Sonic Frontiers is Afraid to be Amazing
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- čas přidán 30. 11. 2023
- Sonic Frontiers was one of the most hyped-up Sonic games ever. Does it live up to the mania, or have we been kidding ourselves?
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It’s not this game being afraid, it’s sega being afraid of this game being bad.
I would like to mention that they added the Spin Dash in a more recent update, and its probably one of the best things to be added in the game. It basically lets you FLY across the islands at high speeds by going up slopes and stuff, definitely one of the best moves in the game, and gives you a better feeling of freedom than everything else the game has to offer.
He’s making a part 2 to the video. You’ll see that when you finish the video
You also suffer trying to unlock it on hard mode if you didn’t play Sonic Frontiers constantly for months on end before update 2.
Spin Dash is broken and removes the need for a lot of other types of movement. When you unlock Spin Dash, Boost, Air Boost, Drop Dash, Power Boost, all become near useless. Somehow they still can’t make a proper Spin Dash and at least attempt to balance it. 🗿
honestly id rather have a broken spin dash that lets me go flying off the proper terrain rather than a almost non functional drop dash and wonky boost
@@visionxry That’s more of a terrain issue than the mechanics themselves but I guess. Which he touched on in the video.
Frontiers feels like the equivalent of trying to force a square peg into a round hole. I think 60% of the games problems come from having the wromg sonic for the enviornment with almost no context sensetive traversal mechanics.
I mean open world sonic does have strong potentinal for a sequel but it would need to be a from the ground up sequel culling many elements from frontiers and I'm not interested in waiting another 5 years for that.
well you're gonna have to
they cant do it in less time lmao
How do you pronounce "wromg" and "enviornment"?
@@crimsonzone8984 "what dyslexia does to a MF"
I think BlazeHedgehog described Sonic Frontiers perfectly in his video: "This feels like a college students' first week Unity project."
That video is like his worst one
@@miadatenshi9903nope
@@miadatenshi9903cope 🤡
@@miadatenshi9903 I actually disagree completely lmao if anything I feel his review and Spontman's are the only negative Frontiers reviews that actually feel fair and criticizes the game for what it is rather than what it isn't
That's a bit excessive. Not saying the game is anywhere near perfect, but still excessive.
Frontiers is probably the most mixed I've ever felt about a video game.I'll have moments where it starts to feel like great game only to then get hit with a flow ruining bug or poor design decision. Now that the updates are done and I've beaten the new version of the final boss, I'm probably not coming back to this one at least for a good while.
Edit: Also this game's story completely ruins the backstory for Chaos and gives up the mystery of the Chaos Emeralds. Combine that with the poor voice direction and bland writing; and you have one of my least favorite stories of the main series.
I think I saw someone once describe it as “peak mid”
@@minecrafter3448 That's a good description to be honest.
So basically Sonic Frontiers is another Sonic Heroes...
Little do you know, SEGA tweaked Ian's full potential for the story of Sonic Frontiers. he didnt create the story, more-so created the dialouge and character scripts.
2:38
So from what I heard, he DIDN'T write the story.
He was given a rough script of usable characters, and major story beats
Basically, if this rumor is true, "sonic's not a jerk anymore" is one of the very few things he had control over."
you nailed down a lot of my thoughts on Frontiers perfectly
Love these reviews! Pretty much agree so far. You planning to review the spinoff 3d sonic games and alternative versions of the ones you covered so far?
Yup! I'm planning to cover them in a brand new format, hopefully soon.
The Ian Flynn thing is a bit of a misconception. The director did the story and Ian did the dialogue. Ian himself was involved in the development, but did not write the story.
Huh, interesting. That makes me wonder what a Sonic game with more creative control from Ian would look like.
@@spontman I think Dream Team is all him.
@spontman Well, funny you say that. It would be exactly like IDW and Archie if given creative control. He has a lot of creative control there than what most people think.
@@nerodoesart5886 I don't read the comics so I have no idea lol
@spontman Ah, I see. If you do read them one day... I'll just say you may like them or you may hate them depending on what your stances are on Sonic's character and storytelling. Some of their characterizations in Frontiers are actually kinda different than IDW/Archie.
I'll just say that, but won't go into detail about it until you read them one day.
I can only allow the references to fly for this game because they were trying to establish what was cannon going forward. Now that they wanna try to mend the time line, having a mainline game address the inconsistencies from the past to make them fit in the time line was kinda the only choice they had. Sure it was a little overdone, but I think it was important for establishing the mindset going forward. Honestly, all of Frontiers is that way. Wildly inconsistent, but if you can see past the mess and find the intent to build for the future and enjoy the good that is there, it's actually a good game.
I’ve loved this retrospective! Have you thought about doing this style of videos on the Classics, Mania, and superstars?
Yup, I'll be doing a 2D Sonic marathon next year.
