Sonic Frontiers Almost Nailed It

experience Sonic like never before [Music] well they weren't lying Sonic Frontiers has finally been released and therefore so have we it still doesn't seem real yet we were in a post forces drought for so long the food tasted different even after it was teased it felt like eons before we saw any gameplay and when we did we were even more scared the Sonic fandom went into an organized Panic screams and tears were abundant it was almost routine by that point color's ultimate wasn't exactly handled with care and even Origins the money printing classic collection didn't come rent free so we had every right to be a little worried now I kept my wits about me I wasn't gonna make a judgment call for an entire game based on one seven minute clip without any context But like everyone else I had my concerns the amount of times I saw the phrase cautiously optimistic would outnumber U.S citizens Sonic team had a lot of trust they needed to win back and with every new piece of frontiers-related media that came out that started to happen seeing footage in 60 FPS competent players behind the wheels Sakurai giving us his Blessing as well as many other online testimonies that it was surprisingly fun that incredible Knuckles prologue animation that just got everything right a queen song in the launch trailer who do I have to thank for that this all gave me confidence that the game would at least be decent and turns out I couldn't have been more on the money seeing the words overwhelmingly positive next to a new Sonic game touching experienced Sonic like never before yeah I'm looking at it still though I wasn't sure how fun it was going to be until I played it for myself some games you could just kind of tell if you're gonna like it this was not the case I needed that Hands-On approach and now that I've got it there's a lot to say so if you want to go in blind this is your spoiler warning what is happening with your foot one thing a lot of people were excited for was Ian Flynn hopping aboard for the story I think he mainly helped rewrite the English script but I can easily say that this is the best Sonic story and characterization since Black Knight after a decade of baldy we have a narrative that allows itself to be lost in mystery for a while Exposition is slowly trickled in over time well until they sandblasts you at the end everything is more dialed back especially in The Voice Direction This is the lowest Roger has ever sounded and I think I love it he debatably sounds less like the character now but the line reads are so much better it's like night and day even compared to the previous game it's been Generations since I've seen you yeah it's been Generations since I've laughed you can tell a Sonic fan was behind the scenes for this because everyone acts like who they are Sonic tapping his finger because he's impatient butting heads with Knuckles having legitimate conversations with Amy Eggman almost gets shot down by military really taken after his grandfather there's so much heart to heart sprinkled in here while still keeping the playful humor intact Mike Pollock's straight up sounds like Liam Neeson at points and I don't know why they kept that gem away from us till now go fulfill your function A friend gave this to me it's Albanian you mind translating it there are also a lot of references to past games which I know might sound like oh no but the way it's done here is more like a long overdue paying of respects acknowledging the history of a long-running franchise after a decade of pretending like Green Hill Zone was the only thing Sonic ever did maybe they go a little overboard with it but for a first time I'll take it now it's not perfect it's actually a rather basic plot and kind of rushed by the end what's with all these goofy looking smiles but the improvements made to the dialogue do so much heavy lifting it's astounding a big step in the right direction the presentation on the other hand is a different story well then let's do it to it we're out of time while some scenes are quite expressive a lot are two characters standing around hardly moving while commenting on whatever just happened it lacks a needed degree of personality and motion even when things are moving it's often robotic or an idle sway look at that rotisserie chicken spin she just did it really seems unfinished in these areas but then sometimes it's good again and so it kind of evens out oh look at that they love each other no CGI cutscenes either how the mighty have fallen even lost world at an opening I think it would have gave a much more striking first impression again the dialogue carries it all but I'm really hoping they can get some more bombastic animation next time Sonic is dead in any event this is the first full price Sonic game in a while and like Origins there is a deluxe edition and it's a little better you get a cool digital art book that for some reason doesn't play in full screen and has some nice concept art of the environments although it's not very long if this was a physical booklet that would have been awesome kinda like the steel book you got from pre-ordering a physical copy yeah that was kind of a bummer wasn't it if you bought the game on Steam you couldn't get the book since there is no physical version for that it is pretty cool though very Sleek reflective design I just wish there was a bit more to it Mania got a reversible cover and pre-ordering got you that statue they went all out for that game you also get a mini soundtrack it's 25 songs including everything from Island one plus the full version of I'm here and that's cool but the full soundtrack was already scheduled to come out one month after the game's release date so just get that instead if you're a music die hard you also get a few starting items to help you out with progression yeah not a fan of this don't give me a paid advantage in an already full priced game especially and why am I being given free collectible items in a game about collecting items isn't that the whole point I'm actually paying for Less content my eyes were primarily set on the adventurers gloves and shoes and I really thought that was a placeholder image ironically the one thing people would have paid out the Wazoo for is totally free the soap shoes my guess is Sega was like yo you gotta milk this road with another deluxe edition and Sonic team was like fine we'll slap something together but then release the actual good stuff for free so we load up the game and I don't know what happened the first time but it took like five minutes for the application to open better believe my heart sank right away when I saw that I get to the main menu it's got a nice cloudy sky with the sun peeking through kind of stagnant though especially when the music cuts out and that all too familiar corporate silence comes back [Music] no we got a user manual welcome to the Modern Age there's a weird amount of input delay on these menus too you have to wait for the options to show up in about two extra seconds before your control comes back it's weird but hey at least we got multiple save files again finally I don't have to clear all my data to start fresh forces didn't have that or lost world or Generations or Unleashed 406 little tip about these files though the game is always Auto saving into the very first file labeled Auto I made the mistake of assuming that if I went to start a new game it would auto save into the next one not so it always uses the auto file across every play session so if you've completed the game then start a new one and it auto saves that becomes your new file and you lose everything not that I'm speaking from experience or anything you're supposed to manually save onto the actual slot one if you want to keep it independent in hindsight I understand what I did wrong but why not just let us pick the file that it auto saves to like a normal game when it comes to Art Direction not everybody seems to be on the same page but this is Sonic so what else is new from the onset the plan was to juxtapose the standard character designs against photo realistic environments and this is something I have always loved from o6 to unleash to Black Knight I think Sonic in a real looking world is cool in fact he's what makes it work if we were running around as some regular guy these settings would be immediately less interesting but having that red white and blue Charisma in every frame of gameplay rounds off the color balance and frankly makes it feel more fantasy-like I think this is funny could some areas be improved of course more distinct landmarks to help with map recognition maybe some Dynamic set pieces like a sandstorm on Aries or a lightning storm on Kronos and definitely some greater biome variety it starts strong with the grassy ruins desert and snowy volcanic Mountainside but then we go right back to grassy forest and ruins again did I just go between that enemy's legs if you want to go that full circle route where the journey starts and ends in the same area that's fine but only having three major biomes for the AAA open Zone debut kind of sparse gives the impression that they needed to pad out the run time instead of having enough content to make a full game thankfully we have some pretty nice architecture and visual changeups to make up for it cool giant mirror mirror thing yet cool walk without moving legs thing the day and night cycle is probably my favorite touch always nice to see a scrapdo6 idea come back to life it gives each island a multitude of different lighting and color palettes to cycle through leading to some honestly breathtaking scenery this affects cutscenes too since they're rendered in