Sonic Frontiers The Final Horizon DLC: Exploring and Beating 4-B Cyberspace Stage

Playing through this stage for the first time was a huge highlight of the DLC for me. I had no idea what I was in for but the music, the shadowy Tails and everything falling apart set the pace and put the pressure on me. Spindashing off different ramps and inclines to find so many different paths and secret routes was so much fun and I see now that I STILL missed some despite getting the S-Rank the first time I finished.

God, I loved this stage. I might go back and do it again after I fight the final boss. I absolutely adore Final Horizon's content.

If only this game had good air turning and didn't crib the boost turning in cyberspace, I'd be prepared to call some of this Update's stages some of the best core gameplay 3D Sonic has ever had. They're about as long as a Sonic act should be, have tons of different ways to go and utilize Sonic's physics to their absolute furthest extent, heavily incentivizing spindash jumping and rewarding quick reflexes.

Sadly they fall short of this. The control issues are the most obvious (WE HAVE HAD MODS TO FIX THE TURNING FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS SONIC TEAM, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS), and rears its head in the Silver Moon Rings for this stage. You basically have to boost jump for them, but Sonic's air control is so bad that you need to essentially aim first, and that doesn't feel good under a time limit, assuming it even works at all. Second, a recurring theme with this update has been a severe lack of checkpoints, which makes each stage feel more annoying when they're this long (they put them in the stages that last 30 seconds but not these???), and finally...well, I mean, they're made out of cardboard boxes taped together. They're butt fucking ugly in every way. I sincerely hope whatever lead to Sonic Team designing so little actual geometry across Frontiers's lifespan won't be present in the next game. I have far more issue with that than people's complaints about the art direction itself.

Also, this stage in particular gave me a lot of shit, because that final collapsing platform section only really lets you know which ones are going to fall if you wait a second, and when you're trying to beat the S-rank time or Ghost Tails, it's a pain. Having to go through the whole thing each time I had to retry the silver rings only to eat it at the last second was not fun.