Sega tend to...learn the wrong lessons from their game's successes, good or bad. So...they'll take the most surface level interpretation of this game's success and just double down on it without building an actual foundation until we get sick of it.
I remember clearly that playtesters, IGN, Game Informer, and other impressions praised the Cyber Space, either calling it as good, as good as the rest of the game, or the best part. Little word about the controls or physics feeling off. Only very recently did any players start seriously critiquing the Cyber Space stages, which is why I'm not so eager to claim they're terrible, as well as the fact that most people only played the first Green Hill, Sky Sanctuary, and Chemical Plant stages. The City levels still seem like they're both fun and original, and I doubt they are the only levels in the game like that. That's only in his normal speed and not when he's boosting, it seems. The dash panels make Sonic go over his top speed, but then Sonic cranks down to normal. I want to say that will change with the speed upgrades, but if the sliders don't affect Cyber Space, I doubt that will either.
So I'm late to the party, but TGS being a thing and all prompted me to take a look. 1. I hate the recycled cyber-level assets with a passion, but I am starting to understand the intent a bit more now. They are essentially Breath of the Wild's shrines, which was a critically acclaimed game that literally used the same visual assets for over 100 puzzles/mini dungeons. It's the Nintendo philosophy of creating content via recycling tropes, but ensuring there's at least gameplay/challenge to it. I loved that Sega didn't do this, but I will confess that there 'is' merit to the approach if it's essentially the game's filler/grinding element and not necessarily the only meat and bones of the title. From a more practical gameplay/design aspect it does start to make sense. If this is our equivilant of "Breath of the Wild sucks because it doesn't have enough regular dungeons", I won't like it, but I'll accept it as long as the rest of the gameplay is high quality and the stages work as challenge stages that aren't broken/buggy. 2. Any gameplay we see from these stages isn't something I'll take seriously if there are a massive amount of them, with a lot of stages/concepts/challenges being unseen. Again, it's not an approach I like... but it's not much worse than the weird way Chaotix recycles 5 zones across 5 acts each, and I still enjoy that game. 3. The quality of the open world maps are going to have to be the meat of the game, and I do admit the core open world footage looks decent, if not good to me. Followed then by combat/boss challenges. 4. This game will live or die by the quality/depth of its engine. They're obviously trying to create Open Zelda Sonic, which is a huge task. But if the main map/maps are well designed, the open gameplay allows for a variety of play styles, and the exploration is fun and uses Sonic's abilities in meaningful ways, this game does still have potential. Combat being good certainly won't hurt either if they nail it. We shall see. The game remains a "maybe" for my buy/not buy list.
I know we're all sick of Chemical Plant (I'm too, as well) but it kinda looks nice here? I don't know how to explain it, but there is just something charming here, I dunno. I think... it looks more steampunk-ish? I'm not sure, I'm just saying I like it here, visually. And yeah, I really want listen to that song as well. Sounds really great.
Going to sound really basic here, but I must say I really do like the extra tubes/pipes in the background. Just love to see more of the aesthetic and for the level to feel more "filled in."
They're kinda the same character but Sage is cute so she's infinitely superior purely because of that.
Not sure if this was posted, but a Japanese Twitter user posted the differences between the English and Japanese scripts. Seems the Japanese script gives a little glimpse of what's going on in Starfall Islands.
I love seeing classic themes all distorted and crazy. I'd love to see some more extreme stuff, like parts of the world being all "digital" or whatever, weird abstract architecture, and maybe even parts of some areas bleeding into others.
I have much more faith in Sonic Team than that and they usually improve on formulas and only let them go when there was nothing else to do with them. In a way this game is the natural evolution of what they were doing with Lost World.
I agree. Lost World was very much a re-set in game engine and controls after Generations. Lost World > Forces > Frontiers is a clear line where the same team keeps trying to improve, at a much slower pace than Sega did before with Sonic. Which kinda sucks as the Generations base was so good, but what ya gonna do
I disagree because Iiuzuka has made strides in making Sonic games more simple since Force's dropped. Such as simplifying the level design in Team Sonic Racing and adding the team mechanic so a good player can carry one that isn't that great, something he literally said he was trying to do. Colors Ultimate having Tails save mode, so you could fall into pits and not lose your rankings. And Origins having the coins to instantly retry special stages. I'm not arguing over these changes being good or not but they are consistent with them making Forces more simple to be more accessible to a wide audience of people.
I agree that despite Forces being filler to test out the direction ST was taking mechanics in and possibly also to reinforce the trend of understandably polishing and re-using existing assets of all types, and also to serve as a display of their desire to improve upon what they have establised. Pumping out a 3D entry was still surely top priority, even if it was explicitly a budget title. Everything officially disclosed about Frontiers indicates ST's desire to refine and expand upon the foundations they laid in the most recent releases. The reveal of a big fishing adventure, along with Iizuka's stated desire to deliver a proper Adventure 3, lead me to believe that this is a game they truly care about and the faith they have in it serving as a solid foundation for future entries.
The Sonic Frontiers booth at TGS is at maximum capacity today, after 30 minutes of being open. Again. In addition, Japanese twitter has quite positive things to say about it. I literally haven't seen a single strictly negative tweet, which is weird because people generally like to talk about their negative experiences more.
This is why I still tune in to check it out. Before the hands on gameplay I thought it looked awful and just tuned out. I still think it looks bad, that's not exactly a secret. But the fact most people who have played it have enjoyed it can't just be waved off. Even IGN liked it, which I thought might just be because they had exclusive early coverage rights, but I'm thinking they genuinely did like it. This marks Frontiers as separate from other Sonic games. Lost World actually looked promising during the lead up and fans were trying to dismiss early negative public player opinions at booths. 'They aren't real gamers' etc. Rise of Lyric wasn't clearly a disaster until the public demos started and people shared their experiences of how awful it was. There's simply no denying that Frontiers has been received differently.
That's pretty much where I'm at. I'm still skeptical that I'm going to like playing this as much as I want to like playing this, but I have more of an open mind about it than I did before.
