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

This is similar to the worries some of us are expressing in the Superstars thread too. That game looks solid on a technical level, and has what appears to be excellent gameplay, but visually isn't quite as stunning as previous eras. It looks fun to play, but it doesn't look quite as magic or otherworldly as the other sprite based titles do.

Hopefully, that doesn't end up being entirely true. I like most of the Frontiers package, and I do think its sound design nails ambience in an excellent way, but the visuals don't quite hit the mark.

It's the same problem a lot of open world titles have, actually. Where they build a large map, but one that doesn't quite wow the senses with visual creativity, but instead heavily recycles assets to increase the scope of the map itself. The Xenoblade games do an excellent job of avoiding this problem with slightly less detailed, but an otherwise handcrafted 3D World to explore. You actually feel like you're in a true wonderous fantasy setting, and the fact that you can venture to almost any part of it only adds to that immersion.

 

I don't entirely understand the love for the new Cyberspace levels. I think they're super disorienting and don't really match the quality of the "original" 4-x stages, to the point where I've ragequit some of them. I don't know if I'm considering going for all their collectables because of that.

 

Some of them make great use of the spindash, but I've actually find a fair amount of them to be a bit gimmicky now that I've seen more than a handful.

 

That's my big nitpick with them too, part of that is probably due to the overuse of identical blocks and platforms along with the frequenct rapid changes in camera perspective from launching off ramps and slopes. Easy to get confused until you somehow figure out what's what. Other than that though, I think they're better than most of the base game levels because they're explicitly designed to use everything Sonic can do in Cyberspace. Getting insane air from a Spindash launch isnt breaking the level in half by skipping half of it (sort of).

 

The new Cyber Space stages are ugly but I thought the level design was fun and creative and the music slapped my nuts 3000 so I can forgive it

 

At the final island, I did did like a 20 minute fishing session and have a crap ton of coins to blow (got 30 keys already). What stat should I dump all these coins in? Not that stats seem to matter much, but hey!

 

Here's a bunch of photo mode pictures I've taken in update 3. Most are of the new island, but there are a few on Kronos and Ares. (i have no clue why imgur marked it as nsfw its literally just frontiers pictures)

I don't really have the energy to write out a long form post about my opinions right now, but what I'll say is that the update is really fun and I'm enjoying it a lot. It's definitely got issues with jank and difficulty, but overall I think it's a pretty good addition to the game. I definitely prefer it to the original Ouranos, but that's not a hard bar to pass. Also Super Sonic 2 is RAW and I love him.

 

The bird in last pic caugh me off-guard.

 

Getting attack and defense seeds helps makes any subsequent fights go by quicker (particularly the former). That said, I don't believe you can really go wrong with levelling up any of the four stats (though I think ring capacity should have the least priority).

 

I'm being careful not to post in here too often, but I feel a need to speak up here. Superstars is far better aesthetically than Frontiers. Now I actually have criticised Superstars' aesthetic a lot in thar thread. It looks very plasticy, toy like, and has an excessive amount of bloom. However, it also does actually have somewhat interesting environment concepts with bright colours and clear level themes.

Frontiers is far better technically. The lens effects are nice. The haze effects are also good. But the biomes are drab, washed out, incredibly generic, and soulless. Not even comparable. Chaos Island has one of the worst aesthetics of any game I have ever played. Superstars is just a bit mediocre in comparison. Chaos Island has absolutely beautiful music too, which makes its horrible aesthetic even more notable.

 

you can tell they are pushing the limits of what you can do with "same 7 assets 500 times in the sky". i get tired of it so quickly, i can't see myself 100% this. of course the same 5 biomes does not help too. the characters deserve so much better. very fun to control in their own ways, all 4 of them.

 

At least it's not your stereotypical fire world. Also, bananas!

 

I beat the main story. Even though I knew about The End, it still feels a bit like a fever dream. What really adds to that feeling is that Sonic/Sage doesn't quip at all during the fight, it's just the moon yelling at you, the player, for 5 minutes. Did a bit of the DLC and I do find it funny how even Sage warns you how hard it'll be.

Edit: Didn't wanna double-post, but I was curious. What would Frontiers play like if it had Adventure-style physics and controls? Is there a mod like that? I know there's a few "Improved physics" mods but they seem like minor tweaks

 

I really suck at this new final boss, and also fuck the tree line I can’t see the attacks coming. How can I perfect parry when I can’t see Sonic or the attack?

 

This part of Chaos Island looks good:

 

Are there any advice or tips on resetting the tower climbs? I'm finding some towers involve like, pink homing-attack blocks which I use to climb, destroy in the process, and then when I make a mistake / fall, I'm stumped on how to get the blocks to respawn without like, changing island (and then traversing back to the tower), or going into a cyber space, or just 'guessing' at when things pop out of render. Playing on Switch btw.

Odd to kind of ask for popping to happen in order to respawn a climbing mechanic than complain about asset / render popping. But here we are.

 

My strategy was to set the game to easy, get back to where I was before I fell, and then set it back to hard.

 

To my knowledge the platforms don’t respawn during gameplay. When I was in that section I also fell and I just had to carefully walk on the edges of the vertical platforms.

They prob should’ve just used respawning balloons for that part but I guess they wanted it to be extra punishing lol. Those towers don’t mess around.

 

I can't get over how obvious and quickly a patch could make a ton of this stuff not even controversial.

 

Just die lol