Current Events > Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood is one of the worst games ever!

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've been trying to play through almost every Sonic game (minus some educational and miscellaneous non-games). There has been some rough moments: Sonic Shuffle, Sonic '06 (actually enjoyed it, for the most part), and Sonic and the Secret Rings; but Sonic Chronicles has to be the bottom of the barrel.

The sound design is just offensive to the ears. Sound effects use stock sounds and the music is full of incomplete MIDIs.

There are at least three competing art styles used throughout the game. One, mostly single images used for loading screens, looks great. One, mostly character art used for talking, looks ok. But the 3D models are laughable, worse than Sonic 3D.

The story is a mess. Some of the dialogue manages to have some nice humor, while some of the plot is just nonsensical Honestly, this is on par with other Sonic games, but still an issue.

The game itself is a trainwreck. The best part about it is that the balance is so bad it feels like a NES era RPG where making the wrong choices makes the game close to, if not impossible. Thus, your choices really matter. But there are so many wrong choices.
Imagine a Pokemon game where you can only carry 3 out of 6 HMs at a time, that's what you get in Sonic Chronicles because you can't swap party members on the fly and they have differing map abilities.
Currency is essentially finite (a mistake Pokemon also happens to make). You can find chao eggs which hatch into random chaos with varying effects, but some are MUCH better than others and the game balance expects you to save scum to get them.
The game uses DnD style stats without making it clear: i.e, Attack = accuracy, Defense = evasion. You can choose which stats you gain on level up, but some choices are much better than others and its hard to tell before you try out different strats.
Skills use a type of QTE, but many skills are all or nothing. So if you miss one part of the healing osu, you receive no healing rather than partial.
You never know if a common enemy fight is going to let you mash attack to victory or be harder than a boss fight. You often have to dedicate significant resources into killing regular enemies and between frequent misses, annoying AI moves (lower your damage to 1 or completely evade all attacks),and long animations each fight can end up being a 10 minute slog.

In terms of bad Sonic games: Sonic '06 (on emulator to lower load times) > Sonic and the Secret Rings >>> Sonic Shuffle >>>>>>>>> Sonic Chronicles.
Sonic Chronicles is seriously a game that never should have been released. I know there were legal issues with Ken Penders and contract issues between Sega and Bioware, but releasing a game in this state should never have been an option. I used to have a decently middling opinion on Bioware, but this game seriously lowered my respect for them.

Apparently some of the songs weren't bad, they were just broken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_f4LFgiXFY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TplshN4vsyc

Tropicalwood posted...

Apparently some of the songs weren't bad, they were just broken.

Yeah, some of the music (that works) is actually decent. But a lot of it isn't and that makes for a bad time. On top of that, the sound effects in battle, sound effects you'll hear hundreds of times, are awful stock sound effects. Also, often things like missing an enemy will make a "nice" sound effect while hitting them sounds like you missed or messed up.

The funniest thing about this is that it's a Bioware game and came out right between Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

Must've rushed it out during a lunch break or something lol

I had high hopes for it, being a Bioware game. Rented it from Gamefly the week it came out, but it got stolen out of the envelope lol. Joke was on the thief because that game was bad.

After waiting a week on getting it replaced, I finally checked it out. It was OK at first, but I soon found that it was way too easy. I was never at risk of losing any of the battles, felt like I was just going through the motions after a while. I got about halfway through and decided the story wasn't interesting enough to put up with the combat and bad music.

Did Tails perform the black sacrament?

I just now finally finished the game after starting it like five years ago and restarting it early this year. It was very strange. I'd heard that it ended on a cliffhanger, but even beyond that, the ending was weird.

The final fight sequence is just four rounds against the same guy but your team is different each time. The final round has you transform into Super Sonic, but your teammates are gone and you don't choose your actions, just complete the QTEs. And if you do them all correctly, the Super Sonic fight is over in one turn.

Then you save the day and go home, but there's a dark plot twist! But instead of getting upset about it or jumping into action, Sonic and Tails go off into a meta conversation about the making of the game and then Tails and Omega recite the credits. There's no scrolling credits sequence set to music or anything, they just tell you the people who made the game. And of course Sonic and Tails tell you to wait for the sequel, which is even funnier knowing that that never happened and never will happen in a million years.

What a fucking game lol. And yeah, all the criticism in this topic so far is totally correct.

Man this takes me back. Both Sonic and DBZ had an rpg come out around the same time, both were of course super garbage and just weird. Sonic at least made sense because as per usual they were trying to follow in Mario's RPG success.

I actually (eventually) played both games, both of which hilariously ended in a cliffhanger like they were actually expecting that people would like what they made. As for Sonic I actually unironically felt that I could be into this game if it was good and if the battle system was good and the gameplay was fun. It was just missing that everything to make it a game worth playing.

I had never played a bioware game so I thought a series I'm familiar with, Sonic, would have been a good intro to see what these Bioware guys had to offer. Especially since I owned a ds and didn't own the pcs or consoles that played bioware games back before they released any games on ps.

i actually liked it when i played it but the last hour or so was shit

I tried starting it the other day and I couldn't take it after a couple of hours...

A little history on the game's development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH6rBc2E1tw

saspa posted...

Sonic and DBZ had an rpg come out around the same time, both were of course super garbage and just weird

Are you talking about Attack of the Saiyans? That game wasn't the greatest of all time or anything, but it was light years ahead of Dark Brotherhood. It at least did some interesting things with the DBZ lore and wasn't a broken, unbalanced mess.

