Sonic Frontiers - Final Horizon DLC Spoilers Topic

[Sonictrainer]

We can discuss anything about the DLC here, including any Spoilers.

EDIT 1:

• Like the last game, there are new soundtracks to collect in this DLC. Will make a list in a bit

[Shiny Gems]

Spoiler

I love playing as Sonic's friends! So far, I love playing as Knuckles, with his punching power and all. It is so great they made the other three characters playable. They control so well!

 

[Zadent]

Spoiler

Man, those new towers are tough. 
 

so it feels like the characters aren’t swappable until some later point. Crazy they included the Cyclone of all planes plus its mech form.

 

[Sonicka]

Excellent stuff so far. I like how different these characters feel compared to Sonic. 

It takes some adjustment for pulling off certain moves (Amy's Multi homing attack for example) but mastering it is the challenge. I can't help but feel her descent / floating card skill takes something away from Knuckles who is the glider of the team - but for the purposes of how Frontiers platforming operates in this 3D space that's ok.

With Knuckles there is in fact a difference in his gliding and this feels like there is more weight and distance gained, especially since he thrusts himself forward in an attack position of course. But... not being able to climb any surface and being limited to the special surfaces? That is utter BS haha. I suppose you could explain this away via their ghostly apparitions, the gang are probably only tangible to certain objects such as the islands digital interfaces which assists with their island traversal.

Hopefully though, an "anywhere climb" skill is unlockable later like the infinite glide skill I spotted on his tree.  

[Shiny Gems]

2 minutes ago, Sonicka said:

Excellent stuff so far. I like how different these characters feel compared to Sonic. 

It takes some adjustment for pulling off certain moves (Amy's Multi homing attack for example) but mastering it is the challenge. I can't help but feel her descent / floating card skill takes something away from Knuckles who is the glider of the team - but for the purposes of how Frontiers platforming operates in this 3D space that's ok.

With Knuckles there is a difference in gliding and feels like there is more weight and distance gained since he thrusts himself forward in a sort of attack pattern as well. 

...but Knuckles not being able to climb any surface and being limited to the special surfaces is utter BS haha.I suppose you could explain this away via their ghostly apparition forms, so they are only tangible to certain objects and the islands digital interface of traversal.

Hopefully an "anywhere climb" skill is unlockable later like the infinite glide skill I spotted on his tree.  

Glad I am not the only one who feels that way about the other characters.

[DaBigJ]

This is terrible so far lmao

The controls to all three characters feel slippery no matter how many times I adjust the settings. Tails was the least bad and I was able to beat his (first?) section in only a few minutes. Amy kinda stinks, I don't really like her moveset and her platforming feels very simple if you know she can triple jump and glide.

Knuckles is fucking worthless. I'm honestly pissed that they did him this dirty. His glide is a god damn pain in the ass to turn and it keeps royally fucking me over during his section. I could not figure out how to reach his Chaos Emerald and I legit had to use a glitch just to get it because I couldn't figure out if I could dig into the walls or not.

The difficulty is also bullshit. Some of the on map challenges feel almost impossible to do. There's one where you have to literally run across the island to hit three different buttons. How is anyone supposed to find and then go to the buttons on time?

Overall, I'm not impressed. I'll probably play more tomorrow but christ on a bike this is ROUGH.

[Sonicka]

@DaBigJ I think you should consider updating your signature from 'Green Hill Zone' to 'Sonic Frontiers'. 

Sorry to hear it's not gone down too well for you so far. On the plus, only a few more weeks until we get a couple of excellent sidescrolling platformers.

[Zadent]

20 minutes ago, DaBigJ said:

This is terrible so far lmao

The controls to all three characters feel slippery no matter how many times I adjust the settings. Tails was the least bad and I was able to beat his (first?) section in only a few minutes. Amy kinda stinks, I don't really like her moveset and her platforming feels very simple if you know she can triple jump and glide.

Knuckles is fucking worthless. I'm honestly pissed that they did him this dirty. His glide is a god damn pain in the ass to turn and it keeps royally fucking me over during his section. I could not figure out how to reach his Chaos Emerald and I legit had to use a glitch just to get it because I couldn't figure out if I could dig into the walls or not.

