Sonic Month: Sonic and the Black Knight (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

"You better, I just sharpened you!" - Also said by Sonic.

When we left Part 1, Sonic had completed tasks given to him by Nimue, the Lady of the Lake. However, he felt compelled to help a child whose family had been taken by a dragon. In Crystal Cave, Sonic runs through the cave and defeats a ton of enemies. He also finds himself having to rescue townspeople trapped in magic crystals, by reflecting sunlight off of Caliburn to break the solid prisons. With the villagers freed (and yet no dragon in sight), Sonic returns to the child.

When you run so fast, your legs turn invisibleé

It turns out that this child had been Nimue in disguise, presenting another test to the hero. And Sonic made the right call by going out there to rescue everyone! Hah, and Caliburn wanted us to ignore this! Nimue goes on to explain that the only way to defeat Arthur’s scabbard-powered immortality is to gather the weapons of the Knights of the Round Table through defeat in duel, and combine them to Caliburn in order to get a sword powerful enough to undo the spell. That’s good, I’ve already defeated Lancelot and Gawain. And the only one left is Percival. Why only three? Either there was no room in the plot for the others, or the studio blew their budget and could only afford three. Yeah, that second one makes sense.

...Hey, don't you dare call me a Japanese Gardevoir!

Whoa, she's on fire!
I mean, it's Blaze, yes, but still...

This quest now takes us to the Molten Mine. After venturing through the burning lands, Sonic encounters Sir Percival. Never mind that the Knight is portrayed by Blaze, she’s a Sir. She fights well, and she uses her fire abilities to fend off Sonic, but she’s defeated. With this, she tries to toss herself in the lava below, but Sonic catches her in time. This victory, and the act of heroism that followed, finally make Caliburn acknowledge Sonic as a proper knight. A Sir, not a Knave, at last! Took him long enough! Now with the Knights’s three legendary blades collected, we meet with Merlina again. We might have just what’s needed to take down King Arthur, and this battle in Faraway Avalon will make history!

What is it with knights and suicide around here? Geez!

Watch out for incoming mine carts.

Beating Percival also unlocks the Cavalier and Paladin Styles, as well as a handful of extra missions that veer off more on the mini-game side of things. In one of them, Sonic runs through the Crystal Caves and must not come into contact with a single villager. Of course, this is the level where they’re every-freaking-where. Another one, in the Molten Mines, requires Sonic to spend the whole level grinding on rails, and jumping to avoid rolling minecarts. In both cases, it takes an insane amount of timing and precision, and the smallest mistake forces you to start the whole thing over. These two go from “Okay, cool, an interesting idea” to “God damn it, why did they make these so annoying?” in record time.

He tells me that I'm the one tor un away...
While HE is running away? Hypocrite, that Arthur!

The Epic (Final?) Showdown!

Past those, we can head to Avalon to fight Arthur. It’s a final boss fight alright, as Sonic has to use everything he learned in his journey. The real strategy is filling up the Soul Gauge to the maximum, usually by slashing the spheres of darkness Arthur drops back at him, then by catching up, and homing in on him to attack. Next comes a difficult and annoying QTE moment where Sonic must clash blades against Arthur, six times, which then opens him up for attacks. Slash, slash, slash, lather, rinse, repeat, until he’s defeated. After which, in a cutscene, Arthur begins to heal thanks to the scabbard, but Sonic sets the other legendary blades around him to end the magical process, then slashes him one last time. Boom, done! Roll credits! …Wait, really? That’s kind of sudden.

Okay, so the Adventure Mode was kind of on the short side all things considered, but I’m sure there’ll be a lot of postgame missions, definitely. Secret Rings did that, I expect the same. At the end, it had some annoying moments, but overall it wasn’t too terrible. So yeah, after long credits, we can check the Multiplayer option, since that’s another option. Or the Gallery, which shows all the cutscenes – including 10 that are still apparently missing… Okay… Hm, checking the Adventure Mode, a mission opened in a new area… Alright, I’m intrigued.

Oh great, he's disappearing again.

Pictured: When shit got real.

