"Sonic Chronicles" trademarked by Sega

[Kogen]

The music itself sounded fine, although most of the new stuff was too generic. I had no problem with them using classic tracks.

It is just the quality... I would believe someone if they told me all of this was from a cell phone.

[Ngangbius]

I still can't believe that the sound itself was actually significantly below the quality of the original Gameboy.

[Shadow Hog]

Actually, I've heard Game Boy music on par with that. Granted, it was a pirate... but still!

[Locit]

It always reminded me of a slightly more harmonious rendition of the only music I've ever heard from the Game.com version of Sonic Jam.

[Arcade]

But the game was still better than Sonic Rush, or Sonic advance 2... that is something.

Stil since sega tends to "rush" developers, it wasnt all their fault.

[Owen Axel]

Better than Sonic Rush, how? Better graphics, no. Better gameplay, no. Better sound, no. Better plot...n-maybe. Better lastability, fuck no.

Chronicles could've gone another round of testing for pure gameplay balance and flow. There's really no excuse for labelling Evasion as Defense and Accuracy as Attack. The diversity of character abilities would've worked a lot better if the specific characters were more rounded, instead of having only 1-2 characters out of each party be at all able to inflict damage higher than 1 without stat boost items. Having to use weakening abilities simply to be able to cause normal damage in every single random encounter in certain chapters is just plain tedious. The polygon models are hideous (how is Chronicles' Sonic so damn ugly compared to Rush's Sonic?), the music can't be defended (except the battle themes, which are decent), and the plot grinds to a halt at the exact point where it was getting interesting.

Honestly, Bioware is supposed to be better than this. It's not like they're new to making RPGs, they should already be aware of design pitfalls like these and know to avoid them at the design stage.

I enjoyed Chronicles, though, but I'll sooner replay Sonic Rush. Sonic Advance 2, I won't defend.

[Crisis]

Chronicles gets credit for being the first Sonic game to exceed my expectations since Adventure, although obviously I was expecting horseshit. I guess I'm a bit late to be giving my opinion (picked the game up fairly recently) but here goes:

Bioware wouldn't have been my first choice and I think the game suffers from being their first attempt at a more casual, action-based, handheld RPG. That said, I always respect developers who take on ambitious projects and who try to expand their scope. I'm at least glad SEGA waited so long to make a Sonic RPG and I'm glad they outsourced it.

There are a lot of novice mistakes, some of which are the hallmarks of a poor internal testing (evasion -> defense, blue arms, autolevel, sloppy presentation) and some which are pretty mystifying (the music). Overall I felt like it could have used more development time, but despite this I thought the core mechanics were solid. Healing is literally hit or miss which gets VERY frustrating and it seems odd that such a fundamental mechanic is the hardest to master, which is why I suspect there is such a huge gap between people who found the game easy and those who found it immensely frustrating and grindy, since the rest of the game is pretty idiot proof (if a little unintuitive thanks to the PP system). I haven't finished the game yet so I can't really remark on the overall plot (I'm just at the "grinds to a halt" bit I suspect) but I will say characterisation is pretty solid all in all, even if it doesn't have the charm or wit of, say, Superstar Saga. So it's sophisticated enough to be called a good game, but it would have really benefitted from some polishing.

I'm interested in seeing where Bioware will go with this series as I think it has potential, despite lingering doubts about their design philosophy.

[Neo]

Healing is literally hit or miss which gets VERY frustrating and it seems odd that such a fundamental mechanic is the hardest to master

Give Cream that chao which makes POW Moves automatic. Then use Refresh. Congratulations, game broken.

(I'm just at the "grinds to a halt" bit I suspect)

The "grinds to a halt" bit is the fucking ending.

[Ngangbius]

IIRC, the labeling of Attack as Accuracy and Defense as Evasion comes from the D&D school of stats. Problem is the game obviously felt like an attempt to create a modern jrpg despite being created by a NA company which is were the confusion starts. Even worse is that you can't really tell how exactly strong your characters are due to the missing nurmeric stats, and you only have the vague description of the codex to go by. Seriously, who would actually check the codex on character profiles for the first few hours they play the game, let alone to find out this is were you'll find out the strength of the characters?

I already said my piece on what is wrong with the game in this thread. Overall, I disliked Chronicles moreso than Sonic Unleashed, and I hope Sega themeselves will make the next Sonic RPG.

[Kogen]

I never really payed a lot of attention to the attributes. If it was Sonic, I mostly gave him speed, if Tails, then intelligence or whatever it was, and so on.