The difficulty is also bullshit. Some of the on map challenges feel almost impossible to do. There's one where you have to literally run across the island to hit three different buttons. How is anyone supposed to find and then go to the buttons on time?

Overall, I'm not impressed. I'll probably play more tomorrow but christ on a bike this is ROUGH.

I’ve learned that for the people signposts

Spoiler

You need to have the character’s special Cyloop ability to activate them. For Knuckles especially on the first Emerald, they make a taller pillar to climb to get to the emerald.

You do switch back to Sonic, so some of the challenges may be tuned for him, or things Tails might be able to do with the Cyclone?

[Mega]

I'm really disappointed so far. The new characters have nice ideas for movesets, but the level design for the platforming challenges doesn't have a very friendly learning curve (especially for Knuckles so far), the draw distance is shit, so it can be really hard to figure out where to go, and the camera really isn't engineered for these characters. Just... ugh.

It doesn't feel like it was playtested, and I got so frustrated I had to stop. I need a break.

[SonicLegends]

Regarding the characters for those that want to just cheese the platforming understandably make sure to immediately get Tails his mech as it's literally SA1 flying levels of broken in being "forget the level design" and can get his skill tree fully unlock the fastest. I was off put by Knuckles glide at first, but it's doable and became better once it upgraded to the infinite version which felt to me at least that it improved the control so not sure if the only one. One of the go-to issues I think is Sonic Team really ought to have showcased in it the Kokos give out experience points as otherwise some players are going to wander around aimlessly as I've seen from some streamers. I do need to call out this thought into the level design they did being shesh they really should not have had sign posts in a limited space in some areas as otherwise no joke had to go into my settings and put my initial speed (or in general speed) all the way down and plus if you feel a slipperiness that you first get as Amy you need to slide the deceleration up all the way to the right as for w/e reason anything less won't compute. The 2nd trial is gotta be patient as got no choice it seems but to do cyloop (no quick one as it's disabled) and attack 3 times only rinse and repeat. Anyway I'm at the last trial now which definitely switching it into easy mode as heard get extra frames for the parry.

Best combat character = Knuckles

Best traversing character = Tails

And Amy is between of them.

6 hours ago, Mega said:

I'm really disappointed so far. The new characters have nice ideas for movesets, but the level design for the platforming challenges doesn't have a very friendly learning curve (especially for Knuckles so far), the draw distance is shit, so it can be really hard to figure out where to go, and the camera really isn't engineered for these characters. Just... ugh.

It doesn't feel like it was playtested, and I got so frustrated I had to stop. I need a break.

For the one area as Sonic where had to use fans to get up to one of the towers the draw distance for that was a pain in a later on section that had to abuse parry in midair just to be able to freeze and then spam dodge for striking distance of homing attacking a spring or w/e to bring me back up as yeah going all the way down and have to redo can be really disheartening. The dlc is giving me Sonic Unleashed Eggman Land flashbacks lol. Some stuff I like and then others yeah not so much for design.

[Dr. Mechano]

Final boss and ending spoilers (video, major spoilers, don't look if you want to be spoiled):

Spoiler

 Where do I start with this?

• From a gameplay perspective, the final boss builds on the main game's Super Sonic gameplay instead of just being a top-down space shooter, so that's definitely an improvement.
• Eggman freaking takes Supreme's giant gun and then shoots Super Sonic into The End for the final blow. That's so awesome that it deserves its own entry. (Also hey, his glasses having tech/scanning features like in 06 again!)
• Eggman and Sage getting a happy ending was everything to me. Him calling Sage "dear daughter" to her face (and not just quietly and sadly after she's out of earshot, as in the other ending) made my heart melt. They're such a cute, loving family. Best Eggman development in years, possibly ever. 
• New ending song is great too. Like "Dear Father" it's once again from Sage's perspective, but this time about how glad she is to have a home and a family.

