Spoiler: RE: Unfinished Content I wouldn’t have minded Rhea nearly as much had it actually just been a part of Kronos instead of its own separate entity on the menu. It would’ve been so cool to just pass between the two islands at will. It was fine in terms of gameplay though, I liked the dramatic tower climbing. Just felt a little burned that we were promised 5 islands and we only got 4 fully featured ones. As for Ouranos, is it bad that I didn’t really mind it at all? Despite being just Kronos 2 it was a big enough area that it still felt fun to explore and the Cyberspace levels were probably the highest quality in the entire game. That combined with having some really tough enemies even when at combat level 99, I enjoyed my time with Ouranos. It probably might’ve been better had it been given a winter wonderland makeover or something but I’m content with what we got. As a whole this game just feels unfinished in the same way that Generations is unfinished to me. Like with both games obviously there could've been more to the game and there was obviously supposed to be more content at some point in development, but I feel that the final products we got are still damn good either way, so I don't really mind it. Anyway I just really hope this game gets DLC to incorporate any elements that were left on the cutting room floor into some post-game content or something. I doubt it'll happen but hey, I can dream.
Spoiler See, that's the thing. I do actually agree with almost all of the choices made, I'm upset that they had to be made. Rhea and Ouranos both work better as isolated worlds than they would as part of Kronos (I actually think Ouranos is the best-designed area of the five), and it's not like any of this is reused content. I'm just upset that not only was development stressed enough that these compromises had to be made, but it was so bad that the scars they left are obvious even to laymen who aren't paying close attention.
… I wanted to play this again so I restarted only this time I’m going after all memory tokens. I actually got all of them on Ares Island before freeing Knuckles lol
It's so odd watching that Accolades trailer with so many no-name publications. Like Frontiers is somehow one of the most acclaimed games of the year alongside Elden Ring, A Plague Tale: Requiem, and God of War Ragnarök. I also find it odd that Spoiler there were so many high-quality CG cutscenes shown in trailers but there were none in the game. Is this the first mainline Sonic game with no CG in-game?
Hey you take what you get, a review is a review. They aren’t all no name publications though. Also this outsold God of War at least in Japan (there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say) And no this has been the trend… actually I think since Generations, save maybe for intro videos when you don’t press start on the title screen. The exception is Lost World that started with a CG cutscene. But in a game with a day night cycle a CG cutscene would break the immersion, unless you make like 12 variations of the same scene with different lighting I guess.
CGI was clearly marketing budget, same as Gens and Forces. Crazy to think how Unleashed handled things. In hindsight, the CGI of Unleashed probably got them the job to do the CGI Harlock movie.
CGI cutscenes are also kind of a waste. If the game engine can give good enough quality to cutscenes using way less resources (to produce, distribute, and play) than a possibly 4K video file, why not use it?
If they're having CG done at all, why not make it function as part of the game? I don't think people are asking every scene to be CG, but it would make sense to have an important scene be CG and then still use that CG as promotional material. Also, while the animation is a step up in Frontiers (when it's not just PS2-style "basic idle and mouth flaps"), the cutscenes still largely retain the limitations of everything since Unleashed, which is that they're mostly for dialogue and nothing all that exciting or visually-engaging happens in them. 06 for example has a dogshit story and dogshittier cutscenes, but the presentation of that story would blow everything since out of the water if it were as polished as the modern games. I think a lot of the people who want CG back in the story really just want the cutscenes to be more interesting to watch.
I mean, it's not if you're deliberately looking for the ones with the highest ratings, you just hope the audience will gloss over the fact they haven't heard of any of them. You'll go for that over a name you have heard of giving the game a lower score.
Ya know what I would really want in an upcoming update to Frontiers? S+ rank added to all stages. Make more times like Sanctuary 1-2 which require much better movement and knowledge of the stages to get much better times. I think that would be awesome to get times that push you to get better at the Cyber Space levels.
Given how the latest Pokemon games turned out, I'd say its a good thing that Sonic doesn't have attention on it for once.
That was what I meant, I'd argue most people (even gaming enthusiasts) completely gloss over the review outlets and focus mostly on the score. The marketing team had to deliberately ignore any unfavorable reviews from well-known outlets (like Gamespot, Destructoid, The Guardian, or IGN) and use only the overwhelmingly positive reviews from lesser known outlets to make the game seem like it received some critical acclaim to the average consumer. It's common to see it in many games but it's just odd to see it in a Sonic game.
