Megathread Sonic Frontiers (2022) | MT | General Discussion (DO NOT discuss leaks here please)

[Sonictrainer]

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Quote

Warm wishes from all of us at SEGA!

 

[Iko]

A while ago I wrote a suggestion for improving the final boss in a status update.

I don't want to make a Twitter account only for that but I wish Kishimoto was able to read it.

Spoiler

The Ikaruga fight against The End is the same, but there's an extra part at the end.

When Supreme grabs Sonic and throws him into the planet, instead of instantly destroying it, there's a transition into a linear level inside The End (a cave level played as Super Sonic).

At the end of the level, you reach The End's Core, and that's the true final boss fight. The End is a shapeless entity mainly made of energy, kinda resembling Tabuu from Super Smash Bros Brawl, minus the human body look (it's more like an orb). It can spawn limbs and weapons, and shift shape in general.

At some point in the fight, the core throws some big lasers at Sonic, and Sonic has to do a QTE to deflect them. Each laser you deflect will cause a big hole in the cave, so much that you will be able to see the open space from those holes; the atmosphere of the arena changes drastically, formerly a dark and kinda scary cave, now that you can see the outside, it gives you a sense of hope.

When the planet is damaged enough, Sage piloting Supreme will manage to destroy what remains of it, and the very final part of the fight happens in open space.

When the core is defeated, it will self destroy and at that point Sage will grab it in order to block the shockwave of the explosion and protect the Earth.

From there, the story will connect back to the regular one from the actual version of the game.

 

[Dummy Bear]

Since it's pretty obvious obstacles are pasted onto the environment, I hope ST just goes "oh screw" it and unlocks the editor and let's people upload stuff online.

[Jango]

I really wish Super Sonic was playable in the open world. Maybe the DLC will have that.

 

[ZinogreVolt]

 

According to Kishimoto, he tried to add drifting into regular Sonic's moveset, but couldn't for one reason or another. Not that it's absence is really all that felt in Frontiers, since his overall handling makes it a pretty unnecessary addition imo

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

1 hour ago, ZinogreVolt said:

According to Kishimoto, he tried to add drifting into regular Sonic's moveset, but couldn't for one reason or another. Not that it's absence is really all that felt in Frontiers, since his overall handling makes it a pretty unnecessary addition imo

I'm loving how down-to-earth and with the fans Kishimoto has been lately. This is a quality we don't see often, even from other good devs usually, that aren't indie anyway.

[ElectricAngel]

Pretty cool he's being open like this with the fans. I realize I never put in my final thoughts on the game after being wowed initially. And yeah the final boss really disappointed me, so I do hope it gets revised. Even if not, I appreciate Kishimoto for listening and responding to fans and I'm looking very much forward to the content updates. Makes me optimistic for future games

[AstroSeedP]

 

 Uploaded a compilation of nearly all CG cinematics made for Sonic Frontiers:

High-quality download.

===========================================

Video Sources:
SonicRangers_GamescomTrailer_ONL.mov
Sonic Team Teaser-25102260afa3fa194d24.50575938.mp4
Rangers_Trailer 2_PEGI-UK.mp4
Sonic_Showdown_Trailer_FULL_4K_MULTI_EN_PEGI7_PreOrder.mp4
Sonic_Showdown_Trailer_FULL_4K_MULTI_DK_PEGI7_PreOrder.mp4
Sonic_Uber_Trailer_FULL_4K_MULTI_EN_PEGI7_OutNow.mp4
Sonic_Uber_Trailer_FULL_4K_MULTI_DK_PEGI7_OutNow.mp4
Sonic Frontiers x ONE OK ROCK - 'Vandalize' Teaser [YouTube].webm
Sonic Frontiers - Showdown Trailer [YouTube].webm
Sonic Frontiers - Coming Soon! - SEGA [YouTube].webm

===========================================

Credits -

Video Post-Production:
AstroSeedP

CG Animation:
SEGA / Marza Animation Planet Inc.
Shirogumi Inc.

Music:
"I'm Here"
Vocals & Lyrics by Merry Kirk-Holmes (To Octavia)
Composed & arranged by Tomoya Ohtani
Strings arranged by Takahito Eguchi
SEGA Sound Team

Programs:
Adobe Premiere Pro 2022

 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Well now. Kishimoto's very dedicated to putting his money where his mouth is, and curating the constructive criticisms given to him, despite the plethora of such.

Good man.

[Dummy Bear]

Here I am doing what I always tend to do in open world games: run around aimlessly like a goon just having fun pulling off random stunts. Boosting and jumping at the top curve of rails can get you big air and IMO hella fun.

