Review by Aaron Espinoza

In the past few Sonic games on the DS, Sega has really put an edge to what Sonic should be; fast paced and fun. Since Sega released Sonic Rush on the DS, Sonic has really gone back to his roots with intense speed and Sonic’s classical side-scrolling gameplay with a much deeper storyline than any other Sonic Game on the consoles. Sonic Rush has really helped shine the light on the Blue Blur himself.

Sega than later decided to rid Sonic of the side-scrolling and create a new kind of game with the help of the critically acclaimed Bioware, whom has been well-known for creating some of the best RPGs in the video game industry.

Personally, I was not to excited to hear about a Sonic RPG, I am not much of an RPG fanatic. But because of my extreme hate for the Pokemon series, I was waiting to try this game out to finally say “Pokemon is no longer the best RPG in the market!!!” So I pre-ordered my copy of Sonic Chronicles a week before its release and waited patiently for the game to be released. After school, I walk over to my local video game retailer and pick-up Sonic Chronicles with my goodies, my Sonic Chronicles Styli!

Anyways, I accidentally left my DS at home, so I waited, patiently. I get home, pop the game in and this is what I got:

When you first pop in Sonic Chronicles, you will be introduced to a neat intro cutscene with pieces of the gameplay and pretty cool looking animations. You will then get the option to save you game and choose your file in which you would like to save, much like any RPG out there. Simple enough, nothing to complicated yet so I start the game.

The game starts off with a cutscene that has Sonic and his friends taking out yet another one of Eggman’s egg fleets. Sonic being the decoy and Tails being the one to blow up the fleet. Sonic and his friends escape on the popular Tornado. Then a new cutscene appears that has doing what only he can, run. He runs for a few seconds, jump and looks at his watch with a comic-like speech bubble saying,

“SONIC SONIC! COME IN!”

As I look through the cut scenes, there is only one thing I can think of, FRIGGIN AWESOME! The cutscene all look like a neat comic strip with the Sonic X artwork. Hmmm, I have collect the Sonic X Archie Comics series, so seeing this in a game was pretty awesome and brought back memories. The artwork is bright and full of color, looks amazing.

The game will then lead you to the start of the game with Sonic. The game will give you a brief tutorial on how things work in Chronicles. Its all basic stuff. Once you get past all the annoying basics, you will get a good burst of joy, kind of like a 2nd love at first sight…yeah, that didn’t make a damn sense, anyhow, the game looks amazing! The level designs seem hand-drawn, with nice rich beautiful colors and details with the exception of sonic, he looks like a damn blob of goo, the whole time I’m looking at Sonic, I wonder why they didn’t use the Sonic Rush model. Sonic Teams sonic looks like Sonic, Bioware’s looks like a damn blob with eyes about the side of his entire body, but who caress, anyway, the levels look nice, especially at first glance.

As you travel through the games story, you will be taken on a rollercoaster dating back to even the original Sonic the Hedgehog on the Genesis and Master System. A lot of un-asked questions will be answered in Chronicles, a lot of irony and a lot of drama starting off with the disappearance of Knuckles. As you progress into the game’s story, you will encounter a few familiar faces form previous Sonic games such as Tails, Amy Rouge, Shadow and more. One of the key things in Sonic Chronicles that can affect the games story is communication. Bioware has added their signature of the speech system, in which you will be able to choose the outcome of a conversation with any character. You can choose to either be nice, rude, or just tease. But watch what you choose, depending on what you choose, you can either earn something or lose something.

So what does Sonic Chronicles really have to offer? Its simply another kind of RPG. Roam around, find stuff and battle. The battles is where Sonic Chronicles really shines. If you have played any RPG, you will know what this consist of, you attack and your enemies attacks as you both take turns to take each other down. Unlike other RPGs I have played, you can play up to 4 characters of your choice in battle. Each character has their own special attacks and abilities with POW moves exclusive to themselves.

When battling, you have a few options per character; Attack, defend, use an item, use a POW move, or flee. Using a character to attack will make all of the character’s turns into a standard attack. Same goes with defending. POW moves can be used as many times, as long as you have enough PP to use whatever POW move you choose. POW moves are the key points of battle, they can either damage an enemy or restore health/PP. Unfortunately, the concept of POW moves isn’t a new and fresh idea, it will just feel like Elite Beat Agents all over again, although it is really fun.

While the battles are fun, I think that they are extremely lengthy and sometimes the enemies are over exaggerated with just about infinite health. When you reach a certain point in the game, you will fight these green squishy looking things that can hurt you and regain COMPLETE health with just one un avoidable attack. I was in one battle for almost 10 minutes trying to fight the damn things, but they just kept regaining health over and over! Eventually, I used all of my characters POW moves and almost killed them, he tried to regain health, but somehow Shadow blocked the attack.

Much like Pokemon, some battle just get really annoying! All I want to do is progress further into the story, but I cant because these highly HP’d enemies! They block door ways and are at every corner. Maybe that’s just a normal RPG element, I hate it.

The battles are great and the travel to certain spots can be fun, a few slow downs they may make you want to tear up your DS, but don’t fret, the battles are extremely satisfying once you beat them.

The music in Sonic Chronicles is well put together, the intro cut-scene I mentioned earlier had a rock feel to it, and during times of battle, it will really set the mood to the Sonic feel. The music wont be an issue, the sound effects will. They are just about the most annoying things ever starting off with the maps. When you encounter and enemies before you go into battle, they will make some weird buzzing noise that will give you the biggest headaches ever. The worse part is, if you walk away any come back, they will keep making the damn noise over and over again! I checked the options and I cant set it off! I tried!!! That’s not even the start, when in battle, your characters themselves make annoying noise, like some loud squeal depending on what character or enemy it is. Man, even when there isn’t voice acting, the characters still manage to annoy you with their noise!

So yeah, that’s pretty much it. There are a few unlockables in the game like the Chao in the Chao garden, but don’t get too happy. You cant treat your Chao, they are just power-ups to help you in battle like having stronger attacks or restoring PP. Really not much of a reward in my opinion.

If anything, I am disappointed in the lack of multiplayer in Sonic Chronicles. You can only trade Chao and that’s about it, lame I know, considering you cant treat your Chao.

All-in-all, Sonic Chronicles is a pretty damn good game. A few annoying mix ups here and there that may annoy gamers, buts its all good. It is a definite must buy for any DS owner who is looking for a good game other than Pokemon… Oh yeah Pokemon… fuck you! Sonic Chronicles does a better job with the nice element of the Speech system, great combo moves, and easy to use gameplay.

Sonic Chronicles Scores:

8.9 out of 10