It would be nice if they were a bit more blunt on what stuff does, I guess.

And comparing it to recent stuff, I think it is safe to say it is better than a lot of new titles. Riders 2, Black Knight, Rush, 06... all worse than this.

[Ngangbius]

Sorry, I agree with Owen in that Rush is overall better than Chronicles despite having some qualms about that too. The latter feels more of a sloppy fangame than any of the Dimps titles.

[Kogen]

Sonic Chronciles does not have holes everywhere.

[Ngangbius]

It does however, have some shitty battle gimmicks and interface making battles slower and less fun than they should be. That's the Chronicle version of the bottomless pits.

[Owen Axel]

I don't get all the bottomless pit complaints about Sonic Rush. There was exactly one level out of the entire game where I had to struggle to avoid pit deaths, and that was the way high up in the air level with all the rails and scaffolding - the one level where falling down is an appropriate hazard (although the usage of instant-death laser beams instead of ordinary bottom screen pits was unsettling).

For the rest of the game, the only times where I hit a pit death was where I blatantly ignored the level design's very obvious hints that a platforming section was approaching. I can't blame the game for choosing to mix it up after the first few levels could be conquered by dashing from start to finish - in fact, doing so makes for a better game altogether.

When Sonic Rush is hard it's Scrap Brain Zone hard, which is challenging but certainly not unfair.

[Kogen]

Sonic Rush is worse than Sonic 06 to me. It is like one of the shittiest Sonic games in the last decade and that really counts for something.

It really got to me when rolling made you go slower.

[Crowbar]

It really got to me when rolling made you go slower.

That's a pretty asinine reason.

If you don't like the "hold right" aspect of it that's fair enough (even though I think people tend to exaggerate it, and the complaints of pits are just bullshit) but claiming it's worse than Sonic 06 is just ridiculous.

[Shadow Hog]

Yeah, I don't like Rush much either, but 2K6 is, bar none, the worst entry in the franchise for a variety of stylistic and technical reasons. Rush wasn't glitchy as hell, with 20 second load times to load a single line of dialog, after all.

[Kogen]

I rate games on how much I enjoy them. I played Sonic 06 more than I played Rush. I also liked the graphics (at times) more, and the music was better. Most of the bosses in Rush were terrible too.

Rush is just a really terrible game. I put it down there with G Sonic for portable platformers.

[Crisis]

Graphics I'll grant you (2.5D doesn't do it for me either) but the music??

I have extremely fond memories of the first Rush but I thought the second one was pretty mediocre. Most people seemed to like it better and I couldn't point to anything obvious in the game's design, so I guess 3 Advance games and 1 Rush was enough to make me sick of the concept.

[Kogen]

Rush 2 basically removed the holes and fixed up the gameplay a bit. It is a good game, but nothing stunning. Fixing holes was basically the main issue resolved.

Personally I would hope they drop the Rush line-up now and go for a new series of platformers.

[Owen Axel]

I rate games on how much I enjoy them.

I see. Your main problem is that your extremely subjective input is being accidentally viewed as objective input. Clearly I have been in error, and shall remedy my mistake by no longer taking you seriously.

"Shittiest game in the last decade" Wow. If that's not a warning sign that a person is talking out of their ass, then I don't know what is.

[Kogen]

I rate games on how much I enjoy them.

I see. Your main problem is that your extremely subjective input is being accidentally viewed as objective input. Clearly I have been in error, and shall remedy my mistake by no longer taking you seriously.

"Shittiest game in the last decade" Wow. If that's not a warning sign that a person is talking out of their ass, then I don't know what is.

Except I never said that and you clearly have sand in your vagina, but okay.

[Wombatwarlord777]

I don't agree with most of what you say about Sonic Rush. The first time I played it, it was a major blast, even if it was essentially a prettier SAdv2, BUT...

Kogen wrote:
Personally I would hope they drop the Rush line-up now and go for a new series of platformers.

I concure. I really hope that the next handheld / 2D series really cuts back on rushing all over oblivion, and focuses more on platforming and actually navigating through the stages in a semi-precise way.

[Ngangbius]

They probably won't drop the "Rush"-name until the next true DS successor, and even then it's probably more likely they will still play like the Rush games after all.

[Arcade]

Better than Sonic Rush, how? Better graphics, no. Better gameplay, no. Better sound, no. Better plot...n-maybe. Better lastability, fuck no.

Well, that was just my point of view, sure I tend to like some bad games, like Iron man for the Wii, but if I couldnt stand bad games, what I would be doing in this forum?.