Sonic Frontiers Thread - PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC

I talked about this with a friend and I think it would've been neat if they at least added some kind of digital shader effect to make everything pop in in a more deliberate looking way, something with blue ones and zeroes. Might get too demanding if too many objects are nearby though, I dunno.

 

It would be incredibly distracting considering the volume of objects that pop-in as free game progresses. TFH Ouranos would nothing short of a headache.

 

I'm genuinely surprised. They actually fixed every major balancing issues I had with the DLC's release. I really went at it hard earlier in the thread about how bad some of these decisions were, and they have indeed addressed them.

I have to give credit where credit's due, Sonic Team has actually been really good about post launch feedback on these titles. They make major changes that other companies would never bother doing. I just wish they could've figured out some of these changes 'before' launch.

It makes me wonder what they may do with Superstars, though I'll remains very surprised if it receives any alternations as notable as these.

 

They didn't fix the broken deceleration for the alt characters. I'm appreciative of all the changes the latest patch had made, but I can't ignore that huge shortcoming. They patched in the physics sliders as a direct response to feedback, broke the sliders for alt characters and didn't fix them. How does that even happen?

Additionally, I'd say that TFH Ouranos just shouldn't have combat at all if the alt characters don't have combat-ready movesets. It was broken to the point of utter tedium and near-impossibility before, and now it's broken to the point of feeling like you've entered a cheat code.

And yet it doesn't matter too much to someone just looking for a means to an end, because Frontiers' offers workarounds to its major gameplay loop of "fight guardians to get gears > use gears to beat cyberspace to get keys/lookout Koco > use keys/lookout Koco to get Emeralds/climb towers". I can't be the only one who had no idea what the point of Lookout Koco even was because I'd found so many of them scattered across the open zone in the first place. Cyberspace it's awful and I'm glad I don't have to engage with it, but it's still a very poorly balanced gameplay loop. The game shouldn't be designed for you to just be able to blindly ignore its major components. Big's fishing minigame is similarly OP.

 

Maybe the alt characters’ movement settings are implemented as hard-coded-slider settings, which would override any adjustments you tried to make — and somehow they didn’t fix that. Just speculation though. If I’m wrong for sure, let me know.

 

As far as I can tell, the only slider that's broken is the deceleration slider, and even then it still partially works in that they'll decelerate instantly if you set it to zero. It's just that it's only either 0 or 100.

 

Given Kishimoto's tweet, I think we're past the point of being able to expect any further patches. I've not played the latest one yet and likely won't for some time, so I hope it does at least put everything into a good state, but, for better or worse, I think this is probably the final state of Sonic Frontiers.

 

At it least it shows he's really trying listering to feedbacks.

 

For sure, I think Kishimoto is an absolute fucking saint at this point for the patience and reception he's shown to the community. I just hope in future he can really hone in on what we've been asking for (certainly a Herculean task, given the many disparate parts of the fandom) and that SEGA creates the development environment to accomodate this. Forces and Frontiers were given singificantly more time than their predecessors, that can't be denied, but both still faced compromised development cycles which prevented that time from being used to its fullest for the sake of the game - the first year or two of Forces' development spent making HE2 and Frontiers having to contend with the pandemic and seemingly being restarted almost from scratch. Frontiers was, of course, delayed internally, but SEGA really should be willing to make further delays if needed, which it clearly was in Frontiers' case, given the game's obvious seams and evidence of crunch in spite of the five years between it and Forces. Sonic is unquestionably SEGA's biggest IP and one of the most prolific pop culture icons in the world. The franchise can absolutely coast on branding, but it'd be so wonderful if we could ever reach a point where the games once again carry the same kind of prestige as Mario's do. Still, we're seeing steps in the right direction, however shaky they may be, so I remain hopeful.

 

This is not quite how the game handles it, but you're on the right track. Update 2 added minimum and maximum deceleration value parameters to Sonic's RFL file (parameters) that are floated between with the slider. If you set the game to 75% deceleration rate, the game picks an appropriate in-between value based on the minimum and maximum.

When Update 3 rolled around, the extra characters didn't get this extra detail - the minimum values are bugged. So anything other than max deceleration causes the characters to slip around like butter. It's a simple enough fix to where HedgeModManager has a built-in code for it.

 

God already has a place reserved in Heaven for this man.

 

chaos goes down really easily in every Adventure boss fight so this tracks LMAO

 

I truly commend Kishimoto for at least trying to address the issues in this game, it's far more than what Sega usually do and just let the game live with its issues forever.

For the next game, I hope he builds on a better foundation that won't lead to half of these issues to begin with. I don't want perfection, but a lot of these problems really should exist in a 2023 game.

Shit happens I get it, but it's a death of a thousand cuts scenario where every little problem just slowly chip away at the game.

 

Knuckles, and only Knuckles, has proper rolling physics.

H U H

 

I'd hardly call it proper, because it's definitely an oversight on top of an oversight.

It seems like someone somehow changed Knuckles' parameters to where the rolling mechanic that was left in for some reason when they added back the lost world spin dash has no resistance. Simply pressing the button while completely still on pretty much any slightly slanted surface will send knuckles *flying* with no player input until he naturally reaches the nearest lowest point, or gets caught by a wall/surface meant to prevent the player from going up it (which is normally ignored by the spin dash)

People probably haven't noticed it because it's very hard to actually do instead of spin dashing, which someone would probably change if they did accidentally activate it.

 

Without looking into the data I’d say the rolling and spindash states are more or less the same thing but the spindash has the benefit of being propelled at top speed by the boost meter to overcome ground resistance plus it has a hitbox, the way they look visually different makes them seem like they’re more separate than they actually are.

They were pretty close to making it behave like SA1 if you just tap a spindash out but anything but very slight stick movement will cause the roll to cancel out, pressing slide/crouch while still in spindash/roll state to launch spindashes instead of holding the trigger is basically SA1 mode for it but again strong stick movement cancelling it out unfortunately means you can mostly only use it in straight lines.

 

Nah, they're definitely different things. You can telI because the roll conforms to the rules of walls and intentionally unclimbable surfaces, the spin dash just doesn't care about collision or gravity. I think the spindash itself had more work done on it to try to match it up to the boost, while the rolling is just something that you could do in Lost World that nobody bothered with removing or fixing to actually work in the context of this game. It's actually the second rolling mechanic in the game too, the first is in 2d stages by pressing down, and you can tell they're different states because the 2d one has the proper jumpball.

 

I came across this review on YouTube on Sonic Frontiers. I know people hate seeing negativity towards Frontiers these days but he makes a lot of good points on why this should not be the direction for 3d Sonic moving forward.

 

Surprisingly, they couldn't be more different. From an internal perspective, the Spin Dash is essentially a copy of the Boost with slightly different turning parameters and lower stickiness. The drop dash and Lost World-style rolling state both have very different physics and handling.

 

The one thing I'd like maybe more than anything is just an option to not have Amy/Tails/Knuckles be in their "cyber forms" when they're playable. I don't care if it contradicts lore, it looks annoying!