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Official Sonic Chronicles thread of Will it be Good?
- Thread starter grandjedi6
- Start date
I'm actually enjoying the game. The combat system is very fun, althought I would like to have more touch combinations for the POW's.
The story is ok, there are some topics about the old games - or just appearances. There are some flaws here and there, but it's just ok.
For me the music is the worst part of Chronicles, I miss some classical tracks (for example, they would put the Green Hill Zone music in the Green Hill Area). Soundtracks are very poor, Nes-quality.
The graphics are awesome, the 2D backgrounds are beautiful and the 3D parts (battle and the characters) are well designed.
The story is ok, there are some topics about the old games - or just appearances. There are some flaws here and there, but it's just ok.
For me the music is the worst part of Chronicles, I miss some classical tracks (for example, they would put the Green Hill Zone music in the Green Hill Area). Soundtracks are very poor, Nes-quality.
The graphics are awesome, the 2D backgrounds are beautiful and the 3D parts (battle and the characters) are well designed.
I AM JOHN!
Banned
Fixd4u.crowphoenix said:
And oh Lord this game sounds like a total mess. Now I HAVE to buy it to see if it's really that bad!
crowphoenix
Banned
:lol Thanks. Sonic 2006 killed the Sonic fan in me. What an awful game.
Somewhat expected, but still a disappointment. I was hoping for a Mario and Luigi type game with some skill/dialog trees to give it that Bioware flavor. Oh well, at least I still have Etrian Odyssey 2 for a good quality RPG fix.
It's rather ironic how a Mario RPG has a faster pace than a Sonic one. I guess Nintendo systems lack that blast processing to fully realize Sonic's potential. Yes, that's the problem...
It's rather ironic how a Mario RPG has a faster pace than a Sonic one. I guess Nintendo systems lack that blast processing to fully realize Sonic's potential. Yes, that's the problem...
I AM JOHN!
Banned
In after protocol blast processing joke.
Azure Dream
Member
Edit: I will clean up this post to make people happy.
I would like to mention that some games have built-in anti-piracy detection that goes above and beyond the norm (like the infamous Earthbound save destruction), and some of the titles on GBA had some fun with this. I remember one of the Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku games supposedly reset after a certain point with a "Please buy the real game!" message. Considering that there was a leaked dump of the game from before release, there is the potential that some people may witness a version with an improper ending. Or the game may have detection for popular emulators and flash cards and pull something similar to the DBZ game mentioned above.
Hey, I could be wrong. But certain descriptions of the ending from unknown sources sound too meta and too ironic to be natural. But I could be wrong.
I would like to mention that some games have built-in anti-piracy detection that goes above and beyond the norm (like the infamous Earthbound save destruction), and some of the titles on GBA had some fun with this. I remember one of the Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku games supposedly reset after a certain point with a "Please buy the real game!" message. Considering that there was a leaked dump of the game from before release, there is the potential that some people may witness a version with an improper ending. Or the game may have detection for popular emulators and flash cards and pull something similar to the DBZ game mentioned above.
Hey, I could be wrong. But certain descriptions of the ending from unknown sources sound too meta and too ironic to be natural. But I could be wrong.
The Hermit
Member
Kulock said:
That is a bold statement you know?
I think it´s just too bad to be fake/ anti-piracy bug...
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
Kulock said:
Are you mad? Not only is that a ridiculous scenario you just painted but there is no proof Ntom64 pirated it. Plus you would think that one of the countless other reviewers/Europeans/ect. would have called him out by now if he had been wrong. I mean damn man, com'n.
Azure Dream
Member
Wow, settle down defense force. I wasn't screaming for bans or any bullshit like that.
Modified my original post to remove anything accusational.
I wasn't trying to finger-point. I was saying "Let's wait until the game's in general release before we talk about the ending." I know some copies broke street date in Australia, supposedly, but I also know there's a large number of non-Australians playing the game on their flash cards too, including one person in this thread for sure that I won't name (that's not me or the person I quoted before my edit). That's what I was getting at.