 

I got everything I wanted. This series could just do 10 Shadow the Hedgehog sequels in a row and I wouldn't complain at this point. My main man Eggman is genuinely happy and has someone he unequivocally cares about other than himself. Sage finally found that family born of love she so wanted. I'm just so happy with this ending.

Kishimoto, Flynn, and everyone else who made this happen - Thanks for a Sonic story that made me genuinely emotional for the first time in a very, very long time.

 

[SonicLegends]

4 hours ago, Dr. Mechano said:

Final boss and ending spoilers (video, major spoilers, don't look if you want to be spoiled):

  Hide contents

 Where do I start with this?

• From a gameplay perspective, the final boss builds on the main game's Super Sonic gameplay instead of just being a top-down space shooter, so that's definitely an improvement.
• Eggman freaking takes Supreme's giant gun and then shoots Super Sonic into The End for the final blow. That's so awesome that it deserves its own entry. (Also hey, his glasses having tech/scanning features like in 06 again!)
• Eggman and Sage getting a happy ending was everything to me. Him calling Sage "dear daughter" to her face (and not just quietly and sadly after she's out of earshot, as in the other ending) made my heart melt. They're such a cute, loving family. Best Eggman development in years, possibly ever. 
• New ending song is great too. Like "Dear Father" it's once again from Sage's perspective, but this time about how glad she is to have a home and a family.

 

I got everything I wanted. This series could just do 10 Shadow the Hedgehog sequels in a row and I wouldn't complain at this point. My main man Eggman is genuinely happy and has someone he unequivocally cares about other than himself. Sage finally found that family born of love she so wanted. I'm just so happy with this ending.

Kishimoto, Flynn, and everyone else who made this happen - Thanks for a Sonic story that made me genuinely emotional for the first time in a very, very long time.

 

Also, huge spoiler here being

Spoiler

They really went this is to go even further beyond! Just what do we call this form!? It looks like a combination of dark form from X anime and Fleetaway super form with the cyber corruption added in of course so maybe like Cyber Primal Sonic? Gotta wonder what the fan names for this will be lol.

 

[J_Regalis]

Hi! For the last trial if anyone else is having a lot of trouble with it, here's how you can beat it easily 

Spoiler

 For the boss rush, since the game keeps you at level 1 with no extra rings you need to do the following 

>Get your quick cyloop charged
>quick cyloop then spam Wild Rush, Stomp, and Loop Kick
>gets them down to half health instantly
>Phase 2 starts
>Parry/Do their QTE
>Quick Cyloop
>Wild Rush, Stomp, and Loop Kick
>Mandatory QTW
>Dead
Repeat for all bosses. I was able to finish Knight with over 150 rings left thanks to this!

Hope that helps! This was very difficult to play through last night. 

 

Also, Knuckles has an infinite jump glitch like Sonic Boom!!! Punch combo, when he uppercuts into the air press jump to start the glide animation. When he begins the animation do the punch combo again to cancel the glide startup, he'll uppercut into the air again and gain height lol. Can be done as many times as needed.

Edited September 29, 2023 by J_Regalis
Wanted to add in Knuckles part, sorry.

[Dreadknux]

Played a little bit this morning! Man, the vibe of Frontiers is not the 'Sonic' I am used to, but I can't deny that it's fun pottering around the Starfall Islands. I 100%'d everything before the DLC1 hit (including all the heart tokens etc etc - you don't get anything for doing that, d'oh), and didn't bother to really pick up the extra music notes etc from DLC1 and 2, so it's actually quite nice to come back to it and find stuff to collect again alongside DLC3.

Not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing... Amy seems fun to play so far, but I'm collecting these weird 'Lookout Koco' and I'm not getting any clue as to what I'm meant to do with them or how many I need to collect (I'm not sure I want anyone to tell me by the way, I like figuring these things out on my own)... it's definitely harder to unlock the map this time --

Spoiler

(I actually quite like looking for the new 'map' based Koco)

-- but I'm not really getting any guidance from the game here. I found the Chaos Emerald that Amy is probably supposed to be looking for but it's locked up and nothing's telling me how to open it either so 

Anyway, I'm enjoying it! Avoiding all the enemies as much as I can while I am still a weakling lol... finally found the Elder Koco who's amped my attack and defence a bit but I think I want to parkour a little more before I try that "Spider+" prick that keeps wandering around.