When Arthur is defeated, he vanishes into particles of darkness like the many Knights of the Underworld that Sonic has been defeating. Merlina is being cornered by the three Knights of the Round Table when the hedgehog shows up with the scabbard, wondering what’s going on. Merlina explains that this King Arthur was an illusion made by her grandfather Merlin to keep the kingdom prosperous… which she believes has always been a mistake, and that what should have been done from the start… was to imbue the entire kingdom in the scabbard’s power to make it eternal… which she proceeds to do, also transforming the kingdom into the Underworld and making monsters come out all over the place.

Well, shit. We’ve been working for the real villain this whole time.

Ah yes, the inevitabe sewer level.
Even in the Arthurian Legends, gotta have one of them.

Also important: Each Knight uses a different playstyle
(Lancelot = Knight, Gwain = Paladin, Percival = Cavalier).

Sonic and the Knights flee from the castle of Avalon as it transforms into a dark, spiky fortress, and meet each other at a safe point. Nimue joins them and explains that, the same way Sonic could cancel the fake Arthur’s immortality with the Knights’s legendary blades, it might be possible to cancel the scabbard’s power on the whole land by planting the blades at the corners of the Kingdom. Surprise – now, it’s possible to play in Adventure Mode as Lancelot, Gawain or Percival, in some specific missions!

"Oh yes, bring me a samurai helmet, an aquamarine,
a chain bracelet and a lollipop, I'll MacGyver a
new weapon up for you."

At the Blacksmith’s shop, you can equip different items to Sonic and the Knights (Also of note, Gawain can hold only one item, while Lancelot can hold two and Percival, three). Also, remember all those objects you pick up and identify at the end of levels, those seemingly-useless items? It turns out that the Blacksmith can build new swords and weapons using those are crafting materials. I like the idea as it encourages players to go through the game some more in order to collect these materials. That said, good luck figuring out what can be found where without a guide…

Is that Shad-er, Lancelot? Yep!

Can I say that some of the areas in this game are
absolutely gorgeous?

Three new areas open, with Barrier Stones at the end of each – this is where the legendary swords must be planted. Lancelot plants Arondight at the end of the Shrouded Forest, though the construct reads “This stone is but a part of the ring that sealeth the Dark Hollow”. A similar message is found at the Great Megalith by Gawain, who realizes after planting Galatine that, though he served Arthur, he never saw Excalibur itself, only the scabbard. Then, Percival takes her own Laevatein to the end of The Cauldron, a fiery area that has the most annoying elements of platforming I have seen in the game so far. Difficult jumps across lava? Yep. Enemies who willingly push you into the molten magma? Yep. After this, Sonic has to go through a dragon’s lair and kill the dragon within before he can set Caliburn into the last Barrier Stone. Alas, Nimue sees that their efforts weren't enough, as they didn't prevent the darkness from creeping further throughout the kingdom.

Blaze Percival will breeze through this land of fire!
It's her element, after all.

Sonic runs to the Dark Hollow, ready to fight Merlina. She wants to preserve this world’s beauty, but Sonic claims that nothing lasts forever and that’s why life must be lived to the fullest. I mean, nice moment of philosophy for a Sonic video game, but… it almost comes out of nowhere. Wished this was expanded upon in the franchise, but apparently that’s too much to ask. After beating Sonic within an inch of his life, Merlina turns into an Eldritch monster, the Dark Queen (what a creative name), while Caliburn merges with the Knights' legendary blades to become the true Excalibur. Sonic also gets a new form, Excalibur Sonic, which is… well, just Sonic in a golden armor that protects the entirety of his body, except his tail. Hey, Merlina! I know his weakness, his ass is still bare! Grab him by the tail!

This final boss is a bit disappointing. It doesn’t really bring anything new – Sonic must slash at large orbs of light to hit them back at the Dark Queen and fill his Soul Gauge. Then a press of the B button, and Sonic will rush at the Queen and slash for a bit. The one change is that, in order to avoid attacks, Sonic must roll left or right, using Z or A to do so. Then comes the Wii remote QTEs again, which yay, we didn’t have enough of those yet. The battle against the fake Arthur was tougher than that! (Or so it seems, at least; I remember struggling against the last boss a lot, back when I first went through the game.) And so, with the Dark Queen defeated, Merlina returns to normal, and her spell is lifted from the land.