I just finished the game. I have some thoughts. Overall? It's pretty fucking good, not gonna lie. I really enjoyed my time with it. It might be my fourth-favorite 3D Sonic game, behind Colors, Generations, and Sonic Adventure. It doesn't entirely stick the landing but I think it's overall a successful stab at making something new with Sonic without losing the series' core identity. I think there's a lot that can be done with this formula and I'm excited to see where they take it. I think the biggest thing for me is that the core gameplay is very solid. I'm a huge sucker for collect-a-thons, like Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and the like. I've long wanted a Sonic one and, well, now I have it! I think Sonic Team managed to shift the series' direction to a more open, nonlinear style of play very well. The worlds are a ton of fun to run around in and explore, and Sonic controls really well. He's snappy, responsive, and feels the most versatile he's felt in a while. I had a lot of fun doing nothing but just toying around with his abilities and seeing what I could pull off. The combat is pretty simplistic, but I quite enjoyed it. If the Werehog had been like this, Sonic Unleashed would be my favorite Sonic game. The combat's mostly one-button but I found it really satisfying to chain together combos, especially with how much visual flair and how much damage they do. And then the bosses, oh man I really liked the bosses. They're probably the best bosses the series has had in 3D; there's a good amount of strategy required to take them down and I enjoyed how they integrated platforming into the combat. Cyber Space has been incredibly divisive, but you know what? I liked it too. The reused layouts didn't really bother me because the stages feel a lot different in the Frontiers engine, and it was a fun guessing game figuring out which layout had been reused. The nerfed boost means Sonic doesn't go nearly as fast as he did in Unleashed, Colors, or Generations, and he can't kill enemies either. So that ended up changing how a ton of levels felt, and made enemies feel more purposeful rather than things to boost into. And I was also happy to have more boost levels, as I'm a huge fan of the boost gameplay and wish they'd done more with Generations-style level design. And man, the soundtrack is fuckin' dope as hell. Undefeatable rocks hard. The Cyber Space music, to quote Tuco Salamanca, hits like a mule with his balls wrapped in duct tape. It's a Sonic game, so the music is 99% likely to be good, but seriously. This soundtrack is awesome as heck. That being said, Frontiers isn't perfect by any means. It's not unfinished in the slightest, but it's pretty jank. I found it a bit odd how Sonic, like, sticks to surfaces (I would've preferred some classic-style momentum for launching me off things). Visually, it's pretty bland; the worlds don't really feel Sonic, and kind of blend together. There should've been more vibrancy and surrealism, in my opinion, not to mention the pop-in. And I definitely would've preferred more original Cyber Space layouts, especially considering how the original ones are incredibly well designed and show that Sonic Team still knows how to make fun and engaging boost levels even post-Forces. I'm a bit torn on the story, though I don't really play Sonic for the story in the slightest, so it wouldn't affect my enjoyment of the game even if it was bad. I thought the callbacks to past games were fun and made the universe feel more alive and cohesive, even if they were a little shoehorned in. The character interactions were alright, even if I think they're kind of blandly written. The script's not terrible by any means, it just didn't leave an impression on me, good or bad. Overall though, I really enjoyed my time. Definitely a recommend in my book. I'd rate it somewhere between a 7.5 to 8/10.
People want CGI cutscenes because Marza is better at animation than Sonic Team, by a huge margin. Sure, the Super Sonic stuff looked cool, but animation-wise it was pretty rough.
I’d argue they at least improved a lot in this game. Animations aren’t perfect but they had 100% more life in them than Forces did
Yeah, some of the optional side stories are a little rough but the story cutscenes look pretty good for Sonic standards most of the time. Sonic is actually very expressive in scenes like when he first encounters Giganto, or when he and Knuckles are fooling around. It’s a massive step up from the past few games. Again, It’s just most of the side stories that feel kinda lifeless from my experience, probably because they’re optional content.
Gonna be honest, the side story cutscenes don’t look any worse than what you see in other games of this scale. I don’t remember Breath of the Wild having particularly impressive cutscenes and Fire Emblem Three Houses’ cutscenes are all pretty bad in one way or another, with the in-game dialogue cutscenes being downright laughable in their presentation. Not to say that I’m happy with where Frontiers finds itself in this regard, I definitely want better in the future, but what we got is mostly inoffensive to me (except those times where they use eyelids to do the things that eyebrows are supposed to do).
It's funny because the latest Pokémon games with Scarlet and Violet falls into the exact same pitfall. Major plot scene of note? The characters are outright the most animated they've ever been in the franchise, with a real refined polish to it you don't see often in these things. After the past decade of JRPGs like Falcom games having really sloppy animation and shortcuts everywhere and Pokémon never being very high budget in the past, it really stands out. Then the entire rest of the game is still the same handheld 3D tier of characters turning in place, reused animations since Sun & Moon, robotic and stiff idle animations, you name it. Do the Side Story and non-important story scenes in Frontiers look iffy? Yeah, and especially because shadow resolution in this game is pretty crap even on the high setting, so getting close-ups of these characters with jagged broken shadows looks pretty bad. Are they industry standard for this sort of thing? Even with $60 games, yes, quite often. And hell, going into other Sega territory, I love Yakuza / Like a Dragon and the overwhelming majority of that series' content is this kind of low-budget thing, so that's probably why I shrug it off here.