Photo Mode is still dope:

[Shiny Gems]

3 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

Played a little bit this morning! Man, the vibe of Frontiers is not the 'Sonic' I am used to, but I can't deny that it's fun pottering around the Starfall Islands. I 100%'d everything before the DLC1 hit (including all the heart tokens etc etc - you don't get anything for doing that, d'oh), and didn't bother to really pick up the extra music notes etc from DLC1 and 2, so it's actually quite nice to come back to it and find stuff to collect again alongside DLC3.

Not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing... Amy seems fun to play so far, but I'm collecting these weird 'Lookout Koco' and I'm not getting any clue as to what I'm meant to do with them or how many I need to collect (I'm not sure I want anyone to tell me by the way, I like figuring these things out on my own)... it's definitely harder to unlock the map this time --

  Reveal hidden contents

(I actually quite like looking for the new 'map' based Koco)

-- but I'm not really getting any guidance from the game here. I found the Chaos Emerald that Amy is probably supposed to be looking for but it's locked up and nothing's telling me how to open it either so 

Anyway, I'm enjoying it! Avoiding all the enemies as much as I can while I am still a weakling lol... finally found the Elder Koco who's amped my attack and defence a bit but I think I want to parkour a little more before I try that "Spider+" prick that keeps wandering around.

Photo Mode is still dope:

Glad to hear you are enjoying it, Dreadknux!

[fia]

Currently on the very final boss. Mixed feelings on this DLC overall. New characters are... generally fine, though the delay on Knuckles and Tails' flight is very annoying, and Amy's wallrun seems *very* finnicky and hard to activate for some reason. Knuckles not being able to climb any walls is a pretty big bummer too - feels like he got shafted compared to the other two. Also wish Amy's hammer was a bit more prominent, not sure why it isn't used for combat besides the parry - I don't mind the tarot cards being used more, but they're practically 90% of her moves here.

The towers you ascend as Sonic are a massive difficulty spike from anything in the original game and probably the hardest thing here overall. I'd be fine with that, except the game punishes you hard if you fall, as there's no checkpoint system like with the pulleys on Rhea. Given that this is Frontiers physics... that happens a lot more than I'd like. Easily the most tedious part of the DLC. I also ended up giving in and changing difficulty to Normal for the final trial, because the timing there is absolutely brutal.

Written dialogue seems a lot better than what was in the original game, but the actual performances here are very off for some reason. Sonic feels like he often just straight up slips into Roger's regular voice and it's very weird. It's cute they recreated some of the voice effects from SA1 and SA2 for Tails, but Amy saying 'lah' and other similar cutesy noises everytime she jumps is also weird (though I can't remember if it was like that in the adventure games too).

This kinda goes for Frontiers as a whole but I really do think they need to update these models if they want to continue doing more serious stories - pretty much every facial expression that isn't that one dreamworks smirk they overuse on the characters tends to look goofy. Oddly Eggman of all characters gets some nice expressions here, which I don't think really showed up before.
 

Spoiler

Love the concept of the final boss, but funnily just like the original Supreme it's super confusing what exactly you're meant to do. Even after looking up a video (and spoiling myself on the ending) I'm still a little puzzled what exactly leads to him changing phases or becoming vulnerable. Hopefully I figure it out soon.

The actual story/writing elements are probably the best thing here. Having all of Sonic's friends involved plus Sage and Eggman along for the whole ride as well as The End doing more than just monologuing at you during a bullet hell feels much better. Glad the ending here isn't so bittersweet.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

7 hours ago, J_Regalis said:

Hi! For the last trial if anyone else is having a lot of trouble with it, here's how you can beat it easily 

  Reveal hidden contents

 For the boss rush, since the game keeps you at level 1 with no extra rings you need to do the following 

>Get your quick cyloop charged
>quick cyloop then spam Wild Rush, Stomp, and Loop Kick
>gets them down to half health instantly
>Phase 2 starts
>Parry/Do their QTE
>Quick Cyloop
>Wild Rush, Stomp, and Loop Kick
>Mandatory QTW
>Dead
Repeat for all bosses. I was able to finish Knight with over 150 rings left thanks to this!

