Sonic Frontiers - Sonic Was Always Good
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 24 ноя 2024
- Finally at the end of this long road, kinda. Not really. I still have many more Sonic games to talk about. But it feels quite monumental to be here. This game wasn't even announced when I started covering Sonic. And it is kinda the big one. And while it is fairly negative, I think this is a pretty fair overview of the game. We'll see if people agree.
As you can guess, I cut so much out of this video just to try getting it down. I don't need to talk about every little thing. So no mention of the weird slot machine, the bad startup animations to Knuckles' and Tails' abilities that can be fixed with mods, the fact that the water when fishing is still broken, the strange rules about when the air boost refreshes, the term "open zone" and how that means nothing, and so much more. This video is already long enough.
One thing I probably should have mentioned is that while I do think the combat is more fun with a timed parry, the enemy startup animations in this game are really bad. It's nearly just trial and error to learn the timings. Sonic Team definitely does not know how to make proper attack tells for that kind of gameplay. Probably why they made the parry infinite. But once you learn, it is still better.
btw, calling them rings was not a slip up. That was always the plan. Because this will be the only Sonic video in the world where there will be a bunch of comments asking why I'm calling them rings, and that will confuse people not in on the joke. Which is funny to me. Y'all getting played.
I mention it a couple times here. If you like the movement in this game, GO PLAY CLOUDBUILT! It is my absolute favorite 3D platformer, and has the craziest movement you've ever seen.
Here's my spreadsheet of Sonic mods. Everything I used in the video is here.
docs.google.co...
/ pariah695
ko-fi.com/pari...
Maybe the real Sonic Game was the mods we made along the way.
Actually yes.
Lmao
1:29:30 I said this before: Frontiers is videogame made by someone having a mental breakdown. Consider these facts:
1) After Generations Sonic Team lost some of their most talented devs;
2) Budget cuts to the Sonic IP after the massive flop of Sonic Boom;
3) Sonic Forces;
4) COVID happened. I often forget how many games were affected by the lockdowns around the world. There's no way COVID didn't affected Frontiers' development, given the time frame and whole "Project Sonic 2020" that was seemingly discarted without notice;
5) This game was in development during the drought of Sonic content post Forces, and before the first movie. Sega just didn't gave a shit about Sonic and there was talks about replacing Sonic for Persona's Joker as Sega's mascot.
I can just picture the devs at Sonic Team being miserable making this game. Frontiers has this vibe of "well, that's it". The fact the story is this melodramatic tale about Sonic and his friends being trapped in what is essentially a giant graveyard and having to face the physical manifestation of Death makes me think they knew, Sonic Team knee something awful was about to happen to them or the Sonic IP had this game failed. At some point they went "ah, fuck it", and went "ooh let's add, and have that, out this as well, add giant robots and shit". If this was the end for them, might as well make most of it. Multiple Super Sonic boss fights was something Kishimoto said he wanted to do for a long time. Combat in a Sonic game was something Iizuka wanted to try again.
*I'm not excusing any of the terrible design choices that went towards this game.* But I think the story behind this game might be more interesting than the game itself.
Or they just wanted to ripoff BotW but didn't had the talent or resources for it.
From what I read sonic team was always miserable in one way or another ,even before generations,if you look at izuka’s condition after designing sonic heroes by himself damn….they also lack trust in themselves A LOT,instead of doing something themselves they most of the time copy what the fans ask for (forces) or copy popular games (lost world and frontiers) so while I understand why the games are the way they are ,as you said it doesn’t excuse the game ,if it sucks it sucks ,what matters the most is the end result
Knowing Sonic Team, I think the last guest is the most possible one, but I really want to believe that the first is the real one.
I think it started as the second, but became the first one.
I wanna bet its the first one AND the second, mainly because one of the franchise’s things is basically ripping something off but making it into something unique (i.e. Death Egg, Super Sonic, [kind of] Lost World in general, the personalities of literally half of the cast), and that happened here too, but they kinda gave it their all because it could’ve been the end
Here lies the dreams of sonic team
R.I.P
the first episode of Sonic Was Always Good was published on August 11th 2021
this one was uploaded on August 11th 2024
beautiful
Am I dreaming? He called the coins from Sonic, the rings from Mario… This is truly the scariest thing of all the time.
The purple rings in Frontiers must have totally thrown him off.
LMFAO
Calling the rings "rings" here has to be one the most clever jokes I have ever seen in my life.
I don’t get it?😮
@@MegaFeesobecause he always used to call them "coins" intentionally
He might just be legitimately over it honestly
He said the R-word! In a SWAG video!
... That's NO good.
Oh wow, I didn’t even notice
I do believe we know, either from those leaks from playtesters or from some interview with Kishimoto, that the open zone wasn’t really intended to have much traditional Sonic platforming. Apparently, the open zone was simply meant to house the story, combat, collecting, and puzzles, while Cyber Space was meant to be where you find the traditional 3D Sonic gameplay. Like Sonic still would have been fast in the open zone and stuff, but all those copy pasted black platforming sections were all added late in development because playtesters kept saying “this doesn’t feel like a Sonic game.” I remember that quote specifically from something I just can’t find it. But it explains SOOOOOO much when it comes to the extremely basic and broke. platforming in the open zone, and why it’s all made out of stock objects that were just pasted in seemingly at random. We even have some leaked early footage of the game where the graphics look much nicer, Kronos Island is still one island and not split into three, and there is absolutely no platforming to be seen in the open zone.
Gotta remember, Kishimoto himself said he spent so long “just getting an idea down” for how they could even make an open zone Sonic game and Iizuka had to beg SEGA for one more year, as the game was originally slated to release in 2021, likely without all those platforming sections and Kronos Island changes.
I guess that's believable considering how odd it is to have 2 parallel objectives in the emeralds and memory tokens. So you'd just be running from puzzle to chest to guardian to cyberspace level to minigame... and that's it? Maybe the sections leading to the emeralds would still be there. But how on Earth could someone think that's a good idea for a game?
@@Pariah6950 It wasn't, that's what play testers told ST. So they added those floating platforms.
Inside the game's files you can find that original Kronos with no floating platforms, which allegedly was what play testers played.
There's also the issue that Sonic Team wanted to use Unreal Engine for this game, because it would bring more fidelity to the graphics. And by Kishimoto's account, it seems things were going well for moment, until something happened and they had to switch back to HE2. And I don't think the HE2 is suited for this kind of open world game design.
There's also the issue with "Sonic Rangers", which isn't exactly the prototype name of Frontiers. According to Kishimoto "Rangers" was the codename of another Sonic game that was axed, and Frontiers inherited that same name. And Kishimoto was put in charge of the project after the previous diretor left. They were making something else, but had to scrap and restart. It is bizarre how the oldest confirmed leak for Frontiers on /v/ dates from 2019, which seems to be around the time development began. Almost like the wasted 2 years after Forces.
One of those leaks had photos of game concepts for a new Sonic title. Sonic Team pitched a lot of different games between 2017 and 2018, ranging from a more traditional Sonic game, to a couple of MMO Sonic game. They ever toyed with redesigning game Sonic to look more like the movie version of Sonic (something Kishimoto said it was one of their inspirations).
