Sonic Frontiers - Final Horizon DLC Spoilers Topic

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, Sonicka said:

It’s a tricky one, this. 

Technically all three boost games had different directors (Kishimoto being the lead on Colours), and very likely shared assets and resources between projects (I say this loosely as I genuinely have no idea). 

Unleashed and Generations specifically share a certain formula for the daytime/modern levels that we haven’t really seen in scope since which is a shame. Colours plays to the Wii‘s strengths instead and goes about its level and gimmick design a little differently (but does enough for it to still be considered part of this “boost trilogy”).

I personally like all these titles and beyond for different reasons.

Unleashed is basically a Pixar styled Sonic Adventure as you have world hubs, level hubs, speed levels, tails flight sections, but also GOW lite stages with the werehog. It was a good time.

Colours jazzed things up with the Wisps, which are an excellent gimmick power that made level traversal very fun not to mention it had some spectacular set pieces and level design and to made water levels FUN due to smarts choices with Sonic’s move set.

Generations is a giant fanservice. It perfects the daytime levels introduced in Unleashed and mostly succeeds with the Classic stages. Game was just too damn short. 

Lost World goes for broke in taking inspiration in design and aesthetic from Super Mario Galaxy, and largely succeeds (on both platforms). The wackiness works to its credit, the wisps addition add continuity from the last two adventures, and the parkour move set (whilst not perfect) was and still is something I want Sonic Team to continue exploring. 

Ignoring Sonic Forces (because it was too middle of the road to engage me) I was pretty glad they decided to change things up again for Frontiers. Love it or hate it, Sonic Team are at their most interesting when they experiment. I think Cyberspace probably should have played it safe and made Sonic snappier and closer in feel to Unleashed or Generations, but it still gave us infinitely better platforming and push to work with than anything Sonic Forces produced for most of its automated runtime. I was more impressed that they replicated environments and levels from SA2 and Unleashed to even function when ultimately this plays like neither of those two games. That’s a pretty damn good achievement IMO. 

What I do think is most important to remember is that for all the praise that modders get, they run off their own time to passionately put effort into their projects. When you are working a job to schedule, have targets and are programming or reprogramming in code for new releases and versions, which are  play tested and debugged, then put through the another dev sprint cycle Inc fixes are in place, then repeat…  it must be a lot more challenging. 

 

I agree on all counts. I liked how Sonic Unleashed was more Pixar like, graphics, music and all.

I also have to say that in the case of modders, they do seem to have a lot less time than the likes of game developers. Still, that is to say, modding still is not the same as actual game developing, and is a bit more on the amateur side than on the professional side, if you ask me. Sure, the modders have more time, but to me, it is all still something like developing a fan game, or a Sonic fangame in this case, as while it might turn out good, it is nothing like what Sonic Team or any other professional game developer would put out. Now, modding is not the same as making a fan game, but it seems modding can be for adjusting any one, or multiple things about a game, from fixing to adding in something, but it is still not the same as developing an entire game, is it not?

[Danj86]

Wow. I just watched a video by Chariii5, he's a big Sonic and does a series based on something from another channel called CinemaSins except based on games. He does them purely for the comedic and not meant as actual reviews, yet even so, his recent video on Final Horizon does point out some interesting things, a major one I wanted to share now.

I never made the connection but it seems like the Trails are set up in a way for the player to get used to using the parry or maybe the Perfect Parry specifically, though only the final trail demands using the Perfect Parry. This revelation suggests that the other trails are much easier to complete by using the parry. It makes a lot of sense when looking back, but that's only in hindsight.

I might just give it a try, but yeah, the game failed to make it clearer that it was trying to prepare you for using Perfect Parry.

[Sega DogTagz]

1 hour ago, Danj86 said:

Wow. I just watched a video by Chariii5, he's a big Sonic and does a series based on something from another channel called CinemaSins except based on games. He does them purely for the comedic and not meant as actual reviews, yet even so, his recent video on Final Horizon does point out some interesting things, a major one I wanted to share now.

I never made the connection but it seems like the Trails are set up in a way for the player to get used to using the parry or maybe the Perfect Parry specifically, though only the final trail demands using the Perfect Parry. This revelation suggests that the other trails are much easier to complete by using the parry. It makes a lot of sense when looking back, but that's only in hindsight.

