Figured that's what it did. I just turned it off once I had gotten everything else and had to grab it as the last thing.
Yeah, I like character action games but I think the devs even stated outright that it's not what they wanted here. I'm a bit on the fence about the combat. I found it fun, especially in the beginning, but there are some little things that niggle me. I don't like the super long buffer which means when you try to attack out of a boost, you need to wait an excessive period, or else you will trigger the "boost + whatever" move. I also think while the unlimited parry is super useful for traversal (holding a parry in the air to freeze all movement and readjust), it should really be a timed move. Furthermore, once you get to a certain level, the game just feels super unbalanced in your favour when fighting any enemy or boss. So I think they should definitely increase the (potential) complexity, but I don't think it should result in increasing the time it takes to clear an encounter. I can't give any comments on mods since I only own for Series X and Switch, but I think if the community really rallies around one, send a Tweet to Kishi. I was super against that other dude linking our thread to him, but giving examples of people enjoying a more in-depth combat experience may show him that fans will accept that complexity in Sonic. I personally think that character action elements would add a nice flair to Sonic's 3D gameplay. However, I think they should probably limit the longer battles to actual bosses/mini-bosses and let mooks be dispatched super quickly and/or avoided. Sonic has never had amazing bosses in 2D or 3D, so this could be a change for the better. Quick edit: Ninja was pretty fun to fight in its early levels, but Master and Kunoichi have too many instances of parrying consecutively without getting a chance to counter, so it just puts you into Hedgehog(/witch) time where you just wait a long time for the attacks to finish up.
Re: combat I've never been drawn to play character action games, so I'm glad Frontiers' combat isn't as sophisticated and complex as in one of those, but I also appreciate that it's not nearly as mind-numbingly-dull and one-note as the combat in Heroes or 06. I think it strikes the most acceptable balance in a Sonic game yet. That said.... ....as someone who was happy that most combat encounters were either quick or skippable, I would gladly see it outright removed if that meant more staff could be allocated to fine-tuning and polishing other bits, like how lively and systemic the world is, character movement quirks, level geometry and the way the player reacts to it, platforming challenges being actually integrated into the landscape proper, a more interesting art direction, etc. I don't inherently mind its presence in the game, as it is now, but I do think there are better things the devs could be spending time on. If it had to stay (and it obviously will), I would like to see it improved in some areas, the most obvious of which being the skill tree. Let me upgrade moves in addition to unlocking them. Had way too many unusable skill points way too early into the game. A couple other ideas, which are more "armchair gamedev" in nature: Partly inspired by that Persona talk, I wouldn't mind giving Sonic different elemental abilities or attacks unlockable in the skill tree. He's been associated with wind, fire, and lightning at different times and in different ways, and it'd be interesting to have different enemies weaker and more resistant to different types of elemental attacks. I'd also enjoy seeing the combat interact with and impact the environment. Maybe wind-type moves could put out fires, maybe fire-type moves could burn trees and plant-based obstacles, and maybe lightning-type moves could electrocute enemies in the water. Similar to how Breath of the Wild had different elements interact with different materials and environmental objects. Bring rolling back, and let rolling into an enemy lead into a combo (I don't know if the Drop Dash can already do that, because it sucks so bad that I stopped using it very early on). If there was to be a snow biome, let me become a bigger and bigger snowball if I roll down a hill, and let me do more damage on contact with an enemy the bigger my snowball is. Give me an electric rolling move that attracts rocks to me when rolling down rocky mountain slopes for a similar size-increasing effect. There's already a speedometer, and enemies already have varying amount of HP, so let the speed at which I roll into something impact how much damage that collision does to it. I think these are fairly intuitive (going super fast makes wind in the air, fire on the ground; wind puts out fires, fire burns plant; fast thing and big thing hit harder than slow thing and small thing; etc). They would make the combat at least a little more deep, sophisticated, and satisfying, without also making it overly complicated.
If they're going to keep combat they should commit to it. I don't like how much sloppy game design in this title is covered up by the fact that most of the game is technically optional. No one would care about forced encounters if the encounters were fun. The controls are bad and have too many overlapping actions. I realized why there are barely any enemies in the platforming sections when I tried to air boost into a stomp and ended up triggering one of Sonic's specials. Those controls are probably why the encounter design is so simple. Sonic almost never has to fight more than one enemy at once, and those groups of enemies are mostly the same 6 grunts for the whole game. The way to increase variety in a game like this is usually to mix and match different types of enemies together, but the game mostly avoids doing that here, I guess because camera control and picking out specific targets doesn't hold up with how cluttered the control scheme is. Another thing is just that the enemy design in the second half is just really, really fucking lame. If I were being honest I'd say from the desert onward but those enemies are mostly just simple and not an active nuisance the way some of the ones on Chaos and Ouranos are. So much automation. So many forced, scripted encounters the second you get near them. Enemies where you're only getting one option to work with so you just kind of sit around and wait for the parry to trigger.
