Yes, as was prophesied (Honestly not sure I’ve ever even played DKC 2, and if I did never got very far)
ooof, this subjective vs objective discourse has always been exhausting, and it gets worse when it comes to Sonic, cause while i agree that art is ultimately subjective, but when it goes on to exist within a community long enough, people establish what works and what doesn't work, and "objective" framework does get established, and working within that framework and sometimes subverting it helps us build much more pleasing work and productive discussions and developments. And honestly, we really don't have that here in this franchise. But at the same time, i'm the type of guy who celebrates inconsistency and engage with this franchise not within my own standards.
The most impressive damage control I've seen for this game is on the narrative front. All the praise is towards "fixing" 2 characters out of the 6 major ones in the game, with the other 2 being locked behind audio recordings you have to buy in tucked away mini game. Nothing else in the game was entertaining, unless you really love back and forth shots of 2 characters talking about the same shit over and over again. Wait a second.. This game stinks but that's the biggest head scratcher for me when it comes to the defense force. + - This game still rules though
To be clear, I do think Sonic controls better in the open world than in the cyber space levels. I'd call the cyberspace controls terrible (with the 2D levels borderline unplayable) but the open world controls simply bad. To begin, the rail controls are still broken in the open world. Sonic still loses all momentum and slows down when he jumps and continues to do so the longer he is in the air. Not a huge deal throughout but it does make Chaos Island even more insufferable than it already is. Traversing those confusing rail systems with the broken rail controls was pretty dreadful. The rail controls in the Rhea tower climbs are so broken that I reversed back into Sonic 06 territory of relying on automation and pressing nothing in the hopes I didn't fall. I pressed no buttons and allowed the game's automation to lead me up from the rail to the hoops above because anything else was just pitiful in getting height. Sonic would lose all speed as soon as he jumped. I also think Sonic's rigidity in air is a problem. He similarly is very unresponsive to adjusting his air direction in the open world once he is committed to a running jump (not boosting or jogging). This was often a problem when I would jump right and try to direct myself back left but Sonic would refuse to avert his course back left. Again the double jump is completely useless when surely it should have a purpose of correcting jumps. Sonic's air control is so bad that I would say that even Generations' air control (which is honestly pretty bad) is perhaps better. Certainly below the standards of Sonic Adventure (which isn't good by any metric).
Without bringing up Frontiers specifically, I think we've all been there with our favorite franchises or artists when they go in a radically different direction than what we like from them and you see a lot of praise for it online that seems to gloss over your own personal problems with it that should be SO apparent to everyone else, to the point where it holds the media back, but they just don't see it. I was there earlier last year with a rapper I'm fond of who changed musical direction (A Woke Rapper became Brag Rapper) entirely and when I vented about it online I realized everyone I was arguing with was way younger than me, and every fault I had with it wasn't something they noticed because they didn't have a deep rooted idea of what "Tyler the Creator" SHOULD be and sound like. Every fault was apparent to me but they didn't see it. I was there again this year with The Batman. I thought it was a fine movie but as someone who consumes Batman content daily, I didn't see anything new it did that made it worth watching over my favorite comics and animated series. But a lot of people did like it because it was a well made movie and they aren't as deeply tied into the Batman mythos as I am. It didn't stop it from bugging me though. It was the same thing, lots of people I argued about it online were probably way younger than me. I realized this because on my post on Reddit a lot commenters were saying this was their first Batman movie. And honestly I could see it being good in that perspective, just not with all I know. I really get the feeling of "What the heck? How do you guys think this is good? This breaks all the rules of what we like about this thing! And when it's not doing that it's just retreading old stuff we liked and you're praising it for it!" I've been there many times amongst many fandoms (Jojo Bizzarre Adventure, Star Wars, Pokemon are a few others I can think of). You just have to understand you're now experiencing people with a new perspective vs what has been the status quo for the last few years. I'm sure a lot of fans agree with EVERY point you made and can help you find new ones to make too. You just won't find many of those people here, where the game is generally well received. And those (like me) who have problems with it, generally think a sequel will be able to bring out the games full potential. Just a matter of different perspective, I think.