Sonic Team pitched those ideas to play testers to gauge interest. I think the winner game concept was one with the description that sounds exactly like Frontiers: "explore a mysterious new land, fight skyscraper sized enemies". I think the general idea was there from the start. And Sage would have a more involved role in the Titan fights, as play tester descriptions.
Yeah, something REALLY wrong happened during this game's development. All the CGI cutscenes made for promotion material also hint at something that isn't reflected in the retail version. Like those cutscenes were made before the game was mostly finished. Like the beta design of the Koco; Sage controlling the Guardians to attack Koco; Amy being in Rhea's Island.
@@Pariah6950I don’t really know how Sonic Team got to this point where, like you said with Forces, they just literally had no ideas for these games. Even with Frontiers it’s clear the only real idea behind it was “let’s make an open world Sonic game” because they spent several years just for them to land on Forces but with tighter controls and with combat and puzzles, which is effectively what Frontiers is and in my opinion the most basic thing they could have done with the premise of an open world Sonic title.
Sonic Team are so out of ideas that Kishimoto was actively on Twitter after the game launched to take ideas from fans. Like I’m not necessarily trying to hate on the guy, but he just doesn’t seem to have genuinely good ideas, and it’s to the point where I’m questioning if he even wanted to be a game director and was just kinda placed in this role by Iizuka when he got promoted. I know Iizuka had some rough game ideas too when he was a director, but at the very least I think he actually came up with thought out and purposeful game design ideas, like the team mechanics for Heroes or the multiple story routes in Shadow. Kishimoto’s games so far have been like Mario Galaxy but Sonic, bad Sonic Generations but with an OC maker, and BOTW/Nier Automata but Sonic. His games do not feel like they want to make interesting takes on Sonic gameplay, it feels more like “oh I played this recently so I want to make a game like this” instead.
And I say this as someone who likes Frontiers quite a bit! Like you said the basic gameplay (while I still have my nitpicks) is super fun, which elevates the otherwise broken and basic game design quite a bit. But man I’d just like the ideas to come from a place of “how can we put an interesting twist on Sonic gameplay” instead of “how can we make Sonic like these other games” lol
@@TehJellyLordto be honest, I think for now its best to let the man cook. Sonic x shadow generation should give you a better idea if he is worthy of his role as director.
@@justiceiria869 Kishimoto is not directing SxSG, Katsuyuki Shigihara is. He was a level designer for Colors and a Game Designer for Generations, this will be the first 3D Sonic game he is directing, and so far I have a much better idea of the vision for Shadow Gens than I ever did with Frontiers lol.
We quite literally have reached the endgame of sonic was always good. After almost three years lol, thanks for all the videos pariah they’ve been really interesting, entertaining, and sometimes dreadful because of all the awful drama thats surrounded them here and there. Unironically these are some of my favorite videos on the platform, really cool analysis’s of some of my favorite (and least favorite) games.
We've got plenty more to go. Dream Team and a whole bunch of fan games.
Yeah i kind of figured but this is basically it for mainline after dream team, anyways excited to see the fan games get covered!
More sonic brainrot... noooooo...@@Pariah6950
Hi Talxic
@@Pariah6950not to mention shadow generations in a couple months
This game is so fucking strange to me because despite punching it down a lot for its glaring flaws, I still enjoy playing it whenever I decide to replay it. I expected my opinion to change after the honeymoon phase wore off and I became more critical of it, but that never happened. Instead, I find myself unable to stop playing until I complete an entire island.
Since day 1, I have always acknowledged that this game is such a duct-taped-together mess that I can absolutely see a lot of people not liking it at all. I will always see it for what it is, and yet, despite viewing it with that lens, I still enjoyed Sonic Frontiers a lot. It has reignited my passion for the franchise. If it was just another Sonic game that I found to be a dreadful experience, it would have further cemented my decision to avoid the franchise like a plague as I have done after Forces came out for 4 years. It wasn't until Sonic movie 2 reminded me why I really loved Sonic, despite its many, many bumpy roads after replaying the older games. Hell, I probably wouldn't even watch your 'Sonic was always good' videos 😅
I still most of it is because Sonic is a perfect character for Open World Design since he is traversal personified.
Frontiers is like one of the best 7/10 games out there if you want to describe it some other way. It's crazy to imagine where the pieces of this game landed to create the strange yet confusing and cool mess Sonic Team was making
Regarding the render distance: for whatever reason every version of the game's default render distance is based on the Nintendo Switch version. Why Sonic Team chose to not increase it for the next gen console baseline is something that'll take cave paintings to figure out.
I can excuse having a close draw distance. What I cannot excuse is Sonic Team not using LODs to mask the draw distance and still having the platforms and rails visible to the player. LODs are 2020 videogame making, and there are tools to automatically make LODs models.
@@CanaldoZennytheir engine could be incompatible with those tools or they never heard of it I don’t know….while graphically it’s a decent engine it did show issues ever since sonic forces that not even modders could fix
@@2ndspringtube708 They actually used a tool like that called InstaLOD. Idk what they used it for though cause it doesn't seem like they used it in the gameplay.
@@CanaldoZenny I''m pretty sure most of the assets from the first stages of development work like this (think of the super structures you can see from anywhere on the island)
The draw distance problem is unique to the generic platforming and rail elements presumable because they were originally not intended to be used as heavily as they ended up being.
My theory is that they can't implement it as an in-game option. The Switch version already uses crusty textures so it's not like they don't have an additional process in making a separate switch version?
4:38 Pariah: "Stand proud, your game is good."
Kishimoto: *cries* "What is this feeling?"
@@freekenjaku😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂.
lobotomy kaisen has spread to pariah's channel 😭😭
He literally made the GOAT Sonic Colors
21:04 oh boy…believe me A LOT has happened ,and even more so according to Kishimoto the game wasn’t even directed by him at first ,he never got the job until 2019 and the game had multiple directors before him and wasn’t originally an open world which definitely lead to massive changes in a little of a time span ,which means development becomes more hell
💀 nah this shit is crazy
That is beautiful.
What the hell!? So the fact he managed to deliver with this game despite the hell development they've been through is actually impressive and impossible to me.
Believe it or not, Sonic Team quite literally begged Sega to allow them to delay the game so they could have more time. The game was only ever delayed once.
Sega sucks, man. I feel bad for Sonic Team on this one.
It seems they were confident in this game for once, but after the abysmal feedback they got from play testers they scrambled to make the game... fun.
This is where all those 4chan leaks came from. Multiple play testers complained that the Open Zone gameplay was boring because there was nothing to do besides fighting enemies and doing puzzles to level up.
23:23 In my opinion the saving grace of Sonic Frontiers is that the playable character is Sonic the Hedgehog.
One of my biggest pet peeves of open world games is the slow traversal. You have these giant maps, and slow ass characters. You can get vehicles or animals to speed up, but that often comes with something inconvenient in the way. You give up and use the fast travel option, because even the devs know walking from one point of the map to the other get stale after a while
Frontiers solves this issue by virtue of being a Sonic game. All player characters are super fast and can do crazy BS skip that running the entire map doesn't get boring, because it takes less than 3 minutes, and it is fun to run around nabbing rings and memory tokens in the way.
