I dunno, I see Frontiers more like Heroes or Lost World where the base is clearly something familiar but so much was changed that it ends up being a very different experience. But then again those 2 still get lumped in with the games they're built off so maybe I see yalls point Same here, though that didn't extend to the base game Cyberspace levels, going through old layouts from fast paced games with a stiffer, significantly slower Sonic didn't do Frontiers any favors.
Shuji Utsumi talked about Frontiers' marketing and how it affected the game's overall success on page 19 of SEGA's 2023 financial report.
It may not have the side-step function that I think most distinguishes the Unleashed formula from the Rush series (which I include Colors DS in), but the amount of holding down the spin dash button that you do to get decent speedrun times has me saying that this isn't a terribly controversial "yes" answer. I guess "Is Sonic Rush Adventure a boost game?" might be a more salient question due to the amount of time spent doing alternate-control minigames in that one.
I... somehow skipped Giganto's second phase? I have no idea if this is something that you can just do, or if the game glitched, if anybody has any idea of what happened, please tell me lol
Weird. Do you normally keep hitting him after he hits the 2nd phase trigger in his health bar and cyloop him down like that? I typically avoid cylooping in Giganto because of how long it takes his body to descend if you don’t get the second cyloop in. Maybe it was just taking so long after hitting the trigger without initiating the second phase animation, that the game was just programmed to proceed. Tip to speed this fight up: Spin the stick while mashing against the laser. It counts as an input as well. You can also avoid the laser QTE completely if you parry and sidestep right after the firing animation.
Talked to some modding buddies about this. Congratulations, you hit a frame-perfect Grand Slam and skipped the cutscene. You can do this with Supreme too.
Famitsu has released a hefty interview with director Morio Kishimoto and producer Sachiko Kawamura. There's a lot of interesting things in this interview, including an entire two paragraphs about... mods! https://www.famitsu.com/news/202311/08320390.html
I've not time to read the whole thing at the moment so I just skipped to the mention of mods and this is machine translated, but the sense I'm getting here is that Kishimoto sees it as competition, something to inspire Sonic Team to reach higher. I think that's very encouraging. Honestly, for all its faults, Frontiers has given me a much better appreciation for Kishimoto, and I hope that's true of this community generally.
They mentioned that its amazing that RGG Studios can release a game every year, but Sonic Team was in a groove during 2010/2011 with Colours and Generations back to back. Wonder what happened.
It might be that RRG simply has a good development pipeline, though I've heard that generally a lot of games take place in the same location, so that probably minimises the need to create new assets. Further, as we've heard time and time again, making a Sonic game just gets to be more and more of an ask as time goes on, with players expecting bigger, high fidelity games, but Sonic keeps blowing past such content much faster than most games. Related to this, Colours and Generations released back to back, but they're both relatively small games in terms of content offered, with Generations in particular getting a lot of its auxiliary content from reusing levels for missions. As I recall, Colours basically spun off from Generations when it became clear that the Wii wouldn't be able to run Generations (with Kishimoto directing Colours while Hiroshi Miyamoto directed Generations). In a sense, I imagine those games' development timelines overlapping would help, since content being made for Colours could likely be made with Generations in mind. That's a lot of speculation on my part, though. At the end of the day, a yearly cycle isn't worth the impact on game quality and developer wellbeing that crunch causes. I would much rather Sonic games (and any other series, really) take an "it's done when it's done" approach so ideas can be fully formed and games can be more thoroughly tested to avoid...basically the past 17 years of Sonic, bar some titles here and there (most notably Mania).
Feels surreal to think the game is one year old, since I've been waiting for it for about 13 years. It's still one of my favourite entry in the series, even after the honeymoon phase. In fact the updates have made it even better, lol More games like this and the boost being permanently removed/replaced by the spindash and I'll be the happiest Sonic fan out there :p
For all Frontiers fumbles (and Sonic Frontiers does fumble a lot), it ultimately represents the most ambitious Sonic Team has been in years, certainly since Unleashed. It's been said a lot in this thread that ambition is a buzzword at this point when it comes to Sonic games, but I disagree and I think this game is a good example of how ambition can drive a game. Frontiers is a real paradigm shift with a lot of heart put into it and what I believe to be a genuine desire to really satisfy longtime Sonic fans, and in that sense I do think it makes a lot of good calls, such as Ian Flynn being brought in to write the script, cutscene animations making strides to become less stiff and play with the models more, an attempt to go to bring the artstyle to something more grounded after the plague of Lost Worldisms that had endured for eight years. Unfortunately, the game didn't stick the landing. Some parts of the script are questionable, character voice direction went too subdued, cutscenes still aren't where they ought to be and the artstyle overcompensated right into photorealism. And this is without talking about all of the gameplay jank, the poor design philosophy of the open zone and its mechanics and whatever the fuck update 3 was. A friend of mine who probably wouldn't qualify himself as a Sonic fan once said that "Sonic Frontiers is a game that coasts almost exclusively on vibes. The good news is that the vibes are really good, but any attempt to take the game apart from an objective standpoint is, ultimately, going to be fairly unkind to it, I think." and I think that's the most salient point I've made seen about Frontiers. The game's fun in spite of itself. I enjoyed it, but I think the next instalment needs to be a marked improvement or, without the novelty that Frontiers enjoyed on its side, I think it'll flop. All that said, I feel better about the Sonic franchise post-Frontiers than I did pre-Frontiers. I feel like SEGA is moving towards producing the kind of Sonic game I want to play and that there's someone steering this ship who's actually listening and doing his damndest to make Sonic live up to his legacy once again. Do I think all the calls he's made are right? Hell no, but he's willing to engage and, if he continues to do that and the system he's working within catches up, I truly believe that we'll one day get a Sonic game that we can truly call good with no asterisks needed.
Game is fun after a year. I wish at some point during that year they realized that being able to turn in cyberspace (or midair) is even more fun.
There's a steam sale in a few weeks, might finally bother buying it if it's on sale. The first and last time I played the game was a week or so after launch on my friend's copy, that experience didn't make me wanna buy it lol. Now all the DLC is out it *might* be worth it.
Windii uploaded a proper translation to her blog here: https://browniehideout.wordpress.co...nniversary-of-the-release-of-sonic-frontiers/