12:05 The voice direction was to make the characters sound more mature, that was the point
nah, i think they just ran out of budget
Keep making PEAK like this🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
Great video. While I do like Sonic Frontiers I do agree that this game definitely lacks polish. I really want to see Sonic Team improve this formula and innovate like make the combat less op and actually have a high skill ceiling, new aesthetics instead of reusing assets from previous games. When it came to the combat originally Sonic Team had the combat system be much more demanding like Bayonetta and Devil May Cry but playtesters had a hard time coping with the gameplay so that's why the combat is much more simpler and easier to get use to than it was when play testing. Great video though your videos are such a joy to watch and you can be pretty funny to ✌️
Blame sega for that they never give sonic team proper development time to polish the game and sonic team only has low as 60 members in there team sega needs to hire more members for sonic team so that they have more help to polish it
Agreed sonic frontiers is a decent game cuz it lacks of polish and the game is poorly designed
And cutscenes sucks and the voice acting sucks cuz it's souless and bland people complained the voice direction being bad in previous games but now theres no direction just playing the role trying to be "mysterious" and "instresting" but no it's boring and lack of life , the gameplay is mixed cuz its a dumbed down of generations and forces wth the physics being worse , the bosses are badly designed genetic textures and assets and are really long , the characters are starting to get fixed to be like the good old days of the adventure era but it every cutscenes needs to bu references of past of games but the problems is it's still nostalgia pandering wth no context and barely fits the story s'narrative , the zones are terribly designed it keep reusing previous games assets. , but ofc they brought back green hill & chemical plant yet again 🙄 , this time sky sanctuary is here for the second time since generations 😁😃 , the island are good but my god how generic they are and not appealing to the public eyes it's clear they Keept copy pasting the same island assets and are mic of the generic colors of 06 , bland colors of lost World , souless colors of forces , the writing isnt bad but could be improved especially if Sega changed sonic art style so the franchise could be less sterile and weird and sonic team to be more competent and use their gorgeous budget to improve quality of games and bring back the old cutscenes animation style CGI cuz sonic games been lacking of animations for 7 years as of 2024 now bcuz the last time sonic had animations was in lost worlds and given the recent Ian Flynn situation of badly fixing the sonic canon cuz him making bs explainations to Canonize his ideas wth his encyclopedia team for profit and siding wth toxic fans is ruining his rep wth these stupid sonic official streams , this situation is giving me 0 hopes for the next game to have good writing again 🙄😤😒😭 but glad Sega of Japan controls the narrative do ism Flynn doesn't mess up everything just bcuz he is a Sally acorn chill .
The updates and dlc didn't fixed the game either instead they made the game from decent to almost bad / mid and the re-reviews post final horizon update perfectly show how the updates are downgrades ( Thanks kishimoto listening to toxic fans for their social lives ) ....
Hope in the next big triple AAA mainline game
Hope they will not continue what we hated about forces and previous games and continue improving like Polishing the game , less constrained staff , more quality care , good game designs , better level designs and less nostalgia abuse , great concept art to meet our expectations in the actual final cut , nostalgia yes if it somehow fits the story s'narrative without abusing it , return of gorgeous CGI cutscenes like in 06 , unleashed , changing the franchise s'art style like Mario did after odyssey or crash bandicoot , better gameplay improving the physics , good bosses , and good voice directions to be ofc not like the 2010s but cartony at least not be the bland souless voice acting of frontiers , continue to fix sonic stupid friends to return them to their glory's days and bring back old friend casts like cream ,the chaotixs , chao garden , animal Friends .
Generaly hope they improve upon the formula cuz sonic needs to be consistent for the first time in 17 years , Open sonic zone formula is amazing and hope it frickin STAYS !
Cuz adventure , boost , boom ~ whatever....
Hope the next game will be good cuz remember the terrible reviews of the last decade well don't want this franchise to be the punching bag of the gaming industry again , then hope there improvements , and consistent management of the franchise and 0 hasty decisions & dreadful deadlines from Sega
Better , if Sega doesn't rush the next game , also if sonic team becomes more competent and actually taking notes from fans works then maybe the next game will be the true return of this franchise after failures and failures and that's when the gaming industry gonna have faith in sonic again and people will respect and take this franchise more seriously and Sega might comeback to the spotlight especially with the remakes of their old IPs like jetset radio , golden axe , streets of rage , altered beast.
The Tails stuff was a bit on the nose for me. Just sounded too much like [I'm tails I'm worthless and stupid nowadays nah nah nah]
3:12 Gotta disagree with the whole “character development hasn’t been a thing since SA2” bit. Regardless of what you think of gameplay quality, character development was prominent in Shadow the hedgehog (2005), 06, Unleashed, & basically most releases up until Black Knight. Character development wasn’t missing until the release of Sonic Colors. It wasn’t missing until Pontac & Graff took over & ruined the quality of storytelling.
What character arcs were in '06 and Unleashed? Not trying to argue, I just genuinely can't remember any. I guess Elise kinda counts for '06?
@@spontman It was actually mostly Shadow who had character development in 06. His arc with Mephiles is one of the best characterizations of Shadow there’s ever been. If you don’t remember, I strongly urge you to revisit that story. 06 did many things wrong. But the characterization is far from one of them.
As for Unleashed, it’s exploring the bond between Sonic & Chip over the course of the game. The eventual realization of why Dark Gaia could never fully corrupt Sonic. And Sonic being more mature as a character throughout the story as opposed to the cringe goofball he would become in Colors & later games.
