The controls are really just awful. Sonic Chronicles makes full use of the touch screen. Full. Use.
The only buttons used are the L and R triggers, for advancing dialogue for the impatient gamer, or the start button to open up the tiny little menu screen. Movement and combat are done entirely on the touchscreen. While some gamers may be OK with this, but it’s frustrating. The DS has seven buttons and a d-pad. Is it really too hard to allow Sonic to be moved around with the d-pad as well as drawing on the screen?
What was really annoying was whenever you want to have Sonic walk down towards the bottom left corner of the screen, you have to be careful not to open up the menu and halt gameplay. This control mechanic was so frustrating that it made playing the game almost like a chore, especially in battles.
There are also some battles that are just hair-pullingly unfair unless you’ve battled enough to level up. For example, while adventuring through a dungeon early in the game, you’ll end up in battles with little helicopter robots and some kind of ancient robot stormtroopers. The battle goes simply enough, but for some reason enemies are allowed to dodge or defend against attacks and still fight back, whereas if you choose to defend with your characters, you’re not allowed to fight back. It gets horribly annoying when you have all your characters focus their attacks on one guy, and every single attack you throw at him misses. Then he attacks you perfectly in one shot. It gets very frustrating, and can be a major turnoff.‚
Speed is also an issue. I never really felt like I was going as fast as Sonic should be going. Sonic the Hedgehog is known for going mondo fast, and this game never truly delivered in that department. I tried to run past enemies when I first started because that’s what Sonic does (Or at least jump on them and avoid others), and I was heavily penalized and reminded how it’s best to not run from battles in RPGs.
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