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.

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?

God(and two friends) as my witness, I tried here. But it wouldn't stop crashing. Two different emulators. Three different ROMs from different regions. Hours of tinkering with settings. I'm not fucking dusting out my DS just to play this. Moving on!

(Even if it did work, you could not convince me to spend more than half an hour on a game that looks like this, sounds like this, and writing that immediately assaults me with Amy Rose's new boyfriend Dexter. There's NOTHING to see here. It wasn't even made in house.)

Now, imagine if Sonic ever got an RPG...

On the one hand, this is maybe the worst RPG I've ever played, a game ostensibly made for kids that's also incredibly cruel to the player at every turn. Every resource from MP and items to XP and money is too scarce and too tightly controlled so that you can't lessen the difficulty curve by grinding - and even if you do manage to gain an extra level or two, the enemies will just scale up. The repetitive battles quickly become gruelingly long and can easily spiral out of control if you make any mistakes. Missed inputs on the insufferable Elite Beat Agents QTEs are punished way too severely. And attacks randomly miss all the fucking time, particularly early on, because for some incomprehensible reason the "attack" and "defense" stats in what was pitched as the Sonic equivalent of the beginner-friendly Mario RPGs are actually secretly tabletop-style hit and dodge stats. It's completely miserable to play. The hand drawn backgrounds are kinda nice, at least, but they also mean that the world has to be incredibly small with few areas to explore, making the adventure feel uneventful. And, of course, the literally unfinished soundtrack is just the icing on the cake.

On the other hand, my fursona is now immortalized in the IDW comics with the army of duplicate "unique" Chao I save scummed for on stream so that I didn't have to do the QTEs for the special moves anymore. So who's to say if it's good or bad

The first and only attempt at a RPG for Sonic, Chronicles is a pretty average game that occasionally manages to catch my interest, but is ultimately more of a chore to play than fun.

The story is also incredibly basic for an RPG, which is a shame because the premise and setting is interesting. Chronicles reveals that Knuckles isn’t actually the last Echidna, as another tribe was sealed in a place known as a Twilight Cage a long time ago, and they’ve just recently been able to escape under the leadership of IX. Ix is unfortunately very generic, he just wants to conquer the world as he already rules over the other planets in the twilight cage, but clearly wants more. It’s mostly a shame that they don’t do that much with Knuckles, who you would think would extremely bothered by all this but… no not much happens here. There’s plenty of ties to the Sonic lore, such as establishing the origins of the Gizoids, but outside of some interesting landmarks, there’s not much happening here.

The world design is laughably bad, while there’s no random encounters areas are often awkwardly laid out. They are hand drawn backgrounds that don’t move much, and clash hard with Sonic’s rough 3D models. There isn’t much to do here, some places require certain characteristics a character has to explore further, but it doesn’t really amount to much. You also have to do everything with the touch screen, which I mean isn’t the end of the world but it’s such a stupid decision that didn’t need to be a thing.

The battles aren’t much either, once again it’s all touch screen based, but mostly it’s just selecting a command and letting it happen in very basic turn based battles. The only time things get more involved are with the special attacks characters can use “Pow Moves”. I do like how certain characters can pair up with others to perform these, it’s cool to see, but you have to play a touchscreen mini game to perform ANY move and this drags the pace down to a crawl. Some moves will be less effective if you mess up the command, and others will fail to happen at all which is totally baffling with support and healing skills. Granted the game isn’t very hard, but that’s not the point, it should still be fun.

The graphics aren’t great, and the music, yikes it’s one of the only missteps in Sonic’s career. Awful compositions, a poor choice of instruments used, the only good track is the intro theme, from there it’s truly awful.

Sonic Chronicles is a weird game that will probably remain the only attempt at a Sonic RPG , which is a shame because I’m sure there’s plenty of potential, but this game ain’t it.