All of the games have had character development. Just in Colors, Generations and Lost World it wasn't really meaningful ones. Superficial at best. Granted those games are more of a plot of the week kind of games with their stories. Heroes is the same way as well and it also has less character development than Shadow and the Adventure games. Sonic has literally always been a goofball and pretty cheesy with his confidence of what's cool. IN both Japanese and English. Consistently throughout all of the games. The only game he's more goofy in is literally Colors and the stakes of that game weren't that high until Asteroid Coaster and the climax. Hell in Forces in both Japanese and English Sonic actually has some harsh words for Infinite and a literal direct threat of killing him in the final fight with the the whole epithet line he threw back at Infinite and calling him a masked clown. That's a first for Sonic. He usually insults enemies to keep his own wits or to taunt and mess them up kinda like Spider-Man.
@@YHUAN01 Eh, but that’s kind of disingenuous to the point. Yes, sonic has always goofed off & joked around. That’s never been the problem. I’m talking about how from Sonic Colors and onward, the silliness noticeably became one dimensional & overly cartoonish.
@@TheAlphazoneYT It's always been that way. Really it has. The problem is you got older. Again, Colors is the only one where it was way more silly in tone because for 75% of the game the stakes are pretty low and the chance for failure is like nil for Sonic. Generations has small moments with his friends but that's about it. Lost World he's pretty par the course aside from taunting the Deadly Six to rile them up and throw them off their game.
Hating on references has to be one of the most pseudonerdy things of all time
Ok. Great video. But this time, I'm gonna save my full thoughts for part 2!
I really loved frontiers despite its very clear lack of polish and its problems. nice video!
I know that replayability is a pillar of sonic, but I think expecting it from an open world game is a bit unrealistic and unreasonable: these are the types of games that after completing it 100% you are not gonna pick up in a long time, heck some people drop them after completing the main story or a portion of the side content. So i wasn't mad when I finished the game and didn't felt the urge to immeditly replay the whole game
That's fair. In my opinion the open world format just wasn't a good fit for Sonic, or at least the modern version of it with objective markers and sidequests and all that. I think if they want to have more player choice in Sonic games going forward, they should go for a more traditional collect-a-thon format like Mario.
@@spontman I see thar, but I think the format they chose is not bad: it's all about little activities and types of content that, if separated, can't sustain a game, but if combined and the liberty jumping from one content to the other is engaiging, kinda like a yakuza/like a dragon game. They just need to make it a bit engaiging and to rebalance some of the stuff. besides the open zone is kind of a collectathon
@@lupinthenerd439 I understand that's what they were going for. I don't think it's an inherently bad format, just not one that fits Sonic in particular. Or at the very least, not one that appeals to what I personally look for in a Sonic game. A matter of preference, I suppose.
@@spontman I guess so. Sonic always had player's choice in his foundation, wheter is going straight to the goal as fast as possible, or slow down to explore and find secrets such as power ups, new pathways to complete the levels or even getting chaos emeralds, and sonic frontiers really goes deep into that aspect (sometimes a bit much)
Awesome video man keep it up!! 😄
26:15 Crazy statement. Forces had shitty level design
I like frontiers but man
The lack of style and surrealism is just so hard not to notice
If I had a dollar for every sonic fan who utters the words "This is a step in the right direction", I'd be able to invest in Atlus stock.
While i agree on some points i want to point out something about boosting. It's for platforming imo. You dont hold it when you are platforming tightly and when you want to go fast you run. Its not missing the point cause it doesnt try to make the same kind of boost.
And about the battles with bosses... You are the one missing the point. The beyblade part is great, its the opposite of your complaints. Also you can always come up with a programmed way to avoid it and speed up the phase
I want to add not as a knockback to u but there is a way to speed up or skip a most if most if not all the QTEs they either jus don't tell u bout it for 1 or it's an exploitable bug for another lol. I honestly thought knight was the "best" mechanically both before & after the updates. I only have huge issue wit Wyvern (for the main 3 cus Supreme is... well ye). I also liked the Final boss a lot & thought it was the overall 2nd "best" Final boss we've had in the franchise jus for bein mechanically sound & challengin. I also like the very arcadey galaga/tohou/ikaruga stuff in general lol. I also liked the pinball & didn't have a hard time once I learned how to properly manipulate it which was quick. The game is a mess but especially wit the updates it's pretty fun as a whole. The story & characterization "suck" for reasons I'd need to make an essay here to explain(which I technically alr have but I don't wanna copy/paste a whole thing for it to not fit lol). As someone who's read a good chunk of IDW & feels as though I know these characters inside & out, I never wanna see his ass writin dialogue for the games again. Forces did better on account that they actually had ppl at SEGA who knew the characters decently but he jus does whatever & it I hate it.
Yeah, classic IDW
BRUH THIS VIDEO IS AMAZING! CANT WAIT FOR MORE AWESOME VIDEOS!
