Sonic Chronicles, a Sonic RPG from Bioware back when they still had a perfect reputation & is the closest we got to a game based on the comics continuity. It got B's & 80%s from various review sites & magazines. What could
possibly go wrong?
Oh God it hurts, please make the hurting stop.
Here's 3 quick facts about me:
A. I can play Sonic games
B. I can play RPG
C. I can't play rhythm games to save my life
Which of these 3 facts would you say is the most important to playing a Sonic RPG? Well it turns out the answer is C because every damn attack & spell requires the player to do some Elite Beat Agents bullshit to work. Made worse that the you-did-it-wrong sound effect sounded more like a you-did-it-right SFX to me, so I didn't realize how badly I was screwing up for the longest time.
In fact, the audio top to bottom is just terrible Shadow's "voice" is the falling-down-the-tube SFX from Sonic Spinball. & the music,
Hoolee Moolee the music. Apparently Bioware ran into legal issues with their soundtrack in the 11th hour or some other shit & at the last minute replaced most of the tracks with MIDIs from a fan site. The results weren't pretty.
Here's the final boss theme Sonic 3, an all time classic final boss theme in gaming:
Here's it's remix from Sonic Generations 3DS, a great track made downright legendary:
& here's the Chronicles rendition, which BTW was used as a dungeon theme & not for any battle:
WHY HAS THE HURTING NOT STOPPED?!?!?!!!!
Story is.............ok. To Bioware's credit, they've done some homework & tied previously unconnected threads from multiple past games together to form this game's backstory & this was probably the last time any Sonic game remembered the Master Emerald. However, some of these callbacks don't really amount to much in the long run. OK, so the Dark Brotherhood built the Gizoids from Sonic Battle, what of it? The gizoids in the game might just as well have elite Brotherhood troops for all the difference it makes. If Gemerl from Advance 3 made an appearance they could've gone somewhere with it but he doesn't so nevermind.
Speaking of the Dark Brotherhood, the other disappointment is that this is like the only Sonic game to incorporate elements from the archie comics canon, except
not really. Instead of the Dark Legion/Julie Su/Dimitri, SC has the store brand knock-offs Dark Brotherhood/Shade/Ix. It's like getting Kylo Ren instead of Jacen Solo. I hate to imagine a sequel having substitute Freedom Fighters if Bioware kept going.
Dialogue choices seem to be there for the sake of Bioware tradition, not to actually add anything of note. You can either choose from sarcastic Sonic or serious Sonic, but the results the same regardless. This probably would've been a better game to work in a custom player avatar instead of Forces, Bioware at least could've done more with it. Tails is so insufferable about reminding the player to save the game, he continues to do it even after telling him to stop. That's how inconsequential choices are.
Stats are so weirdly implemented. Damage output is not a visible stat, you can equipped items that increase your damage but they don't show by how much. There's an "Attack" stat that you can see, but it actually refers to the attack's
accuracy, which I didn't know for the longest time & was hella confused at why I was doing so little damage. You give party members protection from different elemental attacks, but there is no single enemy in the whole game that even deals any sort of elemental damage so the shields are pointless.
In short, it's a game where every facet of it fails. Crap graphics, terrible audio, lousy controls, half-assed gameplay, weak story, & a cliffhanger ending that'll never get resolved thanks to a lawsuit from a dumbass ex-writer. It may not be the worst Sonic game ever but it was the 1 that broke my heart the most.