I might just give it a try, but yeah, the game failed to make it clearer that it was trying to prepare you for using Perfect Parry.

 

The entire game teaches you to throw the parry at anything and everything. If you are trying to connect-the-dots to the perfect parry, then I wouldn't agree with that headspace at all.

In all the trials leading up to the titan rush, you are gifted with the same, brokenly OP parry that Sonic carries through the entirety of frontiers. There is no benefit to preforming a perfect parry to incentivize learning the timing. There is no visual or audio indicator to identify what you've done as a perfect parry, so even if you wanted to practice it, you have no way of knowing if you are even succeeding in doing it correctly.

The closest thing to helping you learn the perfect parry would be trial 4, where the ninja attacks come so blindingly fast that there is a much smaller window to parry - which leads to a greater number of "perfect" parry's by default. But even so, you have no way of knowing if you successfully achieved a perfect parry. Its not different than practicing bowling while the pins rest behind a curtain so you never have an idea how good or bad your doing. 

 

The only way to actually practice the perfect parry is to intentionally play defensibly against either the titan rush or The End. Everything else is literally a waste of time because the only way you can confirm if your doing it right is to see if Sonic dodges an attack or gets stomped through the floor by a titan.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I spent the last week on again off again clearing everything up, 100%ing the update, even though I knew against my better judgement I shouldn't. But I'd done everything in the main game. I'd done all of Update 1. I even collected all of the stupid memory token padding bullshit in Update 2. I couldn't go this far to leave here.

So this is some additional thoughts.

First things first, screw the Starfall rate. The main game had this problem marginally, but here, it's far, far worse when it's your only means of upgrading Tails, Knuckles, and Amy's stats that doesn't take a ludicrously long length of time. By the end of the game, I had Amy maxed, and Knuckles half maxed, and Tails completely unlevelled. And even after doing most everything I could do with them, I still had to sit and just leave characters running around on rails, baiting the time out for a Starfall to trigger. 

Secondly - even after you fully max them all out, the difference compared to Sonic is not remotely close. Their speed still doesn't feel particularly great outside of the max mode, and going against any of the frankly bullshit Guardian encounters. So in the end, it might as well be a wasted effort. All they're good for is exploration and nothing else. Which is frankly ridiculous when you do that to Knuckles of all people. If anyone should've been a great fighter for the new guardians, it should've been him, but nope.

Then you get to the Guardians themselves, and it's genuinely astonishing just how awfully they're designed. Each and every fight had their strategies removed from them, all so enemies are now gigantic damage sponges, even against a max level Sonic - and the very second you do anything against them, they immediately proceed to spam energy blasts and spikes all around you, constantly comboing Sonic into massive ring losses and ensuring that the fight is drawn out even further.

What's frustrating is all of the fights aren't bad in concept. The idea of taking gimmicky fights like say - Tank, or Spider, and making them more traditional fights is alright enough - but in Tank's case, it's just a literal tank that spams hits everywhere, and Spider will at points just start slamming and shredding spikes all around so you can't get a chance to make it vulnerable. It's the same for all of these garbage fights. Silver Hammer, Ninja (especially noticeable in her case), and esepcially Caterpillar, which is downright the worst fight in the entire game, bar none. Cyloop barely makes it vulnerable, and the rest of the time, it's non-stop projectile spam. 

Even Ghost doesn't escape, because if you use Sonic - which is what you SHOULD be doing as every other character gets destroyed by the bosses, Ghost's spawn spots are in locations that are only accessible easily to someone like Knuckles. So either suffer with Sonic with bad platforming on floating crates, or backtrack and switch to Knuckles specifically for that fight, then go back to Sonic again.

The new Cyberspace stages are just awful. I like the core concepts of the idea, and I like that SEGA want to experiment, but the only fun I really get out of these stages is just finding ramps so I can spindash off of them and abuse them for everything they're worth. The gimmicks in these stages vary from meh and unforgiving (Holo-Tails) to downright baffingly for a Sonic game (The mines and rev boost that damages Sonic if he goes fast for more than a few seconds). Cyberspace's physics and momentum is not up to snuff for the challenges it asks you of here, and it means if you aren't abusing spindash to break the stages over your knee, it's just going to infuriate you, more often than not.

