Megathread Sonic Frontiers (2022) | MT | General Discussion (DO NOT discuss leaks here please)

[ZinogreVolt]

 

It seems like they finally got the memo on level/theme re-use, hopefully that means they won't be doing more of this in the future.

[Shiny Gems]

Seems like Morio Kishimoto is taking feedback pretty well. He even is taking feedback about art styles and the like.

Not bad, huh?

[LegoFedora]

 

Seems like the Homing Boost was semi-intentional.

Now this makes me wonder with how strict the timing for 1-3 is, I wonder if that's a leftover from a time when the devs might've made S rank times expecting the players to know how Homing Boost works. 1-3's S rank is actually a lot more doable consistently when you learn how to Homing Boost, yet without it it's really tight.

[SticksSuperFan14]

8 hours ago, LegoFedora said:

Seems like the Homing Boost was semi-intentional.

Now this makes me wonder with how strict the timing for 1-3 is, I wonder if that's a leftover from a time when the devs might've made S rank times expecting the players to know how Homing Boost works. 1-3's S rank is actually a lot more doable consistently when you learn how to Homing Boost, yet without it it's really tight.

Well, I already felt the combat took too much attention away from the platforming, so it not only staying but being emphasized more does leave me concerned.

[TheEyclopediaHBookReader]

I'll just say i'm glad the combat doesn't try to copy DMC, loving NG as a kid i've dreamed of a Sonic combat game playing like that, but i prefer'd the approach in Frontiers with ' press hit button a few times > press another button to activate an powerful attack frame ' it seems easier for 8-9 yro kids to get into if they never played a Combat Action game like DMC and happen to be intimated by that game and it's lites 

[Shiny Gems]

Well, Morio Kishimoto is looking at so many suggestions...

I basically sent him a question about revisiting something from past Sonic games, myself. I am now waiting to see if he does answer. Just thought I'd mention this.

[Forgeafrontier]

Surprised no one seems to be saying this about the game, (maybe its an unpopular opinion) but it looks really ugly in most areas. I don't think its a visually striking game due to its almost non existant art direction. It really does look like an unreal engine 3 (not even 4) asset flip, and what absolutely does not help is how low the graphical fidelity is. In this day and age, if you are gonna go for photorealism, you really need to make sure the graphics of your game are at least decent. Sonic frontiers is so graphically outdated, and looks low res in many areas, that I was questioning throughout my playthrough what made sonic team think going for photorealism was a good idea. Games do not need to have outstanding graphics to look good, Elden ring, nier automota, botw and xenoblade are prime examples of this, they are all very middle of the road graphics(half of these games are on switch only lmao) but are carried by impeccable art direction, they all have a unique distinct flair that seperates them from the rest of the gaming market. I am not saying frontiers needs to look like the classic sonic games, or any of those games. I am just saying imo it is an ugly game due to a lack of art direction made even worse by low grade textures(they probably made the game for switch first and just ported it to all the other consoles which makes me even more curious as to why they didn't go for a unique art style). I still can not believe the game looks the way it does on PS5. I am not saying the game objectively looks bad, I just don't think people realize how easy basic photorealism is. 

[ZinogreVolt]

2 hours ago, Forgeafrontier said:

Surprised no one seems to be saying this about the game, (maybe its an unpopular opinion) but it looks really ugly in most areas. I don't think its a visually striking game due to its almost non existant art direction. It really does look like an unreal engine 3 (not even 4) asset flip, and what absolutely does not help is how low the graphical fidelity is. In this day and age, if you are gonna go for photorealism, you really need to make sure the graphics of your game are at least decent. Sonic frontiers is so graphically outdated, and looks low res in many areas, that I was questioning throughout my playthrough what made sonic team think going for photorealism was a good idea. Games do not need to have outstanding graphics to look good, Elden ring, nier automota, botw and xenoblade are prime examples of this, they are all very middle of the road graphics(half of these games are on switch only lmao) but are carried by impeccable art direction, they all have a unique distinct flair that seperates them from the rest of the gaming market. I am not saying frontiers needs to look like the classic sonic games, or any of those games. I am just saying imo it is an ugly game due to a lack of art direction made even worse by low grade textures(they probably made the game for switch first and just ported it to all the other consoles which makes me even more curious as to why they didn't go for a unique art style). I still can not believe the game looks the way it does on PS5. I am not saying the game objectively looks bad, I just don't think people realize how easy basic photorealism is. 

It's a very inconsistent picture that fluctuates a lot due to, as you said, a lack of art direction. I think the contrasting elements work in some instances, Sonic looks very good next to how robotic and sterile a lot of the enemies are, and the enemies themselves have fantastic animation work. But Sonic next to the environment leaves a lot to be desired because most of them are non-descript and don't communicate anything at all. There are some technical aspects I can appreciate like the lighting, the weirdly amazing looking water reaction, as well as the technical work put into the sand on Ares... but it doesn't really do much in lifting up the game's inconsistent picture. It's just not cohesive, and that's before factoring in the floating rails/platforms and the horrific pop-in. 