No, not unbelievable. Bioware's a savvy company. And they like to have laugh at the player's expense at times.
And I just cited Earthbound's anti-piracy, which was the same thing, if not more aggressive. You could play through the entire game, but it would freeze at the fight with Giygas, and when you rebooted, your save file would be deleted.
That's fine then. It's just that the way the spoiler described it was akin to if you were playing through Super Mario Galaxy, and right when you were about to face Bowser for the last time, Rosalina started nonsensically spouting the rules to Koi-Koi using Hanafuda cards, to name a random example. Like the breakdown sequence in Metal Gear Solid 2, but as a punishment.
Modified my original post to remove anything accusational.
Baiano19 said:
I wasn't trying to finger-point. I was saying "Let's wait until the game's in general release before we talk about the ending." I know some copies broke street date in Australia, supposedly, but I also know there's a large number of non-Australians playing the game on their flash cards too, including one person in this thread for sure that I won't name (that's not me or the person I quoted before my edit). That's what I was getting at.
mrgone said:
No, not unbelievable. Bioware's a savvy company. And they like to have laugh at the player's expense at times.
And I just cited Earthbound's anti-piracy, which was the same thing, if not more aggressive. You could play through the entire game, but it would freeze at the fight with Giygas, and when you rebooted, your save file would be deleted.
big_z said:
That's fine then. It's just that the way the spoiler described it was akin to if you were playing through Super Mario Galaxy, and right when you were about to face Bowser for the last time, Rosalina started nonsensically spouting the rules to Koi-Koi using Hanafuda cards, to name a random example. Like the breakdown sequence in Metal Gear Solid 2, but as a punishment.
cleveridea
Member
bioware created some of my favorite games of all, and mass effect IS my favorite game of all time.
so, buying and trying day one despite my lack of interest in sonic
so, buying and trying day one despite my lack of interest in sonic
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
Wow... what a disappointing endingShadiWulf said:
Nexus Zero
Member
I've played about an hour of this today, got to chapter 2, so I'll give some early impressions.
It is easily the shoddiest game I've bought in years. The UI is slow and non-sensical, plus cheaply designed. Why do I have to see the chapter title after every single save? The music and sound effects are abominable, truly awful - some of the robots sound like digitised farts and the music is indescipherable noise. I think I recognised a familiar melody in Circuit City but to be honest my ears were too busy being raped to figure out which. The game has a real choppy feel to it, the best example I can give you is to compare Super Mario Bros to World, or The Legend of Zelda to A Link to the Past. Sonic Chronicles feels like the former, just lacking that level of polish, the difference is it has absolutely no excuse coming from a great developer and being on a great little handheld. The maps for example, stunning as they are, should have some sense of a third dimension, but there's a huge disconnect when Sonic jumps off a hill and looks like he's skipped across a painting.
Even having said all this, I've enjoyed myself and by 'shoddy' I don't mean 'terrible'. The battles have been fun so far and the script has enough charm to keep a Sonic fanboy like myself engaged. But I can see that the tentative nods the game is throwing past Sonic games are going to be thrown out of the window and that I shouldn't expect too much to like from the second half of the game. But we'll see.
It is easily the shoddiest game I've bought in years. The UI is slow and non-sensical, plus cheaply designed. Why do I have to see the chapter title after every single save? The music and sound effects are abominable, truly awful - some of the robots sound like digitised farts and the music is indescipherable noise. I think I recognised a familiar melody in Circuit City but to be honest my ears were too busy being raped to figure out which. The game has a real choppy feel to it, the best example I can give you is to compare Super Mario Bros to World, or The Legend of Zelda to A Link to the Past. Sonic Chronicles feels like the former, just lacking that level of polish, the difference is it has absolutely no excuse coming from a great developer and being on a great little handheld. The maps for example, stunning as they are, should have some sense of a third dimension, but there's a huge disconnect when Sonic jumps off a hill and looks like he's skipped across a painting.
