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Sonic Chronicles; A Retrospect


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Because this game has been quietly rearing its head a lot lately, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look back on it, comparing the initial reaction to the perception of it now.

I remember all the hype surrounding Chronicles. It was announced in 2007, we were told that BioWare was making it and people instantly got buzzed for it. Nothing was said for a year, and then we finally got an information blowout. 11 playable characters, team moves, branching dialogue, cameos from the likes of Vector and Espio, fanservice up the ass, the return of Chao Gardens and even five exclusive event Chao to collect! So, everyone was excited well up the release of the game. It got an award at Leipzig '08, and the vast majority of the reviews were giving it fantastic scores!

So, I got it on the British release date and was one of SoA's spoiler crew for the game. I played through it, commenting on everything that happened (ShadowXOmega ships ahoy!) while not really my two cents on it, instead just describing hat was in front of my face. I got to the final boss, played through, got the cliffhanger and then...nothing, really. It just made me go back to the start. And this is where I began to realise that things weren't as we'd been led to see.

After the disappointment of the ending, I began to see more flaws; the advertised 20 areas being complete bollocks, the advertised 11 characters being only through technicality as Eggman and Shade are never on your party at the same time making it more like 10 characters, the Chao Garderns not actually being Chao Gardens in the old sense, but being more like Sonic Advance 3's Chao Playgrounds. After repeating the game a bit to see it for what it was and American folks getting their hands on it, more problems reared their heads. The controls were seen to be wonky, certain aspects that we were told would appear didn't appear at all, the game relied too heavily on fanservice rather than its own merits, only one Chao was ever avaliable for download, the anti-climax of Shade's reveal, the sheer lack of impact the branching dialogue had on anything, the fact that the music was most crap midis of tracks from Sonic CD and Sonic 3D. Understandably, the game ended up bombing, and the only reference to it since has been in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. That's not to say it doesn't have it's fans, but I can see why it ended up being a rather bitter title for a lot of fans.

So, basically, what are your retrospective thoughts on it? Do you think the EA buyout had an impact on the final product? What do you think of the game's positive initial previews?

Edited by VEDJ-F
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It was alright. I don't like RPGs, so I was worried I'd never get to finish it due to boredom (I don't like fighters either, so Sonic Battle suffered this fate), but I did manage to in the end, so I guess that counts for something.

Honestly for every thing it did wrong I think it did something right too. It is in the purest sense, a very, VERY average game.

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The only personal stake I had in Chronicles was the gathering of information for it on another site. I'm not a real RPG nut, but the advertising, developer credentials, and all the awards it was getting did make me think that it could've been something fantastic regardless of SWAT bots. Watching people playing that online leak was funny too as well as nice since we got to see the first half hour or so of the game's storyline before release. Then I forgot about it for awhile and eventually came to see that people hated it for a good number of reasons, and I kind of shrugged. So it turned out awful; yes, I suppose the close-up screens detailing the horrific character modeling could make a very compelling argument for that.

It was only until a few years later that I got my hands on it via borrowing a friend's copy and her DS. To me, the game picked up a flow that made it very engaging, partly because I wanted to see storyline events and partly because there were tons of characters I needed to gather. The incompleteness of the entire endeavor made me want to play it. There were some bright spots of characterization too, like Shadow threatening to abandon you, but once I got to the part where I was tasked with going to all of these different galaxies to do something or other- gather Chaos Emeralds, I think- I got bored and put it down.

So Chronicles is a relatively tiny blip on my radar. But maybe I should finish it, just on principle.

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I think it was a little obvious that Bioware put as little effort into the game as humanly possible. A ton of the concepts found in Chronicles are ripped wholesale right out of their other games (Dialog tree, Voxai) – save for the fact that they aren’t executed relatively well. Coming off the heels of Mass Effect, I certainly expected dialog options that would impact the game. What I got was the option to make Sonic a douche. Bit of a letdown there.

I had my fun with Chronicles. I love story heavy Sonic games, and Chronicles does give you some of that (even if it is light for an RPG). There is character interaction everywhere, and the various character plots (Tails and Eggman) do make you laugh. Nothing about the game feels polished though. Everything works fine… there’s just not a lot there. It’s hard to not look at the game as a disappointment considering the top tier talent behind it. Oh, and the game + blows. HARD.

Chronicles is just there for me. It was nice to play through once, but there isn’t much of an endearing quality to the game.

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It was a idea that had potential, but it was squandered by giving it to an inexperienced team (the newly formed Bioware handheld team included none of the members who made their popular games). The terrible graphics and being forced to take music of the internet at the least minute didn't help either.