game you can experience the same story at multiple times of day even the big bosses that you think would break continuity don't which makes everyone's playthrough that much more personalized there were many points where I'd catch a view and just enjoy it for a moment take in the atmosphere and feel the mood as for the rails in the sky concern I'm gonna have to Echo what many others have said yes if you stop and look around it can appear slap Dash in random with all this floating geometry but when you see that stuff far in the distance your initial thoughts are how do I get there what's over there is it worth it those are the questions that cross your mind not oh does this object orientation complement the artistic imagery it's like put the Fedora down we're playing sonic frontiers of course presentation matters and it should be improved but it becomes a much smaller distraction when you're the one playing the game and when the rails are connected to a Giant floating structure it looks right at home besides you're too focused on the pop-in anyway yeah this one's a little harder to defend I will say it didn't disrupt my performance I never felt like things were popping in and out of frame messing me up like I've seen in some clips but when the first cinematic tracking shot is loading the island in real time I'm not filled with a sense of wonder and awe it just makes me shudder thinking about how Sega wanted this game out last year clearly the engine is not fully optimized and I hate to see that because it feels like Sonic is rarely given that same polish that you know the people who made say Mario would hey wait a sec even cyberspace has popping on rare occasion some stuttering too but I'm gonna chalk that up to De Nuvo again because yeah it's back although it doesn't seem to be giving anyone nearly as hard of a time as with Origins which is just hilarious the Cyber levels look great though yes Screen Hill again but it does look pretty good at Sunset I like how the backgrounds are all broken apart with a scanline filter chemical plant may just be the best it's ever looked in 3D I was never huge on the dark Skybox in generations and forces took out all the Blue Sky Sanctuary is as good as ever it helps that they haven't spammed this Motif yet and the city is fully original as far as I can tell there were only two instances where I couldn't see properly I got hit by these same spikes in 3-2 over and over dude stop it gets disguised among those tiny plants at high speeds and something about the curve of the Hill throws me off and then when you're falling here in 3-6 if you hold right like you may be inclined from the hours of muscle memory you'll slip right through the gap [Music] why does that sound like the most real and fake scream at the same time so yeah some visibility issues but overall easy on the eyes I think Frontiers looks great and outside of what I showed the performance is actually Rock Solid no frame drops or slow down it ran just fine on PC when starting a new game you'll watch a couple cut scenes play a cyber stage wonder why does it control like this and then wake up in the tutorial section of Kronos Island it was quite unanimous from everyone who played the demo that this part was tedious to get through and yes it is everything wrong with video game tutorials constantly stopping you to read some function you could have figured out on your own like when it halts you in place pans to three switches and then tells you activate the switches there are three ancient switches on the ground yeah I had a feeling mind you Frontiers is not alone in doing this hundreds of games are guilty and look I get it there's a lot to learn this is usually done out of fear that players will be confused and not know what to do or the inability to teach us in far more creative ways yeah okay okay what perplexes me though is that they have a great workaround already in place with optional notifications that appear in the top right corner this way if I've already figured out what to do I don't have to read it but if I'm stuck I can I can even disable those notifications if I want to but these gotta read them every time sure wish one of them told me how to save it's not the worst I'm sure you'll appreciate the info if you've never played a video game you might think I'm overreacting it's just that it's 2022 and we're still doing this so I'm just kind of over it it turns this whole opening into an ordeal I wish I could skip on repeat playthroughs I found the first 30 to 40 minutes of Frontiers to be lacking in Impact what the heck is going on here too many pop-ups you're under level no cool combos yet puzzles are basic I don't see this roping anyone in without reservation which is why it's so important to acknowledge that it gets way better almost immediately after like many Sonic games you have to take some time to learn what makes it fun because not everything in it will be now when you do it like this if holding forward is boring then look for shortcuts if button mashing is repetitive level up and use different moves to keep it fresh find ways to innovate freedom is the motif here all right not too much Freedom Frontiers is broken up into five main islands with four of them being large open zone areas essentially giant Hub worlds it's not a full-on open world game because the islands don't connect but they operate under similar rules individually the main objective is to beat the big titan boss at the end of each island from Shin Godzilla to Monsoon but you need all seven Chaos Emeralds because without them Sonic will perish they're all currently sealed in separate vaults with the final one being located on the Titan itself how do you open these you need Vault Keys how do you get those by completing missions in cyberspace how do you get there by using portal gears that you get from beating large bosses otherwise known as Guardians who can be made easier by completing various tasks to level up however some emeralds are only obtainable through Story related cutscenes scattered around the islands are memory tokens for the respectively trapped character once you have enough you head over to where they are and you can talk to them most of these are optional but sometimes they'll take you into a mandatory mini game that gives you the emerald this is where that Sonic dance animation plays [Music] Knuckles is in shock so as you can see there is a lot of incentive to participate in most gameplay Avenues but how much participation is somewhat up to you if you only need one portal gear and there are five bosses you have a choice in which one you tackle sometimes you can find these crucial items randomly in the world to help tip the scales in your favor it's a reasonably flexible gameplay Loop is it fun though let's talk about traversal how it feels to move Sonic around a big open landscape alright then when it comes to precision I think this is the best he's ever controlled second only to the adventure games that's stiff heavy weight that always came with the Boost formula is gone you go where you want when you want it's shocking really maybe a little loose and floaty in places but this is the first game in like 20 years where I didn't have to get used to the controls yes I did it now this does have its drawbacks to allow for such accuracy momentum has been cut entirely there is no rolling around gradually building speed and launching off ramps gravity and terrain have no influence over your acceleration you can stop and start on a dime and that was a big red flag for a lot of people Sonic's very Inception is built on physics and so it can't help but feel flat when all you're doing is holding a button to move at the same set speed devoid of all those satisfying tricks we know and love in a sprawling map of Hills and Valleys help what bothers me more than anything though is that jumping kills all your speed the main redeeming quality I would always give forces credit for was that boost jumping was pretty fun you could get a lot of distance out of it and still have an air boost and double jump to cut some Corners a genuinely fun tactic that made or broke a lot of stages wait Sonic what are you doing no no Frontiers doesn't have that because your jump resets you to default speed and isn't nearly as high for some reason air boosting is still a legitimate means of taking shortcuts to the grave but I'm constantly discouraged from jumping because I know it's gonna Slow Me Down great for precision buzz kill for Speed the default boost isn't even that fast you need to max out your ring count to gain the power boost which in my opinion must be enabled at all times there are also a lot of control settings you can mess with in the options as if to say fine you guys do it but I left it as default and it felt just fine it seems that the action in high speed modes you choose in the beginning are nothing more than presets action zooming the camera further out and a lower Max Speed but you can change these at any time and I recommend doing just that this is Criminal all that being said there is one game-changing momentum trick that luckily made it in rail launching a regular jump May kill your speed but hopping off a rail maintains it and just like that the game opens up tenfold shortcuts Galore fast travel Fiesta an objective normally preceded by a long platforming challenge can be reached with a well thought out rail jump this is why people are so adamant about physics-based momentum being present for Sonic because it has historically always made the games more fun yeah I could play like this or it adds a skill ceiling creates opportunities for Innovation and Frontiers is further indicative of