Glad you mentioned how big of a missed opportunity it was for this game not to tailor its physics engine to the world you traverse. Games like Breath of the Wild, for example, are so beloved because of how much you can interact with what's around you. It's hard to think of any good open world or sandbox games that don't take advantage of its environment in some way. It feels like Sonic Team completely stumbled into this game and just barely stuck the landing. And part of that was because expectations were so low.
I get that the Adventure games have their critics and some argue that they haven't aged well, but does anyone say that in regards to how Sonic controls in those games? The complaints usually involve other characters or a lack of polish. It feels to me like once Sonic went multiplatform, Sonic Team really, really struggled with his controls. But now that all console dev kits are so similar to PC, that shouldn't be an issue anymore. In the sequel or next game, they should focus on the physics engine before anything else. Huge stretches of terrain with the Adventure physics would already be fun on its own. I'm sure they could add some fun gimmicks on top of that, too.
now that ur caught up to date can u make a vid of where the series should go from here (what things to pick up and improve and what things to leave behind)
Yup, that's going to be addressed in part 2.
5:53-6:12 I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the Gamma connection I didn't even notice it luhmayo of course 10:04p.m. 6/1/2024
19:07 To be fair when they drop down the parry window on the DLC... Well, it shows why they did what they did, they don't know how to program a parry, i have seen a lot of Sonic fans, that love fighting or action games, just fail at parrying the attacks of the enemies when they tried to make an actual parry in this game... Heck they even complain that the frames that it last it's lower then high tier action games like DMC or Bayonetta
I find the short quills to be a great design choice, and a partial return to more "classic" artwork, like the OVA from the 90s, Juno Studio Sonic, or the japanese promotional artwork (and manual art) for Sonic 1, 2 and 3
Ian didnt necessarily do any of the story, from what i know, he only did the dialogue for characters and had only some involvment in the story itself
I'll write any thoughts that come up as I go through the video, I have played this game (for once) so I can talk about gameplay. The only problem is I haven't beaten this game, but getting spoiled isn't a problem for me so I'll watch that part of the video anyways. I'll try not to make this comment too massive or just make two comments (better for the algorithm). I generally agree with most of your story critiques but I want to mention that one of the main reasons the others characters go through an arc is because of how Sonic's character is fundamentally made. He has a flat character arc which is meant to effect other characters over effecting the character with the flat arc, a good example of this is in SA2. It seems obvious to me that Flynn went for this approach for Sonic's character. The arcs feeling unearned seems like a fair criticism though.
For the Starfall Islands I actually enjoyed them, I really like the exploratory feel that they have. I treat this game like a collect-a-thon so I enjoy myself with these islands. I personally don't care about how the models look as long as they are easily identifiable as each character. This goes for Sonic's quills. I personally didn't have much problem with the voice acting, nothing stood out to me as horrible and there are some subtle deliveries I liked.
I don't need to actually discuss anything about the music here since I agree with you.
I would like to comment on the boost itself, I think it's good here. It's used differently for sure but the immense speed it gives in the overworld really makes moving around in them a lot of fun and I'd like to mention you don't even have to deal with running out of it if you use Cyloop to draw an infinity symbol giving you infinite boost. It also can be really fun in Cyber Space when you use it to skip big chunks of the level.
Other than my comments all of your criticisms seem pretty valid.
dammit it's not galaga, people!
it's ikaruga!!
great video.
I agree with some of your points and disagree with a lot of your points. That said though? Amazing video. I can't wait to watch part 2 and hear your thoughts on the DLC.
The Boss tunes totally rock
Solid video, even though I don't agree with a good bit of it.
I do want to comment on players complaining about things that are optional.
You're choosing to skip the grind, I chose not to. We had different experiences and I didn't think it's fair to criticize the game when the player is choosing to abuse the system.
Sonic Team could've tweaked it more, I agree, but I disagree that it's entirely the devs fault when you're choosing to do the thing.
Well they fixed the final boss and now you can play as amy tails and knuckles in the new update
Yeah the titans while the QTEs are just there, they commend that with insane spectacle. Interesting fact that the spamming QTE you can spin your joystick.
I don’t know how knights blade in the second phase is stupid though, is up to you when you want to aim it at Knight and the aiming is very precise as well the fact he moves with his skates.
Really good video. I do think you should have mentioned that this is probably not the best way to get into the franchise if you havent played a sonic game before since the story does not make sense even a little bit if you havent played the previous games.
My biggest issue with Sonic Frontiers was the environments. At first I was impressed. But like many other open world games it got repetitive. The environments are not interesting or breathtaking like they were in Sonic Adventure games for the Dreamcast. Maybe fun and spectacular are better words. I loved going to different places in Sonic Adventure. Not so much in Sonic Frontiers. Roaming around and exploration is not very fun and gets really dull really quick.
Second the mechanics feel very flawed at certain parts of the game. Despite the training exercises I was still trying to figure out what in the world I needed to do for certain boss fights. Also was clueless on some of the objective areas. I had to look up videos on how to finish too many parts of the game.
Third the part I was so excited about turned out to be one of the largest disappointments. The RPG elements. This is just not set up well and doesn't create a fun factor.
I beat the game before the final updates with new characters. It will probably be a while before I go back and play it again. Ok so the addition of the other characters does hail back to the Adventure days and might add replay value to some.
