Sonic with a sword is cool! :)

I have recently been playing lots of Sonic games and this is a franchise I didn't give the opportunity to discover when I was little; I was mainly just a Mario person but now I do like both equally, however the Wii was the home console I grew up with.

Pretty much my childhood has been Nintendo games but I had a couple of games that weren't from Nintendo and some of them are Sonic games, which included a couple of games like Sonic Unleashed for the Wii, Sonic Colors, Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic and the Black Knight.

When I was little, I had a lot of these but I never really got to play them, but I knew they were games that "were for me". The only one I really got to play was Sonic Colors since it felt the most Mario-ish game. You can tell I am a Mario person.

Now I got to play a lot of the Sonic games I never really tried, and even bought new ones recommended by a few mutuals such as Sonic Generations, but I decided to come back to these games I owned on my Wii to see if they were as good as those games.

I started with Sonic and the Secret Rings and then moved to Sonic and the Black Knight. Both of these games are very interesting because they are based on stories that already exist but they throw Sonic in these stories and Sonic goes through a similar plot in these unique worlds, and because this is on the Wii they of course have to throw in motion controls.

Now these 2 games don't really have the best reputation among other games, and people do have their reasons but I wanted to try them out anyway; and heck, I like motion controls so my view may not be the same as their view of both of these games.

Sonic and the Black Knight goes ahead and throws us to the world of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the plot isn't exactly the same but the game does a good enough job to encapsulate the tone and world we are in, which isn't similar to usual sonic locations, but basically...

We find Merlina a wizard running from the danger of the Black Knight, who possesses the scabbard of Excalibur, which grants him immortality, and this immortality made him get corrupted by power in the world of Camelot, and in order to defeat Black Knight, Sonic must be trained in the art of swordsmanship, he must wield the sword Caliburn, which is a sword that talks! After a while, they find Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, and she gives Sonic 3 tests to complete his mission in 3 days. In order to stop Black Knight, sonic must have the 3 sacred swords from the 3 knights of the Round Table, which are Lancelot, Gawain and Percival; after defeating them, Sonic must take their swords and use them to defeat the Black Knight.

However, something... is off. Black Knight turned out to be an illusion by Merlina's grandfather, named Merlin, she goes ahead and takes the scabbard of Excaliburn to be the new queen of Camelot to make the kingdom last forever, because she is aware that a kingdom like this won't last forever. The knights now have to use the sacred swords to defeat Merlina, closing the kingdom in some sort of a square barrier; Sonic not agreeing with the kingdom lasting forever, confronts Merlina with a battle, but Sonic is too weak against Merlina, which then transforms into Dark Queen revealing her other form. After cutting Caliburn in half, Sonic keeps trying to make through Merlina's defense with no success, after a while Sonic acquires the other swords from the other Knights and fusing them to acquire the legendary sword Excaliburn, thus defeating Merlina after a long battle. Time has passed and Sonic talks with Merlina after battling saying that we have to live life to the fullest in the time that we have and Sonic turning out to be the new King Arthur.

That was a lot of writing LOL.

Anyways, that is a brief summary of the story of this game and I honestly think it is achieved fantastically with it's little tweeks and details that makes it alright to follow along and it feels and is told with very consistent quality with cutscenes and Sonic characters portraying the roles of these characters from the plot. It also does the character of Sonic extremely right with Jason Griffith's voice sounding amazing, as well as everyone else's. Probably one of the better stories from Sonic the Hedgehog honestly.

Like I mentioned before, this is a game that teleports the player to the world of KAATNOTRT, and all the locations sure do look cool in this game.

Misty Lake, Camelot Castle, Deep Woods, Great Megalith and the list goes on but all of these places make sure they have their purpose and match the vibe of the story with success, not to mention, this game looks really good, maybe not the Wii's best but it does look good enough to catch on details or to make the player believe they are not in just another Sonic zone, but they are in Camelot from Sonic and the Black Knight.

I also have to mention how good this soundtrack is, it isn't your typical soundtrack from Sonic but my god that orchestra goes hard. All the tracks really go with the theme of older times in a land where knights are made, and it really is a joy to listen, and I feel like people don't tend to bring this soundtrack into a soundtrack conversation for Sonic besides Knight of the Wind. This game also tries to do semi-tracks with the overall track it has to make variants for levels and missions.

