Sonic Frontiers' Final Horizon Launches Today With New Trailer and Screenshots

This is so cool! I flipped out when I saw the Cyclone, they did not need to go that far but I'm so glad they did. Didn't like Frontiers that much but the updates were good and I'm looking forward to this.

6 hours ago, Blueknight V2.0 said:

Okay, whole thing looks SO cool! Can't wait for it to drop at 8PM EST!

I did notice a bit of pop-in, but I think that was expected at this point. Doesn't really take away from how much fun I had with the game regardless!

Looking forward to it, but also curious as to what I've gotta do to access the new content. Just go to just before the Knight boss, and wait for the update? Or is there new stuff across the entire game? Wish that was a bit clearer before starting my New Game+ save.

It's EDT, not EST. We're still in Daylight Savings time. Standard time is not till November.

The update is live, everyone!

2 minutes ago, ShinyGems said:

The update is live, everyone!

Showed up for the Switch, but not the PS4 yet.

2 minutes ago, Blueknight V2.0 said:

Showed up for the Switch, but not the PS4 yet.

It showed up for the PS5 for me.

PS4 update now live!

1:30am. My god, Sonic Team. 

Gunna be a Blue Blur of a Hangover tomorrow. 

19 hours ago, ShinyGems said:

Can you say another Sonic Adventure?!

This is a joke, by the way, don’t hurt me, please.

As long as its another linear adventure (not the kind with "hallways" that people have complained about), instead of these desolate and empty open world maps filled with pointless collectables (character tokens).

I'm also not a fan of the hyper serious tone with everyone trying too hard to sound mature and "older", all while still trying to make a few awkward "funny" quips. I know Sonic Adventure 2 was "serious" compared to previous games before it, but at least the characters were their upbeat selves. You see that in Sonic as soon as he busts out of G.U.N.'s helicopter. But in Frontiers, the sound like war veterans (no, Forces is not an excuse) investigating a lifeless and cryptic island that acts as a catalyst for the end of their universe.

Meanwhile, all of SA2's "serious" moments were for suspense purposes. In deeper context, the whole Space Colony Ark tragedy sounded as as dark as any real world tragedy, but that shouldn't affect our main cast (Sonic, Tails, Amy, and even Knuckles who's busy with his own emerald shard quest).

I'm keen for this! I just need to refind my PS4 disk

After ruminating my thoughts for a bit, I think The Final Horizon is just about the best thing they should have done for Frontiers as a game. It isn't refined and it isn't polished, just like the base game. Like the base game, it completely throws caution to the wind in favor of being pretty darn daring in its design and for the sake of trying new things. The degree of success for these experiments will vary from person-to-person, but I think it's exactly this sort of boldness that's necessary in establishing a new working formula for the franchise--and why Frontiers is still a product I greatly respect despite having an uncountable number of problems.

Having said that, there are some specific things that need serious reconsideration or alterations in the next game. I won't go over things like the pop-in, visual disparity, and overall jank since those are all problems that speak for themselves. Just fix them already.

The main thing they need to do if they wanna make a more compelling game is have a more expressive moveset for Sonic and company. The boost games use a move set that's very binary and more suited to linear and more set piece driven gameplay - fun by itself but ultimately a mismatch for a format that's supposed to incur a sense of freedom. Frontiers has freedom of choice, insofar that you can go in any direction and pick how you beat the game, but it lacks freedom of expression - which is the main thing holding the game back. Sonic and co technically have big movesets, but they are very low in their potential for interactivity (save for the Spindash, which has a host of other problems). All the attacks they have don't really do a whole lot in fostering interesting combos, they're just different ways of dealing damage rather than things that can fundamentally affect how you choose to fight something. This simplicity actually wouldn't be a problem in of itself, but it's let down by the low variety of enemies that have even less reason to engage with them. It's telling that you have basically no reason to ever fight anything besides bosses in Extreme Mode, since Level Ups are no longer a thing - which similarly leaves you without purpose to fight them in the other modes once you max out your stats (which is extremely easy to do thanks to Big). Level gimmicks should also change in order to compensate for this. For example, Orange Rings could theoretically be two-way instead of one-way, eliminating awkward moments where you have to shimmy around parts of the level design just to get from one place to another.