that additionally boosting off of a flat surface will maintain your velocity albeit in a rigid straight line but this is another trick that can be used to get around in perhaps some unintentional ways and discovering a new spot to zip across a huge Chasm is divine you'd be surprised how much mileage you can get out of this don't want to fight a mini boss to make that spring appear that gets you on the big diamond find the right elevation and you can cut right to the chase it's so satisfying the Collision is kind of janky though so you'll often trigger this by accident on Solid Ground it can be a pleasant surprise but visually inconsistent to try and manipulate sometimes he trips over a pebble and break dances for two seconds and then other times he hugs the ground with so much commitment that he speedruns his own life there's a lot of jittering over objects slow walking on an incline pushes you back yeah I've got some questions but overall the movement is solid elevated by some elaborate Airborne Maneuvers so we've established that running around these Maps feels pretty good but what is there to do in them each island is made up of a series of platforming segments that range from hitting a spring into a hoop that grants a memory token to an extended rail grinding homing attack sequence that spins you around to the top of a giant floating diamond with a bunch of Collectibles these are everywhere and by Design Never outstay Their welcome they're Snappy in nature always fast and Grant you something for your time if you really know your way around you can often chain these encounters together to keep the pace moving for Max efficiency sometimes One path will intentionally send you towards another to encourage that flow State even if it sends you further away from your current objective please stop however there is definitely a repetition to these tasks it's a lot of rail grinding homing attack chains and going through hoops that send you onto more rails to repeat it's very automated when you isolate the input required rarely amounting to anything more than a single button press at the right time so I can see not everyone being on board for the entirety of this game's duration heck even I started skipping these although that was for a different reason I knew there was a problem when I would accidentally redo a section that I already beat and felt like I was wasting my time I realized that I wasn't always in it for the thrill I just wanted that trinket at the end because there really wasn't much of a thrill I think the wall running feature holds a lot of untapped potential for these parts well when the Collision doesn't call in sick you can grab on and start running at a casual jog or boost onto it for a much higher speed that's harder to control quite the potent consideration to make since falling off would be a concern that is if 90 of the wall running wasn't preceded by a dash pad that sent you into Springs doing all the work for you I actually felt unprepared when the game suddenly had me doing things on my own because of how babied I was look at this I'm like a child learning to walk what have you done to me this could have been the perfect Innovation on Lost worlds parkour bouncing around big open terrain but instead it's a feature that I rarely got to use on my own terms and even then it didn't always work I understand that some degree of automation is required at this point if you want all those fancy camera angles and faster than the eye can react moments hey that sucks so include shortcuts that only the Keen speed running eye can locate it sometimes does that but still only involves a quick homing attack add more timing elements like with the Enemy that spawns a bunch of homing chains but you can't hit the red one so you gotta aim towards the green for those moments high in the sky make a mini level out of it use bigger pieces of land to construct some level design platforming without a safety net and would someone please get this man a sweater the way the world is structured currently feels like a skeleton solid but need meat on it Kronos island is pretty good for the most part housing some memorable set piece Towers Aries is about the same only it takes you underground at one point something I think we could have used more of it's chaos Island where we start to see some problems though there is an explosion of 2D sections just an Armageddon of disappointment now the first two islands had some of these but they were a fraction of the content in fact I found their small inclusion to be refreshing in a way heresy I know it felt organic occasionally transitioning to 2D for a quick platforming challenge that you could only get in the second dimension before promptly returning to the open Zone chaos Island makes me want to purchase a firearm nine times out of ten if you take a dash pad or a spring it will send you into colors purgatory and after a while it is simply too much being locked in this perspective takes away all of the game's biggest strengths no rail launching not that you could see far enough ahead to plan one no branching off to an adjacent set piece using your clever wit and no sense of depth at least in 3D there were moments where you were flung high in the sky and could see just how far down you could fall sometimes over a Death Pit maybe a homing attack was still all you needed to make it across but the sensation at least had some tension here you don't even know where you are in relation to the rest of the island you are bound by the straight line unable to break the rules what what is this why can't I make it do I have to go back or oh okay I developed a phobia of Springs and dash panels halfway through this island because I knew where it meant I was going it was especially irritating to get pushed into a section that I already completed more so when there was no way to back out but because so much of it looks the same it can be hard to remember what you have and haven't done yet after running around for an hour it's better to skip it entirely and not take the risk these treasure signs really got on my nerves for that reason on the first two islands they would usually give you some kind of item but here it seemed like it would always reveal a spring or dash pad that torpedoed me into a section I may or may not have already completed sometimes the side-scrolling perspective is so pointless too like it's just a spring in an enemy with a ramp at the end why is this in 2D again if there wasn't so much of it I wouldn't care I may have even liked it but this drained me also why can't we go in the volcano ohtani had the nine string in his studio and you let him do nothing for a lava stage I'm placing you under arrest like I said before I think it was a missed opportunity to not have more environmental events like storms and whatnot there's already a Starfall that happens every few nights where meteors fall like rain and give items so why not a meteor shower from the active volcano to spice things up that would have been sweet maybe we could explore this hexagonal Underside I want to go here man all right that's it I'm stopping this bird Ria island is where the false marketing becomes revealed the game advertises five islands and while that is technically true this one is entirely Story related in that you don't explore the open Zone at all but instead climb to the top of six towers to shut them down now it's basically confirmed that Kronos Island was split into three parts Ria being one of them hence the similar green aesthetic and it is very disappointing that this couldn't be its own dense area like the others but for what it's worth I thought the scenery was kind of epic Sonic grinding up these massive Towers while an orchestra blares away one wrong move sending you all the way down all things considered I think some of the best 2D segments in Frontiers are here the balance between side scrolling and full 3d movement is much better than chaos Island there is some legitimate Do or Die moments where you get flung into the air and have to manually land on a rail without a homing attack to save you that's the kind of stuff I want to see let us play the game we paid money for it the only thing about Ria Island that really bothers me is how it handles Sonic's cyber corruption all throughout the story we see him slowly becoming possessed by cyberspace with every Idol stance becoming more Haggard eventually taking on a form that I swear was going to canonize Dark Sonic you can't do this to me but then Tails Knuckles and Amy are like we gotta save him we saved him what why all right because the game has to ship out soon Not only was all tension absolved in an anti-climactic instant it was the perfect opportunity to let us play as each character in an 06 End of the World style cyber stage imagine speed Highway for Tails Pumpkin Hill for Knuckles or hot shelter for Amy I don't even care about playing as the other characters and I'm freaking out I need a nap the fifth and final island uranos is graciously a full Expedition again but is still just a leftover second half of Kronos causing the visual theming to greatly homogenize and in a game that already has a repetition problem it's not doing itself any favors forces recycled stuff but it still had a wicked looking endgame it's not completely devoid of original ideas but for the big finale it doesn't leave a very strong impact that guy just fall we're just getting started though because movement is only one third of what you do in the open Zone puzzles and mini-games are another major component they give you upgrade items upon completion create rails for faster travel and fill in parts of your map in a