Oh hey! We do have a day/night cycle, and it looks cozy as hell! That's nice. Notes: - Man, those anims are very jank, but the hurt one especially. I do like how his kick/punch animations make his limbs look stretchy and springy. - I love how they gave him a dodge hahahaha. I'm not completely out of touch it seems. - What is that weird splinter animation where he's suddenly up in the air and then zig-zags to hit the enemy? I imagine it makes a lot more sense with an actual HUD present instead of it seeming like it happens out of nowhere. - Oh man. that whirlwind animation is still terrible but the pause right before that when he defeats that first enemy is stylish as hell. It's so weird getting this contrast between the developers' vision/style coming through and the just pure jank. - Was that XP or currency that he got for defeating that enemy there? Interesting. - I really like how you can rushdown enemies that are moving away from you. The homing attack in the Adventure games mainly worked best on stationary enemies, and in SA1 in particular if an enemy or boss is moving fast enough you could find yourself just following them around like an ominous missile orb, never getting any closer until you decide to uncurl and break out of it. - Is that a PROJECTILE ATTACK omg?? They finally gave Sonic a good projectile attack concept instead of "ring bombs" or other garbage. That animation actually looks good too. - I like how there seems to be more to enemies than "a thing you hit once and they die" and "a thing you hit multiple times and then they die", which was the problem I had with enemies in Heroes. Sounds basic yes but it's a thing that is surprisingly easy to mess up in platformers, and it was also one of those things I really hated about Heroes, so. - Weather effects too it looks like. - AIR JUGGLES - Homing attack seems very meaty in sound and animation this time around. Good. - There's probably a title card with the boss name for that giant robot at the end there that we're not seeing. - SONIC EATING SHIT AFTER BREAKING THE LEG OFF LMAO Overall, yep, still jank but there seems to be more here than I anticipated. There are clearly some good ideas here and they even kind of work too. Definitely intrigued by this.
The combat didn't change my mind much, but I admit it was better than the first clip... The fights with the U̶l̶t̶r̶a̶ ̶B̶e̶a̶s̶t̶s̶ bubbly thing and the spikey hat thing both seemed repetitive, but the combat against the wee guys looked a bit more fun, it definitely flowed better. This is what I don't get... It's such an odd way to reveal the gameplay. Why not show off a flashy 3 minute trailer with some gameplay highlights, zone teases and story beats, then do these after? Maybe they are saving that for Summer Game Fest?
I feel like they're showing the game to us like this due to how different it is from previous titles, that and its been 5 years since Forces. So they maybe wanted to show it off more in depth since maybe they didn't think people would get the idea of essentially Sonic in BotW? That and that's always the method they've done and people hated it so they prob thought it to be a good idea to mix up their marketing.
Wait, I actually liked the combat here. I mean, the shuriken-hat-thrower-thing seemed repetitive, but I liked how the Tidal-Tempest-Boss-but-it's-just-a-guy-and-the-balls-shock-you-thing works. It's like Sky Base Act 1 but in a single badnik. Also, we know very little about how prevalent the combat will be throughout the game. There's this blue meter that's filled, but other than that? You can very obviously skip any given enemy entirely, being an open world game and all.
I think the combat looked fun when Sonic was fighting those groups of grunts. I can see mastered gameplay involve you rapidly attacking them and dodging right in the nick of time. But man, I think this footage made me realize my actual problem with these showcases is that the devs are trying to back off and play "deliberately" in order to show off how things work instead of playing it at a faster pace like you usually might. There are points where you can tell that they're slowly pressing the attack button instead of mashing it. It makes the fights against those shield guys seem ten times more tedious than they probably are.
That's why I think the last trailer was so off looking the guy was deliberately slowing down and showing off features (like failing that puzzle on purpose to do it again correctly right after). Like I want to see someone good play this and see what kind of rhythm can be achieved here.
That's my only worry though. Since enemies seem to drop *something* (XP?), it might be required to destroy them to progress. Depending on how many are in the world, and whether that drop is exclusive to enemies or not, that might dictate whether you have to destroy them or not. I'd rather skip them, from what I know about how I play, but that might not be possible depending on certain factors.
