Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
The game that coulda been a contender
Tags: Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Nov 5th, 2008
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Role-Playing | No | ||
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I really feel for Sonic fans. With every new generation of consoles, there is yet another game that promises to be the savior of the series. It’s golden age ended even before Sega stopped minting consoles, and I seriously doubt it can ever fully return. Sonic is an anachronism, and Sega just doesn’t let it rest; continuing to foist more games that completely miss the point, or are just fragile shells of the speedster’s former glory.
When the first few details leaked out about Sonic’s new DS title being a role playing game made by BioWare, the hype grew to a fever pitch. I mean it’s BioWare, I can’t think of a bad game they’ve made. Now, in the back of my mind I head a faint echo, “Super Maaaaario Arrrrr-peeee-geeee” (because traditionally only one platform game superstar has made the transition of genres with any sort of success).
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Initially I concentrated on the isometric display and touch screen controls. I have to admit that the game uses the touch screen really well, delivering a decent take on the mini-game attack and defend style RPG, using various stylus gestures. While this was good, there were problems that surfaced the more I played the game. One of the first nagging doubts that set in was that players seem to get a new character every few minutes or so.
I am all for a plot that invites a ton of different characters, but when I spend more time getting new characters than actually playing the game, it’s a bit excessive. Halfway through the second chapter I was pretty bored with stat management. I’m not going to even touch Bioware’s albatross of item management. Suffice to say it is broken.
There are also little stat boosting creatures called Chaos that make the situation even worse. Haven’t we gotten past using these creatures all the time yet?
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The strange voice from the back of my mind returned when I began to pay attention to the story. I easily called it early on while playing that the formerly evil Dr Eggman joins forces with Sonic to combat the evil threat. It isn’t a bad mold to be cast in, however when added to the fact BioWare juxtaposed their dialogue tree system on top of it, you get this really weird hybrid. This isn’t terrible or anything, but the game is pretty derivative. It may suffer the same fate as so many games that spin around the hype machine before a line of code hits the terminal, it can’t live up to rabid expectations.
For many, the question is if Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood going to be the savior of a franchise. While the short answer is no, the longer answer is a bit more complicated.
Long time Sonic fans will be thrilled with yet another foray into the universe and the hype machine was sure to have reignited some old childhood nostalgia for the long suffering series. With a new actual Sonic game on the way this might at least score an assist.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Decent RPG mechanics + Novel use of touch screen |
7.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Derivative story - Far too many characters - Abysmal item management |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Not even Bioware can save Sonic with an RPG. This is a nice novelty, but this borrows to heavily to be anything more. | |
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Tags: Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Nov 5th, 2008 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
