Sonic Month: Sonic and the Black Knight (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

The plot has been covered, and I discussed most of the missions. Is there anything else to talk about? Oh, enough for a Part 3, don’t worry.

Just because the adventure is over doesn't mean the
adventure is over! ...er...

And sometimes, you get a lot of items.

I finished Part 2 talking about the weapons crafted at the Blacksmith’s shop, and I have more to say here. So! 33 weapons to craft, all of which are made using items found in the levels after identification. Problem one, here, would be that you need to identify each item, and you are very likely to be unable to identify every item obtained at the end of every level, since you need identification points to do that. Some items that can be equipped increase the number of identification points, others decrease the number of points required for a category of items, but it might not always be enough – and also, you frequently get the same items over and over.

What’s more, the crafting screen only shows which items that you've already collected before are needed to craft a weapon. Any item you haven’t discovered yet will be hidden under ????????. Good luck finding them! As for items you have discovered, neither the Treasury nor the crafting screen tell you where you got them originally. So, unless you keep a list of where you find what, from the start of the game (before you even know you can craft weapons), or look up that information from the Sonic News Network wiki, good luck figuring out how to craft everything.

Also, each Knight has its associated Medal, which is earned by beating that Knight for the main plot and getting a good score in that fight. To craft a Knight’s best weapon, you need both Medals earned from these battles. As an example, to craft Sir Lancelot’s Ddraig Goch, you need two Medals of Lancelot plus other materials. I hope you’re good at complex sword dueling.

Pictured: "Complex" sword dueling.

There’s a lot more missions in the single-player campaign, several of which I haven’t covered, but then again, I don’t really need to – most of the postgame missions have a minigame-like feel to them, and there's enough variety to keep a player interested. The actual place for "minigames" here is the Battle Mode.

Shadow VS Lancelot: Someone's a faker here!

Sonic and the Secret Rings had a full-on Mario Party section with mini-games, various modes, and lots of fun to be had. Sonic and the Black Knight trades it for a Battle Mode without a lot of flavor to it. Sure, it can be pretty fun, but it’s overall somewhat bland. First issue; it’s multiplayer-only. You need to be two players or more, as there are no options to add CPU battlers to a game; no playing by yourself! Second issue; there are seven arenas to play in, but the only changes are cosmetic. All stages are a bland ol’ square the battlers fight in.

Now, the first plus: There are 12 playable characters, 8 of which can be unlocked in the Story Mode. The base 4 are Sonic, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain and Sir Percival. The other ones are the Blacksmith, Amy, Sir Lamorak, Sir Galahad, Shadow, Knuckles, Blaze, and King Arthur (the only non-Mobian character available in that mode). Most of them are unlocked through the Story Mode. I mentioned the plot had room only for three Knights of the Round Table? Well, this mode adds Lamorak (portrayed by Jet the Hawk) and Galahad (portrayed by Silver the Hedgehog). The only two characters who are tricky to unlock are Sir Lamorak and King Arthur. Personally, I find it hilarious that the Knights get to exist in this world alongside the original Mobians – Lancelot and Shadow, Gawain and Knuckles, Percival and Blaze. Shouldn’t that create some sort of paradox?

Second element to discuss: There isn’t much variety in stages, but there’s a lot of modes to play in. Character usually start with Rings, a full Soul Gauge, and sometimes three lives represented as Hearts. A character loses a Heart if they’re hurt while they carry zero Rings. Some of these parameters can be edited before the  match, based on the type of match. All modes have a timer, and the match ends either when the battle’s goal has been reached or the timer hits zero. A quick description of the modes:

Sheesh, Arthur isn't playing around.

-Battle: No Hearts; the goal is to kill as many opponents as possible, so everyone has infinite Lives. The player with the most kills at the end of the timer wins.

-Survival Battle: Everyone has only one Life/Heart. Last player standing wins.

-Ring Battle: Bags of Rings fall on the arena once in a while; players must collect them, and the character with the most rings at the end wins. However! Characters can still attack each other to take rings away from someone’s stash. Also, some bags are explosive traps…

-Goblet Battle: Holy Grail Batman! It’s a chase for the Goblet that’s moving around the Arena. The player who catches it must keep it as long as possible, while the others try to attack them to steal it. At the end, whoever kept the Goblet the longest is the winner.

Aaaaaah! The ghost is chasing us!

-Evasion Battle: Opposite of Goblet Battle, and basically a game of Tag. An evil spirit targets someone, and that someone must bump into someone else to transfer the spirit. Whoever had the spirit the smallest amount of time (or avoided it entirely) wins.