There's some cool ideas in there, and I really like the weird shapes and abstraction in some of the environments, but they don't do as good a job telling the story as I'd like. Even when it does successfully convey mood (the graveyard on Kronos, or the pyramid on Ouranos) it does miss its beats too often for those moments to be all that appreciable. 

[8ther]

Is it possible to beat Frontiers without doing the Cyberspace stages?

[Blue Blood]

55 minutes ago, 8ther said:

Is it possible to beat Frontiers without doing the Cyberspace stages?

The short answer: Yes, more or less. After the tutorial, you don't have to go into cyberspace at all. You can go fishing instead. 

The long answer... 

The game starts in 1-1, so thats essential with no workaround. I've got finish that, you're booted out into the tutorial area. The tutorial area is split off from the rest of Kronos Island by a missing bridge. You could theoretically jump/launch to get across, but there's an invisible wall blocking your way that doesn't get removed until the bridge is rebuilt. The bridge is automatically rebuilt after clearing 1-2. So that makes 1-2 essential, unless you use exploits/glitches to get around the invisible wall. And that's possible, as seen in this video after 4:40:

From that point onwards, Cyberspace is technically optional but heavily encouraged. The gameplay loop is supposed to be:

1. Beat Guardians to get gears.
2. Use gears to access cyberspace.
3. Beat cyberspace to get keys. 
4. Use keys to get Emeralds.
5. Collect 6 Emeralds to reach Titans.

(There are also two Emeralds on each island locked behind memory tokens, which form the main storyline and are found by exploring.)

If you decide you don't want to fight guardians or go to Cyberspace, the best way to get all of the collectables is through Big's fishing spots. The fishing spots don't require any gears to open, and you can buy all of the collectables you could possibly need from him. You spend people coins on each cast, and earn green coins to spend on the shop. You can find purple coins around the open zones, or through the Starfall event Slot Machine (basically the equivalent of BotW's blood moon, with a giant slot machine blocking half of the screen for the duration of the night). Starfall events shower you with coins whether you you want them or not. 

And just to make things even easier, the free Monster Hunter DLC let's you earn green coinsfor Big's shop without needing to spend purple coins to go fishing. In theory, all you need to do to legitimately best every island without glitches is go directly to Big's portal and play the Monster Hunter minigame until you can buy your way to victory. 

Lots of people, myself included, actually resorted to exploiting fishing rewards to clear the game. Especially towards the end of the story, the game can start to feel long in the tooth. Chaos Island is a chore, and cyberspace is plain awful. The best way to keep the game fun was to skip everything except the open zone. 

There are tertiary ways to get all of the collectables, except Emeralds. On rare occasions, regular enemies may drop keys, gears and memory tokens instead of EXP pieces. It's a game of RNG though and they only ever drop one at a time. There are also some collectables hidden in treasure spots. These are finite Bieber. You can draw circles with the cyloop without a target to generate rings. On very rare occasions, you may get keys, gears and tokens instead. It's very rare and inefficient though. You can draw dozens upon dozens of circles without seeing anything except rings appear. 

So yeah, you can beat the game without cyberspace after the tutorials. But to do so, you kind of just have to press an elaborate skip button. You'll be missing a lot of meaningful content if you skip cyberspace (or anything else). It's legitimate, but if you're choosing to skip a lot of the game because it's not fun... That's a problem with the game design, isn't it? If you don't want to play part of the game, you can just saunter on by and face zero penalty. There's no incentive to engage. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Quote

[Sticks the Badger]
A slightly strange badger girl who lives in the forest and is good friends with Amy .

She has a free-spirited personality, and is not afraid of hard common sense and traditions.
She is a good hunter and does not let go of the prey she aims at with her boomerang.

Welp. If there was any doubt left on if Sticks was really made canon, then this establishes that they're doubling down on Sticks having been friends with Amy in the main universe. Interestingly enough though, is the emphasis on her willingness with common sense. It might be something that they use to differentiate her from Sticks in the Boomverse.

[StaticMania]

Common sense is necessary for those who live in the wild...

It wouldn't be counter to the part of her that's a conspiracy nut.

I mean, hopefully she's not...it wouldn't really fit and Sonic games don't do comedy that well.

[Shiny Gems]

I just had a thought about Morio Kishimoto removing the boost in the next Sonic game: What if he replaces it with something called Boost Mode; the feature from Sonic Advance 2 and 3?

For those who do not know, Boost Mode was a feature where characters like Sonic would have to maintain speed while moving or running, and after a while, the character would enter such a mode, which was a hyper speed mode that surpasses regular running speed. This happened before the boost was first introduced in Sonic Rush.

