Published: Tuesday, 14th October, 2008 10:30
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood
By Narin Bahar
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Nintendo DS
If you'd told me that I would ever have got so caught up in the story of a Sonic game that I felt genuinely sorry for the old hedgehog I would have laughed at you. But when you get BioWare (the company behind roleplaying classics Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect) turning their attentions to the blue spiked irritant himself, amazing things happen.
Sonic's first RPG, The Dark Brotherhood, is a little gem – with a great story, lush visuals and arguably the best use of the DS' stylus functionality seen so far in games of this genre.
Sonic, Tails, Amy Rose and the gang have to join together to fight a common enemy – but this is not the annoying Sonic with the stupid voice beloved by five year olds and hated by everyone else and – shock horror – the other characters actually have character!
Sonic has been away for a while and the start of the game sees him get a call from Tails who tells him Knuckles has gone missing and the Chaos Emeralds are gone. He rushes back to help but his friends aren't all pixellated bundles of joy at his return – they've had to learn not to rely on him since he disappeared off and aren't going to welcome him back with the open arms he was expecting. This vulnerability is actually quite endearing, and makes you care more for your protagonist than you'd expect you would. The story of this game is way better than you'd expect when your hero is a hedgehog.
The battles are turn based combat as you'd expect from a standard RPG, although there are special moves that you can do if you can make the rhythm using the stylus in a way reminiscent of Elite Beat Agents.
All in all this is a surprisingly fun addition to your DS kart collection. Definitely worth picking up.
Four stars out of five.
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