Sonic Frontiers had some really good ideas and I wanted to love it but it's way too flawed and fun is what a game should really be all about at the end of the day. This is why I always go back to retro gaming.
I found the perfect video that summarizes my thoughts on Sonic Frontiers (base game, will watch the second part later of course). I just want to say, I am SO GLAD someone else points out how Rhea Island was the best part of the game (because everyone else hated it and I was so surprised! The Sonic fandom is always hyping up the wrong aspects). And so glad someone mentions how awful the Homing Attack feels in Cyberspace Stages and how Giganto is the coolest boss ever and then the rest (except Knight even though that fight is awkward af) just drop the ball. SONIC FANDOM LISTEN TO ME, JUST BECAUSE WYVERN LOOKS COOL AND HAS KICKASS MUSIC, THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT A GOOD FIGHT, IT'S AN AWKWARD AUTO SCROLLER WITH LAME PARRY TIMINGS AND YOU AWKWARDLY PUNCH THE HECK OUT OF IT WHEN YOU'RE GIVEN THE CHANCE.
And yes, Amy's arc sucks, and Tails's arc is too obnoxious. Like why are people saying the writing and voice acting (which isn't fully the fault of the VAs, a higher up approved of all that!!) is one of the best in the series ????? The freaking Mario Movie writes its references better for crying out loud SMH
I thought my computer wasnt good enough to render sonic frontiers when everything looked blurry and noisy.
This is exactly my thoughts about Sonic Frontiers.
it's an alright game despite all the iusses and that's a good first (half) step, because the Sonic games that cane after Generations were dogwater and I hope they would expand the gameplay, polish up some jank, and improve the artstyle.
SEGA and Sonic Team better off step up their game with their next Sonic game.
25:52 Actually it's crappy Ikaruga haha. Like it's literally the same gameplay and everything, getting hit by the same colored bullets as your ship and everything
5:24 Yeah you're scared of continuity
I played it for a few hours and concluded it was an unengaging hodge podge.
It’s more like the they know if they make a tiny mistake people will shit on the game and only look at the negative. In fact that’s what people are doing anyway
11:40-12:42 I've never heard anyone say that Sonic in Frontiers sounds like he's high on sedatives before 😂😂😂😂10:15p.m. 6/1/2024
Man, I want to play Sonic Frontiers on the Hot Wheels PC from 25 years ago. I want to use that steering wheel peripheral to control Sonic in the open zone. Maybe we can get some Hot Wheels DLC?
fingers crossed for update 4!!
Would also mention that the final boss is also outright skipped on normal and easy difficulty. There's no real reason so I can only speculate that it was something they threw together at the last minute and were either too strapped for time or embarrassed at the quality to adapt to the lower difficulties.
I like the memos. They give me Skylander story scroll vibes.
(Those are just collectables that are just there to establish lore)
Despite me not liking the game, just the fact that the general public (non-sonic fans) see this game as decent and not just some other garbage sonic game makes me forget about my opinion sometimes.
Also, I tried your game and it's really awesome! Keep up the good work!
Is your pfp from Megami Tensei?
@@spinballproduction9678 Yep, it's Nakajima from the Digital devil story OVA
Nice to hear
The game does lack confidence. They admitted to spending a ton of time experimenting to find an "open world" formula that worked, and then when they started playtesting the fancy combat system, people found it too hard and so they overbuffed Sonic and sidestepped the entire system by making bosses consist of more platforming minigames. Then they also made the entire game skippable through fishing and starfall. It is so bizarre that pinball then exists as a huge wall that demands solid play.
I wonder how much control Ian really had in writing the story. So much of the writing is ultimately inconsequential to the plot that I suspect he was just in charge of dialogue to flesh out a plot outline, not actual cutscenes and events.
Ironically, TOTK has the same problem with rocket shields being a "win button" for every puzzle and food allowing you to brute force any combat scenario. And you are made to grind the same bosses and enemies a lot more times. andthestorysucks
I believe Ian has a lot more power than people think... The JP may not have like his writing since they rewrote the English to fit with the JP side a lot better since they are pretty different from what people know in the English. He was in charge of writing the dialouge, but however he writes is on him and not SEGA. The story was made by Sega/Sonic Team first then Ian Flynn only wrote for the games's dialogue for the English. The JP writers came in second and wrote over his script, so they didn't mess anything up on the JP like the English. So, he may have had a lot more power since he was able to mention sticks and tangled willy nilly like that in the game, but the JP never overused a lot of references or mentioned any of characters as far as I can remember.
I agree about the game's lack of confidence, but I also think it's also a show of incompetence on the team in my opinion.
Interesting video. Didn’t expect these opinions honestly lol
The presentation was very mid.
I'm fairly sure is that with this being SEGA, upper management is to blame. Like, how they usually look at a project and go "mmmh, it needs to hand more stuff to the players. Mmyes"
9:48p.m. 6/1/2024
Yea i Saw The Update 3 Ending i Mean it’s Good But Update 3 Can Do Bit More Better! like 1: Playing as CyberSonic & Not SuperSonic 2 2: Supreme The End Boss Battle Style Would Do Better By Swapping SuperSonic & His Super Friends AsWell WHY We Didn’t Go To Space Again Sonic & his Friends Go CyberCorruption Forms To Beat The Moon Than The Moon Transform into Their ACTUAL “True End” Form a Titan Corruption,The Moon Combine ALL The TITANS Together Becoming a New Boss!