Even having said all this, I've enjoyed myself and by 'shoddy' I don't mean 'terrible'. The battles have been fun so far and the script has enough charm to keep a Sonic fanboy like myself engaged. But I can see that the tentative nods the game is throwing past Sonic games are going to be thrown out of the window and that I shouldn't expect too much to like from the second half of the game. But we'll see.
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
I bit, out of sheer boredom and I'm not near my own consoles or FF4 right now.
I'm actually enjoying it right now. Though I only just got Tails so still real early. I don't know why its so bad. Maybe it falls apart, and I know it feels "My First RPG" right now, but it sure is pretty, exploring the world is missing in a lot of RPGs these days, and any RPG without random battles is a + in my book recently!
I'm actually enjoying it right now. Though I only just got Tails so still real early. I don't know why its so bad. Maybe it falls apart, and I know it feels "My First RPG" right now, but it sure is pretty, exploring the world is missing in a lot of RPGs these days, and any RPG without random battles is a + in my book recently!
John Harker
Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
I've been out on Sonic lore for awhile I guess.
Have humans always been part of the Sonic universe? Or is this a recent development?
I thought these were all anamorphic animals and then there was Robontik who was all crotchety he was the only human type and built robots to take over the animal world. Something like that.
Now all of a sudden I'm teaming up with human army generals?
And I'm still confused why games like Unleashed are taking place in real Earth cities...
Have humans always been part of the Sonic universe? Or is this a recent development?
I thought these were all anamorphic animals and then there was Robontik who was all crotchety he was the only human type and built robots to take over the animal world. Something like that.
Now all of a sudden I'm teaming up with human army generals?
And I'm still confused why games like Unleashed are taking place in real Earth cities...
dark steve
Banned
A request - could someone please do a line-in recording of some of the music when you're wandering around? (not when you're fighting a battle)
I have a hard time believing it's that bad, but if they really did that to the Genesis version of Diamond Dust Zone 1....
I have a hard time believing it's that bad, but if they really did that to the Genesis version of Diamond Dust Zone 1....
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
John Harker said:I've been out on Sonic lore for awhile I guess.
Have humans always been part of the Sonic universe? Or is this a recent development?
I thought these were all anamorphic animals and then there was Robontik who was all crotchety he was the only human type and built robots to take over the animal world. Something like that.
Now all of a sudden I'm teaming up with human army generals?
And I'm still confused why games like Unleashed are taking place in real Earth cities...
The Japanese versions of Sonic games have always been set on Earth. However it wasn't until Sonic Adventure when human characters actually started appearing emass.
It's really that bad. Writing it up for my music appreciation topic is going to be painful.dark steve said:A request - could someone please do a line-in recording of some of the music when you're wandering around? (not when you're fighting a battle)
I have a hard time believing it's that bad, but if they really did that to the Genesis version of Diamond Dust Zone 1....
In which Sciz took a risk but can better inform the public:
A collective "Excuse me, I'm quite certain I didn't hear you correctly, could you repeat that?" arose from the internet when it was announced in mid-2007 that famed Canadian RPG developer BioWare was developing a Sonic RPG for the Nintendo DS. No one remembers exactly how it happened; Sega of America president Simon Jeffery knows BioWare heads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk from back when he was president of LucasArts and BioWare was working on Knights of the Old Republic. They got to talking, one thing led to another, and suddenly here we are at one of the strangest collaborations in the industry. The end result is, perhaps as you expected, peculiar. It excels in some regards while utterly failing in others, and how much you enjoy it is going to be highly dependent on just what you want out of a Sonic RPG.