I rate the controls based off of how intuitively they allow me to pull off tricks and... well... literally control Sonic's abilities to adapt to his environment. It really is that simple. If I quickly reach the point where a game feels second nature to me with some skills being refined over time, as far as I'm concerned, it has good controls. That remains true for the open world, far less so for cyberspace. I don't intent to get into an indepth argument about it. Unlike many here, I've yet to beat the game and am on Chaos Island. I ended up refunding the steam version (not because I disliked it) and picking up the PS5 version as part of the many black Friday sales due to the deep discounts that were available. I'll probably switch back over to the PC version at some point when it's on a deeply discounted sale, and trade in the game at some point before it loses all value. I'll be playing the game more this weekend. All I know is I am having a lot more fun with it than I did for either Lost Worlds or Forces, and I'll leave it at that. Heck, more than Colors too for that matter. Generations and the Adventure Games are the only titles I can definitively say I've enjoyed more for 3D Sonic so far. (Maybe Heroes, but that's a big maybe.) (And just to address it, I'm not terribly impressed by the lore in this. I haven't been impressed with Sonic's lore since the IDW mandates became known, as I truly dislike most of them. That's not the appeal of this game for me.)
As someone that disliked the controls in Forces and liked the controls in Frontiers, if anyone can't understand why someone could hold these positions and actually wants to understand, I can offer my two cents. First, I need to clarify that I feel like there's a distinction regarding "controls" not being addressed that makes it a confusing and difficult topic to talk about. There's "controls" as in "my inputs reliably execute the actions that I expect in the game" and there's "controls" as in "I've learned how the game reacts to all of my inputs in different situations and I have opinions on them". Taken as a whole, Frontiers is more reliable than Forces, which deems it necessary to gently take control away from you in subtle ways such that can often feel like you aren't doing much. Contrast with Frontiers, which never does this, barring clearly defined 2D/3D sections and the inconsistent "trick mode" and ymmv how much either bothers you.
I think some people also use "controls" to refer specifically to Sonic's base ground movement, particularly with regards to turning, since that's most linked to input (I'm certainly guilty of this). I think "Sonic turns like a fucking dream both when boosting and otherwise" and "momentum doesn't exist to a sufficiently satisfying degree, the drop dash is clunky and air movement is a complete crapshoot" are both valid statements that easily coexist, and I can take in good faith that the disagreement here is simply one of perspective and intention when any given person talks about controls. Not that the other things I've listed are moot points, but I really can't overstate how much of a difference it makes just to have Sonic's turn during a run be as perfect as it is. I think the only other games I've played that really match this basic movement are Super Mario 3D World and Super Mario Odyssey, probably the former moreso than the latter. There's something that just works when I'm running up a wall on Rhea Island, weaving between obstacles as I'm boosting in a manner that frankly just isn't possible in Forces or even Generations.
That's...oddly accurate and heartwarming, given the rollcoaster that has been Frontiers' promotion and release.
Yeah. This game has real flaws, but has also clearly connected well with a large gamer audience that loves it. And frankly, that's actually kind of heartwarming to see. If nothing else, it's nice to see people actually excited and genuinely enjoying a Sonic game again without any sense of irony. Forces clearly had a lot of irony behind its reception, even among those who liked it. I didn't play it at all until last year because it just looked so dull, and that's exactly what it turned out to be (unlike 06 which was outright broken and full of bad ideas amidst some misguided passion). Mania was sincerely loved, but even that was first released 5 years ago and 2D Sonic is just a different genre at this point. This is the first game in a long time that's made the 3D kiddos feel cool again, and you know what? I was there in both in the 1990s and 2001. I get it. I'm happy there's finally a game they can point to again and say "I love this, and so do a lot of people."