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I've always been curious exactly what happened to it. E3 2008 was making it sound like it could be the best game on the system, and when it came out it was almost nothing like those glowing, praise-filled previews had made it out to be just months prior.

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I've always been curious exactly what happened to it. E3 2008 was making it sound like it could be the best game on the system, and when it came out it was almost nothing like those glowing, praise-filled previews had made it out to be just months prior.

Edited by ChikaBoing
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I've always been curious exactly what happened to it. E3 2008 was making it sound like it could be the best game on the system, and when it came out it was almost nothing like those glowing, praise-filled previews had made it out to be just months prior.

While it didn't exactly get crap reviews, per se, I do remember rumors going around that BioWare had paid off some people to say some good things about the game apparently based on the precedent that it had happened in the past. I don't know how substantial those statements are.

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It happens with a lot of Sonic games...regarding Sonic 06:

But that's not the same thing. STH '06 got good previews because what they were shown at the time was supposedly good considering how far along the game was. They just released the game long before it was finished, and reviews weren't kind to it because of that.

Chronicle's shows no signs of being unfinished. There are no huge technical flaws that I know of. The released game just isn't very good (to say the least), for reasons that are mostly conceptual in nature. But none of the previews ever mentioned any of the problems the final game suffered from (which they should have caught, because conceptual problems are ingrained from the very beginning), so it makes you think that something happened between E3 and the release that derailed the game in a huge way.

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I was very optimistic about Sonic Chronicles when it was first announced and seeing as how I'm a fan of Sonic and RPG's, Sonic being in a RPG game is like a dream come true for me and I kept hearing from other people how awesome BioWare games are. I still remember a lot of people were celebrating and saying stuff like "Relax it's BioWare!" and "I'm glad that Sega and Sonic Team isn't invovled for this game".

But when the game finally released and they've found out it's pretty average and it didn't live up to their expectations then who did they put the whole blame on? SEGA. Even though those people months ago were happy that SEGA didn't have anything to do with the game.

So...yeah. I'd thought the game was fun at first but I'm not overly impressed with it. The game got really boring about halfway through.

Edited by sonfan1984
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I'm not going to say Chronicles was bad, but compared to some of Bioware's OTHER RPG's(KOTOR, Mass Effect, etc.) its pretty bad, and its obvious that they didn't care, otherwise they would've have left the development to a completely new team who had no prior experience with the franchise. I finished the game mainly because I was bored and I was running out of DS games to play.

-The story was....meh, it doesn't really pick up until after chapter 5 where you're in the Twilight Cage(Because prior to that, its just a fetch quest of find Eggman and Knuckles, and I HATE fetchquest), and even then its nothing to write home about, especially considering it borrows a LOT from Archie, not that I hate Archie but I would've preferred if they went with something original.

-While I did like the cast of characters playable, most them really weren't needed and I would've preferred if they were optional like Cream and Omega; I mean what was the point of having Big, Rouge,and Shadow? They had the least amount of dialouge out of all the party, little to know impact on the story(Espcially jarring since GUN was involved), and barely had any character interaction, why are we forced to play as them,they would've been better off being optional.

-The whole romance subplot; It just felt like it was there to be there, as it has no real impact on the overall story and it doesn't look like it did a good job of developing Sonic and Amy's character at all, because its completely dropped after that scene before you get inside the Citadel.

It does have its charm though.

- I did like how Sonic's tedency to leave his friends behind and then show up expecting a standing ovation was brought up, and I wish more was thought of it so it could've reached a proper resolution, it would've been an interesting developement for Sonic's character(And nix all the bitching about how he doesn't have any depth at all)

- Characterization was pretty spot on; Tails wasn't too much of a wimp, Amy was mostly level headed, and Knuckles was actually competent and serious, and Eggman was a jovial man child like he should be, if anything the dialouge trees really made it hard to interpret Sonic however, the whole dialouge tree thing would've worked with a silent protagonist, but since Sonic already has an established personality, it made Sonic feel kind of OOC.

- Shade COULD'VE been an interesting character, and Ix could've been an far more interesting villain if:

A. Ix didn't announce his plans to the heavens and attack Shade for no apparent reason other than because he's the villain, and She needed an excuse to pull a heel-face turn.

B. If Ix calmly explained to Shade why such measures were needed, and give more of a reason to why Ix wanted to take over earth.

C. Give Shade a proper character arc, it would've been a lot more interesting if she didn't switch sides until the very end; maybe she could've had a complex between what was right for her people and what wasn't, something would've been better than what we got, because after she switch sides, all that development is thrown down the drain and she became boring as all hell.

