D-pad is hardly effective in this game. However, give it a go. Chronicles has a great touch response and you can move your playable character with ease.

The look of this game is obviously very great and looks like a 10/10 game. Well, don’t get fooled this game has some negatives as well. First, you can customize your party up to 4 characters but Sonic must be in your party. So you can’t really customize your party 100% as Sonic must be there. Another thing is, you can’t customize your party anywhere at any place. You must be at either Tails’ Workshop or at Tails’ ship to customize your party. If you’re an Eggman fan, I’m afraid that Eggman won’t be traveling with Sonic and friends to the second act therefore can’t play him there. Shame isn’t it?

The other thing are the character’s abilities. Alright, some of these characters are awesome, but some characters are not and useless. But there are one or two characters that bug me in this game (*sigh* Shadow…) and maybe if Bioware can do their research more…

	Sonic the Hedgehog Sonic the Hedgehog is obviously the main character of this game. His POW moves like Axe kick, Whirlwind and Fastball (must have Amy) are extremely powerful attacks. You cannot remove him from your party but he is alright.
	Amy Rose One of the strongest characters in the game which is very useful to Sonic’s team. She claims she has a boyfriend “Dexter”. Her POW moves Low Blow, Tarum Draw are very useful in battles. If you have Big and Cream also in Sonic’s party they can perform a Flower Power move which is incredibly powerful.
	Miles “Tails” Prower One of the characters in Support Class. Tails isn’t powerful, but he can scan enemies using his POW moves to make them weaker. I had difficulities getting his moves right because once you make a mistake, the whole move fails. So does his other POW moves too.
	Rouge the Bat Bioware disappoints me. Rouge is one of the weakest characters in the game. She’s only good at flirting with the enemies to get them distracted. She can also steal items from enemies. Bioware could have done better with Rouge!
	Knuckles the Echidna A must have to your team (unless you have Shade). He is powerful, he can climb and his POW moves causes a lot of damage to enemies.
	Cream the Rabbit Again one of the weakest characters in the game. She hates to fight, but she’s good at reviving her party and can cheer for them so their stats can go higher. But just like Tails, one single mistake on your attack combination and the whole thing fails.
	Shadow the Hedgehog *sigh* I can’t say much about this character, but his attitude’s very annoying. Anyway, before you can even have Shadow in your party you must defeat him first because he wants to do everything his way and doesn’t want Sonic and friends involved. Sorry if I’m like this towards him, but I just don’t like him.
	Dr. Eggman Sonic’s #1 arch-nemesis is now an ally to Sonic in this game. Everyone thought Eggman was behind all this, but he wasn’t. He is not a bad character to use, his POW moves like Bombardment are very good as it attacks more than one enemy. Too bad you cannot use him in the second act.
	Shade the Echidna I liked Shade! She’s a fantastic person as well as a strong fighter. She really knows how to attack, as if you have Knuckles on your team you can perform her strongest move, “Echidna Rush” that you’ll just love to use it again.
	Big the Cat People were just wondering why did he return to this game? Well it’s been a long while since we saw Big (last appearance was Heroes) and I think it’s time for him to return. Only Big has the ability called “Invulnerable” meaning he can go in places that do not badly stink.
	E-123 Omega His attacks can hit multiple enemies but at the same time, his accuracy is really poor. So expect to see him miss once in a while. But if you have Shadow and Rouge in your party, that’s when he can perform at his very best with his POW move.

The battle system in the game is quite entertaining at first, but it gets annoying as the game goes on. I’ll tell you a bit more about that later. I can say really the battle system with POW moves are uninspiring. All you do is either hit one of the circles in time, drag the stylus in time with the moving circle or tap a circle like eight times before the whole circle connects with it.

If your enemy has a really powerful POW move, sometimes it’s impossible to stop with so many circles in one screen that you have to tap in time. And the bad thing is if you use for example Cream it can knock her out in one hit if you are unable get in sync with the circles.

The most annoying thing for me about this battle system is that, if the enemy has a shield or some sort of guard, unless you do a POW move your attacks will NOT be effective and only take 1 HP from the enemy. Sometimes, the enemies can self-repair if you don’t finish the battle in time. They can also gradually increase their HP by like 30-50 everytime you finish a round. It may take forever to finish one stupid battle that may not be important! Thank goodness you can run away, but when you are trapped you MUST battle and can’t flee.

On the world map and you want to quickly go somewhere you may accidentally hit one enemy you don’t

want to battle. So you flee, but sometimes you may not even be successful running away if you hit objects. So you leave that battle, and then hit >another< strong enemy that you know it will take like 5-7 minutes to finish. Some enemies in the second act have like an insane amount of HP like 900HP for example and take forever to knock them down. You can even enter a battle with three enemies that both have 900HP. Even if you knock them dead some robots can self-repair if you don’t finish the battle in time. You don’t time for this do you? I certainly don’t.

Talking to NPC’s in the game is half good, half bad. You can act like a jerk all the time to other characters, yet you can be super nice. (There shouldn’t be any problem being nice, but being a jerk?)
You can act like a jerk to anybody in this game. Like to Tails, Amy, Knuckles…you name it. But if you act like a jerk, that NPC may just give you a quick response to quickly end the conversation.

Another thing is the puzzles. If you don’t spend your rings on a tip, then you may struggle a lot on some of these puzzles. You may even still get stuck after getting some tips. Why make the puzzles so hard? It took me a good 15 minutes on some of them to get it correct. Loved the Simon says one though.

Now for the good stuff. Chronicles can keep a sweet job at stocking your items and collecting rings to buy items in stores (you can even sell your items too to get rings).

SonAmy fans, I’m telling you now if you have been sweet to Amy from the start…well that’s just say there is

a surprise waiting for you in store before you travel to the last planet.

The comic-art style clips are totally wicked, I haven’t seen something like this at all. It makes you want to see them again. Too bad there isn’t a theater type of menu like in other Sonic games to view clips like that on your own time…

The 3D clips like for example Sonic running from one place to another is totally well done. I can’t also forget about the feel of the environments in the game. The video opening of the game is sweet too, first time a Sonic game in a portable console was able to do that.

The Chao in this game are useful especially when you level them up. But you can level them up unless you trade with someone else. Why can’t there be another way to level them up?

One small thing I almost forgot to point out is the sound. The sound is great sometimes, but it can be out of sync and most of the time the sound is compressed making the sound effects horrible.

Now to end my review. Sonic Chronicles is a great game for any Sonic fan that is out there. Great character selection, seeing the return of Green Hill Zone, great storyline, nice visual effects that you’ll enjoy, finally a SonAmy scene for any SonAmy fans out there - but that’s if you’re sweet to Amy from the start.
But for an epic RPG fan or a normal gamer…would they like Chronicles? I don’t think so…maybe a normal gamer but not for a hardcore RPG fan. This is too simple for any RPG fan, believe me.
So many people wanted Chronicles though, not just Sonic gamers. Which is very good indeed for Bioware. They have already finished the storyline for Chronicles 2, so if this game sells well expect to see another sequel out around this time next year.

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(11 votes, User Score for this game: 4.64 out of 5)
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