essential in locating other objectives as for the missions themselves surprisingly I liked most of them mainly because similar to the platforming all of these encounters are so short they couldn't possibly get annoying well now it doesn't automatically make them good either there are some doozies in here the parrying bullets one The Worst by far there is no parrying in this game it's a guard that you hold indefinitely and guarantees results there's no skill sealing you just hold L and R and wait no penalty no drawbacks you will win a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes parrying such a fun move to master and they make you do it multiple times where the bullets get faster a change that would matter if I actually had to time it but I never do so I'm essentially doing the same exact task three times in a row because they've removed any reason to play differently the quick stepping one is a little less egregious since you don't know which direction the panel will be but still just Simon says why not make us Dodge stuff and if we get hit three times try again kind of like how some of the other mini games operate same with hitting switches it's like okay this was fine in the tutorial why is this on the second island it's better when they combine it with other gimmicks like the floating pillars you have to homing attack at least I'm going somewhere jump rope was cool for a second but it doesn't throw throw any curve balls your way the crane game I don't know who thought this was fun and the hamster wheel I'm convinced was a freebie to give you an item because all you do is run in place then you got those weird ones like the floating spirit ball that you have to stay next to long enough so it evaporates yeah I can really see that one getting tossed around the board meeting it's not even a bad Mission honestly it's just like where did this come from or when you have to siloop these smelly trees at night because oh yeah that's another strange variant there are two missions that can only be performed at night the other being these Light Pillars that you individually Sile Loop and then listen for where the next one spawns and if you take too long you'll have to start over most missions have a time limit but they're never a concern it's a wonder why they're even here especially for ones like the panel puzzle where you're given minutes to solve it but can just walk off the edge to reset the timer I understand dumbing down the difficulty to capture that casual audience but if you're gonna put a hard mode in do it don't make it this half-hearted slightly altered easy mode and then still randomly spring one of the hardest puzzles ever made on us like what is this sacred grove statue Madness and why is it only on the first island nothing else in the game no the franchise comes close to the complexity here you have the Eggman puzzle gave you hard time you are a child and yet there's still a way to glitch it if you wiggle the analog stick the movements will go out of sync so you can move individual pieces when you're not supposed to the one instance where the timer kind of mattered was against a punching bag you have a limited amount of time to deal a certain amount of damage and while reaching that quota is easy you can self-impose a challenge to go for a high score if you want those are the not so great missions everything else I thought was pretty fun going through all the blue squares in the allotted time yeah it's Superman 64 but at least I'm moving and it controls well same with the races it's fun to run around as Sonic so missions designed around that are always going to be a good time this is where I really think rankings should have come in clearing these under the time limit isn't hard but maybe doing it in an even shorter time is and gives you a better item this would at least reward you for being good I can't believe how much I like these basketball mini games when it's only one hoop it's whatever but later on when there's five I am zoned in on making my shots and you actually have to aim positioning matters Tetris was an unexpected Joy you look at the orientation on the ground and try to copy it by dropping the correct order of pieces onto it sure it's not the most advanced but I didn't hate it one of my favorites was the Bentley hacking bullet hell ikaruga clone that comes out of complete nowhere I had a big smile when this showed up I hope it comes back later little did I know I mentioned the panel puzzle earlier this is actually my favorite one and that's great because it seems to be the one we do the most it starts super basic but once we get to Aries they become decent brain teasers it's nothing overly complicated but it takes a moment to assess and go ah I get it and reaching that conclusion is a small pleasure I don't care if it wasn't rise of lyric you know what though we did not have enough of Sonic loading a live missile into a cannon those are some uncharted waters I'm going to die this light mirror puzzle only shows up once near the end I think more stuff like this would be pretty cool how about that out of left field bolt collecting game where you smash box as an outrun falling platforms over lava this needed more screen time the lava in general was horribly underused the mandatory Chaos Emerald missions seemed to be where the extra care was placed because you load into a separate Arena that has its own HUD and music heard the Cocos over to one side under a time limit save them from smashing drill Towers or rather their hitboxes where everything incrementally speeds up turning basic movements into an ordeal I hate this times for Speed I think is objectively unclearable what do I what do I do it's an interesting juggling act because the more Cocos you hold the faster everything becomes so you don't want to get overzealous with your Carriage as enticing as that comically large stack is it's also a pain to control so it's better to take it in bursts all right we're here now just go straight in bridge the gap was the one occasion where I felt the stress of the time limit steer Sonic properly don't lose time to the bounce back and take the right routes for maximum shortcuts not bad overall I thought the objectives were decent some pretty fun ones a lot of acceptable busy work others more disposable and a few that I didn't care for oh right pinball yeah this sucks so the physics aren't game accurate it's more like Casino meaning the ball has very little weight taking much longer to come back down slowing the entire process wouldn't be a huge deal if it wasn't for the absurdly high score requirement six minutes is what it took me in a game where missions are often over in seconds throw in RNG deaths that can reset the whole run and you have one of the most insipid minigames in all of Sonic not even two minutes into my first attempt and I said out loud to myself I'd rather play the ball puzzle now it's really not that bad getting red rings increases your score multiplier so learning how to fling the ball where you want becomes a genuine skill and I started getting pretty good at it but it still goes on way too long and again the RNG kills it scattered throughout each island you'll find portals to cyberspace where you'll play one of 30 bite-sized traditional linear Sonic stages that run anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple minutes so yes Frontiers comes with a playable forces built into it there are a few things that can't go without mentioning for these the first is the Recycled visuals experience Sonic like never before yeah about that calling back to an older game should be special give you that authentic warm feeling that reminds you of Good Times instead people are tired and agitated at the mere sight of another Green Hill Zone chemical plant has begun following suit and Sky Sanctuary will too if they keep this up I don't hate this it doesn't ruin my day but there's no denying that it would be so much better for everyone if we had a fully original song game again and as if in on the joke the level designs are also ripped straight out of past games namely Adventure 2 Unleashed in Generations if it looks like you're in skyrail again that's because you are hey just like the original now this is a pretty cool concept that would be even cooler if they didn't limit themselves to four themes the story excuse is that cyberspace is jumbling Sonic's memories around so that's why everything is so familiar but if this was really that integral to the plot and affected all of Sonic's memories why stop at four why not have every stage be a different callback sky's the limit when you're already stealing well that would take more time at assets I.E money so I'm sure that what they chose was most convenient for their budget I sympathize with that but what we have feels more like a compromise than an artistic Vision the other unavoidable bump in the road is how much worse the control is in these stages I'm bewildered by this how is it that the game that finally got Sonic's control right after 21 years still messes it up just keep it the same as the Overworld control without all the upgrades I actually created more work for themselves by changing it something must have gone wrong the fact that I almost jumped right off the stage the moment I started says it all that being said I did Master Force's control so this was just another day at the office what is going on and even if it did play the same as in the open Zone some issues would carry over regardless Sonic is not fast in these levels at all there is a devastating lack of speed I think it's better to mash the Boost button instead of holding it down I'm losing neurons just processing