Welp glad Arkham knight had the Batmobile ,it was fun to drive around with it especially with the destructive environment which also made the chases more fun
The first successful strand type game, am I right?
This is actually a good point, I feel the same way.
bro i can't even enjoy gta as much once i can just spam helicopters cheats to travel 💀
The travel is the most fun part of frontiers
I do want to preface this just to be clear I don't think Sonic Frontiers is a flawless master peace or anything like this, Its clearly a very flawed game that had a dramatic late development shift in its whole structure.
I have to say quite a few of your criticisms are hard for me to take serious as you call things "bad designed" when in actually its just "not fitting with my preferences in a video games"
That is especially true for the main island progression which I find the most fun thing swinging my self form island challenge to island challenge trying to get as many tokens on the way from point A to B and slowly uncovering the map is my favorite part of the game loop. Because I have so much freedom to decide where I go when I go there, how I get there, finding what ways are possible, what rewards I could try to gain on the way there.
Many of the interrupting cinematic that annoy you so much don't cause any issues for my self because you know I don't try to time attack a god damn open world here.
And obviously the big Titan fights that you look at entirely from a gameplay perspective thinking that they don't make for a decent challenge while I don't care that they are easy they are well enough designed to sell me a power fantasy and that is far more important to me.
As such does your accusation that most people just gas lite them self seems in bad faith as you argue it from your point of view were the main game loop was one of the least fun aspects of the design for you (and of cause would many initially start skipping large chunks of Oranus island. Not only are the token request so huge suddenly that even if you get as many as you can while unlocking the full map won't get your over halfway there anymore causing a lot of busy work to pop up but also as you said is it the same gameplay loop as the previous 3 island with a visual setting already seen twice before and just about everything no matter how good will start to get boring if there is to much unaltered amounts of it. I get bored of Sonic 2 halfway through it usually for the very same reason. This is actually perfectly shown by Final Horizon as like you said you don't have to do any of the side content yet most did it anyway)
This difference in what different people want especially out of 3d Sonic in general becomes even more apparent in Final Horizon as I really dislike the Cyber Space stages of Final Horizon in part because they (just like the new towers) lack checkpoints and I hate having to re-do the same stuff over and over again just to get back to the one place were I made a mistake.
But also because all of this "spin dashing off a slight slop to jump 3 kilometers ahead" and general sling shot design is something I really don't like I know a ton of fans want this stuff because most 3d Sonic fan games are designed like this BUT I ALSO DISLIKE TO HATE ALL OF THOSE TOO.
Non of this is to say that everything you said was wrong but I just wanted to clearly highlight that a lot of the difference between what you see other people think about the game and what you your self think about it comes down to what one personally even likes about this game or Sonic as a whole for that matter
Well, I clicked the video and read the comments. Looks like they planned a meeting so everyone could come here to hate the game lol. Some of the critics are valid, and of them are not due to extreme exaggeration.
Pariah if he was a math teacher: This book has so... so... so MANY problems!!
"These boss fights are also garbage and I know people really love them, but people love them because of the music, and the hype, and the epic moments, and the cool animations, and stuff. Nobody likes these for the gameply because... It's not good."
As someone who likes Super Sonic boss fights, it hurts to hear those words.
Right? I'm here for the spectacle. I don't particularly care about doing deep tactical combat in a Super Sonic boss fight. I got the chaos emeralds, I'm ready to thrash the enemy.
@@Kujaguy The thing is, it's possible to have both spectacle and gameplay depth at the same time. The combat system is fundamentally flawed (eg. most moves being alternative means of "doing damage), and it carries over to the Super Sonic fights which is a shame because those are extremely hype moments that deserved better.
@@kilometersperminute4113so true man, honestly the combat system needs a complete makeover.
The boss fights still are the pinnacle of the game but if only they were more fleshed out and polished along with a real combat system it could go from epic to master piece pretty fast.
@@lambousginiguccigod2007this. Alot of the problems with the game could be fixed or replaced easily but the combat has to be remade from scratch. Personally i thing something like kingdom hearts would work well for sonic
@@kilometersperminute4113 If this game had the werehog battle system from yesteryear people would still hate it for having too many pointless moves and default to the highest damaging move anyway. Having multiple finishers is fine for a game where you're playing the in the moment and not trying to time attack the game. I understand that it isn't the best character action combat system, but I play DMC for that.
48:47
For anyone wondering, the only reason why many people doesn’t want 2D in the Boost Games is because they just want a fully 3D game.
"Sonic was always good if you look at it through the right lense"
"Wait! The game gets really good if you install a million mods to fix the game and think about the potential it had!"
How did you comment on this video before it was uploaded?!
@@CanaldoZenny "Don't even bother with the original version! The game is really bad like that. My opinion is objectively right, don't ever play the original relese and use all the mods I give you."
“this game had a lot of potential if you simply imagine it as an entirely different game made by competent developers with an actual vision for the game”
@@yousefslimani99Pariah releases videos early for free on his Patreon and Ko-fi
Glad the “Iconic Wrench Throw” made a return
From sonic boom?
I'll never forget the first time I heard Undefeatable for as long as I live. Also the flinging and rail launching are just so good and make exploring the islands so much fun. And, despite the pop-in, I think the islands are beautiful.
(Also the Koco are way cuter than the Chao, fight me)
I won't fight you, but I'll come back when they bring Chao in the modern games again (it won't happen anyway).
@@lks19 you like Rin so you're cool anyway in my book
Who ever in Sonic Team asked for Kellin Quinn to sing the Titans themes probably saved the entire game's reputation. According to Kishimoto the original plan was to have sad music playing during the Titan boss fights. He said the "I'm with you" theme that plays during The End's final boss was the kind of music they were going for originally.
I remember people hating on Heroes saying "The game is insecure about it's identity"
or "It's not trying to be a Sonic game"
Im so glad Frontiers has finally shown what being an insecure project from the start actually looks like.
Huh, if anything Heroes is still a Sonic game at heart
Frontiers is straight up "what if Sonic open world?"
And it STILL beat Heroes' sales record by a mile, despite being insanely mind-numbing, and this is coming from somone who put in 90+ hours on this hot mess
@@BladeBrigade7
You have the blatant "inspiration" copy my homework stuff with Breath of the Wild
You have a whole ass enemy from Neir Automata
The similar combat from Bayonette
And the boss fights are heavily inspired by Metal Gear Rising
All coping something else, and all failing to mimic why those games did what they did, so ultimately. I end up just thinking "Man. I'd rather be playing those other games"
Which is already bad. But than they literally reuse so many assets AND level designs from older Sonic games and do it worse. And i think "man. I just wanna be playing those games instead"
And yet somehow with all these different elements. You know everysingle sonic fan was thinking before release
"I cant wait to roll down hills and do cool tricks with the terrain"
None of that. Zero ! Have floating platforms that are slapped on everywhere
@@FirstName_LqstName It also doesn't help that the island formula already had a standard set, and they fumbled it in 3D.
South Island, West Side Island, Angel Island, Little Planet, and even North Star Island
This was basically bringing the classic formula into 3D and they didn't do it. Ruins of some civilisation has been a core stage theme of Sonic since the beginning (see MZ and LZ).
They had every opportunity to make this game grander than it actually was, but I suppose development hell struck this game too, from what I've read in this comment section.
