The Legend of Sonic: Sonic and the Black Knight (Wii, 2009) Review

 NOTE: This review is part of a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective

Finally, I can move onto the next Sonic game. I did want to review Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing but I’ve been meaning to get to Sonic Colors before Ultimate releases, so I will probably save that for later - at least when I finish playing and reviewing Colors. Anyway…

Background

Sonic and the Black Knight serves as the second of the Storybook games that started with Secret Rings. In fact, it was the second out of the two Storybook games since the mini-series ended after this one. The game was revealed at Nintendo’s pre-Tokyo Game Show press conference in 2008, and released in March of the following year. That’s… all I could really find about the game’s development, really.

The game got mixed-to-negative reception when it came out, with a lot of criticism toward the swordplay and platforming, plus sales of it were apparently pretty underwhelming. Like other Sonic games from what is considered the ‘Dark Age’ it was delisted and pulled from store shelves in 2010 due to falling into the ‘mixed’ category of Metacritic scores.

But since then, similar to (albeit not to the same extent as) Unleashed, this game has developed somewhat of a cult following in the Sonic fanbase, with a lot of particular praise due to the game’s story and Sonic’s characterization, which also goes in line with the criticism towards the direction of the series and his character after the release of Colors.

Personal Experiences

While I might have seen some stuff about this game when I was first getting into the franchise and fandom, I believe the first time I heard much about it was while I was visiting family near the start of 2012. We were in the middle of our move to Colorado, and me and my mom decided to stop at my great aunt’s house while my brother and father continued their journey, unloading and unpacking the bulk of our stuff. My mom’s cousin’s son was also into Sonic like I was, and he brought up Black Knight as one of the games he had.

But that was about the extent of it for a while. This was kind of just another game I avoided for a long time - other than my cousin’s kid who brought it up, this game didn’t seem to have great reception and as such I kind of just avoided it. And admittedly I sort of feel like my opinion of it was soured at one point (despite not playing it) due to one guy on the ROBLOX forums who insulted me because I thought the game looked bad and tried to stick it to me for liking… Crash Bandicoot.

okay seriously, if you’re going to insult me for liking a video game you don’t like (because I didn’t like a video game you liked), you could’ve at least insulted me for liking Sonic R or 3D Blast back then. Crash Bandicoot was generally well received and considered a classic compared to Black Knight so that comparison just kind of backfires on you.

In all seriousness though, I didn’t play the game until 2016 - I had started hearing more praise towards the game, and while I was at my local game store, spending Birthday and Christmas money I had saved up on Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Twilight Princess for the Wii and SimCity for the SNES… I saw this game for $8, and I figured it would at least be worth a shot. I proceeded to play it once for about 10 minutes and then never bothered with it again.

Truth be told, the game just didn’t really interest or engage me that much, and honestly I feel like for the longest time I forgot I even had it as a part of my collection. But, of course, for this review I played through the full game after about 5 years.

Story

Sonic is summoned into a medieval world by a wizard named Merlina to fight against King Arthur, the black knight, who is corrupted by Excalibur’s scabbard. With his speed not being sufficient enough to defeat him, he picks up a talking sword named “Caliburn” to fight King Arthur. However, once King Arthur is defeated, it is revealed that Merlina plans to utilize the power of Excalibur’s scabbard to keep her world lasting forever, going against the natural order of the world and putting many lives at risk.

Like I’ve said, I’ve seen a lot of praise for Black Knight’s story, with some even arguing that it’s the best Sonic story period. But to be honest, I just found it to be… alright. As a video game story it works fine enough but I don’t really get the whole notion of it being the pinnacle of Sonic storytelling or whatever. The whole twist with Merlina kind of just felt out of nowhere, with the only moment in the story really hinting at it being the scene with her and the flower earlier in the game - which even then really just provided some exposition on her fear of death - and it just feels out of place to me, almost like one of those twist villains in a CGI Disney/Pixar movie.

Sonic’s characterization also kind of just has a lot of the same issues I have with the rest of the late 2000’s games where his personality just feels really flat to me, often just coming off to me as a pretty bland, generic ‘hero’ character. I guess some of the banter between Sonic and Caliburn did make it a bit more interesting but otherwise… I dunno, it just felt very forgettable to me overall. The line people often point to where he talks to Merlina about ‘every world having its end’ just feels like something I would see on a list of inspirational/motivational quotes.

I guess in general the story works fine enough, but it doesn’t really stand out to me, and I gotta disagree with the whole notion that it’s one of the best Sonic stories or best characterizations of Sonic in the series. I mean, I guess I don’t have many problems with it but I also just don’t have much to say about it either. I do gotta admit though, the post-credits scene of the True Ending actually did make me laugh.

