Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

Hey, remember that time I said I was done reviewing Sonic games? I lied.

Learning from the king.

See, you can't keep me from Sonic games. Me, Sonic, Nintendo DS-- that's three great tastes that taste great together, if we were all edible things and if that didn't sound even the slightest bit odd. Look, the point is that I play far too many Sonic games. And I watched a lot of Arnold movies. Maybe not that second part. Today's game is Sonic Chronicles. (Sorry about the lack of pictures of in game stuff though. Hopefully long dry paragraphs are more your thing. No?)

Look, here's the thing, nerds, Sonic has a storied and altogether faulty past with games that aren't just "press right, dodge enemies". He's not like Mario, who is pretty much just... copy pasting himself through games and he's not like Megaman, who has no problems because he is God.

This guy gets it.

But here's the problem. Sonic is way more story driven than his counterparts. Think about it (honestly). If you were to pick one of these three characters who has constantly changing plotlines and relatively complex ideas, who would it be? (We are only counting the series of Megaman where Megaman is Megaman, and not some kid dressed as Megaman, or Zero, or the crazy ZX Advent game. Just Classic Megaman.)

If you picked Mario, you're lying. Seriously. Luigi's a completely different matter, but Mario is pretty much just the story of a guy in overalls who really just wants to go home but crazy girls in multicolored dresses keep showing up and demanding he save them for no good reason. And then, you know, he does exactly that.

WHERE THE FUCK WAS MY CAKE WHEN I SAVED YOU IN MARIO 2?!

Megaman is the story of Dr Wahwee and his Master Robots who, surprisingly, get beaten by a guy in a blue suit with a pellet gun. So... not masters. Also there's a couple other people in the game.

And then none of them beat Megaman, and Dr. Wily fell into bankruptcy.

I'm not saying Sonic games are smart, because if Sonic 2006 is any indication, Sonic is probably the stupidest of the three. But Sonic also has the distinct difference in that at the very least, the games aren't same-y story wise. I mean, SEGA just saves the same-y part for the gameplay. Even then they try to switch it up. They tried turning him into a werewolf and even characters from stories. I don't know what Sonic 2006 was even trying to be. Sonic can't survive in the 3D world without a gimmick of sorts, and with Mario blanding his way through the ages, Sonic often resorts to the kind of gimmicks that send him from semi-healthy to critical condition.

"But... uh, you," You say, stymied, "What does this have to do with Sonic Chronicles?"

Well, reader, the difference between Sonic Chronicles and the majority of the Sonic library is that Sonic Chronicles is an RPG. And it's possibly the crappiest Sonic game I have ever played. And I touched the unholy wasteland that is Sonic 2006.

I...can't get clean...

I... don't actually know where to start with this, because I should like it. Initially, I did. Hell, I loved it. I don't even hate it now, I just think it's kind of crappy. But, it's weird because it's got all these great aspects to it and I still don't like it.

It's an interesting take on Sonic and went into some story that no one cares about... I ate that up. It's an RPG, of all things. Awesome. And BioWare, as in Mass Effect BioWare, as in Knights of the Old Republic BioWare, that BioWare-- they developed this game. BioWare, you guys. Three great tastes that should taste great together... and I think I ended up with a mouthful of mud.

This guy gets it.

Sonic Chronicles isn't diabolically bad. I mean, history books definitely won't be like, "This one time, SEGA made this game worse than Sonic 2006 in the Sonic franchise, and it's the ruler by which we measure crappy Sonic games since then." But it's not good. It's not the kind of game you tell your friends to play because you want them to enjoy themselves, but you can't tent your fingers and chuckle in your swivel chair with that long-haired white cat you just bought after they start playing either.

I guess if we're going to tackle this bad boy, I might as well start with the story. Most Sonic stories are probably crap to... okay, everyone, but I liked this one. Without revealing too much, Sonic is vacationing after beating the Egg Carrier. I think it's the first one, but only because I don't want to think about the alternative.

This was the only Egg Carrier. This was the only Egg Carrier. This was the only Egg Carrier.

Also, in a weirdly dark twist for a Sonic game, they think Eggman's dead. The dude survived a fall from space, guys. Nothing short of a miracle can kill this guy.

Tails calls Sonic, because Tails is adorable and the plot needs to move on, and says things like, "Chaos emeralds taken" and "Knuckles missing" and presumably, to incite Sonic to move, "chili dog shortage, need assistance," and Sonic decides it couldn't hurt to show up and bash in heads. Tails says the chili dog thieves are called the Marauders. Also they pretty much just kidnapped Knuckles, took the Chaos Emeralds, and there are no chili dogs.

Sonic meets up with his possy (Tails and Amy) and goes to save Knuckles. But he needs help from some other familiar faces, like Rouge and Shadow, and e-123 Omega, and... BIG THE MOTHERFUCKING CAT?!

For shame, BioWare.

I thought we were phasing this guy out. Why is this a thing? Why is this a thing?!

Anyway, as soon as they find Knuckles, shit really hits the fan. It's a really well told story that I'm not going to ruin with aborted humor.

If I like the story, then what do I dislike? Is it the controls?

Well, to be fair, the controls are pretty straightforward and easy to use. I don't really have a problem with them. You use the same sensibilities you would for most RPGs. Any button progresses the dialogue (if you're in the middle of a dialogue, obviously), make a choice with A, back out of menus with B, move with the D-pad-- do I have to get out my arrow key diagram? Because I can do that.

The button ---> moves you to the right.

Okay, so it's not the controls and it's not the story. So what is it? Is it some element of the gameplay? Hmm... Now that I'm thinking about it...