@@FirstName_LqstName
Saying that the bosses were merely "inspired" by Bayonetta/MGR is a severe understatement, they practically lifted entire setpieces from those games wholesale.
@@felixdaniels37can you provide comparisons? I haven’t really seen any and assumed it was because of the music (even though sonic had always had great music for its boss fights).
I really really like your alternate titles on the Patreon. Like bro “you know if something peaks? Then it’s all downhill from there right?” Like oh my god that is such a sassy cool line!
And Generations is that peak, obviously
@@henriquezioto8760true 😢
hey pariah, thanks for the island rush shoutout, i really appreciate it!
the Koco challenges and Rhea/Ouranos towers are my favorite part of this game and i've wanted to make an easy and convenient way to replay them for a pretty long time, especially cuz searching for them from waypoint to waypoint is so boring and time wasting.
at the time, i was disappointed that i couldn't use more open zone sections from the base game due to Battle Rush limitations, but after a while i realised just how forgettable most of them are (apart from signature island landmarks, like the kronos diamond or ares underground parts), so i don't regret cutting those at all lol.
that being said, there were a few Koco challenges i had to exclude because of said limitations, mainly on Ouranos (the cut Kronos ones aren't too interesting imo), so if increasing the BR phase limits becomes possible in the future, i'd love to add those back.
this video sums up basically all my gripes with the game, but its highs are what keeps me around, due to the "good" parts of the vanilla experience and the game's versatility when it comes to playing/making mods.
anyway, i'm really happy that you and many others have enjoyed playing island rush, if you have any questions about it lmk.
Thanks for making it! It's an awesome mod that I've had a lot of fun with! I did notice a few things were missing, but I assumed that was due to limitations.
Not that I'm asking, I'm sure it would be a lot of work, but with the character normalizer now it would be cool to see a similar thing with the other characters using their challenges from Final Horizon.
@@Pariah6950 well, good news is that now i am working on an Island Rush expansion featuring the other characters and i've just released some Tails gameplay.
it's probably going to take a while to finish cuz i'm kinda busy IRL, but feel free to check out what i've done so far.
1:39:12 - "Sonic Was Always Good if you look at it through the right lens"
And this is a problem. If Sonic games can't always be good, they aren't good for most people.
Criticism of the game is very constructive, so it hurts to realize that the series is still not in a good path.
I remember a friend of mine going "Sonic was only good in the Genesis days," and I dont think they were a IGN fan lol. Fact is that inconsitent output for a franchise will make said franchise less popular and more disliked, looked at what happended to Star Wars.
Thank you for criticizing the physics mods lol, most of them are just atrociously overpowered. And the Authentic pinball physics is just for polish in this game, they don’t actually change anything unfortunately
25:38 "Why are we even putting puzzles in a Sonic game? Isn't this supposed to be a physics-based high-speed action platformer? But you know got to chase them trends, baby."
Dont know why, the way he says that statement is funny.
The Sonic series can be one of the best in all of videogames with the right mods and 100% save files.
Really nice video, as always! I liked the way you explained both your praises and critiques such that even when I disagreed, I could totally understand ya :)
It’s equally frustrating and kind of hilarious to see indie games easily translate Sonics concepts to 3D while Sonic Team is running around 25 years later still trying to figure out how to make a Sonic game
That ultimately depends on what game the player wants to begin with. You can’t really find a generations or unleashed level quality indie game.
Forces yes but forces isn’t good
@@lambousginiguccigod2007 >implying unleashed or generations is high quality
@@grthjryrd7552🤔
@@lambousginiguccigod2007Uh... I agree that Generations is great. But not Unleashed
@@grthjryrd7552 *
I Love how you bookended the series with that last quote.
Alright boys,we finally are here
Yup!
Funny how twitter is mad because when nothing said here is wrong, this is a another shitty clone from Sonic Team lmao
Wtf 😂
Anyways Frontiers is an extremely flawed game
A clone of what? Shadow of the Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance of Sonic Mods?
He did it boys he finally covered all the mainline sonic games!
I just pray to god that the next game isn’t just platform spam hell. That’s one of the worser things about Frontiers, the platform spam is just ridiculous, making loops out of platforms is honestly a new low for the series.
People used to crucify modders for making level terrain from platforms in sonic, now here comes Sonic Team doing the exact same thing and suddenly it’s all hunky-dory. Funny how that works ay?
21:46 Frontiers was supposed to release in 2021, accordingly to leaked play tester info and Sega's promotional material way back in 2020. Anyone remember Sonic Project 2020?
Iizuka said in an interview he had to beg Sega for 1 more year of development time. I believe this is when they out there floating platforms and rails in the open zones.
Beta tester leaks on /v/ dating from way back in 2019 up to 2021 all said the open zones were vast empty lands with nothing yo do besides puzzles, Cyberspace portals, and combat. Not a single play testers ever said anything about floating platforms and rails, the open zones were discribed as giant hub worlds for the Cyberspace levels, which was supposed to be the meat of the game.
There's also a leaked betw footage of Kronos that depicts Kronos before the splitting, and there's no rail or floating platforms anywhere to be seen
I believe what happened is that the game was being developed in sort of a black room and ST was very confident, but when they had pkay testers play it for the first time, they got bored and complained there's nothing to do. So Sonic Team panicked and delayed the game in 1 years and cobbled together something to fill these open zones.
Cyberspace doesn't exist until very late into production. There are no leaks about cyberspace, and judging from the reused level layouts and themes, there's no doubt the development window for cyberspace and the open zone platforming is very tight. One tester got to fight Giganto and didn't mention any platforming at all (maybe it's in development by that time, but if they were developing it so far back it wouldn't've came out in the state that it's in, imo)
"Least replayable sonic game.... maybe ever?" Im over here with 280 hours and 25 runs under my belt lol. I do play a certain way tho now where i just do whats fun to me, no combat, chain a bunch of platforming sequences together, dont do the story in the order they want, ill do a bunch of open zone shit, get the chaos emeralds, then blast through all the minigames in one go when i can. I just love moving around in this game so much its just a big open playground to me where youre doing sonic shit. Bigs minigame helps i just buy all the portal gears to avoid combat. This game is super flawed and i hope the sequel takes more design cues from the hub world in Shadow, but this game is so insanely fun to me that its flaws are overridden for me. That being said the sequel DOES need to fix these issues lol
I'm so glad you've also leveraged the power of the homing dash. Honestly such a fun gameplay quirk that pushed me to try for my best times in the cyber space challenge thing (the one where it's all 30 base game stages in a row and you get one final time)
Sonic Frontiers is one of my favorite 3D Sonic games.
In conclusion: Frontiers is the Picasso of Sonic video games. Make of it what you will.
I am a Frontiers enjoyer, even if the game does have many flaws. I do believe there are many aspects of this game that are a step in the right direction, they just need to improve things. And the thing about open world games for me; I try to see how fun it is to just move around aimlessly, whether I'm getting to a mission or not and/or how fun is it to do stupid crap for no reason? Games like GTA fulfill both for the most part, but while this game only fulfills the former, it's just so fun to run around as Sonic in this game that I barely think about the flaws. So if they took the fun of running around in this game and added it to a game with all the positives of other Sonic games, I would love that. So yes, despite my problems with the game (especially the pinball game and Final Horizon's difficulty), i still greatly enjoy this game overall. Not my favorite Sonic game, but definitely one of the best in a long time. I do respect your opinion though.