This is super annoying. That’s why I think the buffer needs to be shortened substantially. I do the majority of token challenges in unorthodox ways and frequently end up triggering the ball projectile by going from a boost into a homing attack. There’s like a good 1-2 second period you need to avoid pressing anything to avoid this.
Any idea why the quickstep seems super laggy to perform and why the step distance seems to overshoot what would be expected in the level layout?
Average fights in Devil May Cry are not usually that much longer than those in Sonic Frontiers? I've played DMC3 and DMC5 recently and I usually let the fights go on longer because they are fun and stylish. But if I wanted to wrap things up quickly then the standard mobs wouldn't take much longer than those in Frontiers. I mean there are the enemies which can be beaten in one hit in Frontiers, but they aren't the standard mobs. People are also conflating complexity with time duration. Complexity doesn't always mean that the gameplay experience will take longer. Sonic Frontiers is clearly influenced by Bayonetta and some of its mechanics are influenced by the series (like Witch Time). I don't think it's controversial to say that if Sonic Frontiers is going to have a character action combat system it should be of a high quality when it is competing against games in a very competitive artistic market. I do give it credit for being more fleshed out then I first assumed. Honestly the combat is one of the better aspects of the game from a design standpoint. But I just don't think that "it's okay that the combat is simplistic because it's not the focus of the game" (paraphrasing multiple people here) is really a solid defence. If you don't want Sonic to be Devil May Cry then it shouldn't be putting a core gameplay pillar in its game which is clearly evoking games such as Devil May Cry and Bayonetta.
After a few months on my brain I'd describe Sonic Frontiers like @SystemsReady once described Sonic Adventure. It's jank. Charming jank. But jank none the less. It has great core ideas but they don't feel seamlessly integrated into what it's trying to do. The exploration, combat, and other mechanics all work together on their own but they don't feel like they were brought together perfectly. Exploring the world is great. Running through vast landscapes as Sonic feels satisfying. But for what reason? Why are there so many mountains to climb that only give you a pretty view instead of something more excited and unexpected? The moment that sold BOTW to me as one of the greatest games I ever played was when I found this giant mountain in this snowy area and decided to climb it and was rewarded majority for it. The game didn't lead me here and it was a long journey and I was rewarded with an incredible boss battle and a shrine. The game hid something that incredible and amazing from the beaten path just because. THAT'S polish. I enjoyed the platforming but I never got the feeling of magic like that or even in PokemonLA and Scarlett/Violet where you find a Pokemon on a part of the map that can't be found anywhere else by venturing properly, it's missing the feeling of wonder you should get from exploring an open world in some ways. Fishing is incredible. Why aren't there lakes and water in the open world to do it and it's instead locked behind shrines? That's boring. Every island has it's own gimmicks but why aren't more tied to the environments? Maybe in the Sandy place some hills are harder to climb without boost because its hard to run up sand? What if the volcano went off sometimes if you were around if and you have to dodge meteors coming down and can get some reward from them if you do it successfully? The game has so many lovely things but it's missing an overall feeling of it being a world. Adventure 1 felt way more cohesive than this and that game came out in the 90's. I know Kishimoto has it in him to nail it next time but this is how I feel right now.
I feel like combat could really only get as complex as the Werehog was in a game like this. That and Spider-Man are pretty much the only games with hand to hand combat that I've ever cared about. But I'm not sure regular Sonic could pull either off.
The Batman: Arkham games are what I would suggest any combat in Sonic the Hedgehog should be like: fast and flowing.
I think part of the problem is that it's not just "Sonic trying to be Devil May Cry". It's trying to be Sonic Unleashed, Breath of the Wild, and Devil May Cry at the same time. They're trying to focus on multiple, very disparate, gameplay types all at once (only one of which they have any real experience creating). It's an interesting combination on paper, and I'm a sucker for genre-blending. But while to me they nailed the "Sonic Unleashed" part (in the open world), the "Breath of the Wild" part leaves a lot to be desired when compared to its inspiration, on top of the "Devil May Cry" part sounding lacking compared to its inspiration as well. Basically a return of the classic "jack of all trades, king of none" problem that plagued Sonic Team in the 00's. Would be cool if a sequel saw some collaboration with Nintendo, Capcom, or Platinum, and had assistance from some of the talent responsible for the games they're taking inspiration from. Get some people experienced in making character action gameplay to help conceive, implement, and polish your character action gameplay. Get some people experienced in making open world gameplay to help with your open world gameplay.
This is the part where I argue that Sonic Team should stop trying to be like other franchises and actually be Sonic. Especially when they're not good at it. Its one of the main reasons Sonic has such an identity crisis and why so many fans have such vastly different tastes. Some would call that a strength and variety, but not when the variety itself is inferior to what its copying. If you're gonna add combat like DMC, but then half ass it then what even is the point besides superficial "cool" points with some fans?