I can't help but agree... I always see people making comments saying how much they love Frontiers, and how the Titan bosses are the greatest thing to ever come to the franchise. But I just don't really get the hype. Maybe its just because I'm used to Nintendo games that always have a LOT of polish put into them, but Sonic Frontiers is distracting levels of janky. I'll encounter oddities just by playing the game regularly, especially in the titan fights (where I will sometimes just straight up clip through them while climbing them at the start).
The story is _almost_ interesting but they fumbled it so hard that its missing all the presentation that would make those ideas work in the first place (Sage is GREAT unfortunately we literally see none of her bond with Eggman throughout the story, and her flashback song becomes more of a joke when the only clips they have to show are her standing there getting yelled). There's a lot of lore bits that are just unnecessary and kinda weird (like the pinball machine, which they even talk about in the Final Horizon DLC... basically saying "idk" but with more words).
More than anything, I just really wish SEGA would give them the time (and money, though clearly they don't have an excess of that) they need to finish their darn games...
This game is amazing I I absolutely love it.
Same here! I loved Frontiers!
3:51 Continuity! Finally continuity and you complain
A great game its just a new beginning
I know the final bossfight of ikaruga like is sucks...but we still have the final horizon ending better than the previous one you can always play that..
22:08 You can disable this, please check the options menu
EggMan Diary
yeaj
The only good pinball section in 3D Sonic is Nights Pinball from Adventure. Change my mind.
It’s also afraid to be good.
They added Big in the game, so it's an automatic garbage Sonic game for me.
0:08 Crazy how not much changed from that IGN footage.
This game's story feels like it's made by Sega but Ian writes the dialogue.
That's pretty much correct, but how it's still written is still done by Ian tho.
retract your video title. frontiers just got an update tonight fixing the parry, the chaarcters' attack and defense stats, the towers, the trial, and knuckles' glide. update 3 is saved
Why? This video is about the base game.
@@spontmanI don’t think he notices that
something important to note is that Ian wasn't given total creative control over the story - SEGA/Iizuka/Kishimoto were behind all that, while Ian was tasked with scripting the dialogue more or less. doesn't excuse how self referential things got, but it does show that Ian wasn't given the chance to truly flex his craft like he could in the comics.
and as an aside, on the graphics being "less clean" than Forces - it looks like you might have TAA on - as usual it doesn't look good here and it's best not to use it, the game is locked to 60 so depending on your rig you have plenty of headroom to upscale
I've tried playing it without antialiasing (that's how I usually play most games) but it makes this game in particular look even worse.
Nice video! However, I have a different perspective on Sonic Frontiers. To me, it feels more like a tech-demo rather than a complete game. Given Kishimoto's strong connection with the fans on X and the frequent updates, it seems that SEGA/Sonic Team is actively collecting feedback to understand what resonates with the audience, which is likely being gathered to inform and improve aspects for the development of the next game. This is why Frontiers hesitates to be a better game, it's not a game, an application designed to collect information.
That, I must admit, is the dumbest thing I've ever seen
X = Twitter
But Sonic Frontiers was fantastic...
14:32 actually, they didn't do that. While frontiers has quite a few quirks when it comes to controls, they redid everything that's gameplay related from scratch. This was necessary because of the switch from the "pricy" havok engine to the open source bullet engine
Wasn't Havok only used for physics objects though? I'm pretty confident the player controller for Sonic is the same as LW and Forces. If not, then they copied a majority of the logic verbatim, which just seems... weird, even for Sonic Team.
@@spontman what did they copy aside from animations and models?
@@playbossthebest936 The way Sonic steers is the same, the wall running is copied from lost world, the air boost was nerfed but still feels similar to Forces, the gravity, air control, and double jump feel identical to Forces, the spindash seems to be copied from Lost World... I could go on but we'd be here all day.
@@spontman but the physics involving those moves are completely different...
@@playbossthebest936 In what way exactly?
Good video all though I think Ian Flynn should write Sonic The next decade and not just 1 more game after this
Regardless of how people feel about this title, most seem to agree that this is promising for the future, as the director of the game has stated his intention to stick with his vision for open world *COUGH open ZONE Sonic gameplay, interested to hear your thoughts on the third update, valid points were made through this video, and it seems well written and structured, nice job!
thx, also your profile pic is wonderful
Sonic frontiers is a game that gives me mixed feelings. It is a good game and I enjoyed it, but when I start to analyze it coldly, I realize that the game needs a lot of polishing.
I agree that it is better than Forces, but even so, it is not a great feat because Forces left the bar very low. Besides, if you analyze it, in some ways Frontiers is a pretty average game. At times it excels wonderfully and at others it fails miserably. It's as if for every good thing it has, it brings with it several flaws. Examples:
Sonic Frontiers has a very interesting story, but the pacing is inconsistent and wastes time on conversations that matter little or nothing to the main conflict of the plot.