 

I keep trying this and it just doesn't work. On Gigantio, if I can counter him on the second phase, sure - but on Wyvern, I had two fights now where I got to second phase, successfully countered, immediately attacked and used Quick Cyloop, only for Sonic to glitch out and not attack, and Wyvern to immediately escape from the chains.

[Dr. Mechano]

Vocal song spoiler:

Spoiler

The new credits song, a vocal version of "I'm With You"

 I love it. It's like the happy counterpart to "Dear Father," sung from Sage's point of view about how happy she is to have a family and a loving home now. 

I love this story. I don't think a single Sonic thing (games, cartoons, comics, whatever) has emotionally moved me as much as Sonic Frontiers. It's not perfect writing by any means, and it's definitely a bit rushed in some places - but man oh man, my heart is warmed nonetheless.

 

[Danj86]

16 hours ago, SonicLegends said:

The 2nd trial is gotta be patient as got no choice it seems but to do cyloop (no quick one as it's disabled) and attack 3 times only rinse and repeat.

I'm not really sure how I did this as it didn't always work, but during that trail, after doing the initial cyloop, I held ZL (I'm playing the Switch version.) while walking towards the enemy so Sonic should roll. I think I bump into it while he rolls which does slight damage and then rapidly pressing Y to attack. Sonic should stay on the ground and his attacks are slightly faster so you could get 5 or 6 hits in. But be warned, you aren't using the homing attack by doing this so you could easily miss.

[PC the Hedgehog]

21 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

Vocal song spoiler:

  Reveal hidden contents

The new credits song, a vocal version of "I'm With You"

 I love it. It's like the happy counterpart to "Dear Father," sung from Sage's point of view about how happy she is to have a family and a loving home now. 

I love this story. I don't think a single Sonic thing (games, cartoons, comics, whatever) has emotionally moved me as much as Sonic Frontiers. It's not perfect writing by any means, and it's definitely a bit rushed in some places - but man oh man, my heart is warmed nonetheless.

 

The OG version sounded so much like an instrumental to a vocal track, so I'm not surprised we actually got one.

[Zadent]

Oh man, they even changed the Ouranus Cyberspace stages. The super low gravity one is crazy with the spindash

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Finally finished the DLC. I think I'll get the positives out of the way first.

Great final boss.

Great ending.

....

...yeah that's about it.

Alright, well not exactly. I think the characters can actually be pretty fun when you get their abilities all levelled up and unlocked.

But god, other than that. This is rough. Really rough. Like, so rough that it makes me question everything I love about the game to begin with.

The difficulty is just far too obscene for it's own good. Expecting some stupidly precise platforming from a game that does not have the capacity to not screw you over at each and every single turn that it possibly can. That's not even including the trials which is some of the freshest bullshit I've ever seen from this series, and I've 100%’d Unleashed.

I just am amazed how the DLC systematically takes just about everything I loved about Frontiers, and puts some very stupid asterisk beside it to ruin it, screw with it, or make it worse in some regard.

The freedom to explore islands immediately out of the gate, unlock everything immediately, and map the whole place out? Locked, because there's now character specific challenges, areas and locations, meaning until you finish the game, unlock everyone, and their abilities on top of it, you cannot map the island out. You're locked into doing the story.

The skill tree, the stats, and the progression system? Both somehow made worthless and made excruciatingly painful at the same time. All of the new characters start out at the basic level, with pitiful speed, pitiful power, and pitiful defences, against the high-end enemies who will shred you in a moment's instance. Something that sticks out like a sore thumb when you take into account Knuckles' big trait compared to everyone else is supposed to be his strength and power. 