If I had a nickel for everytime someone said "sonic frontiers is a step in the right direction" id realistically have about 500 nickels.
@@buckovin oh I know lol but it is true, to be fair
@@buckovinnaw, it definitely isn't a "step in the right direction"
However, I still love it, despite its flaws
This is something minor but it's kind of a misconception that Lost World, Forces and Frontiers were made by the same team. Besides Kishimoto and like 3 other people all 3 games have completely different teams. Sega basically just puts new graduate hires onto the mainline games.
Right.
@@blueberry8565 ?
@@kieronix4071 I was just agreeing with you.
Right.
They even confirmed that they purposefully brought in tons of New Hires for this game who had only worked at SEGA for around 3 years max.
Yea the homing dash is actually a bug. But they saw that players loved abusing it so much they just said fuck it and kept it in the game
According to kishimoto they found the bug back before releasing the game but he found it fun and could be like street fighter’s combo bug so he kept it for the players to discover it
@@2ndspringtube708 he’s based
Just like Spark the Electric Jester's magnet dash
Just like rocket jumping.
@@lordpeeps1 Idk this is a very common thing in programming, there are like several game defining Mario Powerups which are just "we fucked up his model and we found it funny"
I honestly gave up when I got to the third island, downloaded a 100% save file, played all the Cyberspace stages then called it a day.
those gold circular things you collect are called coins, not rings
No Wumpa fruits
The Final Horizon indeed wasn't playtested (allegedly).
Interesting
He said rings, it's so over.
I've commented about Knuckles a lot on Pariah vids, but a game concept like Frontiers 100% fits him better. Sonic just feels very out of place in frontiers. Giving Sonic a combat system, puzzle solving & a huge, lore-heavy mystery to solve like this doesn't fit him. Of course the gameplay, level design & pacing is bleh, but the setting & gameplay elements on paper would work better for Knuckles (Especially after Sonic Team made that animated short specifically about Knuckles).
Others have pointed it out before, but BotW, with it's gliding and climbing mechanics, already feels like a Knuckles game. It makes more sense for him to star in a game like this.
@@Pariah6950 yeah by like island 2 I was like “kinda wish this was a knuckles game”
Except Knuckles is a cursed character by the nature of the master emerald and Sonic is dealing with a man that knows more about ancient secrets than anyone else. The main difference is that Sonic needs to investigate the areas more throughly, which is something he almost already needs to do to actually get the true/good ending. Little Planet is the clearest example of it, but Sonic 1 outright has Sonic seeking for portals to foil any of Eggman’s back up plans.
@@justice8718 I'm confused. What "man" is Sonic dealing with?
@@MarzOnline92 Eggman
thank you for validating the confusion I felt when this game came out. I wanted to like this game so bad but the only thing I took away from it was the music, specifically the vocal tracks. other than it feels like a whole lot of nothing to do, meh levels, ok boss fights, and a couple epic spectacle cutscenes but nothing that makes me feel anything.
52:44 the fact that nobody knows this an Ikaruga clone makes me sad.
I know. Just didn't feel it worth mentioning. I was referring to hacking being in the form of a shmup.
@@Pariah6950 But you literally go over how "lazy" Sonic Team is in taking other peoples ideas so it properly would be worth mentioning that the shmup isn't just some generic shooting but a direct copy of a very specific game.
Your feelings about this game are very valid, but for me, this game is incredibly relaxing. The slow and serene music, simplistic puzzles, constant pauses, and overall forgiving design makes it super chill to unwind after a stressful day. There's definitely something there, and I think that's what resonates about frontiers to a lot of people.
I personally replay this game a lot, because changing the sliders, trying nightmare mode, etc, drastically change the playthrough and how you approach challenges.
Thanks for making this, when I get the game on a steam sale I will definitely look into these mods!
Vanilla Frontiers is alright I guess. The game is goated with mods though 😂
My experience with Sonic Frontiers is the opposite from my experience with Sonicc Adventure: instead of liking Frontiers more the more I played it- I ended up liking it less the more I played it.
This is literally one of those Unreal engine demos with floating rails, platforms, springs, and boost panels spread randomly.
I would say this is like a fan project but after seeing what actual Sonic fan projects are, that would be an incredible disservice to them.
Unreal engine demos still look better than the actual game 😭
Not randomly, but I do get your point. Only the first, second and final islands are actually fun.
Unity demo...
SEGA hired this man.
He did things.
The people didn't approve too much.
36:33 Slight correction: the parry has a time limit, it's just absurdly long (15 seconds if I recall correctly).
“Finally…. Something Interesting”
yoooooo it's that guy who has a lot of skulls in his comment section
@@joeser6666more context? 🤔
@@Hyp3rSonic most of his comments have skull emojis at the end, "💀"
@@joeser6666thanks
"the combat in frontiers is worse than the werehog in unleashed" is quite possibly one of the most scathing things i've ever heard anyone say about this game
I mean, at least unleashed had:
- Moves and combos with different properties (crowd control, damage, guard break, launcher) that aren't just cinematics were you are invincible the whole time.
-A devil trigger that you have to manage (it just makes you invincible and faster, but still)
-Grabs to better crowd control, or get free damage on one enemy.
-More enemy variety (small, big, close range, long range, fast, flying, summoners).
-Izuna drop.
-The (small) possibility of enemies cornering you if you aren't careful.
It's still jank, and some of the good parts seem less "intented design" and more of a accident for copying God of War, but damn.
Werehog, pointless form and only had relevance when furries claimed it
I actually agree
@@IZZYCHAN13
They claimed Werehog Sonic and not regular Sonic?
Bro the parry can be held infinitely and all of Sonic's "attacks" are single button presses that freeze the enemy in place, requiring no consideration of position or timing. That doesn't even meet the criteria for a combat system.
The game makes God of War look like Street Fighter.
This is my 7th favorite Sonic game and the only 3D Sonic game I've 100%'d, so I can't wait to watch this.
New video from Pariah uploads.
Pariah : I'M HERE!
REACHING FAR AVROSS THESE NEW FRONTIERS
@@crimsonzone8984 typo
Great video I was having kind of a bad day and seeing such a detailed review of my favourite Sonic game really helped ❤️
Thank you
Sonic Frontiers is so extremely tedious it is as if the game was intentionally trying to frustrate me. How do people see this as great? What game have you guys play? They approached this game as if it wasn't a open world game which is baffling because it is. What is even more baffling to me is people actually think the cyberspace levels are the worst part of the game. What? The only part of the game even remotely resembling an actual fun Sonic game is somehow worse than wondering a boring empty world collecting crap? What is happening here? Really though the extra characters should have just had new cyberspace levels tailored specifically for them on the mostly unused island and the trials are senseless padding in a game far longer than it has any right being. I wish this wouldn't be getting a sequel its either going to more of the same or mildly better but sell significantly less and be abandoned. Such is the Sonic curse. Honestly I never want to touch this painfully mediocre game again. Hell I also have tons and tons of problems with Breath of The Wild so it copying that didn't start my interest level off well to begin with. Sonic needs to stop chasing trends.
