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

[mfnick]

I’ve recently started this, made it to the 3rd area. I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would so far. The areas are condensed enough to not suffer from the usual open world type fatigue. Although the mini challenges dotted about are very simplistic and repetitive but they’re all less than a minute long so end up actually being quite moreish. Being able to travel

about so quickly makes a big difference too, and this is by far the best Sonic has “felt” in 3D for a long time. Grinding and bouncing around at high speed is just fun.

 

It’s quite an ugly game though. The characters are decent and cyber levels look amazing at times but the areas are really bland and rough. The boss set pieces have been impressive though, especially the 2nd one.

 

Very pleasantly surprised. Doesn’t do anything that’s actually amazing but it’s a lot of fun. 

[mfnick]

Completed now, took me 19 hours - Full maps, all cyber levels and doing some token stuff in each area.

 

Yea, really good game. Nothing amazing but just good fun. 7/10.

 

I stand by the fact if they based the areas off actual classic Sonic Zones rather than generic brown and dull green land masses it would have been infinitely better. Hopefully in the sequel. 

[mfnick]

Just in case anyone is curious, for the love of God do not install and try the new Final Horizon story DLC. Even though it’s free it’s fucking terrible. Don’t waste your bandwidth and time. 
 

As I said before the main game is decent fun but this is just straight up shit. It makes you play as Amy, Tails and Knuckles to start with and they just control like complete crap. Especially Knuckles, you have to climb up huge towers where one slight brush against the edge of the designated red bits will send you plummeting 10 minutes down to the bottom to start again.

 

The difficulty is completely fucked too. It throws you in at the end game but apart from Sonic they’re all at the lowest most basic level so you can’t do shit against any enemies. They’ve also just upped the difficulty in general, every little mission is multiple times harder than anything in the main game, which wouldn’t be a problem in a game which controlled well and had good physics but this game just isn’t designed well enough for this level of challenge. It’s gone from a simple but breezy and fun experience to making you want to smash up the house in frustration. In the bin it goes. 

[Maf]

I don’t think anyone saw but I’m using this mod on the PC version

 

 

The face doesn’t animate so not good for cutscenes. I also can’t get the soap shoes because that part of the mod has to be done manually and that’s beyond me.
 

This is the art style I’ve wanted Sonic to be for a long time, though. So it’s fun just running around. It’s the same when going Super Sonic, too

 

I also put a visual mod so the speed trail is blue and red. Neat. 

 

I tried throwing a tonne of physics mods at the game this time. I did it before and it was good, this time it’s unplayable. It might be because in the last DLC there are in game adjustments to the physics so maybe the combination of everything makes it play like shit. But still kind of funny.

 

Also something is now making the game crash sometimes on loading screens. I might need to deactivate some like graphics mods which don’t seem to add much to my eye anyway.