But if that wasn't bad enough, Sonic's stats also get made completely irrelevant by the trials. All that time you put in to max out Sonic? Worthless. Pointless. All because they apparently didn't want to balance or scale any of this content to a end-game Sonic, instead you just get stripped of most everything and sent all the way back to square one with harsh and stupid requirements for at least three out of five trials.

The platforming? Need I even mention again that they want precise platforming in a game that frankly gets by on the fact that there's enough leeway that you can ignore the jankier elements? Instead, you can fall down a tower over and over again because the homing attack decided not to work, or the fans decided not to push Sonic in the right direction, or any other random janky thing. Not to mention how some objects just don't even respawn if you fail the first time.

Cyberspace? Whereas the majority of levels were fairly forgiving, and were just quick bite-sized romps through traditional Sonic stages, albeit with not great controls, now they're insanely in-depth levels that in my experience, outright want you to abuse the spin-dash - IE - what was supposed to be a broken, 100% reward - to even pull off basic completion of stages. That's not to mention filling the levels with random gimmicks, and general inconsistencies as a result of the momentum and control.

The bite-sized challenges? The things that were just meant to be very quick one and done map events you would seek out and be on your way? Now also made incredibly tedious, with stuff like light puzzles and multi-layered puzzles. Not including also having some puzzles that are just straight up locked out behind characters, or skill tree abilities. Yet another good thing about the base game that's been screwed up.

The fast-paced combat? Now the enemies are damage sponges and can shred even a maxed out Sonic in a matter of moments, let alone the three other characters who start at base stats, and for what? The same stupid gears that you'll find in abundance around the open world for Cylooping?

Even the Super Sonic fights couldn't survive. All because of a awful trial that may be up there with one of the most downright garbage Sonic fights in the entire franchise. Three fights with Titans, all on 400 rings, with a massively nerfed Super Sonic, and a gimped parry that on any difficulty other than easy - straight up wants you to be FRAME PERFECT to successfully perform parries, which makes bosses like Wyvren a downright nightmare. 

I'm genuinely astonished. I am absolutely shocked how easy of a slam dunk this was. Just make more of the main game, give us fun additional characters, a new boss with added dev time, and new story. That was it. That was all that is needed. 

Yet, this is what we got. I could forgive so much. If only because I really do love Frontiers' base game, warts and all, and I was prepared to fall in love with it all over again. Instead, what I got was such a ridiculous, bullshit update in terms of difficulty that it straight up makes me question how good the base game is. 

Frontiers' strength was just it being a pretty chill, fun exploration with fast-paced challenges, great traversal, and a addicting open world to explore, open up, and 100%. Where things stuck to the spirit of Sonic by being fast, snappy, and fun enough. Yet this update seems to think everyone wanted the hardest of hardcore difficulty in it. Which is even more shocking because at the end of the day, this isn't just some hardcore bonus thing for the big die-hard Sonic fans. This is story content. 

There's going to be kids who get this game and they're just gonna be expected to somehow do this shit that even more die-hard, experienced Sonic fans can't do. And it's mandatory at that. This is story content. This is practically the real ending after what we got in the base game was extremely rushed. And this just locks out people with little patience for the game's broken jankiness screwing them over at every turn.

The only consolation is again, the final boss is really cool. And the characters can be really fun. Having the four phase fight with Supreme was infinitely better than the original fight, and I love having all the insanely cool anime moves that Sonic just pulls out, like flicking energy spheres and so on. Sonic already did some really cool shit in the base game, but it got driven up to overdrive here. Having the other characters play a role as well was just fantastic, and I love how Eggman got done some proper justice compared to only getting a emerald in the base game and nothing else.

That said...

Spoiler

I'm very mixed on where it ends. I feel like with just a little more work, this could've easily been definitive, and completely replace the original's ending. Having the End monologue throughout the final fight with Supreme could've still worked, and I wish Sage had played a bigger role in the final fight.

I really like the new happy ending they give Eggman and Sage, but I do think it comes at the cost of one of Eggman's most humanising moments, and genuinely a really sad sobering moment from the original where Eggman sadly looked at the Starfall, realising the cost of saving the world was Sage's life. It did a lot to humanise him.