-Trap Battle: The characters are separated by breakable blocks, and must hit the others by blowing up blocks, while they avoid getting caught in explosions themselves. The player with the most kills wins – and if a tie occurs, the winner is the one in the tie with the most Rings left.

-Battle Phantoms: Underworld Knights appear at intervals on the field, and the Knights must destroy them. When the timer hits zero, the victor is the one who killed the most monsters. Why, yes – it’s still possible to attack other players.

Oh, that's a giant alright. A giant pain in the ass!

-Sudden Death: No extra lives, no rings, no Soul Surges either; Last Man Standing is the champion. The timer is shorter, starting at 60 seconds, and a tie is possible if two characters still remain on the field when it hits zero.

-Battle Giants: A cooperative mode in which players work together to kill a Giant monster. If a player is captured, the others must attack the monster to free that player. The goal is to kill the Giant in the shortest amount of time.

-Battle 100: Monster knights appear in a constant stream, and for 120 seconds, the players must kill every monster they can. First player to kill 100 monsters wins. But careful; a player that gets defeated won’t return…

Many options, but they all end up feeling rather samey and bland. Ultimately, I do feel that the Battle Mode isn’t as impressive or interesting as the extra mode in Secret Rings, but at least it’s something extra to try out. I can’t complain about a game having more content than just a base single-player campaign.

Several more missions are available in Ranking Mode, though those existed mostly so one could compare their scores with other players by using the Wi-Fi Connection, the one that got terminated in 2014. There was also a way for different players who owned the game to trade Treasury items, likely to help each other complete the Treasury and craft weapons, all done by sharing Wii friend codes.

Is there anything else to be found in the game? Well, if you like extra challenges, try to complete the Gallery. It’s split in several sections. On several pages, most content has to be unlocked by getting 5 stars on a precise mission in the game.

-Developer data: This section shows development sketches and art from the game’s production.

All of the music!

-Movies: All the animated segments and movies from the story, as well as the credits. The third page of movies instead shows a skilled player’s techniques in order to get 5 stars on a mission. This is also where one can watch three movies of fan art made by fans in Europe, in North America, and in Japan – imagine being a Sonic fan and seeing your art make it into a Sonic game.

-Books: Consists of 10 character profiles. The last 5 are the Books of Arthur’s Legends, obtained as items to be identified after missions. Gathering all 5 unlocks King Arthur in Battle Mode.

-Music: The music track to each World in the game. The last one is harder to unlock, as it involves getting 7 items that are tough to find.

-Flags: Achievements that involve beating the Story Mode, using either Knight 10 times in Adventure Mode, mastering a Style, getting 25,000 followers, beating all missions, completing the Treasury, crafting all the weapons, and so on.

-Microphone: The Sound Test for the characters’ voices.

So that’s about it. Before I go on to my final words, something sounds odd about the game; it’s supposed to take place after Arthur became King, even though it’s a fake Arthur in this version, and now we’re following Merlin’s granddaughter (by the way, I wonder if she sees time backwards too?), and the Knights of the Round Table are already a thing… Then there’s Sonic who’s the actual King Arthur, and the plot hinges on Merlina fearing that the Kingdom may come to an end someday. And this, even though there’s no Guinevere in sight in the entire game, yet it’s Lancelot and Guinevere going at it behind Arthur’s back that ends up causing the Kingdom’s downfall, implying whoever Arthur-Sonic ends up marrying and taking for Queen, it’s Lancelot-Shadow who can’t keep it in his pants and provokes the destruction of the Kingdom. Then Mordred, also not in the story, would end up killing Arthur, who is Sonic here... Ouch, my brain. It's like a weird fanfiction just waiting to happen.

Also, each game came with its mandatory
special, unique Super Form.

Wait, where was I going with that? Oh right! The Sonic Storybook series is really weird by design, and things don’t really mesh together too well in places. They go for interesting stories, even if they take huge liberties with the source material. To some extent, I understand. “Hey, I want Sonic with a sword!” “Now we just need a reason for that to be a thing!” This game, and Secret Rings, run more on pure awesomeness than any sort of logic, or at least any logic pertaining to the Storybooks they’re taking (very loose) inspiration from.

On one hand, this concept has little staying power and, while I do like both games (with a preference for Secret Rings), it feels like they’re best left to that era of the Sonic franchise, as Wii games. On the other hand, a silly base concept such as “Sonic ends up in famous, copyright-free tales” could have led to other ideas; on a poll held by SEGA, in which fans were asked what a third Sonic Storybook game could be about, the winning option was Greek mythology. Yeah, I can see that. The TVTropes page also brings Wonderland and the works of Jules Verne as possibilities; personally, I’d go for a world of classic fairy tales, and another taking inspiration from classic horror novels (Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde, etc.).