I feel so called out But now that you bring it up, yeah, of the three 3D Sonic games I actually like (SA1, SA2, and this), Frontiers is pretty much the only one I wouldn't be embarrassed showing to someone who isn't into Sonic. Like, it is definitely janky, but it's less buggy and lots of its design is much better than what I'm used to from a 3D Sonic game. I still get fuckin hype over SA1's intro cinematic and I think that Perfect Chaos is a final boss that can't be beat in terms of just....total hype over how it fits into the story and the stakes at play, but I can't unironically actually tell people that without being a liar. I personally think they're hype as shit, but I know full well they're objectively not great. It makes me super happy to see youtubers I follow that normally bounce off of 3D Sonic games just going all in on this one, especially when the first boss happens. There's something magical about it. Now I want Sonic Team to drill down further into what makes people excited about this and clean it up a bit.
WYM? SA1 and SA2's endings are genuinely good climaxes to their stories. Especially 1 with how everyone at Station Square starts cheering his name.The only ones that would look down upon them are online folks and snobs. I have no fear telling people those games are tight. I can't say the same for Frontiers. The music is bopping but there was no actual build up to its final chapter. "Oops, we got to finish the game"
The soundtrack hits right in the soul (Dear Father: I'm a child of divorce, since I was 2, and always cried like a baby when my father dropped me at home during summer holidays, the only time that I could spend time with him. Divorce ended on a good note btw, as far as I'm aware). Why didn’t Jun Senoue write a song for this game? Anywho, the soundtrack's a masterpiece. KENICHI TOKOI, ARE YOU OUR MAN?
Perfect Chaos looks silly in-game, and one of the game's major cutscenes in that part of the story is straight up missing things (there are sound effects of the Egg Carrier II presumably firing weapons at Perfect Chaos but there is literally nothing). The monologue by Tails saying that Chaos has only used up the negative emotions of the Emeralds comes out of nowhere and is borderline gibberish. Finalhazard is a lizard cyborg that has rammed an entire cannon up its ass and looks a lot like a penis. Actually, wait, how even big is the cannon anyway, Biolizard only took up part of a room, it wasn't skyscraper sized... Anyway, my point is is that it's kind of a hard sell to anyone who isn't headfirst super into the games in question. Just pulling up the final fights out of context and trying to tell someone "this is so hype tho" is not really something I think I can do, even if to me they are totally hype, and I think it's encouraging that somehow Frontiers is getting people onboard for that hype shit despite the past like two decades of [3D Sonic game discourse].
I could say the same about Adventure 1 as-well. Every story had an ending, there was no need for the final chapter. Uh-oh he somehow slurped up all 7 emeralds with complete ease so, why didn't Chaos just do that earlier? Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to excuse the ending for Frontiers, I can understand completely why people have found it so underwhelming. This is an issue that plagues even some of the better Sonic games, and I don't think it's any better or worse than the Adventure era games endings.
FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE SEES HOW CRAZY BIOHAZARD IS. He shoved a space station up his ass and you gotta pop boils what even is that? The music makes the fight fun but when you take a step back it’s silly lol
The boils come from the atmospheric burns, apparently, but yes, it’s silly. That said, I really wonder what a fleshed-out Frontiers final boss would’ve been like. As others have pointed-out, the dialogue suggests something more ambitious that isn’t the bullet hell.