Worse still, I could at least cut these stages a break if it was get to the finish and nothing else. Fine, that's cool. Some of these again are fun to blitz and break with the spindash.

But the collectibles are just the worst thing they could have added. Forced to slow down and plod through every level to track down small bouncing critters that might as well be a blur on Sonic's radar if you're boosting. Silver rings that are inconsistent with despawn times and can easily force a stage reset. Secret spawns that can either be easy to find, or the most out of the way thing imaginable. 

I liked how in the original stages, the Red Star Rings were just easy enough to find, and just presented additional challenges most of the time with getting to them and continuing a S-Rank run in one shot. It wasn't particularly hard to find them. Yet here, I had to do usually three runs bare minimum for the S-Rank + collectibles, and usually to a infuriating degree in certain stages as Sonic's busted momentum would kill him when carrying critters, or failing to perform certain launches, and so on so forth. Having to repeat the stages and collectibles over and over again because of the game's own broken momentum is not fun.

Then you get to the island. I've already said before that the challenges have gotten far too complex and run counter against what their intended purpose was. But even better - they're more or less all designed for a max level Sonic and no one else. So even with the additional characters, you're not only story-gated, but the map kucos and the challenges are basically their idea of splitting things out so they don't need to do anything with the new characters challenge wise.

Even the character dialogue couldn't survive. Sometimes, you get some fun character interactions, like Tails taunting Eggman with his victory in Station Square, or Eggman discussing his philosophy with science, or Sonic taunting Knuckles over treasure hunting. Even a nice reference to the other Chaos forms. Fair enough.

But other interactions? They're either exposition that amounts to nothing, like the reveal of the "Zap" meaning, or the pinball machine that basically amounts to Tails shrugging, so why even bother bringing it up? Or better yet, you get the most utterly stupid dialogue sessions where you find a character, only for them to go "YOU BETTER GO DO OBJECTIVE! TIME IS OF ESSENCE!" "YES! I BETTER GO DO OBJECTIVE! WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME!". I could not believe it when I got a Sage dialogue with Sonic that was literally only this.

---

But then - the most insulting thing of all. What awaits you at the end? What's your reward for doing everything you possibly can do? For finishing the game completely, entirely to 100%? 

In the base game, you got a fully levelled up Sonic for the final boss.

In Update 1, you got extra modes, extra difficulties, and extra mechanics.

In Update 2, you got the spin dash. A absolutely broken means of traversal that rewards your hard work. AND you get a crown for Sonic to wear!

What do you get here? What do you get for fully completing the HARDEST update of them all? 

You get a tip.

That's it. You go back to the Master Kuco, and he gives you 'Battle Guidance - FINAL'. What is 'Battle Guidance - FINAL?'. It's a two text box message that tells you how to disconnect the pipe from Supreme, and that you can cyloop the gun.

As in - it tells you a tutorial that the game SHOULD have told you since it's required for beating the final boss in the first place, and it tells you something you already KNOW from the Knight's cutscene!

That's it! The final update! The final reward for all of your hard work! All of your effort! What do you get?! Oh, you get Sonic Team's worthless, pointless, utterly IDIOTIC tutorial screen that should have been there from the very SECOND you start the final fight.

Screw this update.

Never let Sonic Team cook like this again.

[KingSonicFan134]

So I got finished with the Sonic Frontiers: Final Horizon DLC about a week ago. I'd call my experience mostly positive. 

So first off of the cutting board, we have the new playable characters. First up being Amy. I found her to be quite enjoyable for the most part, had to get used to her being A LOT more floaty compared to Sonic. Similar to the older TT Lego games with female characters being able to jump higher. Overall, pretty good time using her. Next up is Knuckles, he was quite alright really. I found his moveset to be a bit boring and toned down compared to how I think of his skillset. I mean he has super strength, can climb walls, can dig holes, he's an excellent swimmer, can beat the Chaos Emeralds out of Sonic no sweat, can glide long distances, and basically has all of Sonic's skills besides his trademark speed.

With all that being said, why does he feel the most underpowered? Why can he only climb certain walls? Why his glide can't fly straight without wrestling with the controls? And why is he relegated to what Tails and Amy can do? A strong saving grace is he is most certainly the best platformer of the three new characters IMO. So pretty alright really. Lastly, Tails. Quite the mixed bag really. I find his ability to fly large distances and having access to his the Cyclone from Adventure 2 to glide basically infinitely was an incredible time. However, I found his platforming to be just annoying. Why can't TAILS be able to Homing Attack and Amy can? Why? That Just doesn't make any sense to me. Strong explorer, but terrible platformer.