Sonic already kills Eldritch creatures on a yearly basis.
He can deal with one more without any problem.

Heh, even Sonic can't believe it.

Sonic has just won the latest game of “My ideology is better than yours”, so I guess it means he’s the hero of this world now. The Knights of the Round Table fear they must disband, all three of them, since they no longer have a King to serve, but Caliburn interjects by claiming that it is the one that chooses who King Arthur is. And, lo and behold, Caliburn declares Sonic to be King Arthur. That comes out of nowhere, but that’s about as good an ending as any. After the end credits, Sonic has been brought out of the book and back to his world (because apparently that world of the Arthurian Legends can live without its Arthur), and faces the wrath of an angry Amy who demands to know where he’s been for so long when they were supposed to go on a date. Yeah, Sonic, good luck convincing her that you were caught in a book the whole time.

"Oh hey, that book is about me now!"

Lancelot: The Rematch.

I am not entirely done talking about the game – the story’s over, but now we have proper postgame missions to complete. I remember the loads of extra missions in Secret Rings, and once again here, we have all sorts of special challenges to finish across the map. The most notable ones may be the rematch against Lancelot. Oh fucking God, he is insanely tough. I think he would be slightly easier if the QTEs worked better, if the game gave the player only a little more time to shake the Wii remote when required – as it is, you’re barely given a second to react. I did eventually manage to defeat Lancelot, with a technique that avoids QTEs entirely, but it took me forever. Eventually, the constant shaking of the Wii remote to slash with the sword put a strain on my arm.

They really go all-out with challenges past this point; one level of the Shrouded Forest asks you to reach the goal without ever touching the ground (though elevated platforms are OK), one asks to finish a level without getting hit once (not easy, but doable when you know the sequence of events), one asks to find hidden fairies. The way to make hidden fairies appear changes depending on the level.

It doesn't take forever to change perimeters at the Blacksmith's shop,
like it did for the equipped Rings in Sonic and the Secret Rings.

According to my sources, the developers behind Sonic and the Black Knight learned from some of the criticism they received on Sonic and the Secret Rings. In S&tSR, you could edit up to four Rings with the abilities collected as you leveled up. It became possible to remove some key abilities from Sonic, such as the instant catching of Rings and orbs. The biggest issue, there, was precisely that several missions were impossible to complete unless you edited an ability Ring specifically to go through them. As an example, in some missions, you couldn’t collect a single orb (the items that refill the Soul Gauge in that game); that included orbs collected by beating enemies, so a Ring had to be modified so Sonic couldn’t collect orbs on the field nor home in on enemies. Editing the ability Rings broke the flow of the game in major ways.

Now you, too, can play as Dan Green Knuckles Gawain!

The system in SatBK is simplified; for starters, the missions don’t outright require one or another of the Styles. All missions allow all styles for Sonic, so the concepts and goals may appear generic, but that doesn’t make them any easier, oh no. The one downside to being able to switch between the Knight, Paladin and Cavalier styles, is that those Styles need to be leveled up as well in order to get their best perks, by completing levels with that style. Also, each playable Knight excels in one Style; Lancelot plays as a Knight, while Gawain is a Paladin and Percival is a Cavalier. The flow of the game isn’t broken constantly, which is a major improvement. The one downside is that the Knights are only playable in worlds that were discovered after the battle with King Arthur in Faraway Avalon.

Every Knight has 12 swords to choose from.
Sonic only gets that Big Mouth Caliburn.

It also begs the question: What’s the use for the swords crafted at the Blacksmith’s shop? Well, those can only be equipped to their associated Knight of the Round Table. There’s a total of 36, so their original weapon plus 11 extra weapons to be crafted. Although one may assume such, the swords aren’t merely cosmetic; each one will change the set of skills that Knight has access to. Perks include higher base speed, easier left/right movement, extra rings gained by defeating multiple enemies, starting with some energy in the Soul Gauge, and so on.

I’ll need to finish this in Part 3.