The last line "Sonic was always good, if you look at it through the right lens." went so fucking hard man.
Its so fitting for not only his review series, but just Sonic in general.
Literally anything is good if you "look at it through the right lens" 🙄........... how does that go "hard", that's like saying water is wet
this comment is proof sonic fans have never read a book in their life
When I wanna appreciate something that sounds cool to me and some smart guy tell me to not enjoy simple things
@@spidtzz They are a troll.
He likes the Homing Dash?
God I can't WAIT for him to start reviewing the Spark the Electric Jester games! He's in for a wild ride!!
I enjoy your videos and for the most part agree with you but may I present an idea art has always been copying other pieces and recontextualizes it to fit that specific piece so with sonic copying other games technically those other games don’t own those mechanics so why can’t sonic give its take on said mechanics? What is a “real” Sonic game? Feels like fans and sonic team themselves don’t know again not trying to disrespect just my perspective and you said it yourself a lot of other games copy sonics mechanics but builds on that foundation love the vids pls keep up the great worl
I would equate this game to more Mario Odyssey with BOTWs tone
Mario Odyssey with its freedom/no leash on how you progress (yes there is an end goal, but both games don't really care how you complete the big objective among several routes to take, they just ask you to complete it)
And BOTW with its melancholy tone and kinda borrowed-notes of finishing off an ancient evil that razed the world X years ago, as well as shrouding itself in plenty of mystery
It's far from perfect, but the attempt here of mixing two different freedom based games into one product is admirable, and the end result is more than serviceable
I wouldn’t say serviceable. Odyssey and BOTW have an issue of being too much on the quantity side but not highlighting anything specific about themselves, making them very repetitive. Those games have more bosses, but no one recalls them because they lack anything unique about them. Mario odyssey has a lot more worlds, which means most of them get overlooked or get a stapled on mini-boss to call it a day. BOTW is self-defeating by its system that redundancy and Jank is essential to its core.
Despite Frontiers taking the Titan and the character of this land theme of BOTW, it actually works better in Frontiers as the Titan is the core of the island and the character of the island (Knuckles, Amy, Tails, and Sonic) already have a ton of history and dynamics that aren’t killed off by a TIME SKIP.
If Amy was on every island just to give you a collectible for finding her, would you look at her as a character anymore or a mere NPC that delivers you goodies.
21:16 There's a little more to this "rumor" than one might actually think. Apparently play testers of Sonic Frontiers during development said that the open worlds were far too large, and way too empty making it boring to run through. Also, looking at the (little amount) of footage that was leaked, kinda supports this since it briefly showed an empty open world.
It's weird how little attention people brought to the nonsensical amusement park design, beyond the fact that it was all floating in the sky. Like they were talking about the production value of the game as if it was some kind of AAA release. AAA games have their own type of repetitive crap but the open zones and the combat "system" are at a different level of mindless junk. There is some fun to be found in cheesing your way through this nothing gameplay but there's a point at which you're just craving like. Actual game design. Nothing in these open zones resembles the highly replayable gameplay of the sonic series. It gets tiring very quick
I would say it gets tiring eventually. It's only on replay that it really hit me.
@@Pariah6950 That's fair. I may have burnt out a little from having used this game as a fidget cube for 200 hours. Just a little. Totally not something I should've factored into my current feelings about the gameplay.
I definitely would love some “game design” also. There is a similar conversation regarding TOTK. Personally frontiers is repayable because its controls are free and fun to navigate the world with. There really isn’t much depth past that but if I’m having fun…I win.
New horizons makes it very clear when they got used to actually designing levels in this weird way.
@@justice8718 it seems SXSG will give us some really good game design, however because of that I’m a little suspicious of act 2
Edit: Rather that they just haven’t shown us it.
Could it be that the Final Horizon doesn't take place in Rhea Island because it's chock full of trees that impair visibility?
this whole game feels like its a playtest labelled as a game you can buy
I borrowed this from the library, and I didn't get far. I honestly just stopped playing. I genuinely just didn't care enough to keep playing. It really didn't hold my attention.
Respectable
Library's have games nowadays?
WHAT I don’t even have to let go the parry at ALL?!
@@Syper7 nope 😂
Frontiers is a weird game because if you take each individual aspect, its not the most well designed game. The puzzles are just bad or at most kinda ok, but innofensive. The platforming is really just things floating around and don't offer much difficulty if any at all, exploring is rewarded but its something minimal, cyberspace has cool levels but a lot of it is just copied from other games, the combat has a good base but falls short in execution. But despite all of this, the game still manages to be fun and enjoyable. Its gameplay loop is kinda addicting and things like the updates (mainly update 2) really made this game better and fuller. Its the most 7/10 to 7.5/10 game ever. Is it good? Yeah, its solid, but just barely. Love this game tho, really like running around and comboing platforming sections. If they take the good things from this game and improve, we could get a really good game next
I'm gonna be honest, i haven't played Frontiers for myself yet, in fact i don't own any game post Forces aside from The Murder Of Sonic The Hedgehog, and the reasons being 1. I don't have enough money, and 2. Even if i had money, Frontiers in particular, my computer just can't handle it. So i'm left as an outsider in the Sonic Frontiers discussion, there's people saying it's really good, there's people saying it's really bad, and i got no way to know anything to have an opinion on that. But, there is something i can talk about as an outsider, and that is the reason this game got so popular.
First, you gotta understand the context in which this game was announced in, this was a long period without Sonic games and the last mainline Sonic game was Sonic Forces, a game that disappointed many people by promising big things, but turning out just average. It had three games with the same gameplay style to learn from, and it turned out to be the weakest of the bunch. So when after such a long time, we finally got a new Sonic game announced, and the trailer showed a generic Breath of the Wild ripoff that recycled Forces assets and gameplay, people weren't having any of it anymore, people woke up and decided they were sick and tired of this amount of disappointment from a franchise which was this popular and beloved worldwide. The expectations were incredibly low, so it could only go up from there and that's what it did, it surpassed the expectations and turned out to be much better than people thought, it may not be a masterpiece, but by the current Sonic standards this turned out to be a huge victory. People lowered their expectations so much that it became easier to surpass them. But i think we all know that story, right? It's not been that long ago, we were there when it happened, so why am i talking about this again? Well, i've noticed a pattern, this is not the first time it happened.
Back in 2019, we got our first look at the Sonic movie, and it was BAD, it had a very generic plot, sure. But this was not what people were complaining about, it was all about the design, one of the most iconic designs of all time turned into an abomination. It took away the cool and the cute in favor of realism, it was uncanny. And in an era where we can perfectly translate comic characters into live action using CGI, something this bad couldn't be justified. The fact that such a beloved gaming ip was getting treated with this amount of disrespect, was an insult to the entire medium of video games as a whole. It was not just Sonic fans who were offended, the people were offended. So when the studio listened and changed the design, it was a huge victory, but here's the thing, that was the only change, the premise was still generic, it was better done than most movies of the kind, but was still very average. But that's not the point, the point of all of this is the people, our voices were being listened, that's why the movie was such a success and that opened the doors for Sonic 2 to make an even bigger success. And that seems to be the pattern with Frontiers, and with the Sonic Generations delisting. The people are the ones to consume the products and are the most important part to consider when making it. Simply the fact that they are listening to us is enough for us to support them. And that's why people say Sonic is back.
