Sonic Frontiers

[DANGERMAN]

It still feels like early days but I'm enjoying this so far. I tried streaming some but my setup seemed to add a few issues to control and framerate, I did a lot better when I wasn't having to play through my capture screen. That said, it's still a Sonic game so I have been launched to my death rather than whatever the next part of the rollercoaster was supposed to be.

 

For all the Breath of the Wild talk it actually reminds me of Mario Odyssey more than anything else. I've no idea if the area I'm in just expands or if eventually it moves you to a new world, but you're on a land mass that's gated, you're essentially playing until you unlock the next bit. 

 

There are traditional levels, they're really short, and they're accessed via totems in the main world. You need gears to open these, you get gears from defeating meaningful enemies, I feel like I've got quite a lot now so other than really early on when the game is teaching you, they aren't hard to find. Beating the levels gets you keys, keys unlock the chaos emeralds, doing that seems to progress the story and open more map.

 

The reason it reminds me of Mario are all the little challenges in the game world. Work out the route to a floating platform, beat a horde of enemies, solve a minor puzzle, these all get you things, usually it's the items you need to level up attributes, sometimes it's experience to unlock more skills.

 

There's probably a few too many currencies really, but it does mean that a trip across the map means a hundred diversions because it's very densely packed

[DANGERMAN]

An update on this, I'm about to finish the 3rd area, I heard Nextlander say Sonic Team had said it was supposed to be 20 hours long, maybe if you're just going to story marker to story marker, I'm probably at 30 already.

 

The gameplay loop is the same for each zone. Start with an empty map, find your friend, hope you've already picked up enough tokens to free them, then start revealing more of the map, defeating key enemies, beating levels and unlocking the chaos emeralds. The first part of the zones are the biggest chore, just knowing what's ahead of you, but once you've opened some stuff up it starts to be compulsive again