I’m probably not the only one who thought that this was a bad idea. Sonic the Hedgehog, one of the fastest characters in video game history, getting a Turn-based RPG. It makes little to no sense. TBRPGs are slow, Sonic games are fast. There is nothing between the two that seems to work well together. And everyone who thought that, such as me… was wrong.

Surprisingly, I actually found that this is a good game. Let’s see what i thought of it a bit more in detail.

Story
Just a note here: This a Sonic game. The story, even though it’s an RPG, isn’t incredibly deep. Though it’s deeper than the average Sonic game, don’t expect too much. The plot twists aren’t bad, but they’re still kinda weak and the story isn’t overly complicated. But it’s still good enough and more than does the job. It’s entertaining enough to make you want to see what’s gonna happen next. Also, there are slight story spoilers, but I’ll keep them at a minimum, no really important plot points will be revealed.
Now, someday the Chaos Emeralds get stolen from Angel Island, and Knuckles, who was trying to protect them, got kidnapped. The thieves/kidnappers are known at first as Marauders, but eventually are revealed to be the Nocturnus clan, a group of Echidnas. They were previously (4000 years ago) sealed in the Twilight Cage(some other dimension it seems) and are planning on using the Chaos and Master Emeralds to get free and rule the world, and it’s up to Sonic and his team to stop them.
That’s pretty much the basic of the game’s story. It goes quite a bit deeper than this, but going deeper now would really be spoiling the game. Again, not a bad story considering it’s from a Sonic game, but doesn’t really compare to… non-Sonic RPGs.

Controls
Before speaking gameplay, I’ll just do a passing mention on the controls. That’s one of the things i feel they screwed up. The game is fully touch-screen controlled. Everything can only be done with the touch screen. Moving, navigating menus, choosing actions in battle… Everything. The only button you’ll press is L, which does the same thing as touching an icon on the screen for movement abilities on the maps(such as dash, “invincibility”, teleporting, flying and such). It can also be done with the touch screen, but using the L button is a lot more convenient. Now that wouldn’t have bothered me THAT much if the movements on the map weren’t so clunky and unresponsive. You’ll sometimes end up just not moving because you’re stuck to something on the map that you’re barely touching, and that really pisses me off. Options for using the D-pad and A button instead of touch screen only would have been great.

Gameplay
Now we’re getting to the good part. Being a Sonic game, I must say I wasn’t exactly expecting good RPG gameplay. But I was wrong. Bioware did a really good job making an interesting RPG game while still giving it a good Sonic feel. Yeah, I was surprised as well.

Battle System
The beef of the game, you’ll be spending lots of time here. The basics are simple. Each characters have a number of moves every turn. For example, Sonic can do 3 attacks a turn, while Tails and Amy can do 2 and Big can do 1. On each turn, you choose what each character will do, and the battle plays out, where the characters and enemies will attack depending their speed and number of moves. When all the enemies’ HP reaches 0, you win the battle, otherwise you get a game over(unless you or they ran away). A game over gives you 2 choices: retry the battle at a cost of 20 rings, or reload the game from your last save.
There are a few things you can do in battle: Attack, use special moves, defend, use items or run away. When you select attack and a target, all your remaining moves will be dedicated to attacking(same with defending). If you choose a special move or use an item, your first move will be the special attack(or item) and then you choose what you want to do with the rest of your moves. Defending, as well as reducing damage, also makes you regain one PP (which are used for special attacks).
Now what makes this a bit different than other RPGs is the special attacks and dodging enemy special attacks. When executing them (or when the enemies execute one), you have to do a kinda “rhythm-game” thing, similar to Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents. There are 3 different things here: a circle you have to tap, a moving circle you have to stay in while it slides along a path and a circle you have to tap 8 times before another circle gets too close to it. You get a series of either of those during special attacks. If you miss that, you attack is more likely to miss and, if it doesn’t miss, will do a lot less damage. Same if you miss when an enemy does it, which will make it do a lot more damage and their attack will hit without fault. If you do get it perfect, their attack misses, unless it’s a “cannot miss” attack, in which case it will only do 1 damage. Really, I thought these would get really annoying over-time, but they’re pretty fun and make sure that you’re always stay on your toes in battle. Some do get repetitive, but they’re really short so it’s really not a hindrance. And after seeing an attack’s pattern a few times, it will be impossible to miss it, and getting them all properly will give you a good edge in battle.
As for running away, it’s also a mini-game of sorts. They start running away and must get far enough from the enemies to get away. Tapping on one of your characters makes him/her jump. Basically you have to jump over crates and step on speed boosters. Simple enough. Though it gets tough when you have 4 characters, it’s still pretty hard NOT to get away. You also chase escaping enemies the same way.
Overall really fun battle system, it’s fast and does the job really well. Bioware really managed to get a good Sonic feel out of that.

