My quick and irritated review of Sonic Chronicles for DS. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4yJ9pPPhVg

Nice review, I don't know if this counts as spam though...
Also, you're one of the few people that emulates Yahtzee unannoyingly, good job

I like it. It's clean and coherent, and the type type of video review I'd like to see on Gamespot or IGN.

Sonic Unleashed

I approve of that idea.

Pretty nice review, I watched your other one too, and I'm glad to see you cut out the pointless intro rambling that your other one had. Improvement!

I find it intriguing that you complain about the difficulty when every other review under the sun criticises the game for being too easy.

Spartan Bannana:
Also, you're one of the few people that emulates Yahtzee unannoyingly, good job

So wait, what? A video review nowadays is automatically a "Yahtzee emulation"? I thought we got past the whole "Doom clone" thing a while ago.

Anyways, not a bad review. I got the impression from others that the game had a lot of potential but just not enough time in the oven for it to fully come together. You seem to echo that opinion, more or less.

Its always fun to see more video reviews. Ever since Nilcypher STOPPED, we have been devoid of a user video review. That and it was done well, and the at least the pictures made sense within the context of what you were saying. I would have prefered something more visually exciting, but at least what you were saying was enough to entertain me. Also, completely off-topic, but if you want to post videos directly from youtube, use the code: [ youtube=Everything after the equals sign in the URL here ] Removing the spaces, and the result is...

searanox:

Spartan Bannana:
Also, you're one of the few people that emulates Yahtzee unannoyingly, good job

So wait, what? A video review nowadays is automatically a "Yahtzee emulation"?

No, but he made attempts at humor during the review, and so: Yahtzee emulation

Spartan Bannana:

searanox:

Spartan Bannana:
Also, you're one of the few people that emulates Yahtzee unannoyingly, good job

So wait, what? A video review nowadays is automatically a "Yahtzee emulation"?

No, but he made attempts at humor during the review, and so: Yahtzee emulation

Yeah, god, anybody being remotely amusing during a video review is instantly copying Yahtzee.

You sound like you lack speaking confidence during your review, work on it and you'll be awesome.

I'd rather a review contained basic factual accuracy than confident speaking. The latter is a bonus for a video review, the former is essential for any review, and it is missing from this one.

Selecting targets in combat, for instance, does not demand that you wait for the camera to pan to them, you can select targets whilst it is doing so.

Not perfecting the interactive combat actions does not make them miss completely, it just makes them do less damage. Also, these moves do not require any massive accuracy, the trigger points for them are huge, they require timing. If you are failing them, it's because you are pressing at the wrong time.

The menu items are easily selectable for anyone not suffering from the kind of shakes a lifetime alcoholic gets before their first drink of the day.

Shop inventory at the first shop is not limited to one equippable item, there are several different items for each character.

And the whole rant about defence being everyone's highest stat is odd, since the reviewer admits to not having spent a significant amount of time with the game, which implies that they do not have the kind of in depth knowledge of the battle system to judge relative statistic values to the level required to say whether equivalent numbers are of the same tactical worth.

So no, this was a fucking terrible review, and would have been if it had been delivered with the speaking confidence of Winston fucking Churchill.

I agree with the above poster. His factual accuracy was terrible, and while I can agree with the interface being slightly clunky, if nothing else, he really doesn't have much of a point. He complained about a lot of things that weren't wrong with the game, and honestly besides the defence stat thing not much, if anything, in his review can be excused by "it sucked at the beginning so I can stop now and say it sucked." He was just plain wrong in a lot of aspects.

EDIT: Also, his comment about the story being slow was what jarred me the most, because you could have absurdly fast conversations as far as RPG's go and get the info you needed without the big exposition on every side characters life story, which seems to imply he actively tried to take all the long conversation options. Or he's really impatient.

Also, this is a big improvement in characterisation for the Sonic posse. Sonic Team had about gotten to the point where I expected Amy to re-enact the hobbling scene from Misery, she was that psycho...

Also, they've given Rouge a sarky attitude. Not quite up to making S&M jokes like in Sonic X, but a smart mouth is always an improvement.

Spartan Bannana:

searanox:

Spartan Bannana:
Also, you're one of the few people that emulates Yahtzee unannoyingly, good job

So wait, what? A video review nowadays is automatically a "Yahtzee emulation"?

No, but he made attempts at humor during the review, and so: Yahtzee emulation

Wait, that was meant to be funny?

