Sonic Chronicles Review

The POW moves can be pretty spectacular, especially when they involve more than one party member.

Some of the POW moves can be quite spectacular, too. One, Sonic's Hail Storm, requires Knuckles, Tails and Amy to be in your party to work. They combine to smash a spinning Sonic at a single target, causing massive damage and potentially stunning the enemy.

While the game is overall quite easy, there is some strategy required, especially after the halfway point when some of the enemies have one hit kills. You'll have to keep an eye on the order of turns, displayed on the top screen, so you can see what order the commands will be played out. In this way, you can ensure you've healed up, or buffed your party, or inflicted a status effect on your opponent before the power classes kick in with their POW moves.

And you'll have to be on your toes at all times, too. No inputting commands then going to make a cup of tea here. Your enemies have POW moves themselves, and the only way to successfully defend against them is to use the stylus in much the same was as described above to make them miss.

The combat never really drags, despite it never posing a serious challenge. It's too much fun for that. If you're willing to give it a chance (and forgive the awful Sk8er Boi style combat music) it's some of the best DS role-playing fighting out there, and, in its own way, quite innovative (the 3D animations are hugely impressive).

The locations are varied, but exploration is fiddly.

In fact, it's the combat which keeps you motivated through to the end of the game, since it's through combat that you'll gain most of your EXP and levelling up. Since the plot isn't the game's strong point (is it ever with Sonic?), you'll be most interested in gaining new party members, exploring their new POW moves and upgrading existing ones so you can cause some truly spectacular damage. The ability to bond collected Chao (which hatch in your Chao Garden) and thus buff specific characters doesn't feel like anything other than an afterthought (you can level them up, but only by trading them wirelessly with other players), so you won't spend much time there either.

If you're not a Sonic fan and instead are simply looking for a quality RPG, there's better on the DS, but Chronicles still comes highly recommended. If you're a Sonic fan Chronicles really is an essential purchase. It's one of the best Sonic games we've played in ages (given the quality of some Sonic games in recent years this doesn't come as a surprise) and, despite it not being as in-depth an RPG as we'd hoped, it's really a lot of fun while it lasts.