Sonic Frontiers has Open Zones where you can explore beautiful landscape, but the floating platforms and rails clash too much with the photorealistic environment of the Islands.
Sonic Frontiers has traditional levels of a conventional Sonic game, but these are quite poor in creativity and originality. With this last one I do have a lot of problems...
Frontiers has 30 cyberspace levels, and while they aren't bad levels, it's quite disappointing that there are only four stages, and of those four stages, three are from previous games, and only one is completely new. Seriously, what's so fun about going through the same four stages over and over again? Hell, say what you want about Forces, but I think Forces did a better job in that regard. Just think about it for a moment, in Forces there are 23 levels and there are only 3 Green Hill levels in the entire damn game (Arsenal Pyramid I don't take into account because that level looks nothing like a typical Green Hill level). While in Frontiers, of the 30 cyberspace levels, there are 10 Green Hill levels (I'm not generalizing, you can check it yourself).
I understand that due to lack of time they can't create more stages, but I think the best thing they could have done was create levels with a cybernetic aesthetic, something like a distorted virtual reality full of glitches, similar to Null Space from Forces. This way you avoid monotony in the levels, but whatever.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Sonic Frontiers is a bad game, on the contrary, I think it's competent enough to be fun on its own, but this game has a lot of room for improvement.
Frontier's story for me is actually fire.
But the writing, Presentation, Lack of new characters and feel of environment is what turns me off this game.
And the custcene work is straight garbage.
This is honesty a really measured and sensible take on the game. Nothing here felt bitter or reactionary and i respect that.
The only thing I really disagree with is that this is the first character-centric game since SA2. Shadow in that game didn't really have an arc in that game, so much as a third act realization about what Maria actually said to him. The following games up to Black Knight had a lot more focus on character, and imo all of them did it much better than Frontiers.
AND SAGE TRINITY IS FINDING HERSELF WITH WENDY WITCHCART NAUGUS
This is the first time I’ve watched a frontiers review and agreed with just about everything the CZcamsr said. I especially think that this is RCS worse performance as sonic. I just want Ryan or Jason back because the acting has been bad for over a decade
I disagree with most of your points.
1. I agree that too many references to past events can be jarring if not put into a good story, but the way the story used its references is harmless at worst and important to the story at best. When Tails feels like he let Sonic down too much in past events (like being scared by Chaos 0 in Forces), Sonic is like: "Don't forget all the heroic things you did too". Tails figures he's inconsistent and needs to work on himself. The references were used effectively in the story, which I like. The only references I found jarring are Sticks inclusion in the main canon (cuz I thought she was a Sonic Boom character only) and the Babylon trio (but that only because I think racing games shouldn't be relevant to the main series).
Same goes with Sage's arc of learning to appreciate love. She references story events from the past to convince Eggman to join Sonic. Most of the references felt natural for me, and those that WERE a little forced weren't too in-my-face to feel jarring.
And the whole VA approach you claim to "suck" is clearly subjective. I like the deeper and more serious direction they gave to the VAs. Sonic, despite sounding like a dad now, still acts how he should. He's confident and likable. All of them are the way they should be IMO. Yes, even Amy because I appreciate her taming her obsession with Sonic and keeping it civil.
2. The mini-games that reveal parts of the map are fun because they require player agency and skill. Quick stepping on yellow panels requires genuine skill. The blue panel puzzles require you to assess the formation and figure out the solution, which is good because you have to actually think. Skydiving and running through blue squares requires a mastery of the game's movement, and so is jumping on yellow platforms or running to a goal with a time limit. The tetris blocks puzzles demand assessment like with the blue panels puzzles, and I like brain teasers. Bringing kocos to Knuckles requires avoiding spiky smashing pillars. The hacking mini-game (also the final boss from the base game) is fun for space shooter fans because it controls well and requires skill between switching colors and avoiding/neutralizing projectiles. Most of the mini-games are fun IMO.
The others which are super easy like stepping on buttons, running in a wheel for a while or cylooping stuff are so short I don't see why complain at all. If they were boring AND LONG, I guess I could've understood, but this isn't the case. Would it be better if all the mini-games were winners? Yes. But even as is, I enjoyed them.
The only one I collectively hated was the pinball mini-game because of the RNG deaths.
3. If you say the combat is boring then you don't understand it. If you want to get the most out of the combat, you have to mix different attacks. Go see combo mads on CZcams and tell me there's no skill ceiling to the combat.
You'll likely say: "But the game doesn't encourages mixing different attacks. You can spam the same overpowered move repeatedly to win". While it IS possible, you can do some really cool things that, if you know how to do them, will give you better results. With each cinematic attack slowing down the enemies, mixing more than 1 of them is encouraged to keep the enemies slowed-down and landing more hits. If you just use the stomp attack, you have to do a homing attack in-between each stomp to reset the attack. However, if you do both a stomp attack and a cyclone kick one after the other, you do have to stop with homing attacks, which will greatly extend your opening window to land hits.
