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Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood Review
Nintendo signed a triple-A RPG developer to translate Mario's greatness into a deeper experience than the limiting platformer genre. Square's Super Mario RPG on SNES paved the way for several great Mario-themed RPGs on portable and home consoles alike. While former rival Sega may be over a decade late to the party, getting Sonic Chronicles makes it worth the wait.
The story follows a standard plotline of Sonic mainstays joining together to take down a common enemy. But the characters so many gamers have grown to hate over the years are actually well written and likeable. Eggman's villain ego shows some amusing tarnish after constant defeat at the hands of Sonic, Big the Cat is satisfyingly stupid, and it turns out that Cream is one of the most useful party members. Fans are finally treated to dialogue suitable for someone over five years old, and haters will love having the option to be a total *** to all of Sonic's friends.
The turn-based combat maintains a nice level of difficulty, and the Elite Beat Agents-inspired inputs keep you on your toes and create some great tension as they become more and more complex. Sonic's speedy pacing is on display here with several quick action options per party member for every battle round. However, if you get distracted during one of these rounds it can seriously screw you over, since there's no way to pause the action. Character skills play off each other well and the team-up moves stir up Chrono Trigger memories. Enemies are decently varied, but robots especially fall prey to too much palette swapping.
The colorful hand-drawn maps are fun to explore in search of Chao eggs, rings, and secret paths. Side missions drift into banal fetch quests and escorts, but it helps that they're short and sprinkled with humor (finding some reading material for a guy in an outhouse, for example). Puzzles almost always involve placing your party on pressure pads, but I was surprised at the variety squeezed out of this mechanic.
Sonic Chronicles is good for dedicated (and lapsed) fans, the BioWare faithful, and anyone just looking for a decent RPG on DS.
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