BioWare clearly did their homework, for starters. The game's plot and setting is an amalgamation of every major console title up through Shadow, as well as Sonic Battle. You'll run around environments collecting rings from the likes of Green Hill and Metropolis, as well as newer locations like Central City. There's a detailed and highly accurate in-game encyclopedia that summarizes the major characters of the series as well as some significant groups and events such as the ancient rampage of Perfect Chaos. There was clearly some serious care and effort put into making the world feel like a Sonic game rather than a game with Sonic in it. The writing, on the other hand, takes the established personalities of the characters and staunchly ignores Sonic Team's approach to characterization and dialogue, resulting in a cast with more intelligence, wit, and depth than they've ever had before. None of the characters are out-and-out unlikeable, and in standard BioWare fashion, you can have Sonic be as much of a nice guy or smartass as you want, though there's minimal effect on the game that results from it either way. The overall plot is reasonably interesting, if a bit generic. Sonic fans can probably guess which dangling plot points they pick up on and run with; it's ground that's been covered time and time again by fanfic writers and Archie alike, though pulled off better than most.
As part of their attempt to make Chronicles feel like somewhat like a Sonic game, BioWare played with the standard RPG movement and battle mechanics a bit. Running around the overworld is your standard "explore, fight (non-random) enemies, open treasure chests" fare, but with two twists. One, there are rings (the game's currency) and chao eggs scattered all over for you to collect on the fly, and two, environmental obstacles block off most of any given map. These take a number of forms, including (but not limited to) loops, sheer cliffs, auto-turrets, and poisonous gas. Getting past each one requires a certain skill innate to your characters, such as speed, flight, or stealth, and so you'll need certain party members in order to get around. A minor annoyance is that most of the obstacles also have levels from 1 through 3, and in a couple cases only one character gets the level 3 skill, so you must use him or her to get past those obstacles, rather than an otherwise preferable character who only has a level 1 or 2 skill. Exploration is pretty fun overall, and there's always a good incentive to poke around every corner of the map. There's also the odd environmental object here and there to spice things up, such as teleporters and the aforementioned turrets, but they're used less often than I would like.
Battles are standard turn-based fare, but they also have two twists. Characters can act between 1 and 3 times per round (an unchangeable stat that differs from character to character), and every single special move in the game triggers a brief Elite Beat Agents/Ouendan style minigame. Every move has a different pattern, and you'll have to pull it off perfectly to get a full power attack (though in the case of buffs, debuffs, and healing moves there's no room for error). Enemy specials trigger this as well, and the better you do, the weaker the attack will be. There's a learning curve for each move and it can get a bit repetitive, but there's a real sense of success every time you pull off a tricky attack or defense. Conversely, there's also a sense of failure when you screw up, and you'll find yourself a bit on edge against even simple foes. And there are a wide variety of foes to be encountered. While you may tire of performing your own special moves, you'll have to learn and adapt to new enemy patterns all the time. And even from the beginning, they have unique abilities and skills. Swatbots (yes, SatAM Swatbots) will auto-resurrect as long as any robotic foe remains standing at the end of a round, some can insta-KO your characters, some have astonishingly high resistance to ordinary attacks, yet others can completely heal off of a single successful attack, and the list goes on. Your tactics and team balance must adjust for each new kind and combination of enemy, or you'll quickly be staring at a game over screen (which lets you retry the last battle for a price rather than reload your save, incidentally). There's a standard elemental weakness and resistance system in place as well, but it can essentially be ignored. There's no easy way to tell what something is strong or weak to, and most attacks are non-elemental anyway.
Ordinary RPG conventions such as levels and items are present as well. Compared to most RPGs you won't actually fight many battles in any given area, so each one counts. As a result, you can end up a bit underleveled or overleveled depending on how much you prefer to fight enemies or just run around them. Powerleveling is made difficult, however, since the exp you earn dwindles down to almost nothing once your level is high enough that enemies stop being aggressive. Each level boosts your stats a bit, and you get a bonus point each time to allocate wherever you want, for a degree of customization. You also get to choose which skills to level (from 1 to 3), so you can emphasize your attacks and buffs at will. The amount of PP remains constant for each skill, so there's never a reason not to level one up short of taking another one instead. Unfortunately, this means that you end up never having enough PP at the beginning, while you can (and by necessity, will) use skills all the time by the end. As a result, battles have the odd tendency to get shorter as the game progresses. The early drain on PP is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the game throws items at you all the time; every battle earns you a healing or buff item of some sort, and they're available from shops, chests, and missions as well. By the end game you'll have a huge pile of the things, unless you've been using them all along in favor of a healing character. As long as you play intelligently, the game isn't often difficult. Equippable items are available in the form of gloves, shoes, accessories, and chao. Gloves and shoes buff your stats, while accessories generally give bonuses such as PP regeneration and elemental attacks. Chao are randomly hatched from the eggs you find scattered around, have have all sorts of effects. Most of them buff stats, give attacks an element, or put up shields, but some of the rarer ones do things like regenerate PP for the entire team or make special moves automatically succeed. On the whole though, equipment isn't very useful. You don't find much out on the field (chao aside), you don't have the money to fully gear up your entire team, and the stat boosts are fairly insignificant compared to your innate stats.