The story presentation is pretty good though. The CGI FMV cutscenes look really good and well animated, and like Secret Rings, the other cutscenes pull off a more ‘Storybook’ feel, albeit with a different style - in general being more colorful and, well, just looking like something out of a picture book, which I really like.

Presentation

Visually I feel sort of mixed on this game. As far as Wii games go, it does look fine enough, and some of the environments - particularly The Cauldron and Shrouded Forest - actually look really good. But at the same time, I kind of feel like this game as a whole doesn’t really look any better than Secret Rings released two years earlier and it doesn’t feel like it does enough to build upon that art style. Sonic’s model is almost the same aside from the addition of the sword and metal glove thing, and some of the environments look pretty dull - kind of just looking too void of color and not really fitting in with the general Sonic ‘style’. 

I do like the look of the menus though, still sticking to the whole ‘Storybook’ theme this game is going for and just feeling unique all around.

The soundtrack is also pretty forgettable to me. The game’s main theme, Knight of the Wind, surprisingly isn’t as overplayed as I expected it to be after hearing what others were saying and coming off Secret Rings in which that game’s main theme was overplayed, but honestly I only really noticed the theme to be played in the game’s Wii Channel screen, the intro cutscene (which you can skip) and the main menu. But as a whole, the soundtrack in general just didn’t really stick out that much to me and I really can’t tell you how many tracks I remember other than the game’s main theme. Maybe it’s just not my taste - I do know there are others who really like this game’s soundtrack - but obviously music is pretty subjective and I didn’t really care all that much for it.

Gameplay

At it’s core, this game is similar to Secret Rings - particularly in that the levels more or less take on the form of linear, straight pathways. However, there are differences - one thing you may notice is that you have a bit more control this time. The game utilizes the WiiMote + Nunchuk combo, in which Sonic moves with the latter. He doesn’t continuously move forward this time and mostly just responds to the input from the Nunchuk - being able to stop at will.

In my Secret Rings review, I really drove home the point that I didn’t like the gameplay, largely feeling that I didn’t have much control over Sonic with him continuously moving forward and the control scheme itself just feeling awkward. And I will say that I do like how Black Knight allows you to control Sonic with the analog stick while making it easier to stop at will, but at the same time, I don’t really feel like the movement itself is much better here. 

In fact, to be honest, the first thing I noticed is that Sonic’s movement basically just felt like they took Sonic’s control from Secret Rings and plopped it into an analog stick while not really optimizing it for that. Sonic still feels pretty janky and awkward to move around, and trying to make precise movements still feels pretty hard considering it feels like when you move the analog stick, Sonic really quickly moves as far to the side the analog stick points towards before you let go of it.

Trying to reverse especially feels about the same, if not worse, as it did in Secret Rings, still feeling janky and imprecise while not giving you the ability to see where you’re going, and especially with how you’re basically just locked to the cardinal directions, in times where you need to get into a better position for whatever reason - whether to fight enemies, interact with villagers or utilize the environment to progress (in the case of that one level where you have to manipulate the light to free the villagers from those crystals) - it just feels awkward to pull off.

Granted, I suppose it doesn’t matter too much because, once again, you’re basically just locked to a single path for the majority of the game, and a lot of the time you’re moving forward through levels that basically just feel like empty paths where you run into enemies every so often, which you have to use the sword to defeat.

And that brings me to the next part of the gameplay - the swordplay. While the Nunchuk is used to move Sonic, you have to remember that Sonic is also wielding a sword throughout the game, which, as expected, you use the WiiMote to swing. 

That said, the swordplay itself just feels pretty clunky and awkward to me. There’s really not much depth to it - for the most part it just feels like you’re making swift wrist movements and it comes off as just being pretty waggle-heavy. To be honest it feels about the same as the Werehog does to me, except instead of mashing buttons, I feel like I’m just moving the WiiMote back and forth. Which, I mean, I guess was the case in the Wii version of Unleashed, but you get my point. Not to mention, a lot of the time, it just feels pretty sluggish and unsatisfying - I can’t really compare it to other sword-based Wii games since I haven’t played them, but I can definitely say that the swordplay in general just felt pretty slow here.

And what makes that even more noticeable is that I feel like the swordplay sometimes feels as unresponsive and the hit detection can be a mixed bag. Sometimes I’ll swing the WiiMote as I’ve done for most of the game, but for some reason, it just won’t register. Other times, I noticed the exact opposite happening where I would be holding the WiiMote still, but for some reason the game would register it as a swing. Sometimes, it would swing when I wanted it to, and I swear it would hit an enemy, but then not do any damage.