that not that you'd intuitively pick up on that since there's so little visual feedback when you're boosting I wouldn't blame you if you couldn't tell the difference losing all your momentum during a jump has never been more insulting the flow is always being disrupted and it makes it so that the bottom route When there's less platforming is sometimes the faster one the Antichrist of Sonic ideology I'm gonna lose it none of your moves reset until you touch the ground either normally you'd regain your double jump air boost and stomp after a simple homing attack but not here I can see the argument that you have to ration these abilities more since you only have one of each in midair but at the same time all the other boost games had just as high of a skill ceiling with the refresh so I don't think that's a restriction worth having it also makes replaying the stages that did have one in the original awkward by comparison and any contact made to an enemy has an immense delay whether it be a homing attack stomp or just jumping into one this gives it a lot of power but shoots the pacing right out of the sky here's the kicker though I still enjoyed myself thoroughly since we're ripping off good stages the level design is pretty good by default multiple routes slow platforming that can be skipped shortcuts via Snappy movement when it comes to 3D it's a vast improvement over forces then again Frontiers can't really take the credit for that except for the last handful of stages which I believe are original but on the other hand 2D sections are far inferior since at least in that game we had a lot of momentum to take shortcuts and keep a steady flow that we are sorely robbed of in Frontiers nowhere is this more clear than when grinding on Rails and feeling the soul leave your body when you jump cover your eyes children thankfully there is much more 3D than 2D this time and at its best I thought it was pretty fun more colors and less Generations if you catch my drift a feature we still don't have turning 3-5 into a train wreck of mundane swerving I want to leave since colliding with enemies causes that unwanted delay I found that cyberspace presented a unique scenario where it became more beneficial to boost jump over and around my foes instead of using the homing attack especially since we can't boost through them anymore in a weird roundabout way this minimized a lot of the Automation and had me traversing Terrain in ways I probably wouldn't have considered if that delay wasn't there dodging enemies boost jumping and air boosting really is the name of the game and wonky controls or not learning to shave seconds off your time is always a good feeling also the lightspeed dashes back huzzah never mind every cyberspace stage has the same four objectives and you earn a vault key for each beat the stage get an S rank finish with a certain number of rings and find all red star Rings unfortunately the Casual curse has infected these parameters as well since s ranking will come naturally for most here's the deal a ranking system is the perfect answer to appeasing both crowds you can make the game easy to beat but throw in an optional challenge for the ones who need it once again we're given a trophy for not playing like a total idiot instead of a champion who mastered the content to some degree hey welcome back iron Fortress 1-2 is the only one that has a tough S rank and you know that had to be an accident same with the red rings 90 of these are on the main path sometimes back to back on a stretch of automation where they're impossible to miss I thought these were Collectibles not participation Awards it's so bizarre there's a laundry list of problems with cyberspace and yet I still enjoy running through most of them on some level if the speed was higher jumping didn't kill it and the control map match the open Zone I think these would be fairly exciting to play for everyone of course if you really don't like them it is possible to skip most if not all of cyberspace entirely tucked away on every map is a fishing hole where none other than big the cat takes you under his wing into Lo-Fi heaven and so now the game is officially a 10. [Music] hey big you sound a little slow are you all right seriously you could have a tumor all throughout the islands are purple fishing coins that you pay to cast your line like an arcade machine it's a very simple Mini-Game wait for a bite hit the Ripple inside the ring and claim whatever you happen to reel back holy smoke sometimes it gets faster the Rings are smaller and there might be more than one usually on a golden bite but it's the same gist you're not gonna mess these up it's basically a quick time event with RNG loot so there was a point where I got bored pretty fast yet I found myself back for more on every island part of the fun is seeing what crazy new creature you're gonna hook next it'll ease you in with a small fry but eventually it's gonna say yo Barracuda it doesn't take long to fish out the whole pond so repeat playthroughs aren't as exciting but that first time you have no idea what it's going to unveil carp Stingray squid and angler fish how is that even possible look at Big's face he's mortified all right I'm drawing the line at Alligator what kind of Rod are we using I think this might be the best game ever made sometimes you don't even get a fish it's just random items buried below yeah well The Ten Commandments or it's a reference like the chopper see this is clever nostalgia all right don't push it now I just wish you could skip through all the Fanfare because there's a lot of waiting between catches everything you collect goes into the fishopedia and every island adds new Critters to the existing pool so there's definitely a good reason to go to each one they're also worth much more of the further into the game you get see everything you reel in is given to Big in exchange for fish tokens these are used to buy whatever in-game Collectibles you want they're all here don't feel like fighting bosses for portal gears or doing cyberspace for Vault Keys just fish for like 20 minutes and you can skip half the island the value of what you catch goes up so much on later pawns too so does the cost of admission but does that really look like it's gonna phase me then we have that Starfall event I mentioned earlier you grab the rainbow bits on the ground to use as a credit for the on-screen slot machine and you will rack up a ton of coins this way frankly too many for something entirely left up to chance you can already sidestep so much content using big it's crazy that they would enable it so vehemently what they don't tell you is that there's a limited amount of credits you can spend before the machine disappears and I usually ended up being around 10 for me so here I am trying to grab as many bits as possible thinking it matters when in reality it caps much earlier I'm not sure if there are some hidden rules to this I'm unaware of I had to look in the options after my first playthrough to find out you can manually stop the machine and the Machine remains on screen the whole time blocking your view I really wish I could minimize it also why a slot machine is there significance why not just give me a time limit to collect as many bits as I can but turn into coins after then I'd at least have some agency and incentive to not stop at 10 or you could just grind the barbecue spit from the Monster Hunter DLC it doesn't cost any coins and you get fish tokens for it because that's balanced the other currency you can get are gold cards from treasure chests which allow you to buy one of anything in the shop regardless of token price something I recommend you do because they provide a lot of additional story context references and funny moments take control of all its resources and give them to me foreign what the heck was that I wish there was more of a surprise factor to getting chests though Brown always has one card and gold has three no sense in locking it inside a chest if I already know what it's gonna be before it opens some more varied rare encounters would have been nice to add a bit of suspense a larger inventory of shop items too the memos were a good start but they could have dropped some cosmetics in here instead of going the DLC route give us a way to unlock something cool in game as an achievement I'm always down for that lastly we have the Scrolls allowing you to fast travel to any Elder and hermit Coco visible on your map worth noting that you can't buy these in the shop you gotta fish for them however clearing all mission objectives will give you fast travel to any portal on the map including a fishing spot so you have a backup the final piece of frontier's gameplay Loop is combat you start out with a basic homing attack couple punches and a stomp but as you defeat common enemies you gain skill points to unlock moves on your skill tree the first is the Sai Loop the main attraction if you will draw a circle on the ground and everything within will be damaged it's also used in many puzzles and groundskeeping mid combat though I rarely used it I found the process to be too slow and the camera left me feeling vulnerable yeah in general the camera was only ever an issue in battle and while some of that is up to player finesse there were moments where it became a war crime oh my God Guardians always put the focus on them for a title card intro but sometimes you're just trying to run past and look it's not all about you makes it really funny when it doesn't work though like of a different enemy steals your attention at the same time it all gets jacked up oh yeah him this was partially what contributed to the early Games Week start