An album of a few of my stunts:

https://imgur.com/a/bqJIJQ1

 

[DaBigJ]

I'm currently playing Frontiers, trying to fight Squid on Island one (TRYING to, half the time I clip through the damn purple floor when jumping onto it.)

If this is a 7/10...then I have no hopes for this franchise's future lol, this is boring as hell so far.

Maybe it'll get better, who knows. I'll give a better rundown of my opinion after playing more.

[Zadent]

14 hours ago, Slash said:

Here I am doing what I always tend to do in open world games: run around aimlessly like a goon just having fun pulling off random stunts. Boosting and jumping at the top curve of rails can get you big air and IMO hella fun.

An album of a few of my stunts:

https://imgur.com/a/bqJIJQ1

I remember seeing a video of someone explaining the boosting off a ramp and how they then proceeded to challenge themselves to get as many memory tokens as possible without using the platforming paths to get to them. This was it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_KGhrER2cbk

[Dummy Bear]

We all know Rhea Island is obviously just the second half of Kronos Island, so I decided to free roam around to see if there were any remnants of what was meant to be, and I found this: A bunch of destroyed fossilized Caterpellar enemies that I don't think I've seen anywhere else:

Next to them is some kind of tower:

Two guess what the tower was for:

1. A simple climbt the tower platform challenge.

2. A boss fight arena for the caterpillar. My evidence for this theory? This tower is different from the others, plus given the destroyed Caterpillars and the Caterpillar boss default arena being a circular grind...

 

 

[Shiny Gems]

Hey there, I played Sonic Frontiers today (I know I am late to the party, but I was busy and something was wrong with my PS5) and...

Spoiler

I love it so far! It is an awesome game! I am having more fun than expected! The boss fight with Giganto was thrilling!

By the way, I found out in one of the levels that it is possible to get through a loop with just the boost and no dash pads. This is in 2D, by the way.

[Sonicka]

14 hours ago, Slash said:

We all know Rhea Island is obviously just the second half of Kronos Island, so I decided to free roam around to see if there were any remnants of what was meant to be, and I found this: A bunch of destroyed fossilized Caterpellar enemies that I don't think I've seen anywhere else:

Next to them is some kind of tower:

Two guess what the tower was for:

1. A simple climbt the tower platform challenge.

2. A boss fight arena for the caterpillar. My evidence for this theory? This tower is different from the others, plus given the destroyed Caterpillars and the Caterpillar boss default arena being a circular grind...

I'm hoping that some of the DLC story or additions will give Rhea a new lease of life. I do like the purpose and challenge of the area within the story, and I get that this was segmented off from Kronos later in development, but I would love to see some more attention given to the leftover elements such as the drowned ruins and that tower, I spend a solid 30 minutes trying to climb the damn thing. 

Perhaps this where Amy, Tails and Knux could come in? 

[DaBigJ]

So I already posted my first impressions in the status updates, but I wanna repost it here and expand on it a little bit. 

Ahem...

 

Sonic Frontiers, so far (I'm on the 2nd island), just...doesn't feel right. Both in Open Zone and in Cyberspace

It doesn't feel like a boost game in an open world, it feels like an open world stapled onto a boost game. It feels more like they were trying to make a sequel to something like Forces, but saw the reception and got cold-ish feet. I know this isn't the case, but it feels like this.

I've tweaked the settings a bit, and while I can say Sonic controls well (in the open zone anyways), the physics feel really bad a good amount of times. Sonic just seems to fly willy nilly half the time, and magnets to the floor the other half. It's clear that the customization of the controls and the way Sonic's handled were designed sometime after the maps were made, because they do not meet up halfway. It reminds me of those fangsme frameworks and that's not a good thing.

Sonic's regular running speed feels oddly slow for no real reason. Apparently it's something that gets better when upgrading, but still, it's off.  I don't like how max speed is tied to ring count, Sonic should be at a decent pace regardless of ring count. It'd make more sense if the rings refilled his boost meter like in other boost games, but they don't and it throws me off.

On top of all of that, everything from a regular boost game is just half hazardly placed in the Open Zone areas. Boost pads, rails, rings that launch Sonic, light dash ring trails, floating platforms. It all sticks out in a way that feels less intentional and more like a safety net. It, like Sonic's physics, does not flow well with the open areas, and it just pushes my suspicions of this being another boost game first, open world game second even further.

Then there's Cyberdpace. Ho boy.