I got about halfway through the game and have over half the characters. All of them have defense as their highest stat. They all have crap for MP. In fact, everyone's stats are remarkably similar. It turns out that certain characters get more turns and certain characters do more damage because......THEY JUST DO. Look it up, it's in the game's own in-game glossary. Such things are barely, if at all, affected by stats. Atk and Def are actually accuracy and evasion, which is why so many of your attacks miss early on when your "atk" is low.

The game IS easy. It's also very drug-out when it comes to fighting.

Yes, there is more than ONE THING in the first shop. The other equipments also boost stats by ONE POINT. I'm halfway through the game and I've never equipped anything on anybody and still the game is easy. Then just now I equipped a couple of things, fought a few more times, and there was virtually no difference.

The special move inputs don't make them do less damage. They make your moves miss. But maybe there is some screwy calculation to it. I did a move with 3 separate inputs to complete, missed ONE of them, and the move completely whiffed.

The story is crap. Utter crap. And I went through all the conversations the long way, choosing all the available options until the one that continued the story was the only one left. It's composed of nothing buy weak, generic one-liners that aren't interesting or witty, and no depth of character is shown at all, though it's not like Sonic is known for having quality storyline, anyway.

I don't like having to use the stylus for everything. The buttons aren't just decorations for the system to look pretty, they're supposed to DO SOMETHING. And the stylus controls aren't even very good.

I wasn't aware that yahtzee had purchased the copyright to humor.

I openly admitted in the video to not having played the whole game and that if that bothered you then you have a point. Nobody seems to get mad at yahtzee for only playing an MMO for the two-week trial period before doing a hate-filled review on it, or when he angrily didn't finish "alone in the dark". There are surely other games he didn't finish before reviewing, since he does a review every week.

I also find the team attacks in Sonic Chronicles to be done very poorly. They subtract from your character's movelist rather than add to it, and they restrict your ability to use the team of characters you want to use.

I would have preferred the speech to have been a little quicker with more variation in pitch and for there to be more in the way of pictures; also, so from a technical point of view, you have a lot of 'pops' due to the emphasis you put on a lot of the 'p' sounds in the review. You need to move your mic a little further away.

nilcypher:
I would have preferred the speech to have been a little quicker with more variation in pitch and for there to be more in the way of pictures; also, so from a technical point of view, you have a lot of 'pops' due to the emphasis you put on a lot of the 'p' sounds in the review. You need to move your mic a little further away.

Even Yahtzee pops into the mic at times during his reviews. Still, that's good advice.

Now, to the TC, I say that I'm very glad that you didn't mumble during your review; so many people have sacrificed word understandability for speed during such reviews. Oh, and the review itself is quite good, too.

I liked it because he had the balls to put his voice up on Youtube. I didn't find any problems with your speech except the occasional sputter with the letter P though a lot of people have this problem, like with S.

......:
I got about halfway through the game and have over half the characters. All of them have defense as their highest stat. They all have crap for MP.

Which makes your rant less arbitrary how, exactly? Seriously, you aren't justifying your point at all, you just have this didactic position that Defence should not be the highest stat, regardless of how that affects the gameplay. Also, the low MP is not an issue given how easy it is to restore. Items are easily available to give per turn regeneration, characters regenerate MP by guarding, and items which reduce MP usage are easily available.

In fact, everyone's stats are remarkably similar. It turns out that certain characters get more turns and certain characters do more damage because......THEY JUST DO.

Holy character balance Batman! Some characters do more damage and have less attacks, some characters have really high HP and tanking skills, some characters have weak attacks and lots of support skills

The game IS easy. It's also very drug-out when it comes to fighting.

And you complained about the difficulty in your review. Score one for consistency.

The special move inputs don't make them do less damage. They make your moves miss. But maybe there is some screwy calculation to it. I did a move with 3 separate inputs to complete, missed ONE of them, and the move completely whiffed.

It varies from move to move, admittedly, but mostly only the moves with really powerful effects whiff completely if you mess up.

I don't like having to use the stylus for everything. The buttons aren't just decorations for the system to look pretty, they're supposed to DO SOMETHING. And the stylus controls aren't even very good.

Shit, you'd almost think this was a DS game or something.. Wait. It is.

I'm gonna say things that have already been said...so instead I say this.

Anyone here baffled that OP's Username is "....."?

Anyway I've seen your reviews, and you're improving. Gradually.

Correction. I now have ALL the characters. All of their stats are almost exactly the same. I have nothing against defense being the highest stat, just not for EVERYONE. That lacks variety. And when I say characters get more turns and do more damage because they JUST DO, I mean that it is an innate trait of the character that is not displayed in their status screen anywhere and their stats have little, if any effect on it at all. What good are the stats for, again? And nobody in this game has tanking skills. There isn't enough difference in HP (which is a stat), for anyone to be considered a decent tank. And the "support" characters barely amount to anything, either. This is a weak attempt at character balance, not a successful one.

