Canadian RPG idols, Bioware, have fused the joy of role playing games with their love of Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons and Chinese Mythology… but who knew that secretly, they had a soft spot for the blue hedgehog and his collection of furry friends.
Despite their heritage and legacy as D20 rolling, hardcore conversation-simulating role players, Sonic is characteristically light, and accessible – a My First Mass Effect, if you will, a Jade Empire for Dummies.
The game’s primary emphasis is combat, and Sonic Chronicles presents engaging and intense battles. Like the Mario RPG games they’ve so carefully aped, Bioware mixes up combat with rhythm based touch screen events for special moves. When two opposing sides are throwing back and forth their most powerful moves, Chronicles becomes an impromptu Elite Beat Agents song, making for fast and addictive combat.
Plus, The Dark Brotherhood features all the trappings you’d expect in an RPG; wearable equipment, bundles of consumables and even Chao that can give buffs and special powers. While it does offer an enjoyable stepping-off point for RPG newbies, it won’t hold genre veterans for long. The ability to pull off the rhythmic special moves far outweighs the need for a strategic battle plan; fights are heavily weighted on offense where a barrage of attacks will likely win, in lieu of thoughtful strategy and tactics.
Sonic can communicate with his pals, such as series veterans Knuckles and Tails, in a dialogue system not unlike big brother Mass Effect; Sonic can rush through conversation for instant action, or stay and dig up information if the interplanetary civil war story piques your interest. Plus, he can offer a snarky or sarcastic response, but with no true consequences; you’re not exactly going to piss off Big the Cat, are you?
While this RPG features the concepts and mechanics that define the genre, it does little to hold attention outside of battle. Unlike the games it apes, from Squaresoft’s Super Mario RPG to the more recent Mario and Luigi games, Sonic lacks humour, charm and most importantly, interesting events. The majority of the game is travelling and backtracking across tightly constructed maps, collecting doo-dads and defeating monsters, yapping nonsense back and forth with your pals.
Thankfully Shadow doesn’t have a gun and Sonic isn’t riding a hoverboard, but compared to the self-referential humour, quirky dialogue and genuinely funny ideas present in Mario’s turn-based ventures, Sonic is stale and joyless. Even the enemies are generic space mutants and ice soldiers, with no googly eyes or personality in sight.
Sonic RPG works well as a light and addictive RPG, perfect for those new to the genre or tired of stat-heavy, grind fests. However, with DS role players such as Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest and a new Mario & Luigi game on the horizon, Sonic will quickly fade from memory.
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Thank GOD a good developer is helping sonic. It’s a shame things will never be the same though. If the story isn’t Dr Robotnik stealing baby animals with giant crazy machines and robots then I’m not interested.
I used to love sonic on the sega megadrive, sonic should remain what he is, a fast paced platformer.
But I think the same goes for mario, a plumber is a nice char to do platform with and yes I think mario has some of the best platform games of all time but an indepth rpg of this plumber and friends saving some blonde doesn’t hold imho. You have to many good franchises that ar pure rpg from the get go and they do it much better and are far more interesting then mario’s 176th adventure in rpg format instead of platform.
These characters were never meant for indepth analysis and it shows hen you put it in rpg format.
missing the sentence “same goes for sonic” after the mario part, sorry.
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