for me without any combos unlocked it was very button mashy the simplistic unthreatening enemy AI didn't do much to enhance the fights especially when you have an out-of-pocket Perry that can dispatch any danger at all times and the camera made Asura the first big boss awkward to get used to not to mention the janky Collision on running up the arms the fact you can mess this up is Wild next to no invincibility frames either so you can get comboed while you're down no no a fight can go from painfully dull to weight I died in an instant when I finally did unlock some stuff Kronos Island really didn't give me much to try it on the Sonic Boom annihilates everything from a safe distance with no cooldown it's supremely spammy and broken it functions like an ability that you'd expect to build up towards like Phantom Rush this needs you to max out the combo meter and then Sonic goes mad with power from all the disrespect he's endured and it feels good to reach that state but this doesn't have any sort of checks and balances in place to vary its application to be fair it becomes much less via available as early as the second island when enemies get tankier but then we have the opposite problem where I stopped using it all together in favor of more powerful abilities they even give you one later on that's practically the same thing Cyclone kick is a lot like spin slash Loop kick is like the stomp from a distance homing shot is another ranged Attack Grand Slam and Recovery smash both involve pressing a prompt at the right time for an automatic spin attack how does a skill tree this small have so much power creep what the what I have some questions make no mistake there is a combo game to be had here when you're wailing on a boss throwing everything you have at it chaining four or five moves back to back it's pretty fun the sound design is nice impacts feel strong it's a spectacle to see Sonic flying around doing all these crazy stunts until that happens the problem is that every encounter plays out nearly the same the combos I use on one fight are what I'm using on the next and so forth because every move is activated and presented in the same fashion press the button and watch the cutscene that deals damage none of the bosses put up a resistance worthy of changing that strategy and if they did Parry their one attack and they usually die after that this can actually backfire on some later enemies like the kunoichi who teleports around since after you parry the game goes all slow-mo to give you the advantage but if she disappears You Gotta Wait even longer for her to come back now that you've slowed down time in fact a lot of these bosses use waiting tactics Asura was a fine start contesting you with red boosters although that came with its own issues this sucks but then we have Strider in its rail grinding Siesta caterpillar doing a similar thing spider launching you into the air for an extensive free-falling segment and Squid squid this abominable Chrome sack is responsible for plaguing my first session this was the moment to put into perspective how slow Sonic was why does it take so long to go through a basic loop I get that it's trying to be all cinematic but I am losing hair waiting for this and if you don't kill him in one cycle you gotta do it again wow it's like a surprise party minus the joy also his intro is a jump scare for me something about the Blank Stare and sudden cut with droning music puts me on edge oh God where is he where where's he gonna come from the one Saving Grace is that you can wait for him to come around and then if you start comboing him he'll drop the arena instantly so you won't have to do the chase at all if you do hit him and fall off though you may have to commit to that fight anyway because sometimes the game still thinks you're in combat so the music never stops I ran all across the island trying to escape the EDM but I simply couldn't no the worst enemy in the game has to go to shark this also has a scary intro especially at night I mean my goodness what's scarier though is when you realize that the whole fight is a quick Time Event now that'll give you nightmares it's a full 35 seconds of pressing left and right when it tells you why can't we control this ourselves it would have been so fun twisting and turning through a Sandy Battlefield even when you can finally land some hits there's no retaliation he just lies there like a sponge so really this boss isn't a boss at all there's no fight fighting the urge to play something else a lot of these mechs just sit there while you go to town some of them justify it like tank who pulls you into a whirlwind that you carefully homing attack inside Sumo was one of my favorites because you got to bounce off the walls Fortress was just a better squid ghost was really unique because it had me going through parts of the open Zone to reach different pillars all while losing rings to put the pressure on Tower and all its incarnations were my absolute favorite that is when they showed up ah yes my greatest enemy getting the game to work it flings projectiles jumps around you gotta break its bottom segments so you can reach the top all while avoiding its Spinning Wheel I can go combo mad without all the arbitrary waiting but still easily take damage if I'm careless and I am Master ninja is probably the coolest enemy in the game and the only one that feels like an all-out brawl parrying is still a problem in the Clone phase however holding lnr really should have just been a standard guard to block attacks and pressing at the moment before you get hit would trigger the Parry that would give you control over the slow motion and still let you defend yourself most importantly it would actually have a skill ceiling instead of being a constant get out of jail free card were you that jealous of chaos fear oh guess it doesn't block that one with versatile defense options the game would have been far more capable of pitting you against aggressive foes perhaps multiple at once because Sonic's combat appears to be very one-on-one focused what with all the flashy attacks that lock onto a single Target if it does Chuck three or four at you it's always small fry of the same type that you attack individually anyway the polygonal henchmen all die in one hit on Chrono so combos are out of the question and from Aries onward they start putting up Shields yay oh they could have done anything anything but Shield enemies all this does is lock you out of all those fun moves until you've painstakingly siluped the enemy first it's not any harder it's just annoying and you never know when they're gonna whip these out wouldn't it be funny if he stopped having fun ranged attacks don't seem to trigger the barriers but now I'm back to spamming the one move again there's a quick side Loop you can activate mid combo but you have to fill the meter first by attacking enemies the worst is when it side Loops a Target you weren't aiming at yeah I'd like a refund accidental move seemed to be a recurring issue every button on the controller has a function sometimes multiple this game is stacked with abilities if you told a Sonic fan the button configuration for Frontiers they might go into cardiac arrest so many muscle memory habits will feel betrayed boost on R2 Light Speed Dash on left stick camera reset on right homing attack is back on X and square are the pills taking effect you can change it to whatever you want but I couldn't even attempt to rearrange everything so I left it as is and surprisingly adapted quite fast I think it works what I couldn't adapt to were the attacks that used common button combinations to activate here I was simply boosting towards an enemy that I planned on homing attacking a pretty conventional two-step process but unfortunately if you press the homing attack button while you're still boosting something you've had no issue with on balloons Springs and most targets for the entire game it triggers the Homing shot playing out an unnecessary cinematic and leaving me helpless in midair it's also massive overkill for an enemy that only takes one hit poor guy probably died of shock before impact immediately after I boost towards the next enemy and try to jump but oh that's right Boost Plus Jump equals cross slash now I'm being rotated off the platform and if I don't save myself it's all the way back down call my therapist because she's about to make a lot of money one time it sent me back in space look how close I am to the enemy and how far back it trebuchets me for the attack and since I've already boosted now I get to fall down and watch cocaine Collision Zone play out it beats having everything on one button but this seems a tad cramped it's probably why there's no light and heavy attack they simply didn't have the room for it and I think It suffers from that the combat overall is too limited to allow for any depth Beyond its one-trick nature of cycling through your favorite cutscene Combos and parrying one strike it's a solid first draft that has its moments in the spotlight but there's so much room for improvement and you don't have to look far for inspiration in general balance is not frontier's strongest attribute it gives you a lot of freedom with how you approach progression to the point where nothing holds that great of value you need Vault keys to clear the island but instead of getting them from cyberspace you can fish which means that you no longer have a need to kill bosses for portal gears so now leveling up your skill tree is less important since you're not fighting eliminating the need to kill common enemies for XP or completing optional missions for attack and defense upgrades suddenly everything