Perhaps I should have clarified my statement on the difficulty. This game is easy. The battles are drug-out and annoying rather than fun, which includes when you attack 5 times and miss all 5 attacks, but your enemy attacks 5 times and all 5 of them hit you. The enemy didn't kill me, but it's still very annoying and when I can't hit them but they can hit me, I deemed that "getting smacked around", not "getting beaten and losing the game".

Yes, it is a DS. How would you like it if the only input device on your computer that worked was the mouse and the keyboard completely stopped functioning except for the "shift" key? Maybe if the steering wheel on your car worked but not the pedals? That would make great use of the device, right?

I have noticed the "pops" in the audio when I say "P" sounds. I've been trying to stop that but I can never seem to get rid of them completely.

If you want variety in the stats, then it's all up to you to install that; you were given the option to pump different stats up at every level, and the "auto-level" button won't do this. And what difference in HP do you want? 2 times? 5 times? The gap I see operates perfectly well for my tanks.

I'm also going to throw my hat into the "you don't know how to do POW moves" ring. The accuracy of the buttons is fine; you're probably screwing up the timing by hitting them the moment they appear instead of when the two circles meet and go green. If defence is your highest stat and you were doing POWs correctly, you wouldn't be getting hit.

The Characters may have the same stats, but they have different "classes" which is one thing that is switching things up.

I dunno, the game was super easy, I bought it, beat it and sold it back all in a small amount of time. New Game+ for a game like this is kinda pointless although it was available. But I don't think easy is a bad thing. The Sonic packaging probably means this was meant as like a "My First RPG" for incredibly young gamers, and since Bioware makes nothing but RPGs, and great ones, that's a good idea for their future.

The characters are significantly less annoying than in other games,
Timing is all that's required for and it makes it vaguely more interesting than selecting things with a menu.
The story was weak, but if anyone attempts to convince me that this game "Fails to live up to Sonic's high narrative standards" I will shoot them in the pride.

All in all, a needlessly negative review, and a largely uninformed one, trying to take a cheap shot at a license that has been easy pickings for about a decade.

EDIT- Got all up on my high horse and forgot something positive I wanted to say right at the beginning.

Thank you for at least writing a review at all. That takes guts, especially when guys like me tear into you over it. Please don't be discouraged at all, especially if people disagree with you. You put an opinion out there, albeit not one I share, and stood by it and didn't start name calling or getting hyper-defensive.

It is a nice review and all but all I really heard was, in a not trying to be an asshole kind of way,"I suck at the game, therefore the game sucks." I actually kinda found it weird that you had a tough time with the controls while a lot of other people got it down fast. Also, patience is something you need in order to play an RPG. Now I ask you, is it REALLY another nail in the coffin or are you the only person who is saying that?

EDIT: I re-watched this review half way and I want to point out some things you said:

1:"Virtually Unplayable" umm.....WHAT?

2:If the D-pad and A, B, X, Y buttons did what they were supposed to do, the stylus would do absolutely nothing except be an optional thing for selecting items, and like you said the stylus has to do SOMETHING other than be an optional tool of use.

3:Are you aware that this game is an RPG, right?

4:What do you mean that Bioware took the mistakes and put them all into this game? What are you talking about? I hate it when reviewers nitpick something that has nothing to do with what anyone really cares about in the games and then give it a low score. For example, did Sonic Adventure 2: Battle have terrible voice actors, undeniably, was it a good game, YES!

......:
What good are the stats for, again? And nobody in this game has tanking skills. There isn't enough difference in HP (which is a stat), for anyone to be considered a decent tank.

Yeah there is. Big. One skill forces enemies to attack him and reduces damage he takes, another makes him regenerate.

And the "support" characters barely amount to anything, either. This is a weak attempt at character balance, not a successful one.

I guess you missed Little Miss Broken then, Cream, who can restore 5PP to everyone at a cost of 7, which with an economiser and a PP regenerating chao means she can do so every turn.

Yes, it is a DS. How would you like it if the only input device on your computer that worked was the mouse and the keyboard completely stopped functioning except for the "shift" key? Maybe if the steering wheel on your car worked but not the pedals? That would make great use of the device, right?

If I was playing a game which could completely adequately be controlled using only the mouse and shift key, then it wouldn't be a problem, would it? Seriously, think before analogising.