Sonic and the Black Knight sees Sonic summoned into the world of the Arthurian legend by Merlina; granddaughter of Merlin. King Arthur has been possessed by evil forces held within his scabbard and is summoning minions from the underworld in order to conquer the land. With Merlina’s help, Sonic must take hold of Caliburn; one of the legendary swords in order to stop King Arthur and save the kingdom.

While not being a particularly strong plot (as with most Sonic games), it doesn’t take itself too seriously making for a fun little set of events are encounters. Voice acting is pretty solid which makes watching the cut-scenes more interesting instead of the usual chore.

Presentation is SatBK’s strongest point with some beautiful menus which are simple to navigate and great to look at. Our particular favourite has to be the Treasury which uses a strange contoured effect when you hover over items with the cursor. This is essential because similarly to Sonic and the Secret Rings, you’ll be spending more time on the menus than you would your normal Sonic game.

SatBK has a light dusting of RPG elements to its’ gameplay. Collecting items during the stages allows you to assign up to 2 of them to your character to heighten certain abilities. Considering how many different items there are to unlock, some replay value is added with this feature. But most of the items have little to no effect whatsoever so the casual gamer will be less bothered than the hardcore Sonic fan.

It’s not often you see a Sonic game look as gorgeous as SatBK. It has to be one of the best looking Sonic games available at the moment (Unleashed on 360 and PS3 just taking the top spot). It can be hard to comprehend that the little Wii is actually capable of such splendour but it pulls it off magnificently. It also maintains a steady framerate which I’ve only seen dip in the King Arthur battle. It’s not 60fps but its’ consistency certainly adds to some polish to the overall presentation. We cannot deny that SatBK’s visual package is one of the best, if not the best we’ve seen in a Sonic game.

The soundtrack is also brilliant as you would expect when you discover that Jun Senoue was employed as the game’s sound director. It’s brilliant to hear Jun’s hard-rock flare added to a Sonic game again. Every track has excellent production quality and they suit the stages well. If there’s one thing that SEGA are consistent at, it’s making great game-music.

But what’s a game without good gameplay? Unfortunately, not much. Where SatBK does improve of certain things from its’ predecessor, like moving Sonic with the nun-chuck and jumping with the A button, it adds the rather disgusting sword-mechanic. There is nothing accurate about the sword gameplay and it simply boils down to waving the Wiimote around like an idiot when enemies attack you. Oh, and lots of enemies attack you. Lots. This only amounts to even more waggle and when it’s as monotonous as this, we’d rather not have it. If the enemies didn’t attack in such ridiculous numbers the attack system might be more rewarding but it just goes on to hurt your arm after extended play.

Because of the frequency of the attacks the game is also slowed down a lot more. In order to make up for this the Soul Charge system has been implemented. This gauge is increased by collecting red fairies that are scattered throughout the stages. Once the gauge is filled, pressing B activates Soul Charge mode and Sonic darts quickly between enemies to destroy them faster and more efficiently. If the next enemy is far away Sonic will speed boost to it. This certainly keeps the game’s pace higher but it only leads you to more waggle-battles, hurting your poor arm even further.

If the game wasn’t action-based enough you’ll be unhappy to hear that there isn’t much platforming to be done either. Almost everything you’ve come to expect from Sonic games has been removed. Rings are collected through smashing objects and collecting yellow fairies instead of actually collecting rings, there are no springs, no loops and hardly any other paths to explore. I hate using the word linear but SatBK is definitely that.

What we’re left with is a fantastic looking game with top quality presentation, a brilliant soundtrack, some slight improvements to Sonic’s control but the disappointing addition of way too much waggle-action. Why there had to be so many enemies is beyond me. If they were just made less frequent and Sonic just jumped on them instead of having to slash them up with a sword this could have been a decent little game. Shame that.