Edited by Shadic93
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That audio quality was terrible and the plot isn't anything particularly groundbreaking but I enjoyed the game considerably for what it was.

I found the battle system to be a lot of fun.

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That audio quality was terrible and the plot isn't anything particularly groundbreaking but I enjoyed the game considerably for what it was.

I found the battle system to be a lot of fun.

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I agree with the above posters. It's kind of sad really. Back when I used to visit SonicAnime.net, a popular poster would often state that he was absolutely sure that the game would be a great success. If given the option, he likely would have staked his life that the game would be spectacular. Several others agreed with him.

Now I wonder what they think; It's a shame quite a lot of people got their hopes up, for something so average. Not the first time it's happened, but it's still sad.

Personally, I like the game, but I easily understand the people who do not.

I remember trying to get my sister into it; she loved Kotor (Knights of the Old Republic) so I was certain she would like chronicles. She was completly bored of it by the time she finished green hill. She found the battle system completly tedious. :/

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If horribly unforgiving, you mess up one part the whole attack fails, you don't even do partial damage.

Yeah and because of that the battles goes on much longer then they should.

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Sigh, I remember back when it was announced, this game was everything I dreamt of on the paper: deep storyline, promises of fleshing out characters, a team battle system reminiscent of Chrono Trigger, hand-drawn backgrounds and Bioware's trademark carefully crafted dialogues... but in the end, I think all I managed to really enjoy were the latters, though I did enjoy them quite a lot.

I don't think it was necessarily Bioware's laziness that wasted all that potential with a rushed game, I remember that those were the times when EA acquired the hole studio and started reallocating all resources; the newly assembled portable games division was disbanded by EA as soon as this game was released, so I have a feeling they cut all resources and rushed them to end it with what they had, which would explain the abysmal quality of sound effects and music for instance.

Though Bioware's own lack of experience in the eastern RPG genre is apparent too, nothing about the game is close to being balanced, from experience points, to currency, quest awards, item system, etc...

I think they set the bar too high when they decided to take on this game with such a new and small development team (it was also their first portable game), and they weren't granted the necessary time to polish or even finish anything due to EA's comeuppance.

But let alone whose fault it was or how disappointing the result turned out to be, I believe the Sonic RPG formula still holds all its original potential: Sonic's universe is surprisingly rich and developed (...well, used to be :unsure:), and Nintendo has been setting the example for a long time with 3 different, critically acclaimed Mario RPG series; I think Sonic could fare even better in the genre, due to the multi-character nature of the franchise (...well, it used to be its nature :().

I, for one, would be totally up for more Sonic RPG, either a (much) polished up sequel to Chronicles, or something entirely new.

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If horribly unforgiving, you mess up one part the whole attack fails, you don't even do partial damage.

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And? They were piss easy and even if you did have trouble there was a specific Chao called Ferox that guaranteed success whenever you used a POW move.

I put that one on Cream. Cream is already the best support character so getting that broke the game pretty much. Hahaha, fun times.

Do you know how lucky you have to be to get that bastard? I shouldn't have to rely on a power-up to do something the game should already be doing.

Like Sonicfan said, it made the battles drag on way longer than they needed to, I don't mind the whole "touch and slide" deal but I would've loved if the game didn't give you a huge middle finger for missing ONE step.

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I think that Sonic Chronicles is a great game.

I love how it expanded the Sonic storyline. We learn that there are more echidnas.

It also reminded me of the Archie Sonic comic series, which is my favorite Sonic canon.

It also give us Shade who is one of my favorite new Sonic characters.

I hope that Sega uses her again.

Sadly half the fanbase gives this game a lot of unfair hate, and thanks to Ken Penders lawsuit against Sega and EA it's unlikely that we'll see Shade again.

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Chronicles was ok, I had fun playing through the game, but for an RPG I was disappointed with how little exploration and side-quests there were.

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I think that Sonic Chronicles is a great game.

I love how it expanded the Sonic storyline. We learn that there are more echidnas.

It also reminded me of the Archie Sonic comic series, which is my favorite Sonic canon.

It also give us Shade who is one of my favorite new Sonic characters.

I hope that Sega uses her again.

Sadly half the fanbase gives this game a lot of unfair hate, and thanks to Ken Penders lawsuit against Sega and EA it's unlikely that we'll see Shade again.

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Really was disappointed by the game. I saw some of the videos and thought it looked enjoyable only to have any and all interest immediately disappear after playing through the game. There wasn't much to do, the game was short, the music was way sucky, and the enemies were dirt easy to beat. I'd say the only thing I did like about it was the clan of echidna's.

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I shouldn't have to rely on a power-up to do something the game should already be doing.
Edited by Chooch
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