Sonic and his friends have banded together with leading RPG developer BioWare to create a stylish blend of strategy and speed for Sonic’s first RPG, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Exclusively for the Nintendo DS, Sonic Chronicles mixes a rich story, hand-painted visuals, fast-paced team combat, and wireless collectible trading into a uniquely compelling adventure. Rhythmically tapping and dragging with the stylus in Sonic-style battles, players can level up and use Rings to buy new special attacks as they progress through 20 different and beautifully hand-drawn areas including new and classic Sonic locales. With an engaging storyline, lightning fast attacks, high production values, and impeccable visuals, Sonic Chronicles allows gamers to experience Sonic in a whole new way. Online Trading and Collecting: Collect several types of artificial Chao lifeforms, each with varying power-ups and abilities that help in combat and elsewhere. Players can exchange their Chao with friends via local wireless play. New Party System Gameplay: Sonic Chronicles introduces the “party system” for diverse team tactics using each of the 11 playable character’s unique and customizable skills and powers.

User Reviews about Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

If your looking for sonic to be runnig around and fighting egg man stuff like sonic advance, sonic rush, and sonic x the cartoon then this is not for you. trust me I thought the same thing when I bought this game, its too much like final fantasy games. so its up to you if you want it but as for me give me the sonic that we all remeber, thanks. -- Its up to you if you want it

A Christmas present for my grandson. He likes to play games, i am sure he will enjoy this game. -- game

Despite the campy quality of some of the graphics and music, "Sonic Chronicles" is an enjoyable gem of an RPG.

To tell the truth, there are many reasons to not like this game. The 3-D cutscene animation is generic and shoddy. The world map music sounds like ancient 1980s Game Boy music. The sound cuts off and sometimes skips in certain sequences. There's not even enough rings on the map screen to pay for accessories and items.

Yet, there are also many reasons to keep playing "Sonic Chronicles." For starters, exploring the overworld is ridiculously fun. Each character has a special ability to get through certain obstacles or climb surfaces. The challenge is finding which combination or characters to bring, so that they can get all the rings , like a and eggs.

The other half of the fun is in the battles themselves. Whenever your band of merry animals confronts a monster, they fight in a goofy "Elite Beat Agents" style battle. Special moves require players to rhythmically tap on circles on the screen and follow the drag marks. It's actually a challenge to cast the recovery spell by dragging on the guide lines on screen. The hot rave and rock music in the background only contribute to the hip fight atmosphere.

True, the pop culture RPG was executed with much more style and finesse in "The World Ends With You." However, "Sonic Chronicles" still has an undeniable amount of excitement. People will definitely want to keep leveling up their characters with the cool battle system, or search through every nook and cranny of the vast world map for goodies.

Still, you can tell that Sega hasn't been thinking much about the Sonic games, based on the poor quality development in this RPG. The cheap MIDI music on the map screen sounds very dull and uninspired. Sometimes the characters attack monsters that are already defeated.

Even the story sounds terrible. Imagine, the world is once again in chaos, but Dr. Robotnik is not the enemy. No, it's actually the Marauders, who stole his old robots to use for evil. And guess what--these Marauders were one of the ancient echidna clans expelled from the world by Knuckles' own clan.

It all makes very little sense. However, it doesn't keep this game from playing like an incredibly enjoyable RPG game. True, the graphics and sound could have been revamped by the development team, Bioware. However, the team does a great job in revamping the classic RPG with complex gameplay. Compared to all the inferior 3D platformers by Sonic Team, this is one of the better Sonic games. -- Cheaply produced Sonic fun

This is the best nintendo ds game I have ever played. It is the E3 game of 2008. The graphics are good, the sound is good, the dialogue is good, and they should have a music Cd just of the songs on the game. If you're a Knuckles fan you'll love this game. If you like Sonic at all you will love this game. Pow moves can be hard to learn and some enemies are incredibly hard to defeat but if you stick with it and try as hard as you can you will eventually win. -- This is a great Sonic the Hedgehog game!