Sonic The Hedgehog and RPG

somehow those two don't fit well with one another...

Still sound miles better than games like Big Rigs and Tombstone 1882.

ZevLoveDOOM posted...

Sonic The Hedgehog and RPG

somehow those two don't fit well with one another...

I feel like you could have said the same about Mario back in the SNES era, but Super Mario RPG worked out great.

the only thing i like about it is you can play sonic as a total asshole

The only semi good aspect of the game was the writing. Everything else was a complete disaster. The music, graphics, and world were one thing. But the gameplay was abysmal.

Accuracy was poorly designed, so you missed moves constantly, and most QTEs weren't easy without the Chao that auto'd them. Who you could obtain fairly early by abusing RNG Chao and soft resetting. Combined with Cream pretty much broke the vast majority of the game due to her healing, and....above average stat line if I recall.

The reason the music is so fucked up is because the composer only had like 6 days to make it lol.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/5/AAPa_qAADWsZ.jpg

We'll never see her again.

random_man9119 posted...

I tried starting it the other day and I couldn't take it after a couple of hours...

This was basically my experience the first time I played the game. I kept getting lost in the third area of the game and every time I'd enter a battle, I'd start falling asleep and missing the QTE prompts lol. Then this year I decided I finally wanted to finish it and powered through it. I can't say it was worth it lol.

ZevLoveDOOM posted...

Sonic The Hedgehog and RPG

somehow those two don't fit well with one another...

I think there's potential there. Sonic has a fun cast of characters with a range of interesting abilities and lore. Chronicles just wasn't good. :|

tremain07 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/5/AAPa_qAADWsZ.jpg

We'll never see her again.

she cute

ZevLoveDOOM posted...

Sonic The Hedgehog and RPG

somehow those two don't fit well with one another...

The humor is pretty good.

Timmy fell down the well! Timmy is an adult man and wants his father to give him some space.
And some of the characterization is great. Robotnik and Tails work together, but Robotnik doesn't understand making machines that don't kill people. And any game where Amy isn't a Sonic obsessed love freak she's a great character. Even Big the Cat has some good lines.

The combat is almost good. I can see why people enjoy it, there's some real decision making involved that can either make the game super easy or fairly frustrating. It's just everything else within the game is either unfinished, broken, boring, tedious, frustrating, or all of the above.

Lol I forgot about Timmy. The writing did have its moments. Also it was funny how you'd add characters to your inventory when you were "escorting" them for a sidequest.

Also the character art for dialogue was really charming. I loved all the original human character designs for some reason.

Amy was still obsessed with Sonic though. I'm still not convinced Dexter was real. But it isn't her entire character, so whatevs.

tremain07 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/5/AAPa_qAADWsZ.jpg

We'll never see her again.

Blame Ken Penders

why would you need to save scum when the game is a total joke

the game is really bad but it's super easy. it's so slow and tedious and you have to do the same boring timing challenges over and over because basic attacks are hilariously inaccurate, so unlike other easy rpgs you can't autobattle it and have to slowly do every battle

Crazy how such a terrible game got great reviews. The in-game models look like absolute dog**** and the gameplay is atrocious.

NeonOctopus posted...

The reason the music is so fucked up is because the composer only had like 6 days to make it lol.

A lot of it wasn't even made, it was just stolen from old Sonic games and then remixed poorly.

Tropicalwood posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_f4LFgiXFY

finally some good fucking music

I played it a bit, but never beat it or anything. I honestly don't remember a damn thing about it.

Shadowplay posted...

Are you talking about Attack of the Saiyans? That game wasn't the greatest of all time or anything, but it was light years ahead of Dark Brotherhood. It at least did some interesting things with the DBZ lore and wasn't a broken, unbalanced mess.

True, they did try to make Krillin, Tien and Yamcha slightly more relevant but we all know that's basically their final arc and even the final team of Piccolo, Goku and Gohan would have Piccolo be replaced by Vegeta.

It's better in that it's more generic and not offensively unplayable, but still a bit of a ripoff to focus on just the saiyan arc when other games combined several arc. Hell the gba had a game that did the entire android and cell saga.

i just remember it being absolutely horrible

saspa posted...

True, they did try to make Krillin, Tien and Yamcha slightly more relevant but we all know that's basically their final arc and even the final team of Piccolo, Goku and Gohan would have Piccolo be replaced by Vegeta.

It's better in that it's more generic and not offensively unplayable, but still a bit of a ripoff to focus on just the saiyan arc when other games combined several arc. Hell the gba had a game that did the entire android and cell saga.

Well, they obviously wanted to make more of them if the sales justified it, but I don't think the fact that it only went up to the Saiyan saga necessarily makes it a rip-off. They included the last two arcs from the original Dragon Ball and the filler that they created for the game was at least interesting in how it expanded upon the lore from both DB and Z.

Beyond the bad sound, the battles were just.... way too long. Too many QTEs for anything. Everything moved so slow. I got to Chapter 6 and gave up.

Musourenka posted...

Beyond the bad sound, the battles were just.... way too long. Too many QTEs for anything. Everything moved so slow. I got to Chapter 6 and gave up.

Yeah they were just boring honestly. It's a good thing the game never got hard because if I'd had to retry a boss fight and slog through that, I woulda lost my mind lol.