In general, I feel that the motion control aspect of this game just doesn’t work very well in my experience. The lack of responsiveness can really be an issue, especially with those motion-based QTEs that are required to beat some of the bosses. I actually struggled a lot with the Phase 2 King Arthur boss just because of how I felt like the motion control would just not register when I swung the WiiMote at the right time. 

Like Secret Rings, I made sure I was at a good enough distance for the game - which apparently didn’t really matter regardless there, and it probably doesn’t really for this game either, but I still took those precautions just in case. And apparently I’m far from the only person to have this issue with the motion controls feeling unresponsive here after looking at what other people have said about the game. 

At the end of the day, my opinion on this game’s swordplay is that, at best, it just feels repetitive and sluggish, and at worst, tedious and annoying to use. I will say that Sonic having a sword is a lot less dumb of a concept than Shadow having a gun, and can actually make for an interesting concept, but gameplay-wise, it really doesn’t feel very good. Towards the end of the game I really felt my hand starting to hurt, so there’s that too.

You can skip over a lot of the combat sections in the levels themselves by jumping over enemies and whatnot, but when I do that, I end up with levels that just feel like empty, straight pathways a lot of the time, and as such I just don’t feel like I’m having fun with this game.

Hell, on top of that, the platforming in this game also feels awkward when those moments come up. A lot of the time I feel like Sonic goes from 0 to 100 really fast, and with how far Sonic jumps once he reaches his max speed, it makes trying to do precise platforming annoying. The Dragon’s Lair stage was the worst in this regard, where the way in front of you is coming down and you have to make jumps over those gaps, and a lot of the time, it felt like I couldn’t make those precise movements without either undershooting or overshooting. 

I will say though I do like how you get the option to play as other characters in the form of Shadow (as Lancelot), Knuckles (as Gawain), and Blaze (as Percival), who play similarly to Sonic with their own abilities. Knuckles/Gawain in particular carries over his glide ability from previous games, which frankly makes those platforming sections a lot less tedious, and honestly I think this game has a system of playable characters that I feel could really work in the Boost games, again due to how they play similarly to Sonic with their own sorts of abilities, and I’m surprised Sonic Team hasn’t really done that.

However, you unlock these characters later in the game, which is fine, but at the same time you can only really use them for the last few levels and the optional side missions that go with them - you can’t go back and play as them in previous stages which is something that sort of negates this feature and makes it feel less special.

The game also uses a mission-based structure, but admittedly it doesn’t feel as intrusive or even as repetitive as Secret Rings, since I feel it’s made a bit more clear on where you’re supposed to go and the missions don’t feel quite as padded. Although, one thing I don’t understand is how the game appears to end after you defeat King Arthur with the credits rolling when there’s still more to play for the ‘True’ Ending. With Secret Rings it did kind of make sense since you had to track down the seven World Rings but with how this game utilizes a more linear structure I don’t quite understand why the game just ‘appears’ to end there.

I also feel like the Soul Gauge and Soul Surge feels less situational here than it does in Secret Rings and can actually be fairly useful. You fill up the Soul Gauge by catching red fairies scattered throughout the levels, and while starting it up and using it can be pretty annoying due to having the same responsiveness issues, actually using it does make the game feel faster and in some cases a bit more satisfying.

Conclusion

So as you can probably guess… I don’t like Sonic and the Black Knight. The swordplay feels clunky and unresponsive to use, and the levels themselves just feel pretty empty and dull, with occasionally some pretty awkward platforming. In general I just didn’t find much to enjoy about this game - even the game’s story, which is often praised, just feels kind of… there for me.

I will say that I slightly prefer this game over Secret Rings, but at the same time, I can’t say the Storybook games are my cup of tea, and I can’t say I’m too surprised the series died after this game. I know there are people who like this game, and there are people who like Secret Rings, and that’s great! I’m glad you could find something to enjoy about this game that I just couldn’t. But personally, neither of these games felt fun to play, and frankly, nothing is really compelling me to go back to either of them.

If you do want to try this game, it doesn’t cost too much for a copy on the Wii, plus if you play it on a Dolphin emulator, there are mods and whatnot to apparently improve the control scheme, which I haven’t personally tried (and admittedly I don't think they would help my enjoyment of either game very much), but may be worth at least looking into.

And on a final note, I do have a proposition for a third Storybook game, that’s set in the world of George Orwell’s 1984 where Sonic gets banned from Twitter. Come on Sega, hire me.