I think, as we're getting more footage, a clear picture of the state of the game is forming. My working theory for the time being is that ST reused and repurposed everything they felt they could get away with, particularly with regards to animations with little adaptation for the new systems and contexts for those things. Meanwhile, the wholly new stuff looks to have had a lot of effort put into it. The enemy designs and movements, Sonic's new attacks and so on look great (though I do take issue with the artistic decision of having Sonic people to just float around in the air NiGHTS-style for certain attacks, like that kick finisher). Hopefully I'm on the money and the game is largely more polished than things may seem at times here. I am both baffled and aggravated that this thread has seen both "this game looks empty" and "I want to skip this core part of the game". To be clear, I'm not asserting these sentiments are coming from the same people at once, but I feel that people are missing the point of taking the game holistically (which is admittedly hard to do when things are currently being shown off in a piecemeal fashion). Critique the combat for what you fear it may be is fair, but I think dismissing the concept outright as not belonging in a Sonic game risks getting into the territory of criticising the game for what it isn't, rather than what it is. And I've been guilty of this too in the past. When Mario Odyssey first revealed captures, I hated them for not fitting in with what I wanted or how I thought the setting should be, but they ended up being a really fun part of that game. I'm hoping the same will end up ringing true with the combat of Frontiers.
It's nothing jawdropping and I was hoping for a bit more, but combat at least looks fun. No Heroes-style mashing, there's at least some nuance to things. We might see more enemy types later on but I'm glad we saw enemies that weren't *only* there to be mashed on. Obviously theyre not gonna make a DMC/Bayonetta styled combat system because Sonic is for all ages and skill ranges, but it's still nice that there seems to be some nuance to it. The boss looked fun to fight too. Moves look flashy, which is what I had hoped for. I swear the helicopter spin thing looked better here than in the trailer - is that just me? Still a bit awkward, but it looked better. I'm excited still, but yeah these gameplay reveals aren't doing the game any favors, because it just looks kinda rough and barren. I'm sure there's more to it that we're just not seeing right now, or maybe it gets cleaned up super nicely. If it releases like this I won't mind because it still looks fun, which is what I personally care about.
Great, the multiple-hits enemies from Heroes and 06 are back. The ones that are slow and tedious. The comparisons to the Werehog - the worst part of Unleashed - fit rather nicely. That's bloody awful I've no problem with the shielding thing some enemies are doing, but it should be then one hit to kill them when you have the weak spot exposed, not 7 million. The boss looked alright, and you'd expect multiple hits there - though it does feel very BOTW in how it works (with maybe a sprinkling of Shadow of the Colossus). This doesn't feel like a Sonic game at all.
lolllll the soft piano music playing this game isn't even gonna have good music! The ultimate mark of a bad Sonic game...
Yeah seeing McPetalShield over here take like, 2.5 combos to take down by repeating a spin cycle on him over and over to mash out the same combos looks awful. I can see what people see with the weaker foes and a good spin cycle can do, but Sonic Team always loves their repetitive "durable enemy" stuff to really waste time.
RULESOFNATU- Sorry. As far as defense, It appears to be the type of just waiting for enemies for enter vulnerability periods , though I do see what appears to be a perfect dodge mechanic at 3:54. Also, appears to do some sort of dash away at 0:49. There is also the quickstep, which. Yep. That makes no sense in open world. He should be able to dodge in every direction, not just left and right. We're not running down linear paths. Would be slightly more reasonable if we had Zelda's z targeting, which we don't... Though from the energy line and camera change, we may be seeing a lock on mechanic at 3:36. Projectile attack looks overpowered. Can't comment on combat outside of that without knowing inputs, though it doesn't look good. he appears to have a faster spin cycle at 2:57, maybe an instant one like blue tornado from heroes. Only thing I have real strong feelings on is the perfect dodge move if it is real (YES) Everthing else is just like, "Okay, so this is a thing."
I mean, sure, but you don't need to face any particular enemy at any time you don't want to. With Sonic, more than any other open world game maybe ever, you can just run away and go do something else until you feel like getting that XP. Also -- does the spin cycle happen naturally as you run around an enemy or do you have to activate it?
Wow, I'm in a discord server and someone pointed this out: Notice how long Sonic's Quills are in this shot And see how shorter it is in gameplay So I guess we are seeing an early build, then? I'm not sure what's up with that.
Yeah, it looks to me like some kind of aerial variant of spin cycle that seems to target only the locked-on enemy, giving it a distinct use case that doesn't make it better than the regular spin cycle in every scenario.
I would assume you hold a button to activate it, other games with similar systems have done it this way. EDIT: How did I miss this when watching the video? https://twitter.com/daregularsauce/status/1532759714425147396 uuuuuurgh