I do think the Skill Tree should stay since it's a nice form of progression by itself, but the Skills themselves need to feel like more than just DPS with different canned animations. In all fairness, there are some things that do genuinely affect how you play for the better, such as Phantom Rush, Quick Cyloop, and Recovery Smash - which all help to broaden how the player interacts with enemies and bosses. Most of the others don't do this, and are instead just slightly different flavors of DPS. With the next game, I'm hoping they either narrow the skill tree and increase the interactivity of each present skill, or broaden the skill tree and increase player expression through more technical play. Both outcomes would be better than what we've got right now - and that's speaking as someone who actually does come away from the combat fairly positive as it is.

As for the open zone format, I think they need to cut the middle man and either omit the item currency or change its focus. Being able to pick up Portal Gears and Memory Tokens from random stuff even well after I'd already 100%ed an island gives a sense that what I'm collecting is disposable - which isn't something I want to feel when those are the main things I'm gathering. A lot of this can be related back to the maps themselves just not being very interesting to explore without a whole lot of trinkets populating them, so I suppose that also leads into my problem that the maps also need to be improved greatly. I don't have a problem with realistic vistas in Sonic games, but the bigger issue with Frontiers' environments is that nothing about the setting ever really helps to inform the level design. Why am I running across a mess of rails and platforms in the sky and not, say, running through old strongholds and settlements built by the Ancients? There are occasional flashes of this in the game (it's why I think Rhea Island is a highlight), but they're all too brief considering what you'll actually be doing most of the time.

As far as Cyberspace goes, there's obvious issues with them like reused aethestics and level design, but I'll vouch for them and say that they are otherwise fairly well done. I think the main way you can improve them is by how they're implemented into the open zone itself. The game occasionally flirts with the idea that some Cyberspace portals are out of the way and require some platforming and/or puzzle-solving to reach, as well as thorough exploration. I think every single portal should be like that, since it would make finding them feel rewarding - which would help both the open zone and levels themselves in feeling more memorable. In general, the game just needs more purpose, rhyme, and reason in its level design. I enjoy running through it, but it's very much an inelegant and somewhat slapdash game as far as world design goes. Action Chains, which are a great addition, would stand to be improved a lot simply by the open zone design itself actually being better and accommodating for it. Give me big landmarks and huge chunks of the levels that will stick out in my mind and immediately tell me what's where. Again, there's flashes of this in the game - and Sonic Team has shown nothing but confidence in the new level design, so I hope that bleeds over positively into the next installment.

As I said in a status update, I think the flaws that came with the final update for Sonic Frontiers, specifically the other playable characters and how they turned out, is because Sonic Frontiers was made mostly for Sonic and his moveset, not the other characters, as the base game only had Sonic as a playable character, and that it has been a while since they added other characters as playable characters not counting Sonic Forces with Shadow or even Sonic Mania, the latter which was not made by Sonic Team. I think they became a bit sloppy there, and I don't think there was much Sonic Team could do to make the other characters better without changing the base game, which was already finished long before.

Not that I am defending Sonic Team here, I just wanted to point some things out; my thoughts on the matter.

I love the update in theory. The ending is so vastly superior to the ending. The characters are fun. The obvious problem which I’m hoping they’ll touch up is just the little bugs that got through the cracks. Knowing sega, I’m sure they give Sonic team little resources for a free update for a game that has already sold most of what it’s going to sell. But if they could tighten up the little things like camera during the platforming (ghost was a nightmare) and Knuckles’ climbing collision. That all in mind, I’d much rather have this than not. 
 

