Nov
14th
2022
Well, that's something I never thought I'd see. · 12:45pm Nov 14th, 2022
Steam's user-rating convinced me to pull the trigger on Frontiers yesterday afternoon. Too early to tell if I agree with that rating yet.
Just under six hours in, just about to (hopefully) 100% the first island.
The good:
- The music, as always, is on point.
- Open world is fun to traverse and explore.
- Collect-a-thon gameplay isn't tedious as of six hours in.
- The numerous 30 to 60-second cutscenes present an air of mystery, and is certainly one of the darkest approaches to a narrative in the franchise.
The neutral:
- The villain, so far. She is certainly intriguing, and there is only one single thought in my mind regarding her: For the love of the franchise's various gods, please be better than Infinite was.
The bad:
- Cyberspace levels. Be VERY careful what you wish for; I've been saying S-ranks need to be harder to get for 14 years. Well, a lot of them here are exactly that, and there is absolutely no sense to the difficulty curve. I got the S-rank in 1-1 on my first try. 1-2 took me more than 30 tries. Side-scrolling levels are the worst because the only way I can tell I'm boosting is if I see the meter go down. That is absolutely laughable.
- The pop-in is egregious. Spotting clear paths to sky-high collectibles is impossible because of it. If they didn't want the floating platforms and rails to ruin the island vistas, they should have made them fade in. But they just pop into existence less than 100 feet away.
- Speed upgrades. It's an insult that I can't tell the difference between level 1 and level 10.
That's a lot of bad, but Steam's review system is just a mere thumbs up/down rating. Overwhelmingly Positive just means that 95% or more of players believe that the good outweighs the bad, and after the last decade+ of this franchise's 3D offerings, I can understand that, so far.
Jury's still out for me.
P.S.
No, I have not drawn a dick with the Cyloop yet. It's on my to-do list.
Sounds like a fun/frustrating experience
Yea, Sonic's 3D track record has been spotty.
I was a big Sonic fan back in the day as a kid.... but then it went 3D and other than the first attempt I haven't enjoyed any and quickly stopped.
I've made roughly the same progress you have, and so far the hardest Cyberspace level was 1-2. You know, the Sky Sanctuary one. And yeah, that was way too tight of an S Rank, but that's not the issue I had with them. The Cyberspace levels are just snippets of Sonic Generations levels ripped wholesale. And if the implied in-story reason is that the environments are being pulled from the memories of Sonic, Amy, Tails, and/or Eggman in Cyberspace, then fine, but that still leaves me concerned. Are we going to see some new level design, or did Sonic Team just recycle the old stuff? And if the former, is it going to be good, or Sonic Forces quality of level design?
Meanwhile, I'm playing on the Switch with five year old Joy Cons, so Joy Con drift is making things harder than they have to be. Hell, I couldn't even learn the Titan boss properly, so I just went in with max rings and spammed the air blade move.
I'm probably going to buy that game very soon or get it on my birthday since my birthday is coming this month
Sounds better than most Sonic games so far, gonna wait a bit for more reviews.
Or I'll blow my money on Warhammer 40k Darktide before I get a chance to play Sonic.
Still, hope this game's later half turns out for the best!
5697868
I'll just say this.
The game's first boss has the energy and intensity of a final boss. It's insane. Quite a twist that is making me look forward to what's next.
I am also enjoying the game! A agree with most of what you say. The two biggest problems for me are Sonic's speed and the camera. Sonic's speed is not very well balanced, in that I had to crank all the settings up to max for Sonic to move at a speed I thought was appropriate. However, with Sonic's speed turned up so high, the physics get really wonky and I often just run right over springs or dash pads without activating them, forcing me to redo lots of the memory token platforming challenges. It's just so weird to feel that Sonic is both not fast enough, yet too fast at the same time. The game also has probably the worst camera I've seen in a Sonic game. The game constantly jerks the camera away from me when I'm trying to do precision platforming, making some jumps literally impossible to make because I can't reposition the stick in a way that lets me be accurate. The saving grace is that the exploration, story and world-building are the best they've been in over a decade.
In case you don't know this, you need to be on hard mode to fight the true final boss.
5697886
Can I change the difficulty anytime? Or replay the whole thing on Hard?
5697888
You should be able to change difficulty at any time from the options menu.
Assuming you don't want spoilers, I'll just say the final boss triggers immediately after you beat the final titan.
5697894
I'm still on the desert island. So many freaking Knuckles memories. I'm going to be here forever.
Might give this a try here soon.
... right after I am done with Somerville and God of War Ragnarök!