Overall, not bad for having other playable characters in a mainline 3D Sonic game for 17 years. They were the stuff I was mostly excited about, and I think they delivered enough for me to have fun.

I'll write more about the other aspects of the DLC later.

[Sonicka]

Decided to slide the difficulty down to easy based on recommendations, and it sure does make the towers more manageable to climb.

There’s still a decent challenge there, but there is less of a gut punch when you mess up. Trial 1 still took me about 15 tries however, but that’s likely my lack in forgetting how combat works since it’s been too long. Got there in the end though. I like that the Titan Pilots are basically challenging him because they are pissed he gutted their beasts (albeit this was under false pretences at the time). 

The highlights for me continue to be these new insane and creative Cyberspace stages. Despite the lack of checkpoints and the length of each level for the challenge… they are an absolute joy to learn and rush though (loved the Rocket one in particular). This sort of challenge reminds me of doing stages like Final Rush from SA2 for the first time and I’m down for it! More like this in future please Sonic Team. 
 

EDIT: I think Sonic Team must have been smoking something when building a lot of the new cyberspace stages. The reverse SA2 City Escape level with low gravity (4-C?) is mental as ****. All those cars everywhere... spiralling... It's an archaic nightmare yet feels so meaningfully symbolic if you think about it. I love it. Anyway, time to tackle Tower 2.

So far my personal impressions are that this final free update has been a freakin' good time. When you come away smiling from a play through that's 1 part thrill to 2 parts challenging you know they've done a great job here. 

[juiceDpunk983]

Finished the update

That was hard... I couldn't Kill any of the Guardians, even as Sonic. I only managed to kill Ninja with Amy & Sonic.

The Towers made me lose 10 years of my life and King Koco can just P off. Never in my life have I had to switch to easy before in any game, Sonic of all games made me do this. Quick Cyloop isn't guaranteed to work, so that nice fan tower with the rail switch is super fun to do.

Final Boss was hahahahaha yeeeee, how am I supposed to know you are suppose to Hit him in the head once, then do a dodge? Why can't I manually target his Brain Tube thing?

Also, the Story kinda makes less sense in the update, why is the End using a Smashed up Titan and not himself like the base game? Can't The End just laser beam the planet like all the other planets? I thought the battle would be in space like the base game but as actual Super Sonic killing The End. I thought it was cool in the base game, trying to stop The End reaching Earth.

Sonic and The End don't have their dialogues in the fight which I found disappointing, especially since I love Jun'ichi's perfomance on that part as Super Sonic.

Cyber Super Sonic showed up for about 4 seconds, a bit like that one scene in Sonic X.

I liked playing as the different characters though, reminded me of the last story in 06. This is a step in the right direction.

Can't wait to play this on extreme

Also quick question, Is this the Canon ending or can we count the Base game ending? Is Sonic going inside a ring to reset a map Canon?

All in all though, I did enjoy it. Just no more Master King plz.

[KingSonicFan134]

Now to talk about the exploration of the island and its puzzles.

First of all, I'm very glad I unlocked the Spin Dash before indulging into this DLC. I find the sliver railings to be a lot more sparce then in the base game. A bit of a minor annoyance, but I got over it quick with the Spin Dash.

I've read discussions about the Open Zone Challenges being a lot more complex then the base game, and sure enough, the time to complete them has doubled compared to the base game, making some challenges a straight up chore. To be fair, on the other side of the spectrum, the base games challenges sometimes were too simple to even be considered a challenge. I understand what Sonic Team was going for, but they've got to draw the line somewhere.

Speaking of drawing the line, I cannot understand what Sonic Team was going for when they cranked up the Guardians strength, Hp, and speed. They are unbearable to take down, taking more time then needed to be granted there Portal Gears. I'd rather dash across the island cylooping Item signs for the Portal Gears then fight those juggernauts.