Than there are those attacks that serve different roles. Sonic Boom is great for the early game, and even later as a long ranged attack (which is really useful on these shielded enemies). Cylooping is good to launch enemies into the air and dispatching them one at a time. Cyclone kick can add to that because it also acts as a launcher and can keep enemies in the air for longer. You can cancel the cinematic attacks with a quick-step if you want to do another attack. There is depth if you experiment with the combat.
That's why I love playing on Extreme difficulty (the 1-hit KO) mode. It's very hard, but dying in 1 hit makes me wanna gut gud. I'm forced to study the enemies and the combat to problem-solve.
I'll admit that the parry is OP, but try to play the game with a perfect parry and you realize that these enemies were not designed for it. There are enemies that pretty much FORCE you to parry if you want to get hits on them (like Wyvern or the 6 dogs). Obviously the better solution would be fixing the enemies instead of overturning the parry timing, but for what it is it still works.
4. The guardians are better than you give them credit for. A boss doesn't have to always be open to attacks to be enjoyable. Bosses can be fun if if you do something interesting or if there's a certain gimmick to do before you get to punch them. Look at KH superbosses. You can't always attack them, but that's because you have to avoid their attacks and find openings.
Squid and Fortress require you to do quick-steps to avoid projectiles before you get to them. Tank requires you to time homing attacks on his weak points between his flamethrowers. Spider has you cylooping his legs and skydiving through loops to break his shield. Caterpillar has you hitting blue orbs and avoiding red ones on rails to make him vulnerable. With ghost, you don't fight, but instead you need to go through obstacle courses and cyloop statues. There are little to no moments where you're standing doing nothing until the game says "you can attack now".
The only times that this IS the case is with shark and strider (and maybe the beginning of squid and fortress too). But with how the game allows the player to choose its encounters, if there's an enemy you don't wanna fight, you don't have to.
5. Open zone movement is great. It's true you're doing a lot of running to your next destination, and memory token challenges are relatively samy (and often automated). But with moves like rail launching, boosting off ramps and spin dashing, exploration and platforming gets so much better. You can find your own ways to explore the islands and get memory tokens. If you see a token in the air, you either do the platforming challenge, or you use your movement tricks creatively to get it early. Not every token is easy to get, but the game DOES encourage creativity. Giving players more than 1 way to problem-solve is always a plus, as it doesn't feel like you're "going by the rails" and are allowed to express yourself with the gameplay.
6. Cyberspace too has a high skill ceiling. With this game having different moveset and physics, you can do tricks you couldn't before. The double jump, stomp jump and the boost with extra air-height make playing stages from SA2, Unleashed and Generations interesting as you can navigate through these levels differently than before.
Watch speedruns and tell me these levels have no interesting gameplay to offer.
You do have some good points, which I'd love to be either patched or fixed. However, some of your issues with the game are the result of lack of experience.
6:35 i have that shirt!!!!
Let’s be honest. This game got held back by the ps4 Xbox one and Switch from its full potential
SONIC IS NOT AFRAID OF ANYTHING AND
SONIC TAKE OANYTHING KNUCKKES IS
THE ONE WHO
IS AFRAID OF
ANYTHING AND
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG IS ALSO NOT AFRAID OF LIONS LIKE SLEX THE LION FROM MADAGASCAR SO
I BELIEVE SONIC
THE HEDGEHOG
WON'T JABARI THE
LION TOO WHO IS
GONNA BE THE
PLAYABLE CHARACTER IN
SONIC FRONTIERS
AND JABARI THE LION IS ALSO GONNA BE THE SONIC VILLAIN
SONIC WILL DEFEAT
IN SONIC 2024 AM
I RIGHT
im genuinely shocked people still think generations had superior controls, you're gonna tell me it isnt flawed through its tanky ass controls and sensitive movement? frontiers feels leagues better in comparison
i dont see why youre gonna bother reviewing the updates if you didnt like the game as is though, its not some grand "i actually think the game is great now" you'll just shred apart the new features and denote the game as meh
at the very least you didnt make fun of anyone for liking the game, thats always a red flag in my eyes because people doing that comes off kind of petty
I was referring to the physics of Generations, not so much the handling. I want to give the updates a chance because I've heard good things about the Final Horizon. Thanks for watching
Sonic Frontiers is a return to nowhere, I refuse to call it a *_"return to form."_*
People who do don't know Sonic and should just stop calling themselves *_fans_*
whereas you are a * real * fan, aren't ya bubba?
Tone down the aggressiveness a bit. I agree, but this is the best we've gotten in a long time. All things considered Sonic fans are just starved of actually good content, so you can't blame them for getting excited.
@@lasercraft32is it too hard to thinks that not every sonic fans likes this game because they are "starving for good content" and have legit reasons to like it?
@@lupinthenerd439thank you, like sonic fans arent a hive mind. They can enjoy different games for different reasons. Like every doesnt think like you. Just some scream louder than others
oh you're another one of those people who gatekeep people from enjoying certain sonic games just because it isn't sonic utopia on crack
for your information good sir, i AM a fan- any sonic fan is a fan, they do not have to restrict themselves to adventure, generations and mania
in my opinion, YOU'RE not a true sonic fan, because you get off on shutting people out of this community for liking games