By Cass Carter Staff Writer cccarter23@gmail.com

Sonic the Hedgehog fans, rejoice. Finally, quality game play has returned to the franchise, brought to fruition by the brain trust over at BioWare, the same people that brought quality back to Star Wars games. The Blue Bomber's first foray into the RPG genre is an excellent experience that renders the most pained player an amnesiac in regards to the past few games.

The idea of an excellent Sonic game being on the DS seemed laughable to this reviewer, but the DS is now clearly an ideal format for an RPG. Being able to use the touch screen to direct the action quickly allows you to keep combat fresh and fast, and the controls are highly intuitive as a result. The graphics are excellent and the overall tone of the game is the classic cheerful, colorful and upbeat Sonic environment.

The battles are not random-encounter, but are based on actual enemies populated on screen, allowing players to bypass unnecessary battles if they prefer. The combat doesn't drag on, and actions take place in a turn based format, so you can take as much or as little time. The experience of moving around is actually very fluid, enjoyable and simple.

Which, oddly enough, becomes a problem; it's all too much fun to play around and try out this system, that at times you can find yourself not really paying attention to the story. Indeed, despite the whole 'imminent threat to everything in the world' vibe coming from the story, it never really feels like you're under pressure.

Even if you do get into the story, the worst of this story never gets too dark. This is a game with an "E for Everyone" rating, after all, and the primary vibe of cheerfulness never fades. There also never seems to be any real increase in difficulty; the game remains easy the entire time.

Additionally, multiplayer is pretty much non-existent, relegating players to only enjoy the ability to trade skill-enhancing 'Chaos' pets. However, this is not too surprising, as multiplayer in an RPG is a hard thing to conceive of without making it far too easy.

However, the game was a major surprise delivered by a solid development team. While suffering from an extremely easy difficulty level, it's still a solid RPG at its core. I give the game a 7.5 out of 10.

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