And lastly, the Trial Towers. Doing it all on hard mode, I found them to be quite a mixed bag. Towers 1 and 4 gave me the most trouble out of the five. Especially the 4th tower. Having to loop the circle rails consistently was straight up impossible. However, I found the tower challenges to be quite enjoyable in what I had to accomplish, especially the 2nd towers. Though I found tower 3 and 4's challenges to be a complete joke. And yes, I even think the Master Trial was quite fun as well. Schooling Giganto, praying to succeeding against Wayvern, and beating Knight second try with 11 rings to spare. And yes, all on hard mode. I'm aware consistently Perfect Parrying Wyvern is impossible, but I got around it...eventually.

So yes, exploring the island has its fare share of rough patches with the Guardians, or the challenges being really taxing. But I still managed to have fun throughout my playthrough.

I'll get to the writing once I'm finished with seeing all of the character interactions... 

[Sonicka]

Ok, I'm done with update 3 now - checked my timer and put a solid 25 hours into this free update. Sonic Team you are legends - thanks for the content and making my purchase even more worthwhile whilst increasing the value of this game. 

So, my overall thoughts:

• Towers and trials - yes, I had to dial the difficulty down to easy from hard (I’ll attempt these on hard at a later date), but the climbing was solid fun. Hard mode is where the insane challenge is - but that's Hard mode, so it's on you if you want to risk the pain. Sonic titles don't often come with a difficulty slider, so it's appreciated here for accessibility.
  
  King’s trial - this took me a good 15-20 attempts to actually nail down - ON EASY. I’m not ashamed to admit that this one pushed me to some limits, and I could see where some will get flustered with this one, however I genuinely love the titan battles (some of the best Super Sonic battles in this series history right in this game multiple times over), so actually replaying them over and over was fine with me. It focused my efforts on relearning the patterns and figuring out the optimal methods of attack to make it through. This felt really rewarding upon beating the damn thing
  
  The only notes I would have given Sonic Team is that lowering the stats was enough, having a 400 second time limiter (and a harsh one until you work out the best skips in breaking a boss) was very strict. Also it wasn’t necessary to have the Sonic climbs the Titan lead up sections - this made no sense in context - it just needed to literally be the Super Sonic fights (and also would have helped with the time sink when you fail, makes the reset more bearable).
   
• Additional characters - I've spent a longer playtime with Tails, Knuckles, and Amy despite some initial kinks I didn’t have any real issues with their handling. I also think that once you unlock their traversal abilities it only becomes increasingly enjoyable to uniquely traverse or spindash across the island to unlock their specific parts of the map and their skills. 
  
  I also wholly appreciate the pandering to SA2 enthusiasts with Tails’ Tornado mech (AND the laser cannon) which I was practically frothing at the mouth over getting to control. Love this fan-service and where it becomes useful for that one map puzzle. So yeah, some super good stuff here. I really hope Sonic Team are serious in using this as a tester/taster of what could be in a sequel. There is a lot of potential here from them in a full game capacity. 
   
• Cyberspace 4A to 4I - Despite being challenging without checkpoints - I think they went all out and these are the best stages in the game. I really enjoyed each idea and gimmicks which varied each experience. The toughness made me feel like a was playing an endgame level from Sonic Adventure for the first time, the ask was never too much but it was still a decent post/endgame challenge for skilled players. Once you’ve beaten these and know the layouts you can just go back for gold attempts later (which is all part of the trial and error risk/reward fun factor to return plays). I can forgive the basic level aesthetics and assets use considering it's cyberspace, so they can get away with the random object placement since it is purposeful to the game's themes. BUT, if these were baked into proper locations as actual levels (with less pitfalls) then I think it would have been an even better. There where some nice cinematic camera moments and tough platforming sections aplenty. 
   
• Lore updates and character conversations where also a nice touch, these also solidified what I already suspected when it comes to the lay of the land of starfall, only Sonic (and Co) can see all the random object placements, grind rails and assets because they are linked into Cyberspace and it's pulling from their memories and experiences to assist with the world traversal. It's all just bleeding through into the real world essentially which is very cool. The only two things I would say is that 1) explanation should have been made clearer in the main campaign and 2) a better shimmering / fade filter would have been better for cyberspace assets as opposed to "pop-in" - it would have highlighted to the player why they are here and also would. just. look. better.  
   