You're not missing out too much tbh. But the Frontiers modding community is just as big as Generations back in the day. I'd say Frontiers became more of a platform/tool for fan games more so than an actual game.
Another important thing to note is that the Adventure & Dark Age games were getting a lot of attention around this time. Around Frontiers' marketing cycle & ultimate release, the Adventure games became well liked again, 06 was getting more love, Unleashed established a cult following, & in general a game with that sort of Dark Age/Adventure aesthetic & gameplay was in HIGH demand. Frontiers was seemingly that game. The story looked to be more high stakes & intense, & the gameplay seemingly had that same open ended level design as in Sonic Adventure. When the game came out, it proved to be that, & thus people were really happy. Their dream game had finally come, hence another reason why Frontiers was so popular
@@Whyisthis-t9b That is true, thank you for pointing that out, once again this just proves my point that the people bought because the people were listened.
Frontiers is a game that you need to experience to know if it’s for you or not. I think there could be fanmade potato PC patches so it’s still worth to nab it on sale.
The "story of" video is gonna be so vindicating for my gripes
The story video interests me a lot
Fans were that scard by Sonic Forces, Frontiers to them is the best Sonic game ever.
Tbf, given the timing it was released in one of the best years for gaming combined with coming out a week after Odyssey, yeah it was genuinely embarrassing lol
if you get fed rat poison your whole life, expired poultry will seem gourmet to you.
Basically, give your public a product so disappointing that they will have such low expectations, and when they don't trust you, you give them a product that's just a little bit better than the last, and automatically your public will come back to you. That's all. It already worked once, and it will work again.
@@sebastianmartinez5963 I've seen the same comment earlier, but I'll respectfully say: this looks like an exaggerated thought. It's a good game. Not amazing, not innovative, but it does the job. Some people just can't appreciate if it misses something. I think it's just how this fanbase is; but that's okay, because the numbers tells the truth. The game was a success despite the franchise in ruins and the majority of the people really liked the game. I mean, I know I'm the black sheep here in this entire commentary section since everyone came to this video to hate Frontiers, but some things need to be said...
@@lks19 It’s average at best.
SEGA! Hire this man! SEGA! Hire this man! He's using Unreal Engine in any WAY he can!
Hire the man who made Sonic Souls! (it's yet another shitty fangame on that Sonic framework for UE3, but whatever!)
Hey, it rhymes!
Probably the thing that annoy me the most is how unfulfilling the prize system of this game is, you get 6 times more collectables by opening random "chests" on the ground that doing the actual platform challenges, even Big's fishing gives much much more collectables for less time than actualy playing the game, this game just doesn't want to be played, you have to willingly ignore the most effective strategy to have fun, it is terrible design.
nah fr i hate the excuse that some things are kids games when these kids deserve better fr.
FACTS
I love the thumbnail.
I think the power boost could've been a good mechanic as it finally gives you a reward for accumulating rings, and unlike the extra lives of old it encourages KEEPING the rings
except they pussied out and made the cyloop spit out rings, although I'd argue it's much more fun to just run through the map anyway instead of using the loop as a crutch
Can't wait for the next sonic game where they try to replicate the success of frontier but instead they repeat the same mistakes, make new ones and omits all the improvements final horizons made because sega fired the team who made frontiers to replace them with cheaper recent graduated developers who never made a sonic game, because this company can't make a good decision to save their lives.
That isn’t happening, fortunately. Sega finally stopped being dumb about the blue rate for once.
Pariah slowly doing all the Zelda games too was all for this moment
I went into this game thinking exactly how you did in this review, that it was just going to be a cheap BOTW Sonic clone. Surprisingly though I came out of Froniters thinking it was the best mainline Sonic game in a decade. Granted that it isn't saying much since what we had for the past decade was Lost World, Boom, and Forces; still I really enjoyed it. Is it the my de facto favorite 3D Sonic game? No, that goes to Unleashed and/or Adventure 1 (depending on how I feel, usually Unleashed is the one that I prefer). Frontiers how ever is the closest we have gotten to a game like Adventure 1 and Unleashed. Is it perfect? Hell no. I think you put it pretty well that Sonic fans were just starved and scard by Forces, that at that point would take anything that wasn't uncomfortably mediocre.
Shockingly, the more I've played Frontiers, the more I got out of it. Finding shortcuts, breaking the platforming sections, optimizing my times, and collecting things as fast as possible. I agree that they still need to properly design a game's open zone/world around all these broken game mechanics and movesets Sonic characters have. At times it didn't feel like they tried to fix the brokenly design worl and platforming. Frontiers is what I call a beautiful mess. It is messy, but in a beautiful way. Because Sonic games are traditionally broken by players to maximize time save, the broken design kind of worked in Frontiers' favor. This time, they leaned into the fact Sonic players break the level design intentional. It is the closest we have gotten to Adventure style physics in a boost game. I hope they ditch the boost style gameplay for a more Adventure-focused style or at the very least a hybrid style between Boost and Adventure.
I think a lot of Frontiers' problems stem from the fact that the open world was not designed to be a platforming playground. It has been mentioned/confirmed via interviews and by beta playtesters that the game's open world did not have any traditional Sonic platforming elements until mich later in development. Originally, the cyberspace stages were the only remindent of traditional 3D Sonic gameplay. Playtesters mentioned that the game didn't feel like a Sonic game and was incredibly rough. The open world was just a glorified giant Hub World.
SEGA planned for a 2021 release, but Sonic Team had to beg SEGA to delay the release a year for additional polish and platforming additions to the open world. I'm glad they did delay the game because we would have lost around a quarter to half the game as we know it. I can't imagine Frontiers being nearly as fun without the platforming sections added later in development and especially the elaborate Final Horizons platforming.
Speaking of Final Horizons, Final Horizons was so close to getting somewhere that its a shame it was held back tremendously by the overpowered character abilities, non-playfitm accommodating overworld, the obnoxious Master King Coco Trial, and obtuse Supreme fight. We finally got additinal playable character playstyles in a mainline game that weren't just a different playstyle for Sonic (e.i. Classic Sonic and whatever the avatar was in Forces).
The story isn't perfect mainly due to the unfitting cast, lacklaster cutscene animation, and questionable voice direction. It is also bit too self-referencal for my liking, but we hadn't had any consistence or referencing of 2000s era Sonic games in the canon in like forever. SEGA/Sonic Team was ashamed to even bring up the Adventure games, Heroes, Shadow, 06, Unleashed, Black Knight without it being in a mocking manner. Now these games hold just as much importance to the canon and lore as Classic Sonic from the 90s was and still is. I don't think that would have been possible if Frontiers was a flop for the fans or was critically panned.
Sonic fans at this point will take any type of victory, oir relationship with SEGA/Sonic Team is as abusive and self-destructive as it gets for mainstream gaming franchises. The fact that they are trying to repair it at all even if they fall flat at times is better than what we got pre-Frontiers.