becomes undermined yeah no thanks this goes beyond fishing though one of the skills you unlock very early is the ability to perform tricks after hitting a shiny ramp spring or running off a flat surface to earn skill points sounds handy and it is in fact it's so handy that you can spam tricks off the same spring over and over to max out the skill tree in exactly 55 minutes yes I did the math now are people gonna do this probably not especially when the strongest abilities are passively handed out during the story but you could at least try to mask such an easy to see exploit or crazy idea don't include it make it so that the spring loses its shine after one use now you gotta go find another explore the island further why does this keep happening it can be fun to have such a game-breaking mechanic after all it lets me fight giganto with all my moves but like any cheat code once the high wears off you realize how much substance it robs the experience of or how dull the normal one is then there's the topic of difficulty and normally I wouldn't care because Sonic games have never been about that for me they're spectacle Platformers that specialize in Sensational movement and might get a little tricky by the end but as a grown man I'm not struggling when I play these and that's okay I truthfully don't care how easy or hard something is as long as it's engaging unfortunately Frontiers combat doesn't quite know what it wants to be yet it's trying to combine Sonic elements into a hack and slash but some of those traits don't favorably overlap rings for example work pretty well in a forward moving platformer that encourages Reckless experimentation so you can learn how to ebb and flow with Grace but for a completely different genre that's about direct enemy confrontation taking that threat seriously is important for player side decision making so when you have a system where you cannot die so long as you have a single ring and getting hit causes those rings to fly out nearby where you can easily grab them again you are effectively invulnerable taking the threat out of every situation also you can generate rings at will by side looping the ground you might even get progression items so not only are you never without assistance but rings found throughout the open zone are consequently rendered next to meaningless why grab any here if I can do this at any time this lack of danger is only made more mystifying by the weirdly unforgiving invincibility frames no this had to be an accident it doesn't make the combat more casual friendly like everything else would lead you to believe nor does it add any kind of skill ceiling since getting double hit is completely out of your control yet at the same time you only take damage when you hit the ground that's when your rings fly out so if you can dodge roll after getting hit Sonic will return to his normal stance and you won't lose anything man only in Frontiers can you avoid an attack after it happens of course you'd probably be more interested in the recovery smash by that point after getting hit you press jump when the prompt appears and you'll Buzz saw the enemy right back which you can manipulate by taking damage on purpose it's kind of busted so yeah balance isn't exactly what they achieved to make the combat of Smashing success fix the Parry include better enemy telegraphs more enemy types Better Health System combos that aren't self-contained animations and an actual hard mode or a score slash ranking system that rewards high level play currently the only way to speed up the fights is by increasing your stats seeds of power and defense that you bring to hermit Coco for an instant upgrade and Tiny lost Cocos to the Elder who can only upgrade one stat at a time I truly can't believe that made it into a final build he levels up your ring capacity and max speed this is incredibly misleading however as your running speed is unaffected what this refers to is your climbing speed yes of course how could I be so blind alright because it doesn't tell you the crazy thing about it all though is that you have so much freedom in how you clear an island without being pushed too far in any given direction that you're able to choose when and what content you want to participate in if I see an enemy or Guardian that I have no interest in fighting because I filed a restraining order I can ignore it same goes for Mission cyberspace fishing even parts of the open Zone if there's a portion of this game that I don't like chances are there's a way around it and so by some miracle Frontiers is allowed to have its cake and eat it too by letting you skip the filler of your choice or at least reducing it to a palatable size your run time will suffer but this thing took me 23 hours to 100 even if you cut that in half you're still left with a good 10 to 12 hours one of the biggest Sonic games we've ever had there is however one area where I felt the combat was most effective the Titan fights I don't think it's been properly Quantified how much heavy lifting these battles and their music have done for frontier's legacy and reception people are quoting lyrics and comment threads on Steam Reviews Frontiers status is a video format now boys are becoming men overnight they single-handedly raise the entire game one letter grade it's insane when I went super to fight giganto for the first time and I heard those heavenly vocals staggered against a monstrous riff my jaw dropped [Music] [Music] they did it they made Sonic cool again and in a way that's never been explored metal core in Sonic the Freak on a Leash go is in here where am I I could not stop grinning for several minutes this feeling I had was what I wanted to feel for this series for so long that moment I could point to and say yeah this is awesome Frontiers gives me that in Spades and it's all thanks to these Titan fights what great timing too with how much Metal Gear Rising became a meme again the Showmanship is Sky High reveling in excess at every opportunity the flashing on impact chromatic aberration on damage text giant might guy fists perfect sinking of actions with music it's like a playable AMV stopping a beam with your bare hands giving him the piccolo treatment flying through the sky passing over the open Zone beneath jumbling missiles into a ball prying open the beast's mouth riding a spiked Shield like a flying saucer I'm gonna cry there is no questioning that these are franchise highlights for me some of the most memorable scenes in all of Sonic it's no wonder why it's being compared to Revenge yet ironically the music is even heavier it's like Doom with vocals Guilty Gear nah bury the light you better bury the trophy because Sonic's about to steal it the music really does carry the fights you don't even have to like the genre to appreciate the raw imagery of pairing Sonic the Hedgehog with one of the most hardcore forms of Music it was a Christmas morning every time these fights came up you wanted to hear what crazy new song they were gonna incinerate you with next not to say the combat doesn't hold its own here but it certainly takes a back seat to what you're observing one of my favorite things about the three main Titans is how they first interact with you on the island as regular Sonic showing how powerless you are in your base form giganto straight up Chucks you across the map like yeah try again a 7 out of 10 now small thing but I love how the camera Cuts diagonally on every hit it's these details that we've been sorely missing wyvern chases you through a desert obstacle course that would have been really fun if it didn't needlessly restrict your movement it's a great set piece but the threat is almost entirely visual Knight has a similar problem with not enough stuff to dodge but it's also in 2D so you get that noticeable downgrade and speed sucking out all the excitement the spike Shield wasn't used enough either it felt more like a squid 2.0 fight than a Titan and that is not good for my blood pressure when it's finally time to throw down though Sonic needs to climb up the Titan's body to reach the last Chaos Emerald Shadow of the Colossus style I really like that these were included so much so that I wish there was more to them some more platforming obstacles anything to drag it out just a bit longer wyverns is unique in that you have to climb up a tower so you can even reach him but it's also not because it's another squid segment wow I'm getting tired of these it's a better one fortunately but still too drawn out in desperate need of variety we also should have climbed on the wyvern at some point instead of only at the very end Knights is more on the conventional side and that you wait for an opening to make your move well when he's not migrating like a runaway swivel chair with one of the worst camera angles once you're on him though there's no resistance just climb up and you're good kind of tame compared to the first two but what about the fights themselves how do they fare well like I said the spectacle carries it supersonic has all the same moves with visual enhancements to his Grand Slam and giant fists during punches and unlike the smaller Guardian fights Titans will attack you more often so it's not just a combo spam Fest although that is still a big part of it camera is something to behold the hit detection on his arm is a specter what is that like two frames and when he knocks you away Sonic faces you for three seconds before the perspective slowly shifts back to normal but you can move during this time so you try getting back into the fight only to be slapped right back away like a cat for jumping on the counter this camera sucks instead of being pushed all