Hands on with BioWare's Sonic RPG - Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

A surprise highlight at Nintendo's Media Summit held last week in San Francisco was a fully playable demonstration of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Like the love child birthed from a union of hedgehog and level 50 elf, this unlikely role-playing take on Sonic is more than just a beautiful roll through a dark spot in the long-running franchise.

Neither BioWare nor Sega would divulge details on the game's plot, but we do know that Sonic Chronicles will see the speedy hedgehog team up with series standbys Tails, Amy and others to defeat a mysterious evil that is hell-bent on destroying their world (surprise!). The role-playing clichés don't stop there, though. Oh no, Sonic Chronicles treads a well-worn path of level grinding action and point-based character development.

What promises to set the game apart, however, is amazingly stylish presentation and a spit-shine that only the RPG masters at BioWare could muster. Sonic Chronicles remains unabashedly traditional in its core mechanics, but does well in freshening up the experience with inventive combat dynamics and unbelievable depth to character development.

Exploring the gorgeous hand-painted levels, Sonic and his pals can bully wandering enemies. Battles, which transition away from the main exploration screen, play out in turns. Upon a character's turn, a radial menu fills the touchscreen with a variety of options, including a basic attack, special abilities, items, and flee. Using items, special abilities, or launching a standard attack means hitting the option in the menu and then tapping the desired target with your stylus. Fleeing involves a simple mini-game in which Sonic and his accompanying party of up to three other characters leap over boxes obstructing their escape route. Naturally, it's up to you to time taps of the touchscreen to jump over the obstacles.

Basic attacks require nothing beyond tapping your intended target; special abilities, however, involve a bit more interaction. Depending on the ability, the game often prompts a stylus-driven action on the touchscreen. For instance, Sonic's whirlwind attack has you holding the stylus within a designated area as it moves in a circle around the edges of the touchscreen. Succeed and the damage dealt to your foes increases. Another mid-battle mini-game includes tapping a collapsing circle at a precise moment to boost your defence.

Victory in battle yields experience, which in turn levels up your characters and grants you the ability to augment their core attributes and unlock new abilities. Points awarded upon levelling up can be assigned to individual attributes, essentially enabling you to develop each characters' fundamental qualities. Ability points make it possible to acquire new powers, unlocking them by climbing through the tech tree.

Additionally, you can cultivate cutesy 'chao' that grant unique bonuses. Equipping a vampire chao, for example, affords the ability to drain an enemy's health, whereas a fire chao bestows that element onto your basic attacks. Mixing and matching different chao provides immeasurable benefit to your party, making it a vital part to outfitting your characters. You're also capable of trading chao with other players locally, expanding the possibilities for bolstering your combat abilities.

No matter how much effort goes into crafting Sonic Chronicles into the perfect handheld role-playing game, the hedgehog's spirit of speedy platform gameplay has to remain. Fortunately, the game packs in platforming to a limited degree. Sonic is capable of zipping through loops and rolling across levels using the stylus. As you work through the game, you'll be able to increase Sonic's platforming proficiency by unlocking abilities in the tech tree. Similarly, other characters possess platforming abilities crucial to progressing further in the game. For example, Amy can crush blocks with her hammer that increases in power as new abilities are learned.

Whether Sonic Chronicles ends up packing in enough platform gameplay to complement its in-depth role-playing to remains to be seen. Our limited time with the game certainly has us looking forward to it, though. The beautiful visuals and solid battle system serve as a foundation for what could yet turn out to be one of the year's best handheld games.