I HATED this game when I first played it... I couldn't wait until it was finally over (as I was playing for the story first and foremost). But then I bought it AGAIN on Steam (because it was on sale) so I could try modding it. Mods are GAME CHANGERS! I actually went through with 100% completion for the first time ever, all because modding it fixed a lot of its issues and actually made it _fun_ to play.
Plus, I could play through the whole game as Funky Kong with mods, that's pretty cool.
what mods
I think it's less people desparately wanting to like Frontiers (though I'm sure that's absolutely a thing) and more so people liking the IDEA of Frontiers. It's an open world Sonic game with a serious story by a well-known writer in the community that actually acknowledges series lore and continuity while abandoning the unfunny, self-depreciating meta humor everyone had grown tired of. Essentially, people love the game simply for the fact that it exists. Actual execution doesn't matter that much. Kinda like DBZ Kakarot and DBFZ. People love the IDEA of an open world DBZ game and a traditional 2D fighter, so people gas them up as the greatest things ever simply for existing regardless of how mediocre they actually are. Hell, when DBZK came out, the vast majority of the praise was literally just that it's an open world DBZ game.
Funnily enough, it reminds me a lot of Spyro the Dragon(especially 2 and 3). Plopped in a large zone, and got to do a mixture of combat, puzzles, minigames and platforming to get Macguffins, with alt game style(Flight or Cyberspace). Spyro just does it a lot better.
You know what style of game would be great for Sonic? Fancy Pants.
Write that down!
I always loved the Fancy Pants games when I was a kid, but just recently I came back to them and noticed how Sonic-like they are, and that's probably part of the reason I like them so much.
Shadow Generations is supposed to take what they learned from Frontiers and applying it to that game which so far they seem to be doing a decent job when it comes to levels and the platforming. I'm more curious in the open zone and how that will work, cause I imagine it's not all just gonna be the white space, perhaps having areas that resemble the level with some platforming challenges.
afaik it's just open zone-inspired white space, which I suppose is better than base gens
Nah, it's going to be the same thing.
From what we’ve seen the Level Design is finally integrated into the World but the Level Design itself still looks similar to Frontiers
@@Terminal_ApotosOf course it would because they designed final horizons, so obviously they wouldn’t waste that knowledge.
Sonic Frontiers is carried by its controls. And this isn't even lowballing the game's quality because 3D Sonic games have consistently controlled like ass for nearly two decades. Even the best recieved 3D games still have horrible tank controls that should not be on a platforming character known for his speed and agility. Before Frontiers, the movement and game feel peaked at SA2 over twenty years ago. Think about that.
It's also funny how much Pariah praises cyberspace, even forgiving the reused stage layouts because the new control scheme gives a new experience. But at the same time he's using a mod that gives you open-zone controls. Goes to show how much of a change simply making player movement feel good can make. And it's insane how ST has never strived to make this the standard until this game. Boost gameplay should have always been this
@@LexStormA i still believe that cyberspace is the best part of both the base game, and TFH.
However, I respect your opinion.
About everything else you said, I also respect it. Very interesting
The first Hedgehog-Type game
Really looking forward to your story video on this game, it does some CRAZY shit with the lore and I'm interested to hear what you think of it. Ancient aliens, I'll be damned.
When it came to witnessing the pre-release shitshow in the fanbase, i felt like I was living in a 1984 totalitarian/Blade Runner Night City type of environment. All the blind consumption, the gatekeepers, the peer pressure, and the willful….no….blissful aggression and arrogance. I just feel like I’m the outcast (as it is what my RUclips name implies) in the fandom, even though I was watching it from a distance. That’s why I feel so grateful for others like you, JebTube, J Reviews, and many others. (I’m not trying to sound selfish here, but that’s just how I personally feel.) It made feel less…lonely.
I feel you, man. X/Twitter is truly a hellscape.
I have a theory that sonic fans do not exist in real life and are actually bots run by some corporate troll
I love this game, I know it could be better but to me it’s just so fun
It has problems, a lot of problems some parts of this game are absolute trash
But when I look at as an overall project, I can’t help but love this game
Also ngl Final Horizon is so repetitive
I mean ig I like it
But it is kinda boring tbh
I would argue, and this may be controversial, that this game may be on levels of jank that rival Sonic 06. The designers' decision making in so many areas is so baffling and quite-frankly insane that if it were any other franchise, the product would be so unacceptable that it may have been emergency-shelved ala FF14. It is absolutely more playable out of the box than 06 and is definitely fun, but it is a very ugly duckling. I could list all the unacceptable, ridiculous calls the designers made but that'd make this text wall even longer. The nighttime slot machine for purple rings is a perfect example but there are many, many more. That being said, I still had plenty of fun and still replay it from time to time. It's a good first step as a glorified tech demo.
Yeah I wouldn’t agree with this if it wasn’t for that 100% map reward in the Final Horizon
That shit teaching how to do the boss when it is completely just not clear what to do is absolutely dog game design
I mean the whole game is dog game design
IMO 06 is a game with Good Systems that weren’t Polished while Frontiers is a Game with Bad Systems… that also weren’t Polished.
21:19 there’s actually a leaker that played the game when it still was called sonic rangers that said that the open world was completely empty, he also talks about a bunch of stuff we know was later removed of frontiers.
I think about what open zone Sonic could be, the idea of having vibrant colorful environments with integrated platforming, NPCs, side quests, and secret areas only certain characters could access (Sonic 3&K) is something I want to see in an open zone Sonic game. They could still have the "cyberspace" stages but instead of it being cyberspace it's actually just action stages accessable through warp rings. The stages themselves would be based on the open zone (every open zone would have a distinct theme but there would be sub-areas, POIs to make the areas feel more alive and varied) there could also be in-game shops were you can buy costumes, decorations, and food. Have items scattered throughout the open zone, like the usual ring and shield power-ups. Depending on the shield that's equiped Sonic and co would get a secondary effect to their attacks (like fire shield would burn the enemy and give them status effects). Eggman bases could be around the open zone, they would act as a sorta rogue-like area where you mow down enemies and when you die you get kicked out of the base and have to try again. By the end of it you could get a special costume or collectable.
1:35:50 Should be noted that this "Homing Dash" mechanic first appeared in Spark the Electric 2, and probably like what happened with Frontiers it was a bug that the developer decided to keep in and call "Magnet Dashing". Interested to hear your opinion on this when you get to Spark 2 & 3, especially comparing how it interacts with the level design in those games versus Frontiers.
The developers didn’t call it magnet dashing because they didn’t even know about the spark games.
@@kilometersperminute4113 I think they do know, judging by the new leaks we gotten for frontiers 2. The gameplay seems awesome. But I’m scared of the Ian juice I’m feeling from Sage.
Now we have one more video to go before we're all caught up with the Sonic series, the story of Sonic Frontiers
Ok, but why was there so much detail and effort put into how the fish look in Big’s QTE?
WE’RE HERE
i still haven't played this game because of the dennuvo parasite
Explain
@@Hyp3rSonic Denuvo is a DRM used in the industry to prevemt piracy, but its known to fuck over games performance wise. Theres alot on it but thats the general gist.
@@ike804why, I heard of that before. But for me, I mainly play sonic games on Xbox(and sometimes playstation, but I only have 3 of those games there)
Also, it's only a problem for PC, right?