Alas, the poor critical reception and lack of sales at the time nipped this idea in the bud. It was fun while it lasted. Thankfully, the games are better  regarded nowadays.

With this out of the way, my final words on the game itself: I used to be pretty indifferent to it, mostly because I kept thinking I had problems figuring out the swordplay mechanics. Turns out, I was just dumb – the game IS made in such a way that most levels utilize basic swordplay, while a handful of bosses require more complex sword-based gameplay to be learned. There’s still stuff I struggle with, but I understand it relatively well. I paid attention to the game and completed it much faster for this review; maybe I should have cared more the first time. Originally, I wondered why we collected so many useless items in the Treasury, what the differences were between the playable characters, why we could access the Blacksmith before every level. Like I said; I was dumb. Who would expect a crafting system in a Sonic game of all places? It’s unexpected, yes, but it’s at home in a game that tries to break some conventions of the franchise without straying too far from what we know. The overall game is a lot better when you take into account the entirety of its contents, though there’s a bit of a learning curve to it due to everything one needs to keep track of.

"Reminder: I can build deadly weapons out of
random pieces of junk. I'm just THAT awesome."

If it weren’t for the sword(s) and the crafting, it would feel like the usual Sonic fare; the speedy, rail-riding, enemy-killing action. A tad annoying that it’s on-rails, AKA there’s no free exploration and Sonic usually follows a single path, but understandable considering the nature of the game. Thankfully, the missions are varied and so are the environments, the secondary characters and the bosses are memorable, and the overall plot really helps in giving this world its own feel. Some missions are a tad annoying, but it's not a big issue. The music is good, thanks Crush 40, and the cutscenes are all quite nice, both the handful of animated ones and the many that are made of still images. No critiques on the overall look and feel of the game either, its all on point. For people who want to play further, the game has the optional challenge of getting 5 Mastery Stars on every mission, which unlocks a lot of bonus content in the Gallery.

And if the Wii takes a second to register your movement...
I found the solution: Avoid Wii remote QTEs as much
as possible.

As I mentioned before, one of my issues involves the quick-time events scattered through the game; you deal with them while performing acts of chivalry for townspeople and, most annoyingly, during boss fights. Not just QTEs, though; QTEs that involve slashing with the Wii remote. On top of having to do them on time, one movement too many or an accidental shake, and boom, you wasted your chance. I am not a fan of QTEs, especially how they’re used mid-cutscenes in most games, but I can definitely say a big, resounding NO to Wii remote motion QTEs. They’re even worse when they ask for perfect timing, as if a player could react to a split-second with a swing of their arm.

That's still not gonna replace the Lost Chilidog.

On to the Treasury, the Blacksmith, and crafting: I went on and on about the Identification Points, and how you receive items almost at random at the end of a level. The Blacksmith doesn’t tell you what you’re missing to craft a weapon; the Treasury doesn’t tell you where to find an item you’ve yet to find; several items use up Identification Points really quickly. And when the RNG is not on your side, there’s nothing you can do. Personal story: One item I’m missing in the treasury is a Rusty Dagger, necessary for several crafted weapons. I looked up online where to find the damn thing. I went through all the levels in the Deep Woods, Titanic Plains and Camelot Castle areas (which are the three areas where it can be found) and I Never. Found. One. Without a handy guide and a rabbit’s paw, good luck getting everything in the game. Some items are rarer or harder to find than a Rusty Dagger; some of them can be obtained in a single mission of a single area. And you’re not given a single clue, ever.

Percival going through the fire and flames, in style!

Also a shame that Lancelot, Percival and Gawain can’t be used in all areas, and are restricted to a few of them. As for the Battle Mode, it’s nice that it’s there, but it’s a bit on the bland side as far as multiplayer modes go. Some levels have annoying or unfair moments, and several missions suffer from the old “Missed the mark? Better start the whole level over” trope.

Would I recommend this game? Before playing through it again for this review, and actually caring for everything I do in it, I would have probably said no. It used to strike me as a forgettable game with annoying mechanics. With everything I learned by writing this review, and using all the gameplay mechanics the game has to offer, I can say it’s overall a good game with annoying moments at times, but the ride is fairly decent and worth the price of admission. I’ve warmed up to it.

And this concludes Sonic Month 2020! Let’s hope I don’t wait another 5 years until the next one.