Being part of the storybook games duology, means both Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic and the Black Knight will have similarities, and they do, but the one that is the most different is their gameplay. Black Knight follows the structure that Secret Rings built first, but changes it to what it's trying to achieve from a gameplay perspective, and honestly, this may be the game where Sonic does the least amount of platforming in the series. (at least on the bigger games from Sonic the Hedgehog)

The game centers around using your sword Caliburn to defeat various enemies on the way while you avoid certain obstacles while being on a on-rails type of gameplay. Combining mobility and sword moves is what makes Sonic and the Black Knight's gameplay unique. It also uses the Wii Remote + Nunchuk to make the sword moves happen as well as basic movement with the Joystick. Most of these do feel fine enough, although moving backwards is a bit weird because you really can't see what's behind you, even with the more dynamic camera this time, the game doesn't really help with it.

The main goal of Black Knight is getting into these controls to reach the goal of the levels you go through; you have the main level, and then you have various missions to complete and continue with the story. I am not really the biggest fan of missions, specially in Sonic games but thankfully a lot of them aren't mandatory. A lot of these is just completing objectives like defeating a certain number of enemies in a row, donate a number of rings to civilians, don't die or don't get hit, etc. A few games in the series have missions that you must do but are a bit... random, and not too relevant to the main goal of the game, so seeing this game at least having missions that do a bit more sense is alright. These missions occur on the main level's layout so most of the time you go through the same locations over and over with maybe split paths or something. And the main levels/acts are basically reaching the goal in a 3-4 minute level, and most of them are pretty fun!!

And even outside of the main game, you have a lot of things to do, like trying out the multiplayer mode which is fine on it's own as a tiny way of playing a battle mode with the characters unlocked from the main game, all with their unique abilities. It isn't perfect but it is a fun side mode you can try with a few friends.

Overall, this game sounds awesome, graphics, music, story, gameplay and different modes to have fun. So... what is it then with Sonic and the Black Knight? Why only 6/10?

Well this game has some... strange issues.

This game takes 2 hours to beat. It is criminally short when most Sonic games have been pretty lenghty but I am not quite sure what happened here because sometimes it feels like this game was going to have WAY more content. Not saying this game is lacking in content, but it definitely lacks content for the main game; when the game was getting started it was over? The craziest part is that there were other knight designs for the game such as Silver and Jet, but unfortunately they are not in the main story, instead they are in the Gallery and Multiplayer as unlockable characters, and more characters could have been a neat idea to extend the lenght of the game.

And honestly you could say the same about a few of the unlockable missions because there are a few of them where they use parts that were never used in the main levels, like for example Misty Lake, there is a mission that is basically reaching the goal; weird thing is, Misty Lake connects with the starting area of Camelot Castle, so it could have been cool to see Sonic go through Misty Lake and transition from there to Camelot Castle, but instead is a mission you... unlock? After beating the game too? That is weird.

Because there are also cutscenes between these 2 hours of playing, you are mostly playing for like 1 hour and a half. It makes the pacing a bit weird as well.

The bosses of Sonic and the Black Knight are also known for being really bad, and yeah, they certainly are bad. Oftenly being 30 seconds long and being very similar between them, as well as being extremely easy. You would think a game that lets you wield a sword would have good bosses but no.

There is also a lack of control options; like I said, I enjoy these controls, I don't think they are intrusive or anything, but I feel like giving the player choices for controls is very important to make your game more attractive and open to everyone's likes. Controls can sometimes ruin a game, so these are very important.

By far the worst thing about this game is definitely the lack of explaining... everywhere. This game really does a poor job of explaining anything, like your moveset, which I had to look somewhere to know my moves; apparently there is a move called Kick, which you can do by using Soul Surge and shaking your Nunchuk, which you never had to do before but you do with this move apparently. Or how by executing a button combination you get different moves like a Stab or a Sword Uppercut. The game doesn't really tell you about these moves, so it does make it feel like you have less moves that you actually do, which isn't really a good thing because this game is pretty unique on the type of gameplay it's trying to do, and it's very unattractive for players that want to learn more about the game.

And it can also be said about the Blacksmith, which has a sort of upgrade system for Sonic and the others, but it is a bit confusing and doesn't really have the best UI for such a system like that; and again, isn't too well explained. But I decided to try a bit of these upgrades and they aren't super impactful in actual gameplay, but the idea is cute.

And the same can be said regarding the item system, titles for Sonic, or how the ranking system works...

I don't know, there really are a lot of things that really would benefit from explaining just a little bit of it. It really sucks it is this way because a player shouldn't have to look on the internet for basic stuff like this

At the end of the day, this game is very flawed and but that doesn't stop it from being an interesting take of "Sonic with a sword", I still appreciate the take on this kind of Sonic game.

I do wish we still get storybook games because these were neat ideas that let Sonic be at it's most creative but oh well.

Game is fun but definitely has weird issues that can make others think the other way about it but if you ask me?

I don't know a controller replicating sword actions is cool!!