Cyberspace is fucking garbage, plain and simple. Sonic in these stages feels stiffer than any other Sonic I've ever controlled, and it honestly feels better to play as him in Forces than it does here. Level design so far in the three levels I played, are very Forces esq, probably even worse than them, have no faith in them getting better. I'll give them the time of day to see if they do, in fact get better, but again, unlikely.

I hate how the physics of the open world aren't in these levels, they'd fit in here just fine if they were. I hate the grind of having to either play them, or use the blue line thing to find hidden goodies, or do dumb tasks like that weed thing. I hate the mini bosses like Squid. 

And the combat is everything I feared of and then some. It's button mashy, except you have a tiny amount of strategy...and by that I mean just run circles around them with that blue line ability and then spam the homing attack button or hold down L2 and win. It's tiresome and repetitive as sin. Will it improve? I don't know, and I'm dreading to find out.

So far, the game iss a 4/10. Hoping it improves, but I'm not holding my breath.

We waited this long for a confused game like this?

 

[ZinogreVolt]

54 minutes ago, DaBigJ said:

It doesn't feel like a boost game in an open world, it feels like an open world stapled onto a boost game. It feels more like they were trying to make a sequel to something like Forces, but saw the reception and got cold-ish feet. I know this isn't the case, but it feels like this.

I would hazard a guess and say that it's actually the opposite scenario. They wanted to make an open world game, but based on playtester feedback, it wasn't resonating with people--so they wound up haphazardly slapping on a bunch of conventional boost elements like rails, boost rings, dash pads, etc. all across the open world in hurried attempt to make the game feel more Sonic-y. Your mileage may vary on whether you find that thing fun, but it's clear as day in the end product.

[Dummy Bear]

Looking at all the floating rails and platforms make me wish this game had some kind of debug cheat to place objects on the field like the old games did.

I kinda want to make my own platform courses and puzzles.

[DaBigJ]

Why is island 3

Just

Why is it.

[Amy2023]

I've just finished the game last week. The game was fun to play It was just lacking for me It could of been a lot better thought. The open world Is good It had that SA2 feel to It which I like. The boss fights where good. It started to get a bit boring collecting the chaos emeralds on the Islands. The cyberspace levels on some of the stages can be a bit annoying at times. The final boss was lacking as well to me It could of been a lot better. But overall It was a ok Sonic game to play not the greatest thought. But at least we have a new Sonic game to play. Oh I did enjoy the story as well.

[TheOcelot]

There's a 15 minute demo on Nintendo Switch exclusive to Japan. Well apparently it's now available in all regions.

I've downloaded it (see the screenshots below):

  

[Sonicka]

4 hours ago, TheOcelot said:

There's a 15 minute demo on Nintendo Switch exclusive to Japan. Well apparently it's now available in all regions.

I tried this out yesterday and was surprised at how decently this ran on the Switch. The pop in and graphical textures are obviously worse than the other consoles (for the overworld at least), and the CRT screen effect in the cyberspace stages is definitely more noticeable - but otherwise, this is one of the better downscaled Switch ports that exists on the system if this is your only means of playing it. 
 

7 hours ago, DaBigJ said:

Why is island 3

Just

Why is it.

Forced 2D perspective segments getting you down? Admittedly, there's quite a lot - maybe it lives up to the name in that respect. 

Although I didn't find them to be a hindrance personally, I think some sort of button to map exiting some of these forced perspectives on the open-zones would have been appreciated for quick escape purposes.

I weirdly quite liked Chaos island otherwise - it has some large and varied areas to traverse and the Spider mini-boss is quite fun. There's also 7 different musical themes which get better as you progress (the 7th one is probably one of my favourite tracks in the game actually). But there is quite a lot to explore overall despite the initial barren impressions it does give off. Plus, it houses some of the better legacy cyberspace stages IIRC... although I feel some of the more original Cyberspace stages on Ouranos Island are better still.  

Then there is the Titan and it's killer battle (theme) and overkill move. Quite glad I created an extra save file here just before taking it on, but also because it means going to Rhea again afterwards.

...Man, I reeeeeally hope one of the updates this year includes a boss rush mode for the Titan's at the very least. Please, Sonic Team.    

[LegoFedora]

Thinking of the knux/tails/amy dlc makes me wonder, will we see new character themes made for them? Like how Sonic gets "I'm Here" to correspond with Frontiers. It'd be nice to have some updated vocal songs made specifically for these characters. Last time we had that was what, sa2?

Also wondering if we may get a chaotix reference in Knuckles' story considering how much Ian seems to enjoy namedropping other characters like Tangle/Sticks. Maybe finally confirming Mighty as part of modern canon, even if by name alone?

