Sonic and the Black Knight

Sonic and the Black Knight is a platform game developed by mh:awesomegames:Sonic Team and published by Sega as part of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The game is the sequel to Sonic and the Secret Rings, and the two titles form the Sonic Storybook Series. Sonic and the Black Knight was directed by Tetsu Katano (the lead programmer of the Sonic Adventure games and Sonic Heroes) and released exclusively for the mh:awesomegames:Wii in March 3, 2009.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The game's sole defining gimmick, the sword Sonic wields, suffers from noticeable input lag and a lack of available combos. The sword is also Sonic's only way of damaging an enemy. Try a Homing Attack or jumping on one, you know, the usual way you'd damage enemies, and he'll just bounce off of the enemy uselessly.
 * 2) The levels are drab, too linear, and are flooded with enemies that constantly spawn in front of you, grinding you to a halt.
 * 3) Enemies don't require any strategy to defeat; you can simply swing the remote around randomly and they'll go down easily.
 * 4) Boss fights fall prey to basic patterns that make them incredibly easy once memorized, starting with the final boss.
 * 5) The most difficult parts of the game, the fight against Sir Percival (Blaze), 2nd fight of King Arthur, Earth Dragon and Lancelot Returns (Shadow) are only difficult due to the trial and error nature of them.
 * 6) * In fact, the Earth Dragon has an attack where he slams his chin on the ground, producing an unavoidable shockwave. This became infamous as the "Unavoidable Chin Move".
 * 7) Gameplay when you're not fighting enemies is incredibly on-rails, so the game mostly plays by itself.
 * 8) You can only move slightly left and slightly right, compounding the excessive linearity of the stages.
 * 9) The camera is locked behind you at all times, even if you're moving backwards. This makes it difficult to see where the enemies are.
 * 10) Bad multiplayer mode. Unlike the previous game you have to kill different kinds of enemies or just facing each other in a battle this time, but the awkward controls ruin the gameplay.
 * 11) *It doesn't help the fact that you can play and finish all the multiplayer modes in less than 10 minutes, making it very short and boring.
 * 12) The constant sword use can cause your wrist to cramp up quickly. It also doesn't help with the delayed motion controls.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The music is awesome, typical for a modern Sonic game. This is one of Crush 40's best with songs like "With Me", "Fight the Knight", "LIve Life" (Which feels like the perfect farewell song as this was the last Sonic game to feature the 4Kids cast other than Mike Pollock and Crush 40 until Team Sonic Racing) and the main theme of the game, "Knight of the Wind".
 * 2) Compared to the Secret Rings the graphics are a nice step up.
 * 3) * The story is also a lot more interesting and memorable than Secret Rings.
 * 4) * There is even a lot less motion control usage in this game, as it's only used for slashing with Sonic's sword.
 * 5) Great voice acting as usual. Especially Jason Griffith as Sonic and Shadow/Lancelot.
 * 6) Merlina is an interesting character and unlike most other Sonic villains, she's not really evil per se, just desperate to keep Camelot active, even if she has to be "evil" to do so.
 * 7) You have the option to play as other characters, each with their own abilities.
 * 8) The sword is pretty fitting for Sonic, as it’s light and fast.
 * 9) While the sword may not have combos, it still can be fun to use.
 * 10) The ending is pretty heartwarming and it teaches a very good moral/quote from Sonic himself about "living life to the fullest in the time that you have" which is a good lesson in life within itself.

Reception
Sonic and the Black Knight received mixed reviews, and has a Metacritic score of 54. After this game and Secret Rings mediocre reception, the "Sonic Storybook Series" was discontinued. SomeCallmejohnny was highly critical of the game, he criticized the forced and delayed motion controls. He stated that it was one of the worst Sonic games he played, although his opinion on it has softened over time, he now considers it average along with Secret Rings. Shane Luis of Rerez was very critical of the game. He criticized the sword gameplay gimmick and the delayed motion controls. He also critcized Sega for keep putting these gimmicks in every Sonic game.

Trivia

 * Sega put up an art contest and the winner would get a copy of this game and have their art in the Gallery, Sega accidentally used plagiarized art based of Mega777's art of Sonic and Shadow. However, The plagiarizer was disqualified and Mega777 got the copy instead.

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