Alright, I finally beat Frontiers with 100% map completion, on hard mode, and I maxed out Sonic's stats. Took me about 26 hours when I decided to grind and go about it at my own pace. Overall? I'm happy with the open world/zone aspects. For all the complaints about the game being rushed after Chaos Island, I was pleasantly surprised to find how meaty the 5th Island still was. I actually did not expect to get as much time out of it as I did. The 30 cyber stages were better than I expected in terms of music and stage design. Still a far cry from the classics, and I'd still put the designs of SA1, SA2, Generations, Unleashed, and Heroes above these, but they were still surprisingly clever in terms of shortcuts even with the recycled tropes and visuals. If you had released these as a DLC challenge pack for Generations 10 years ago, they would have been a nice bonus. Arcade mode even makes them kind of fun to go back and replay. Unfortunately, as I said in an earlier post... the combination of physics/controls truly hold them back. It's blatantly clear they reverse engineered these stages from the main open-zone engine and it the game wasn't built for them first. The double jump is needlessly imprecise, floaty, and hard to control, yet so many actions also destroy your momentum completely and make you go to a grinding halt. It's truly awful. The air dash makes this even worse and sent me to countless avoidable deaths. I haven't played around with mods yet on the PC version, so perhaps some of the physics mods are fixing it. I know Sonic Team won't fix these on their own, which is a shame. That makes these stages the worst part of the game when, even despite the recycled level tropes, they could at least be a fun challenge. The Open zone world maps and controls are thankfully far better. The engine does not have classic physics or momentum, but does have tricks of its own and grants clever players some pretty great degrees of freedom, which I quite enjoy. I found countless tricks and shortcuts to make progress yet never broke the game, and ran into invisible walls to block progress only twice in 25+ hours. Some of the 2D sections could be annoying, but I liked the fact that I almost always found ways to break out of them when I needed too, and unlike the cyber stages, I never had oddities in them give me unfair deaths. A few of the more gimmicky bosses take way too long to grind through due to their design, but the rest can be beaten quite quickly with clever tricks once you master the game's combos. The game's combat is relatively shallow, but still satisfying to execute. I most enjoyed just exploring the maps and trying every route I could find. I found myself 100%ing each map and hunting down each character's extra script/dialogue even after beating the game just because of how much I enjoyed the exploration alone. Unfortunately, the rewards for doing so dried up very quickly once you beat the main story, but it was appealing enough for me to stick through it for my own sake. Visual design of the open zones are... fine. I actually liked the variety in the last 2 Islands more than I expected, but overall the game only having 3 real visual tropes felt kind of a bland copout, but oh well. The game's lack of exciting visual variety is definitely a low point for me, as Sonic games giving you a variety of level tropes was always their main appeal to me when I was young, but it didn't impact my enjoyment of the core game and exploration, and they did try to have some variety within the themes on each Island, so I could see some clear efforts at least. Story and lore is forgettable. Western style character progression while the Sega's IDW mandates still will keep Sonic trapped in Mickey Mouse styled perpetuity. Chaos and the Chaos Emeralds came from space now. Master Emerald is still a mystery. Woo. Eggman gets a daughter, loses her, then the post credits scene hints at something. Tails, Amy and Knuckles say they will evolve as characters, but I suspect we'll be back to status quo by the next game. Nearly every mainline Sonic game gets referenced in dialogue, but that isn't exactly what I find exciting about the lore anyway. I give Ian props for effort and his dialogue was solid, but it's clear SEGA does not want Sonic to ever truly have a Sonic game push the boundaries again the same way the Adventure games did... and given how badly Shadow and to a lesser extent 06 turned out, maybe that's just for the best. At least this felt more impactful than Colors, Gens, and Lost Worlds. It was also much more focused than Forces, which tried an over the top story but made it completely forgettable. The music is good. We all know this. No further needs to say it. Oh, and fishing simultaneously breaks the game, but makes grinding bearable. It's weird, but I used it to the fullest extent and don't regret it. Kind of love that it made Big relevant again, even. And the "true" hard mode boss being a bullet hell fest SCHMUP was the last thing I expected. I managed to stay unspoiled for that, and played on hard mode anticipating the extra boss. That was... not... how I expected it to go down. WTF Sega. I was spoiled on how The End looked... but not how it would play. I can absolutely see why they decided to keep that locked in hard mode, as there are no doubt a large chunk of players who won't be able to beat that boss. Overall... I'd put this above just SA1 in terms of gameplay (since SA1 has aged so poorly), but still below SA2, Heroes and Generations. I think I enjoyed it more than Unleahsed and Colors, however. I won't make any comparisons to 2D games since they're too wildly different, and any other 3D titles easily ranks below this. So that's that.