[Red Hot Jack]

1 hour ago, LegoFedora said:

Thinking of the knux/tails/amy dlc makes me wonder, will we see new character themes made for them? Like how Sonic gets "I'm Here" to correspond with Frontiers. It'd be nice to have some updated vocal songs made specifically for these characters. Last time we had that was what, sa2?

Also wondering if we may get a chaotix reference in Knuckles' story considering how much Ian seems to enjoy namedropping other characters like Tangle/Sticks. Maybe finally confirming Mighty as part of modern canon, even if by name alone?

1. I wouldn't expect too much from free DLC to be honest. The fact (IF) all 3 are playable is already a lot. Maybe next game will have character songs. At most here I could expect a remix of previous themes.

2. That's possible, it's just references. After all, Ian said classic is now the past (again).

One more thing I wanted to mention, I'm glad Frontiers was a success, it resulted in Kishimoto being more active on socials to interact with fans and listen to them, and yeah this is also the reason we are getting more playable characters.

[Blue Blood]

On 1/8/2023 at 12:37 AM, Sonicka said:

Forced 2D perspective segments getting you down? Admittedly, there's quite a lot - maybe it lives up to the name in that respect. 

Although I didn't find them to be a hindrance personally, I think some sort of button to map exiting some of these forced perspectives on the open-zones would have been appreciated for quick escape purposes.

I weirdly quite liked Chaos island otherwise - it has some large and varied areas to traverse and the Spider mini-boss is quite fun. There's also 7 different musical themes which get better as you progress (the 7th one is probably one of my favourite tracks in the game actually). But there is quite a lot to explore overall despite the initial barren impressions it does give off. Plus, it houses some of the better legacy cyberspace stages IIRC... although I feel some of the more original Cyberspace stages on Ouranos Island are better still.  

Although I'm not @DaBigJand don't want to speak for him, I'm bit irked by people acting as though it's 2D sections alone that cause Chaos Island to be so disliked. They're only a part of it. 

• Chaos Island replaces most of the treasures spots with hidden springs, boosters and ramps. You think you're exploring, but you perform a little Cyloop on an item spot and suddenly you're forced on to a set path. It's practically guaranteed not going be where you wanted to go and could very well be 2D too. This is (almost?) never the case previous islands, which have collectibles in treasure spots instead. You were taught one lesson early on about the treasure spots and now they actively hinder your gameplay. It goes both ways too, because sometimes the path forward is arbitrarily hidden from view. 
• Regular springs and boosters litter the path too, with the same problem of forcibly changing your route should you do so much as graze one. They aren't easy to see ahead as you run through the landscape. 
• Ground-level lava flows across some parts of the map. It's very hard to see and a single touch is an instant Game Over. I also failed a few jumps over the lava because of the fact that Sonic loses all speed and forward potential when he jumps. That's a game-wide rather than being specific to this island, but the insta-deaths involved so exacerbate it somewhat 
• The main landmass has a very rough outline to it, making it difficult to navigate. It's got steep hills functioning as OOB areas on the insides. Furthermore, it's shaped like a broken figure-8. The result is an area that's not very wide, has lots of dead ends and bottlenecks you as you try to explore. You'll be going along the same paths again and again. The likelihood of hitting a booster that you didn't see is anyways pretty high. So it's tedious first by design and then wrests control from you. 
• The other landmasses are connected to the main landmass by springs, floating rails and floating platforms. Good luck having the faintest clue where to start, because draw distance doesn't help. If you're not in the right place then the object or rail you need won't even exist on the horizon for you to follow. You'll run around searching for the one object to start your path, rather than following the last of the land. Its just completely unclear to the player how they're supposed to get to the Emerald Vaults and main story missions. There is no logical order to Chaos Island's layout. Even if by some miracle you do remember the layout of all the things you need, you'll be re-do in gba same platforming tasks every time to get to your destination in one of those little landmasses. 
• And if you accidentally end up in the wrong place, like one of those little islands, you'll need to find another rail or spring to take you back, cause the one you just used is one-way only. 
• And just for good measure, the 2D really is a nightmare. It comes out of nowhere to stop your gameplay in its tracks. Suddenly Sonic can only move left and right and can't contours in the direction you wanted him to go. It also highlights just how visually and mechanically samey all of the platforming is when you're pushed into those sections against your will. 

Everything about the gameplay on Chaos Island is restrictive, often oppressive. It does its absolute best to make sure that the player can't do what they want.