While you would think that the RPG format would slow down our favorite blue hedgehog, it really doesn't; sure, Sonic doesn't move as fast as he would normally, but the story and events still seem to take on the nice, swift pace everyone seems to love in his games. Still, if you're looking for levels to simply dash through, you have the wrong game; this game still plays a little more like an RPG than a traditional Sonic game. However, if you're also an RPG lover, like I am, you should LOVE this game: after all, what's a better idea for a Sonic/RPG fan than to have Sonic IN an RPG? Bioware and Sega also do it really well. Unfortunately, like all games, it's not perfect; so, I shall tell you everything about it using the grading system (A+ being the best, A- being the worst):

Story (A-): This game has a nice, seemingly fast-paced story that is easy to get into and should keep you entertained. In addition, this game's story isn't just a bunch of long, drawn-out cutscenes, which may appeal to those who don't really care about the story: the cutscenes this game has are short, usually only lasting a couple of seconds (10 seconds at the most). The rest of the story lies in interactive scenes, where you can choose how Sonic responds (verbally only) to a character who speaks to him; though a great idea in concept, I think they could've done more with it here, as it usually seems like the game is poking at you to respond a certain way (there are a few exceptions, but not many). It can also be repetitive, as you can say stuff over and over again until you pick a certain option; a really convenient feature, however, is that usually (if not always) they show you the responses that will get you out of the conversations the fastest. Though you may miss some details in going fast, they are usually (if not always) just FYI; and it keeps the gameplay from stopping in it's tracks, especially if you decide to go through the story multiple times. My BIGGEST gripe with the story is the fact that the ending is a "to be continued" type of ending; and, therefore, unfinished. A very cheap shot to force the person to buy the next game, in my opinion, and not much appreciated when discovered.

Music (B+): The music is good enough, but lacks the kind of freshness and oomph I usually associate with a Sonic game. There aren't many tunes that are especially memorable (in fact, some are quite forgettable), but there are a few. The best tunes you'll find are when you're exploring the worlds and during the bosses. One of my gripes is that they use the same fighting and boss tunes over and over, no matter where you may be. This isn't particularly noticeable at first; but, trust me, you will notice it eventually. They're are only three "general" battle songs, and three boss battle songs (I think; I can't remember if the final fight had a different tune or not); they're good songs and all, but you just feel that they could've done more. The music may seem impressive, at first; but you will feel it's less impressive once you compare it to other games. Finally, the sound effects are only so-so; in battles, it really kind of bugs me to hear the characters saying "ugh!" when hit, in voices that sound almost completely different from what they should sound like (and not even differing too much from character to character to boot).

Characters (A): There are a lot of good characters in here, including: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Cream, Big, Eggman, Shade (a new character), Shadow, Omega, and Rouge. In addition, they're all design pretty well, according to types and abilities (Knuckles, for example, is more battle-oriented, while Cream is more of a support character). You will have to control just about every single one of them eventually, save for Cream and Omega (which are, surprisingly, optional). Most of them you will just run into throughout the story, but Omega and Cream you'll have to find (they're not hard to find if your thorough enough, though). Just as an FYI, do NOT deny Cream on joining the team the first time around: though she's more of a support character, she's a really useful one. The only thing that bugs me about the character design is they made Amy stronger than Knux here (meaning she can break through stronger barriers); that bothers me, considering Knux is supposed to be a powerhouse.

Gameplay (A-): Great gameplay! I feel that Sega tried to do a little too much at once (which is one reason why it's not A+), but it's still great. The RPG is turn-based, POW moves are fun to execute and make good use of the stylus, and items are fun to seek out and collect. Chao eggs are one of the most interesting items, which hatch into chao you can equip for abilities (the type of chao you get is randomized). There are also other forms of equipment; but, when you include the chao, it's kind of overkill: in addition, there aren't a lot of ways you can get money (in the form of rings) to buy items after you go through each world a few times. Also, most equippable items don't affect the gameplay much: you can usually hardly tell they're even equipped. Another gripe: this is stylus control only, even for movement. While you can get used to it, I do prefer to move using the control pad rather than tapping like a mad man. One more thing: your characters are going to miss a lot at the beginning, when they're weak. That's annoying, but it should pretty much stop eventually; in fact, when the characters you control become strong enough, enemies should actually start missing YOU a lot.

Graphics (B-): Pretty good graphics, but not the best. The backgrounds are pretty when the characters stand still, but hard to look at when you move (movement causes everything to blur a bit); the characters in cutsenes or in conversations appear good (somewhat comic-like), but the same characters came off to me as very messy looking when you're controlling them in actual gameplay.

Overall (A): Not a perfect work, but you cannot deny how addictive this game is once you are into it. Another nice feature: once you complete the game, you can play from the beginning again with the same leveled up characters, and make small changes to the storyline if you want to (e.g. if you were nice to Amy throughout the first time, you can be mean to her the second time). While this doesn't sound like much in replay value, it's actually somewhat good; that is, until you become bored of the storyline and gameplay. You can also keep up to three save files, though I have no clue if there's multi-player or not. Still, this game offers many hours of fun and entertainment. In conclusion:

Sonic Chronicles is another point for Sega! -- A Good Chapter in the "Sonic Chronicles." (by Laura)