the way back just give us a nudge that takes away Rings Lord knows we're not gonna run out otherwise the whole thing needed more fine tuning there will be times where things just happen like that what the heck was that inputs will fail you'll try a combo and it simply won't activate due to some undisclosed buffer time that all your attacks have there's a second phase where he emits scapular beams but nothing changes just a new QuickTime event thrown in but man if I didn't feel like a Titan myself wailing on this Behemoth while the background chants I am undefeatable it's a cathartic first fight that in any other game could be the final boss setting a new standard for the series in terms of presentation just needs a bit cleaned up did you just turn my Parry around what the wyvern is better and worse for different reasons the Perry game is a lot stronger you can't even attack him until you've deflected a missile in the following slashes but this also means that there's a healthy amount of waiting especially if you mess it up and have to restart the cycle the missiles can also be hard to see amongst all the chaos so you're better off holding the Parry down the whole time and waiting because you can would have been a lot more exciting if the Perry was timing based and the missile that you had to hit came into frame with a bolder outline or glow for better visibility if you messed it up you would simply lose Rings instead of being knocked back so you could quickly recover and Parry the next missile to keep things moving at least the camera reset is much faster here when it is damage dealing time it operates like shark where you do as much as you can in the allotted time while it lies there defenseless it's all right after that he opens up a Dunkin Donuts and then the Final Phase starts with a quick time event that I was so caught off guard by that I failed four consecutive button presses oh my wait he's actually dead look at that he's gone no model or Ash is just instantly eviscerated oh my gosh I'm back on the ground wow that's pretty hardcore doesn't match the difficulty they're shooting for at all but hey I dig it would have felt a lot more deserving if I died to real gameplay instead of being overcome by so much shock and awe that a big the cat fishing minigame was a supersonic boss tutorial but I'm at least glad that the qts in this game are completely insane I'd prefer not having any if possible but if you're gonna include them this is how you do it it's almost embarrassing when you compare these to the ones in forces even Unleashed didn't go this hard Knight may very well be my favorite of the three but it's also the jankiest he spins around like a wizard you can try and hit him or just wait it's kind of a weird opening phase then you gotta beat up his shield so he throws it and you write it back through the opposing missiles they really like using these again the random spam pushing you around can feel Jank but there's something Sensational about cutting through all that Madness and I mean just look at this look at this the very end is where we see the best phase from any of the titans the shield starts bouncing around with what's this a clear Telegraph that has me parrying the attack back at the enemy and I actually have to aim where he's going because I'll miss holy smokes I'm playing a video game this is what all the fun bites needed so much more of it's not even hard it's just interesting and you still get to watch Sonic wield a giant sword that we totally should have been able to control but man what a great send-off too bad the fourth Titan sucks I don't know what happened here man the ending falls apart so quickly just caves in on itself right at the Finish Line first of all no Island interaction as regular Sonic nor do we have to climb up for the final Emerald you just go super in a cutscene and fly over to him already weakening its impact but then Supreme the whole brand is just giganto again but worse he's got these pointless Triangles around him that you don't even have to fight less HP and you're a higher level now so you will shred his health bar the poor guy doesn't stand a chance he's got the same arm swing attack and Camera issue also what's with the wings they look awesome are we gonna fight high up in the sky with those uh no seems we are four feet off the ground wings are gone and the fight is exactly the same okay where's my ammunition then we have these pointless cut scenes where I parry and attack and then it shows Sonic getting blasted away why why do I have to watch this twice the big QT of the fight isn't even exciting he whips out a gun okay off to a good start but then Sonic deflects the blast in like two frames behind the circle where you can't see it and the ending doesn't do anything extraordinary either you just watch him move his neck for 30 seconds what is happening is that it yeah my thoughts exactly I wish I could say that was the end of it but there is a true final boss that will only show up on hard mode now that's not the problem this could have been a redeeming moment to go out with a bang but what we're given is a sudden return to the bullet hell minigame against a foe that just revealed itself credits okay here's the deal this fight is better than Supreme it functions you can see everything on screen it's fair and might just be the most difficult final boss in a Sonic game not a high bar but the fact that you can only get hit twice is rigid and I appreciate that at some point during my playthrough I had to apply myself to overcome an obstacle but for one it's too long not pinball long but a four minute fight with a lot of downtime between phases most of all though in a game that thrived on over-the-top spectacle the tonal Whiplash of ending with a top-down space shooter that was previously treated as side content is enough to put you in the hospital a game all about massive environments Larger than Life battles heavy metal and you are a small blip shooting a giant Circle the setup was so perfect for an Unleashed style tag team sage has piloted the Supreme Titan to join you we should have been able to play as it then finish it off as supersonic maybe some kind of fusion instead we are left with an incredibly anti-climactic QuickTime event that uses a new format so careful that doesn't catch you off guard and a spontaneous termination of Sage's character as she sacrifices herself and action Sonic has nothing to say about when he lands although this does help contrast the two sides of the ending Sonic with all his friends now saved and Eggman all alone after losing the one thing he cared about yeah I really like the father-daughter dynamic they went with these two never before has Eggman been this humanized under all that ego and pretense is a lonely man and for a little while he started to feel valuable to someone else you can feel his pain in that final shot and then he brings her back to life uh never mind I guess it's like they knew the ending was rushed so they had to bring her back to ensure a better resolution in the next game she really was a great character with a lot of mystery until the very end where it turns into an exposition fest with zero tension we didn't get enough screen time of the father-daughter dynamic so the sacrifice would hit hard for us and what was the deal with that flashing where it looked like she was becoming human yeah that went nowhere is she human is She gonna look like Maria oh my God it's Rosalina the ripping off Galaxy again this is all on top of aranos Island already feeling a lot like cut Kronos content and so Sonic Frontiers sadly ends on an unfulfilling note for many I may have had my issues but nothing made me feel upset like seeing those credits for the first time did it clearly didn't have all the resources it needed whether that be Time Manpower budget or some combination Corners were cut in the performance content distribution animations finale Etc this is a game where every single aspect of it could be done better the open Zone control is great but with enhanced physics could be amazing cyberspace is a great idea but needs better control and original layouts combat is flashy black substance the dialogue is the best in years but the story is incomplete Graphics are stunning but need optimized Frontiers 2 would be one heck of a game if they fixed every problem this one had and it looks like something to that effect may be happening with the DLC roadmap so hopefully they polish this one up and knock it out with a second yet despite all of that I haven't felt this positive towards a 3D Sonic game since Generations heck we haven't had this much 3D in a Sonic game since Black Knight and while I didn't hate the last two games they felt confused and restrained whereas Frontiers feels bold and ambitious again even when it fails it at least tried and can fall back on a good foundation I think the phrase this is the most 7 out of 10 game ever sums it right up I really enjoyed my time with Frontiers there were some dips but some Peaks as well this is the direction the series needs to go in at least for a little while and hey if they patch a lot of the stuff we complain about we might be looking at the most 8 out of 10 game ever who knows thank you all so much for watching my longest review ever cyber Shadow has been dethroned and I am terrified staring at this waveform right now and as always don't forget to check out the next episode whenever I post it which will probably be soon all right see ya

Channel: bickuribox12

Views: 669,350

Keywords: sonic the hedgehog, review, game

Id: t3dhwzti9K0

Length: 69min 32sec (4172 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 01 2023