And then there's a whole host of other issues. Character models are animated well, but they all look a bit off, especially the eyes. Most bosses are hardly more of a challenge than the regular enemies. The map art is nice, but there's no depth to it; your character will frequently clip a bit over parts of the map that he should be behind, and clip behind enemy models that he's logically far above. Jumping off of objects to the north is like taking a single step, regardless of the logical height. There are a few missions scattered around each area, but they all follow the formula of "go here and do this for me" or "bring me this", and the rewards for them aren't balanced at all. Sometimes you'll get a nice wad of exp or some useful items, other times next to nothing, and never any rings. You can't get a description of your items mid-battle, which further marginalizes the buff-giving items that aren't that useful anyway. You can level up chao, but only by trading via local wireless. Sonic is required to be in your party at all times, save for two points when you split into two teams, and he's terrible at dealing with heavily armored enemies. The battle themes are ok, but the overworld music is absolutely atrocious. All of it gives me this mid-90s PC edutainment MIDI vibe, but consisting of horribly mangled versions of classic Sonic tunes. Sound effects are pretty bad as well. Once you hit the second half of the game most of the playable cast goes quiet but for the odd line here and there, meaning that the enjoyable banter and interactions between them largely vanishes as well. Information such as a character's innate power and armor is buried in the encyclopedia rather than displayed on the stats page. The ending is terribly rushed, provides no resolution whatsoever for any of the characters or unresolved plot points, and is a blatant setup for the sequel. Most of the game's major events are told through comic-book style prerendered Flash animations, and they're as awful as the music; some proper still frames from Archie would've been a much better choice. There's a New Game+ mode, but no incentive to go through it aside from collecting more chao. The minigame for chasing fleeing enemies (or fleeing yourself) is an interesting novelty the first few times, and then it just gets annoying. It's also fairly tricky when you have a full party.
And I enjoyed it, more than I actually expected to. For all of the flaws, the writing and battle system was engaging enough that I was riveted to the game until I finished it. If you don't like Sonic, his friends, or his world, a lot of the charm and appeal is going to be lost on you. If you do, you're in for a great presentation of the characters and all sorts of retro references and throwbacks. If you don't like EBA or the concept of an entirely touchscreen controlled game, you're just going to be dissatisfied the whole way through. Since it's obvious a sequel is on the way (pending good sales, obviously) I hope that BioWare can polish it up, since there's a good core game here. But this is one diamond (emerald?) that's really, really rough.
Rewrite said:
I agree, I'm having fun with it as well. Has a strong Mario RPG vibe, crossed with Bioware sensibilities.
I like the EBA style stuff during the battles.
Not GOTY or anything, and it can't compare to any of my recent DS RPG purchases (FF4, DQ4, and Disgaea DS) but I like it, and its a lot of fun, and it might be the first RPG my girlfriend ever tries, so it gets points for that as well.
cleveridea
Member
this game way exceeded my expectations. really shown was DS can do with the right mindset (beautiful 2D scenery with 3D garnish like waves, and detailed 3D for characters)
love the idea of some kind of mass effect side story RPG (which HAS to be coming).
love the idea of some kind of mass effect side story RPG (which HAS to be coming).
johnjohnson
Member
There must be something I am missing in the combat system. I seem to be the only one having issues with it. I've seen complete rounds of misses far too many times by now (chapter 5) and i need a lucky shot (or POW moves) to deal considerable amounts of damage, while the enemies around where I am deal a good 50-70 hp of damage. Worst of all: I only get little to no XP for beating them.