I feel like they could've still had Sage's sacrifice, and that shot, but maybe have Sage reform at the end of the cutscene, so we can still get the happy ending, and everything more or less slots into canon, other than Eggman rebuilding her from the end of the hard mode ending in the base game. 

Also kind of lame how the ending doesn't change at all for Sonic and co. Feels like there could've been more there, frankly.

But still, I'd definitely say it's a overall improvement. Sonic's new cyber corruption form looked cool as hell for all of five seconds it appeared, and I thought the spectacle of everything was fifty times better than what we got in the original. 

Overall, I'm severely disappointed, personally. So much of this could've been fixed with a far more reasonable difficulty scale. I do not know what on earth Sonic Team was thinking here.

[Scritch the Cat]

Sounds like modders are going to have to come to the rescue.

Again.

[JezMM]

Finished it just now.  Ryannumber1gamer really got most of my thoughts across here.

More than anything else, it's annoying how schizophrenic it all is.  Towers 1, 2 and 4 I found absolutely brutal.  1 and 2 tested my patience but I got there.  4 I had to switch to easy mode and make use of the helpful homing attackable balloons that appear - sorry Sonic Team but asking us to use momentum to jump from one O-shaped grind rail to another at a 3/4 camera angle that shifts once you're in the air is absolute nonsense.  And what's strange is that 3 and 5 felt so reasonable - definitely more tricky and less automated than Rhea Island but reasonable.

There was literally no reason to not have the Rhea Island style shortcuts here and there.  This is just do much to ask a player to do in one go as a mandatory challenge and watching Sonic fall down past everything is just so frustrating.  The level design is good creative use of the various toys and gimmicks they've created to build platforming out of in theory, but it's all just so fiddley and full of ways for the camera to screw you over or a single mistaken input to undo minutes of progress (which is long in platforming time).

 

There's a severe lack of tutorialisation here which is strange too with how hand-holdy the opening of the main game was.  It takes a lot of experimentation to figure stuff out.  Was anyone else's first 5 minutes playing as Knuckles spent listening to the first 10 seconds of his vocal song over and over while dying to that first totally optional platforming challenge they plonk you in front of with no rings?  Bit weird.

And yeah... the trials.  The first one was just a bit annoying but doable.  The second one is such an odd, not particularly fun puzzle situation of the EXACT thing you need to do to beat them all in 2 minutes.  Once you have that, it's fine, but just doing it to 4 guys in a row is pretty repetitive.  The 3rd and 4th were perfectly fine, although stupidly sped-up enemies is still very cheap difficulty escalation on the main game.

I didn't really fight any guardians or play any cyber space stages because you just constantly get given the tower unlock koco and gears by cylooping every treasure spot you come across.  Because I couldn't get into cyber space as the three friends I actually started ignoring them and forgot about them when playing as Sonic, and I figured the story would direct me towards them as an objective once the time came.  Means I have something to go back and do, though the two I did play seem as startingly brutal as the guardians and towers, and both of them being just built out of platforming parts strewn across existing cyber space stages was a bit of a bummer.

And... yeah.  The Master King Trial.  Wow.  Hey guess what, I haven't ACTUALLY beaten Update 3 - I cheated.  Thank goodness I got this game on PC, because I was so fucking sick of it after only two attempts I had to load up the Hedgemod Manager and disable ring loss to beat them.  On Easy.  Sonic Team's concentrated effort to destroy all the goodwill and cinematic appeal of these fights has been most successful I have to say.  I was already a little bored of them after playing them over and over for the Update 2 gauntlets, with their unskippable cut-scenes, Wyvern's autoscroller you have to slog through before every attempt.  And the game basically expects you to perform a perfect run on all three.  One or two missed parries and you're done, every attempt is like 10 minutes long.  Like... sorry but I got a damn life!!