 

The Characters
You have a good variety of characters in the game, and each is really different in combat. There are 3 types: Power, Support and Shifter. Power are damage dealers, Support are… support >_>, and Shifter are a mix between both, though I realized after a while that they(well, 2 of them) tend to do more damage than my power characters. Overall, all the characters are quite different, and it’s fun to be able to make a well balanced team, and considering you have a good number of characters to choose from, it’s not hard to make a good team.
As for the characters themselves in the story, they’re not too bad. All the characters you’d expect are there. Sonic, Tails, Amy, Cream, Big, Knuckles, Shadow, Rouge and a couple of others(trying not to spoil too much here). They’re overall mostly interesting. Their personalities are not really different from before (sonic is cocky, tails always states the obvious, Amy is an idiot, Big is stupid and actually funny… you get what I’m saying here), but you’ve got some interesting dialogue. Speaking of dialogue, when speaking to someone you get multiple choices when replying. In general other replies just give extra info and the events don’t change afterwards, but there are a few exceptions where minor changes happen depending on what you say.

Map
Okay, I already talked a bit about the controls on maps and why they suck, but there’s a bit more to it. Maps have different hazards that need to be cleared. Each character has one or many movement abilities. Let’s say there’s poisonous gas in the area, Big can pass through it with his “invincibility”. High walls can be scaled by Knuckles. Long cliffs can be traversed by Tail/Rouge/Cream/Knuckles’s fly ability. Boxes can be destroyed by Amy or Knuckles and finally ramps and loops can be passed by Sonic’s Dash ability. Otherwise not much else to say. You find Chao eggs and rings in the levels, and on each of them you’ll see how many there are and how many you’ve gathered on the current map. Also, no random encounters, you’ll see the enemies on the map first.

Leveling up!
Similar to other RPGs, winning battles (as well as solving stupidly easy puzzles) gives you experience points. When a character reaches a certain number of points, they level up. Also, they get experience whether or not they’re in your party(even if you didn’t meet them in the game yet), so they never fall behind when you need them. here’s some inconsistency in experience gained though. In the end of the game it isn’t as bad, but early it just doesn’t make sense sometimes. Some parts I fought enemies that gave 500 EXP, and another fight right after against the same group gave only 10. Not sure why that is, but it’s strange.
When leveling up, the character gains: extra stats automatically, 1 bonus point you can spend however you want, and 5 points to learn special attacks and leveling them up. Special attacks cost 5 points at first, and 5 extra points for each higher level (each attack has 3 levels, so 15 points required for the final level). Each stat increases certain things. Attack boosts accuracy but not damage(that is determined by the character itself and is boosted by equipment), Defense boosts evasion but not resistance to damage(that is determined by the character itself and is boosted by equipment), speed affects how fast you’ll get to attack on your turn, and luck affects the number of critical hits you gets and ambushes you get.
Forgot to mention that, ambushes. When getting a battle, you might either embush or get ambushed. The “team” that ambushes the other enables each character to perform 1 normal attack before the first turn starts, giving a slight advantage. 
Anyways, to boost stats, there are also pieces of equipement: shoes, gloves, accessories and Chao. Equipment is the only way to boost damage output and resistance to damage. Chao are interesting because they have various effects. Some give elements to attacks, resistance to elements, better damage, more PP, PP regen (one gives that for the whole team, which is awesome). Chao can also be leveled for better, but that only does anything if you do trades with other people with the game, which is kinda lame(never got to try it). Accessories also seem to have similar effects, but not sure if some of them is to the same extent as Chao.

Overall
Okay, I’ve already said a lot about this game already, so I’ll stop here(not much else to sway anyways). Overall it’s a good game. Sonic fans who like RPGs will like it. There are some bad things about it, like the controls on maps which should really have options for D-pad movement, and the music is really… unmemorable and even bad at some parts. But the battle system is fun, the leveling system works well, the story is really sim-ple yet entertaining and the characters are fun. Overall a really fun game that is surprisingly worth checking out. And think about it: Mario worked as an RPG, Sonic should be able to do it as well And Bioware definitely know what they’re doing.