I just recently snagged myself a copy of the European version of Sonic Chronicles. Obviously, it's exactly the same as the US one, though it had the honor of hitting shelves first. IGN would tell you that the game is awful, but I can say quite the opposite with the time I've spent(roughly 7-8 hours and 5 chapters in). As far as RPGs go, this one is a very solid one, but really gets my attention due to the story and writing. It's obviously not the deepest story ever, but BioWare has once again written a very good script, for a very simple story. What's essentially is just a glorified Chaos Emerald hunt is made thoroughly enjoyable by the humor BioWare injected in many of the lines. Most notable is the fact that you can make Sonic act like a total dick to almost every single person he runs into, as BioWare provides various dialog options with every conversation.

As for the battle system, I don't really see where there's a problem. Some enemies are annoying(see Swat Bot Mk. II), but has there ever been a RPG without annoying enemies? As for the EBA-ish way of using POW moves, I don't see how you could consistently fail most of them unless you have no coordination at all, which would raise the question of how the hell you were playing games in the first place. I guess what I'm trying to say, in short, is that Mark Bozon is an idiot. Don't let that guy's review convince you, especially when various other outlets have given Sonic Chronicles 7's and 8's(which are quite good, mind you. I don't know where the idea of 7's being bad came from). I'll put up a full review for the game once I finish it.