I understand that it was Bioware's first handheld but this is so embarrassing.

The presentation of this game is awful, models look bad, sound effects are terrible, the music is especially gross.

This game acts like it wants to waste your time. The way to progress is usually confusing, attack animations take ten years to wait and watch happen and some cutscenes are super drawn out.

The actual battle part of this game is 50/50, sometimes it can be fun to pull off powerful moves, and figuring out the best team, POW moves and Chao can honestly be pretty fun. But the amount of missed attacks in the early game + the repetitive fights in the later half can get super boring

The best part of this game without a doubt is the dialogue. It's genuinely entertaining and funny sometimes, and the overall story is good too.

Too bad Ken Penders sued these guys, because I doubt we'll get another Sonic RPG which is a shame because Sonic makes a lot of sense to be in an RPG.

45/100

the sound effects are AWFUL LIKE JESUS CHRIST THEY USED THE MOST SILLY AHH SOUND EFFECTS LIKE WHY????

and the combat is pretty boring too, the only thing i genuinely liked about this game are the characters and the lore, specially we can see more about the Nocturnus Clan in the Archie Comics.

just... don't bother with it unless you're a sonic fan like me and even though... why bother with it?

A turn based RPG, which is a kind of game that I don’t really like. I’ve attempted a couple, but Sonic Chronicles is the only one I’ve actually completed. As far as the combat is concerned, I found it a bit more engaging due to the POW attacks, as you have to play a sort of rhythm game for full damage (and do the same to protect yourself when the enemy does one), but as I don’t really know the ins and outs of the genre, I can’t comment on the quality of it.

One thing that Sonic Chronicles does pretty well is story, it has an engaging mystery of what this mysterious group is up to, and when you enter a portal you meet some interesting entities. It feels a bit like Doctor Who in a way, as Sonic can negotiate with the people of these various worlds as they’re not the mindless brutes as they originally seem to be. The new characters introduced are rather interesting, and I would like to see some of them return. The biggest flaw with the story is that it does end with a cliffhanger ending (the main plot is, thankfully, tied up), and a sequel was never made, presumably because the developer – BioWare – became part of EA.

I also really enjoyed the dialogue. Like a lot of BioWare games, you can make dialogue choices. This doesn’t have any impact on the overall story, although if you are nice to Amy, it can lead to an additional conversation where you can set up a potential future romance between her and Sonic. The conversation options allow you to ask some questions, or if you really want to, you can just make Sonic rude and obnoxious with some funny dialogue choices.

Getting around the world I found to be a bit annoying. To access different areas, you need to have certain movement abilities in your party, so sometimes you’ll need a specific character with you, or you’ll encounter some chao eggs or rings you can’t access until you return at a later point (but not too late, there are multiple points of the game that lock you out of previous areas). To trigger this ability, you just tap an icon on the screen. I have particular trouble in the Metropolis area as I didn’t notice I could jump down a platform and searched for ages to try and find the route to get to where I was needed.

I did enjoy Sonic Chronicles overall, due to the charming writing, although some aspects were a let down (the music is just…there, and is the most forgettable music in a Sonic game), the only thing I really disliked was that it was a turn based RPG.

A great RPG from Bioware, in a very unusual choice of license. As a casual Sonic fan and an RPG fan, this impressed on both accounts.

The writing is really great for having been done by Bioware in terms of how it feels like it's from Sonic. As someone who loved Sonic Adventure 2, these characters felt like they jumped right out of that game into this one, and the numerous references to Sonic Battle were appreciated, as someone who likes that game too. In terms of mechanics, taking a page from the Mario & Luigi games, you do mini-games to execute your special moves, but instead of timed button presses, they're more like something out of Osu/Elite Beat Agents, which is actually really fun. Additinoally, you also dodge enemy special moves this way, which leads to my next paragraph.

In terms of flaws, the difficulty is really weird. Because the developers realized dodging enemy special attacks is basically 100% if you're good at the tapping games, enemies get really strong normal attacks, which in about chapter 3 you can start getting people 1-round killed by, when there's virtually nothing you could've done about it. Also, stats being explained a bit better would've helped a lot. Every character gets so many attacks per round, but their number is (with the exception of one special buff Tails can do) are totally set in stone. Sonic and Shadow have 3 attacks per round as soon as you get them, and they always will, while characters like Big and Cream only get 1 and are stuck like that. Granted that is built into the design, it'd be nice if they let you power-game it, considering there IS a stat called 'speed.' Other peeves with the design is that being able to assign an action to a specific turn in a round would be nice, as well as being able to go back to undo the last thing you told someone to do, instead of having to rewrite the whole round's commands to do so.

Overall, despite how long that flaws paragraph is, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and recommend it to anyone who likes quirky JRPG's and/or Sonic.