Let's talk about the Chao. You know them. Cute little guys, introduced in Sonic Adventure? If SEGA actually wanted to make a buttload of money, they'd just keep adding "develop your own chao" mini games to regular campaigns. I'm just saying that Sonic Adventure 2 was a blast because the story and the Chao were just all too good to be true. Surprisingly, though, they took a breather from the Chao. That's fine. It's cute, it's a great idea, but you don't want to wear out your welcome. I get it. But you know, you can't go from fully customization Chao to this watered down version of "caring" for Chao eggs.

Sonic, from time to time, will find a chao egg and pick it up. After a little while, a Chao hatches. Bam. That's what we get for Chao this time. On top of that, you can get multiples of the same Chao, which of course means you're not even naming them. And they're just an equippable item, on top of that, ones that can't level up unless you have a friend playing the game with you. Sonic Chronicles isn't a 3DS title, so you didn't have the SpotPass feature when it came out. You have to either bully someone into playing with you or hopefully have a group of friends playing the game at the same time.

Just so that you can trade away three extra copies of this guy.

I mean, there are a lot of Chao, and they're all really cute, but... it's such a let down that this is what they are now. Just things that Sonic and his party equip. I barely used them, on top of that, because if you don't have a friend to play with, they tend to be not very helpful at all. See, in that picture above, there's a line that says "Level: 1". If you don't have a friend to play with, just get used to that, because the Chao don't level up otherwise. That is crap.

"But... what's your name again? Look, they can't just dump the customizatiable chao thing into this game. That's a really big feature." You say. Right you are, reader. But that's not really an excuse for this, is it? Up until this game, Chao haven't played such a huge role. You need to get the Chao in Sonic Advance, for example, but it's only so that you can get 100% completion, if you want to. Technically, you don't have to use the Chao in Sonic Adventure/Sonic Adventure 2 either, only if you want 100% completion. In this game it's kind of hard not to use them after a while, because it's an RPG and you take what boosts you can get... you could say that you don't have to use them-- I didn't-- but I feel like this game kind of pushes the Chao onto you instead of letting you choose to use the Chao. And even with their current system, there's a way to make improvements. I mean, why can't you have four slots for "Original Chao", where you can breed some of the chao you've found and make four babies with the looks and the name and the skills that you want? Why not have the leveling up feature take place in the Chao Kindergarten, which costs rings depending on level? Why not have the trade feature be one of many features with the chao-- why not also have a "play" option that allows you to level up chao faster than you can in the Kindergarten? I'm asking why they made the Chao, one of the most interesting and fun aspects of new Sonic, so... boring. It's so boring, I barely wrote any jokes into the last two paragraphs. 

This guy gets it.

And while we're on the topic of boring, try repetitive. The battle system is annoying and really, really repetitive, but requires that you watch the screen. It's kind of like playing a rhythm game... but exactly the opposite of that. I mean, the special moves are an absolute mess in my opinion.

I get it, we're playing an RPG... but I don't see why they just didn't go the Persona 3 route and have Sonic tell everyone what he wants them to do generally and then just pick an attack and then go. The "hit detection" on that red circle there is absolutely arbitrary, because sometimes if I drag across quickly, the thing's like, "HOLY CRAP, YOU DID IT!" and other times it's like, "...Man, you suck." It's the same if I go slowly or at the pace of the circle. I've seen other people do it with ease and it makes me wonder if I just suck... but then I remember I did this exact thing in Elite Beat Agents, which I beat on the highest difficulty. So it might just be this game, then.

Err... yeah, I... guess this guy gets it?

On top of that, there's a system where you have to tap on bubbles on the screen or repeatedly tap inside a circle. Why not just have some classic Sonic gameplay in there somewhere? I don't get it-- did BioWare look at the older Sonic games and go, "Yeah... fuck all of that" and then decide to do this? Or were they like, "You run enough on the map screens and to escape battles or chase enemies, no more of Sonic doing Sonic related things at least until the end of this battle, maybe longer"? Are you telling me "Press A to jump, press A two times to hit an enemy" was too hard to do?

OK, so it WAS too hard then?

There's a battle counter on the top screen that's okay... I don't have much to say about it outside of I'm sure you could've done better, BioWare. I have that much faith in you.

Then there's the results screen and the difficulty. No, please, allow me to give you my opinion in .gif form.

Hey, people who are developing Sonic games, Sonic != Devil May Cry. I don't know why you randomly decided we needed to be told we sucked in letter form, but I'll tell you one thing-- if you're going to do it, at the very least make it some kind of fair. I can S rank most things in Sonic games, mostly from repeated plays. I have played this game twice, total, and I can count the number of times I've gotten an S rank on my hands. Which I bet would make you think the game is hard, but it's actually so easy that I just spammed the same move all the time when I realized it literally kills everything, until I couldn't use it anymore (POW uses PP and once that runs out you need to use an item if you're in the field). So, yeah, if you go from  one-hit KOs to taking four or five turns to kill things... you do tend to start getting lower grades. And as the game progressed I found myself getting bored because, while the story is great, you still have to play the game to further it and that is kind of annoying to do. It took me a year to beat this game the first time. Not in hours, I mean. I bought it, played it for like a week, and then switched it out for Rhapsody. I went back to it and beat it in another week. I don't even know how many hours it took. 

But I like this game, I just... don't like this game. Say what you will about Sonic 2006-- and trust me, I take potshots at Sonic 2006 like it's going out of style, but you at least were engaged in it. this game isn't engaging. It was just boring. Like this review. I tied it all together, right Arnold?

Jeez, alright, alright.