I can't buy any weapons either as the rings are so limited and I need them to buy healing items. I collected all items and almost every chao egg so far, so it's not that I'm lazy or something.
I can't stop to think that I must be doing something wrong. This can't be what BioWare wanted this game to be.
Any help?
I can't buy any weapons either as the rings are so limited and I need them to buy healing items. I collected all items and almost every chao egg so far, so it's not that I'm lazy or something.
I can't stop to think that I must be doing something wrong. This can't be what BioWare wanted this game to be.
Any help?
Chapter 4 here.
Yup, johnjohnson, I also feel that the characters miss A LOT and outside POW, lucky and the occasional decent hit from the brawly chars there's no substantial damage most of the time. I think that could be attributed to basically every character having more than one attack per turn or something, but in the end I can't say I've been having much trouble with that since I'm usually regenerating PP like there's no tomorrow with accesories and Tails' Med Bot. I haven't grinded or been paying much attention to XP though, so I can't say the amount I get from each battle has bothered me.
I managed to buy some fairly good equips and found others on some optional crates. When I switch party members I also swith the equips, so the ones I have are enough. However, yes, the money has been very scarce. I always felt quite rich at the start because I thought the number exposed on the map screen was my total money, until I noticed it's just the rings you got in that particular area regardless of you spending them or not. :lol
Sorry I can't help as I'm sort of in the same boat but I'm not really having trouble. Just wanted to throw my two cents.
Random edit: those enemy parties where you have to kill all of them in one turn or the ones you knock out come back to life with 50hp regenerated can be annoying as hell. Fuckers.
Yup, johnjohnson, I also feel that the characters miss A LOT and outside POW, lucky and the occasional decent hit from the brawly chars there's no substantial damage most of the time. I think that could be attributed to basically every character having more than one attack per turn or something, but in the end I can't say I've been having much trouble with that since I'm usually regenerating PP like there's no tomorrow with accesories and Tails' Med Bot. I haven't grinded or been paying much attention to XP though, so I can't say the amount I get from each battle has bothered me.
I managed to buy some fairly good equips and found others on some optional crates. When I switch party members I also swith the equips, so the ones I have are enough. However, yes, the money has been very scarce. I always felt quite rich at the start because I thought the number exposed on the map screen was my total money, until I noticed it's just the rings you got in that particular area regardless of you spending them or not. :lol
Sorry I can't help as I'm sort of in the same boat but I'm not really having trouble. Just wanted to throw my two cents.
Random edit: those enemy parties where you have to kill all of them in one turn or the ones you knock out come back to life with 50hp regenerated can be annoying as hell. Fuckers.
I'm playing it right now and I actually like it. The battle-system is quite fun and the exploration is fast. The only letdown for me is the technical side(framedrops and sound glitches). The soundtrack is a mixed bag, overworld tunes suck, battle music is decent and there's some good material scattered around. I still don't know who came up with the idea to let BioWare develop a Sonic RPG but at least it's fun.
I don't care much about the story and I've got no idea what the problem is with most Sonic characters.
I don't care much about the story and I've got no idea what the problem is with most Sonic characters.
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
Not only is the composition bad but the sound quality is horrid, truely horrid. I mean I've never heard such static come out of my DS before ::Shudders::Teknoman said:
Something went horribly wrong there
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
gamefly manFirestorm said:
Shockgamer
Banned
Gamespot is really taking their sweet time to put out a review. I need a third opinion to mediate between 1up's gushing and IGN's disgust.
DevelopmentArrested
Banned
Hive said:
no convincing going on
on the surface, it is a mediocre game. But somehow, it's still REALLY fun.