• Supreme / THE END Mark 2 - Arse. Total crap. I think this is the only thing that I think that was worse than the original ending / fight. For sure there were some climactic scenes, and the lead up to this fight was better. But the Supreme section was barely improved and still boring compared to it's brethren, then THE END taking it over made it worse. we had an cinematic camera that was placed behind trees so I couldn't see projectiles or the fight for 50% of the time, and then the fight itself and what you had to do was NOT CLEAR, and very button specific that even when I had worked it out (despite the cryptic prompt) it still wasn't entirely obvious to me what I had done. This boss took a few attempts due to the fact that I didn't know what I was doing so kept running out of time. At least with the bullet hell of the OG fight you knew what to do, the monologuing was creepier, and the final blow was more impactful because you were fighting with Sage. 
   
• The New Ending - This is basically the exactly same as the old one. The only difference is that Sage doesn't cop it then get bought back to life, she simply remains alive and goes home with father. The result is still the same come the next game so whatever in game canon you prefer to route for doesn't really matter.  

So overall, I think Updates 1 through 3 have boosted the value of Frontiers substantially. This raises it from a great game and into a fantastic one IMO. I think Sonic Team’s efforts here should genuinely be applauded for the experiment and effort (even in its flaws) and now they have a solid gameplay baseline, a sequel can only be stronger on the next outing. 

[Zadent]

I’m late, but life overruled some of my gametime. Finally finished The End. My overall consensus was, I enjoyed it mostly? I went through much of it on Hard, though I admittedly avoided the Guardians because I somehow got a lot of Gears from the sign posts. Same with the lookout Koco. 

I realllllllly enjoyed the Towers on Hard, oddly enough. I liked that type of increased challenge. That was a highlight for me, honestly.

Amy, Tails, and Knuckles I enjoyed what I played of them. I want to try and get their stats up more and see how at least Knux does in fights for myself. I found that I had to set the Deceleration Rate to the default when playing as them though, very slippery, imo.

I need to spend more time in Cyberspace, but I liked a lot of the ideas in the stages, though still not sure on the animal missions..but I had a fun time at least speed running them

The Master King trial and The End were the trickiest, and the points I lowered the difficulty because I just couldn’t get the timing. Though I wish I could’ve pulled off the end because I admittedly enjoy One Way Dream in the credits more than Vandalize I think The End needed a bit more clarity. I went down to half my 999 rings before I got the tip about “Try something other than attacking The End” which then led me to Cyloop the back (and then had to go again because I ran out of time before the moon reconnected). Really cool sequences with the Cyberspace Powered Super Sonic.

It had some issues, notably for me in the difficulty spike, but I did enjoy it.

[Shiny Gems]

2 minutes ago, Zadent said:

I’m late, but life overruled some of my gametime. Finally finished The End. My overall consensus was, I enjoyed it mostly? I went through much of it on Hard, though I admittedly avoided the Guardians because I somehow got a lot of Gears from the sign posts. Same with the lookout Koco. 

I realllllllly enjoyed the Towers on Hard, oddly enough. I liked that type of increased challenge. That was a highlight for me, honestly.

Amy, Tails, and Knuckles I enjoyed what I played of them. I want to try and get their stats up more and see how at least Knux does in fights for myself. I found that I had to set the Deceleration Rate to the default when playing as them though, very slippery, imo.

I need to spend more time in Cyberspace, but I liked a lot of the ideas in the stages, though still not sure on the animal missions..but I had a fun time at least speed running them

The Master King trial and The End were the trickiest, and the points I lowered the difficulty because I just couldn’t get the timing. Though I wish I could’ve pulled off the end because I admittedly enjoy One Way Dream in the credits more than Vandalize I think The End needed a bit more clarity. I went down to half my 999 rings before I got the tip about “Try something other than attacking The End” which then led me to Cyloop the back (and then had to go again because I ran out of time before the moon reconnected). Really cool sequences with the Cyberspace Powered Super Sonic.

It had some issues, notably for me in the difficulty spike, but I did enjoy it.

I am glad you liked it. I did not mind climbing the towers on hard myself, and I really had fun with the update, too!

[Starry Skydancer]

This might be controversial, but I the "more mature" Amy doesn't feel right to me. I feel like Amy is supposed to be overly friendly and overly familiar with everyone, not just Sonic. Amy cutting down on being overly romantically forward with Sonic could have probably been better "solved" with her generally being overly forward.

