Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Reviews
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Sonic Chronicles isn't a bad game overall, but it does suffer from a list of things that keep it from being a title we can recommend to just anyone. The character balancing is strong, the game is simply beautiful, and there's more effort put into the front end and general flow of the game than most DS titles out there. On the gameplay front though, players will need to suffer through tedious point-to-point fetch quests with very little story to push the experience, and a battle system that gets too repetitive far too fast. Random balance issues make the fights a bit awkward, while the framerate and camera follow issues mix with some odd collision in the overworld and broken flow that requires you to talk to NPC's to solve a puzzle that's sitting right in front of the team. The dialogue doesn't push the story at all, and it just takes too long for the story to get moving, having you repeat areas long after they wear out their welcome, and do fetch quest after fetch quest just to lengthen the experience. There's fun to be had, and the game does pick up after the first few hours, but we'd be surprised to see many DS gamers get behind Dark Brotherhood while there are so many superior role-playing games on the platform. There's a good design in here somewhere; it's just lost in the shuffle of it all.
While 1UP thinks it's "one of the best handheld RPGs" ever and gives it an "A":
Sonic Chronicles' light action elements provide plenty of fun puzzle-solving and exploration opportunities without cramping the fairly traditional RPG style, and even if you're not a Sonic devotee (incidentally, I'm not), you'll derive plenty of enjoyment. It's not the most serious or hardcore RPG in the world, but it's quite a lot of fun. Here's hoping the now-EA-owned BioWare can somehow keep this spin-off series going.