I’m mixed on the difficulty. For things like the new enemies, I loved the updates. I hated enemies like Tank in the base game because you had to wait through their attack patterns, and there was no way to by pass it with skill. but this update turned tank+ into one of my favorite fights with Sonic. 

when the difficulty was cheap, it got frustrating  but when the challenges, they were incredibly good.
 

so I hope they patch up the rough edges like they did with update 1/2. Nothing major. Just something to make it fit the rest of the package.
 

here’s a question for you, would everyone been okay with (In a word where the bugs aren’t this apparent) this DLC completely overwriting the original last island, or was having the old ending and the splitting path sufficient?
and follow up, in its current state, are the bugs worth it for getting a stronger ending, or is the weaker ending worth not dealing with the bugs? 

I already downloaded it, as soon as I have time I will be playing it and enjoying it like never before, I'm looking forward to it, what an excitement

Finished it and it's um...eh, a mixed bag at best honestly.

Idk, have to be honest here and say I'm writing this after spending way too long on the final boss. Not because it was really hard mind you, but because of the game's bs. Did you know the game (at least on PC) will crash on you if you "mistakenly" place Super Sonic over the titan when it's doing that weird arm attack to the barrier? I know now, and that shit ruined a few runs of it for me. So I had to sit through the unskipable cutscenes multiple times just to get to the ending. It was a great ending mind you, but jfc this game is unpolished... and I think that scenario pretty perfectly sums up my time with this DLC.

It's unpolished. Technical and design flaws abound. There isn't really a new concept introduced here that doesn't carry with it some issue. It's nice we have characters like Knuckles playable in 3D again, sure. But jfc they control so poorly that it makes the experience almost not worth it. I like that they've added more context and narrative to the ending, but what they did add is still pretty nonsensical and rather dull outside of the very last cutscene. Responding to the difficulty complaints by upping it is good on paper, but in practice... just fucking no.

The game, on a base technical and mechanical level, is not where it needs to be to demand such performance from the player. Input lag, bad camera, busted moves, ect. Frontiers was enjoyable when the game knew what it was and gave you the playground to account for its inevitable hiccups. Putting gd Only Up sections into this shit was never going to work out.

Also, I said this in the statuses but I'll also repeat it here, it's great that they're applying some of the more advanced movesets into the level design now. But, that shit only really works out when they're optional, not required imo. Hence why you now have a lot of players only seeing these new bits as kaizo sonic rather than actual improvements; myself included honestly.

Luckily, this DLC did make me learn how nice the easy mode was in this game. If it wasn't for that, I would not have finished this, plain and simple. The game does not respect your time enough for that with its unskipable cutscenes, large time wasting penalties, and a bunch of busy work.

To try and ice my little rant here, yeah, I'm conflicted here. There was a lot of good in here tbf. Getting the three new characters leveled up is actually an interesting gameplay loop and their OP power-ups are actually rather fun. The little character interactions dotted around the map are neat (even if some come off as boring and can often glitch the audio out so that the character voices stop playing). Love the multiple references made both in the script and in the new moves. The ending cutscene is legitimately amazing. Plus, the biggest positive honestly, it's free.

But overall, this shit was rough. I really hope this wasn't ST's best foot forward and that they used this update more as a literal testing ground rather than... well, anything else. If I'm being completely honest, both the technical and mechanical issues in here do not leave me with a whole lot of confidence in their future endeavors. I realize this was a free update with not a whole lot of time in the oven (on top of an already questionable game too), but still. The amount of jank in here is kind of inexcusable. There's more of it in here than what the base game had. I love how they're taking feedback and applying it but while that effort is somewhat giving results, they need a better foundation to truly work them out (I just hope they're actually capable of making that foundation). This DLC is great on paper, and while its core ideas do sometimes carry it through the jank, its overall implementation just ain't there.

The game needs a major bug fix after update 3. It's not a stable as it used to be.