[CalmCha0s]

I started Final Horizon on my extreme file and made it all the way to the Master King's Trial. That didn't go well lol. Went back to my other save and got to see the ending on easy. I must be crazy, but I decided to give extreme mode another go. After many hours I won't be getting back, I can happily say that I've beaten the entire game on extreme mode!  Now I can focus on Superstars, haha

I know it's a bit late, but I haven't really said my thoughts on the DLC so here I go:

- Love having Amy, Knux and Tails playable! I wish Knuckles' gliding was a bit more precise. I feel like they were trying to make it more realistic compared to how it was in previous games, but it still feels too off. Also wish Amy had more hammer moves than cards, but the cards are welcome.

- The extra Cyber Space challenges are nice, like the variety. 

- The main game wasn't difficult for me besides The End. I love a challenge, and appreciated the difficulty spike from the DLC... up to a point lol. I loved the towers but the trials (especially in extreme mode) make the game a bit more frustrating than fun, in my opinion. I hope future Sonic games balance this better so gamers of all types can enjoy the game as best they can. I feel like the difficultly settings are a good idea moving forward.

- I've only played the Switch version. I'm been impressed with how well it runs, no real issues.

- The final boss was on point! I admittedly did enjoy the original The End. I thought it was very challenging and felt like a final boss in terms of difficultly, but missed the action. Final Horizon certainty fixed that! Having to take down Supreme with a new power and use the gun against it is a lot of action! It was a clever idea and I love how it led to Eggman helping get the job done. I wish there was a bit extra dialogue between Eggman and Sage at the end, but overall, for a free update, it's great! It's kinda neat to think that it's basically been a full year of non-stop Sonic content, can't beat that! 

 

[Shiny Gems]

58 minutes ago, CalmCha0s said:

I started Final Horizon on my extreme file and made it all the way to the Master King's Trial. That didn't go well lol. Went back to my other save and got to see the ending on easy. I must be crazy, but I decided to give extreme mode another go. After many hours I won't be getting back, I can happily say that I've beaten the entire game on extreme mode!  Now I can focus on Superstars, haha

I know it's a bit late, but I haven't really said my thoughts on the DLC so here I go:

- Love having Amy, Knux and Tails playable! I wish Knuckles' gliding was a bit more precise. I feel like they were trying to make it more realistic compared to how it was in previous games, but it still feels too off. Also wish Amy had more hammer moves than cards, but the cards are welcome.

- The extra Cyber Space challenges are nice, like the variety. 

- The main game wasn't difficult for me besides The End. I love a challenge, and appreciated the difficulty spike from the DLC... up to a point lol. I loved the towers but the trials (especially in extreme mode) make the game a bit more frustrating than fun, in my opinion. I hope future Sonic games balance this better so gamers of all types can enjoy the game as best they can. I feel like the difficultly settings are a good idea moving forward.

- I've only played the Switch version. I'm been impressed with how well it runs, no real issues.

- The final boss was on point! I admittedly did enjoy the original The End. I thought it was very challenging and felt like a final boss in terms of difficultly, but missed the action. Final Horizon certainty fixed that! Having to take down Supreme with a new power and use the gun against it is a lot of action! It was a clever idea and I love how it led to Eggman helping get the job done. I wish there was a bit extra dialogue between Eggman and Sage at the end, but overall, for a free update, it's great! It's kinda neat to think that it's basically been a full year of non-stop Sonic content, can't beat that! 

 

I am glad you ended up liking The Final Horizon! It was something I liked too so much!

[Sega DogTagz]

On 10/24/2023 at 2:47 PM, Original Character said:

This might be controversial, but I the "more mature" Amy doesn't feel right to me. I feel like Amy is supposed to be overly friendly and overly familiar with everyone, not just Sonic. Amy cutting down on being overly romantically forward with Sonic could have probably been better "solved" with her generally being overly forward.

 

I didn't feel like she drifted too far from being overly friendly. In the base game, she was quick to make the Koco's problems her own, and even pushed Sonic to do the same when he faltered. In the DLC, she deviated from her mission to collect the chaos emeralds rather quickly to instead protect the Koco, even though there was no real evidence that they would be of any use for the final battle.

 

Her kindness and generosity basically over-rode the importance of the task she was given. She's still the same in-your-face sweet believe the best in everyone heroine she always was.... she's just not making googly eyes at Sonic 25/8.