Considering their entire shtick is pretty much just memorising the time between the parry signal/sound effect and the actual time you're meant to parry it's just... not engaging gameplay.  I couldn't even make it to Knight before giving in and using cheats to skip it.  In phase 2 Wyvern just starts doing "Aha, before there was 1 second between the noise and the parry moment, but now it's 2 seconds!  Did you not anticipate that?  Well, then get fucked, enjoy the consequences of your brain's pattern recognition survival techniques you complete rifle."  That's some real engaging gameplay design right there, right up there with "the enemies are fast now" or "we've negated all your levelling up efforts arbitrarily".

The boss rush just didn't need to be here.  It's total padding.  We already have a boss rush.  We already have extreme difficulty.  The players who enjoy zero mistake runs are catered for.  Don't put that fucking putrid shit into a mandatory story task.  God I'm so mad!!!

 

Now... I'm an Unleashed fan.  I'm theoretically okay with high difficulty, and I'm theoretically okay with "low lows for high highs" exchange.  But this DLC, overall, was low lows for average highs.

 

So... on that note, the positives.  Playing as Amy Knuckles and Tails is fun enough.  Knuckles is definitely wonky, and all three suffer from the same as Sonic, with fiddley platforming sections.  Luckily theirs are significantly shorter.

 

The new final boss was really enjoyable, great spectacle, although again my experience was dragged down by just some real confusing design and arbitrary punishment - fighting Supreme again each time for each attempt was very boring.  Being forced to get hit a few times before the boss truly begins on replays was boring.  And I ended up having to google for a solution to it.  I tried all sorts of stuff that seemed to make a difference but were actually misleads.  Perfect Parrying a bunch of the orbs in a row shows Sonic doing a unique animation, suggesting progress or some kind of effect on the boss.  Cylooping the boss holds it in place but it then immediately fires this laser at you I could not figure out a way to dodge which undoes it being held.  In the end, all I needed to do to progress was... tap the right bumper to target the connection to the moon instead of the head when I was mid-combo.  From there it was challenging but fair, though the trees getting in the way of the camera was still annoying, and there's no way to see the orbs coming when you're mid-combo on the head.

And... the one part I could count on, the music was fantastic.  I kind of wish the three vocal themes for the friends had progressed to a "second phase" for their second segment each, as is they did slightly feel like they were extended intros for songs that never HUGELY get going.  I was also so excited to get a new arrangement of Ouranos Island, one of my favourite songs, but it was only a slight change in the end.  Still, overall I still enjoyed everything I heard, I'm looking forward to tracking down the other Cyber Space stages to here those new remixes, and the new ending theme was just gorgeous.

 

Story-wise, it was fine, but also wasn't really much more than the bare minimum I expected?  They seem to make a big deal out of how hard Sonic pushes himself, seeing a battle-damaged Super Sonic is an unsettling and new sight... but then he just changes back to regular Sonic at the end and he's fine.  It's great to confirm that Sage is sticking around pretty much with this new ending, but I did hope for just... something else other than "it all happens the same, but Sage is fine this time".  I mean, in the original version, that was kind of assumed from the cliffhanger for the original story anyway (which now... basically has no meaning?).  I dunno.

 

 

So yeah.  Man.  What a bummer.  There's good stuff here, and they really put the effort in.  But the lows are so so low that they overshadow the stuff I enjoyed completely and utterly.

 

[McGroose]

Spoiler

Could someone explain to me how you would complete this additional story if you don't have a complete save file? If you have a completed game, you would find a ring portal that would take you to the DLC content, correct?

How does this all work if you're starting a new game and you entered Rhea island for the first time? Does this content replace anything then? 

Are you able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy outside of the DLC area now as well?

Also I actually really appreciate how they added new cyberspace levels, but I have a complaint(pretty dumb I'll admit): there's nine new ones. Originally there were 30, so now there's a total of 39. C'mon Sega, tf kinda number if 39? Why not go for a perfect 40? 

Also I might stand out here but I really could give less of a fuck about the new Super Sonic design. I want Hyper Sonic back, or at least something that looks different. IDK if it's even supposed to be considered a new form or not, but for all the hype the trailers and in-game buildup were leading towards, Super Sonic with blue eyes and some edgy poses ain't doin it for me