Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

Yep, I got it.
I actually went and bought it the day after my last posting about it... :)

IMHO:
It's a good game.
It took me about a week to complete.
It's a pretty good RPG, and the world of Sonic lends itself to the genre well. Sonic and his friends each have unique abilities, like Sonic's spin dash, Tails' flight, and Knuckles' wall-climbing skill, and these lend themselves to both the adventuring aspect (navigating obstacles in the field) and the battle scenes.

The landscapes have a cute hand-drawn look, and you use the stylus to control Sonic's movement in an intuitive manner (similar to Phantom Hourglass). There are plenty of familiar STH elements in the levels, like loops, springs, and those ubiquitous Gold Rings.
The scenes are inhabited by enemies and people, both of which can be avoided or confronted at will - no sudden random battles here, thank goodness!

As for the actual battle scenes, the attacks are customised depending to your character's abilities. Knuckles' attacks involve his fists, Tails' are robot-oriented, Amy's involve the use of her disturbingly-huge hammer, and so on. But there are special POW moves that require you to trace patterns on the touch-screen with the stylus, and these have a necessary degree of awkwardness. You ever played one of those Dance-Dance games, where you have to use your feet to match the falling arrows? Well, it's a little bit like that.
(incidentally, my worst nightmares are full of sliding arrows... ever... approaching... arrows...)

It's not all happy-happy, though.
The battle scenes are well rendered, but applying the special moves is a little tricky because you have to try and remember their effects (because you don't get reminded mid-battle). Also, supplying your party members with "armour" and power-ups is a little difficult, because you can only organise a maximum of four characters at a time. Too bad if you missed a character before an important battle, hey?

There are plenty of references to the original STH titles (look carefully around the ruins of Eggman's Metropolis level!), and most of the background tunes are reworked versions from the vintage games, which I thought was a nice gesture for friends of the older games. It's a case of "Spot the Reference"!

It's a reasonably good RPG, but I don't see it becoming the essential DS title that Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga was for the GBA. I'd recommend this for the hard-core Sonic fan, but the hard-core RPG fan will probably find this over way too soon.

Incidentally, this game carries a PART ONE WARNING - sequel to follow...

Find out more about the game here. You can also find some desktop wallpapers and game hints here too.