I think this could work if Morio was making a Sonic Adventure styled game for the next Sonic game. Now, you may say Boost Mode was only in 2D Sonic games, but here is a thing to consider; in Sonic Adventure 1 itself, there was a character named E-102 Gamma, who was playable. In his story mode, while playing as him; you could actually just make him move around, normally but not limited to forward, and after that, Gamma would say "Mode Change" and go into a wheeled mode where he would go faster than otherwise. This happened in a 3D Sonic game.

I would personally not mind if Sonic could damage enemies like with the boost while in Boost Mode. It just is not done with the press of a button. Either way, I can see potential in something like that coming back. So, what do you all think of this idea?

[Iko]

I obviously like the idea of bringing back mechanics from Advance 2 since I love that game. The problem is that I fear that "no boost" means no boost at all, so it's possible that the next game won't feature any form of boost at all.

BTW Boost Mode wouldn't make you run faster by default, it would only allow you to break the speed cap... you can still run "slowly" and keep the boost mode active, as long as you don't drop the speed too low. It gives you additional acceleration too, but the speed itself is a reward of running without hitting obstacles, and it's gained over time, not instantly unlike with the regular boost; the speed is also not constant, it's affected by the environment (you gain and lose speed on slopes), by your input (as I said, you can run "slowly" too) and by the amount of rings (actually that would affect the acceleration, not the speed itself).

At the end of the day, it's a more complex version of the speed shoe power-up, very different than the boost we're used to in the modern games.

I think Sonic Rush and Rush Adventure (maybe Colors DS too) also had the boost mode, but it was redundant due to the regular boost being way easier to obtain and activate, other than way more powerful.

Ball form is not affected by boost mode, when you roll you can always break the speed cap, and I think that it makes no difference if you are rolling in boost mode or in regular mode, aside of the after-image effect.

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, Iko said:

I obviously like the idea of bringing back mechanics from Advance 2 since I love that game. The problem is that I fear that "no boost" means no boost at all, so it's possible that the next game won't feature any form of boost at all.

BTW Boost Mode wouldn't make you run faster by default, it would only allow you to break the speed cap... you can still run "slowly" and keep the boost mode active, as long as you don't drop the speed too low. It gives you additional acceleration too, but the speed itself is a reward of running without hitting obstacles, and it's gained over time, not instantly unlike with the regular boost; the speed is also not constant, it's affected by the environment (you gain and lose speed on slopes), by your input (as I said, you can run "slowly" too) and by the amount of rings (actually that would affect the acceleration, not the speed itself).

At the end of the day, it's a more complex version of the speed shoe power-up, very different than the boost we're used to in the modern games.

I think Sonic Rush and Rush Adventure (maybe Colors DS too) also had the boost mode, but it was redundant due to the regular boost being way easier to obtain and activate, other than way more powerful.

Ball form is not affected by boost mode, when you roll you can always break the speed cap, and I think that it makes no difference if you are rolling in boost mode or in regular mode, aside of the after-image effect.

Oops! Looks like the Wiki that told me it does make you go faster was inaccurate. My bad.

But I did know it was in other games as well. Thanks for mentioning that though, as I believe that is a detail others should know if they did not already.

But yeah, I do think that ball form not affecting the speed cap makes boost mode more fun if anything. Anyways, I do think the boost mode is different enough from the boost, so I don't think "no boost" essentially means no boost mode too.

[Iko]

1 minute ago, ShinyGems said:

Oops! Looks like the Wiki that told me it does make you go faster was inaccurate. My bad.

Technically it's accurate, you go faster, but in fact you go faster because the speed cap is removed and you gain more acceleration. I mean, you go faster but as a side effect of other things, not because you go faster by default, unlike the regular boost.

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, Iko said:

Technically it's accurate, you go faster, but in fact you go faster because the speed cap is removed and you gain more acceleration. I mean, you go faster but as a side effect of other things, not because you go faster by default, unlike the regular boost.

I see. In regards to what you said, which is "not because you go faster by default, unlike the regular boost", that's all the more reason as to why I think the boost mode would be better than the regular boost, honestly.

[Blue Blood]

So in Advance 2, you actually accelerate faster with more rings. Get your ring count up (or use a Game Shark to permanently have 999 rings) and you'll activate boost mode almost immediately after you reach maximum normal running speed. It always surprises me that no other game has used this idea quite so plainly. Frontiers only toys with the concept of unlocking a second boost tier at max rings.

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, Blue Blood said:

So in Advance 2, you actually accelerate faster with more rings. Get your ring count up (or use a Game Shark to permanently have 999 rings) and you'll activate boost mode almost immediately after you reach maximum normal running speed. It always surprises me that no other game has used this idea quite so plainly. Frontiers only toys with the concept of unlocking a second boost tier at max rings.

I see. That is interesting. I do think I remember reading that Sonic 06 was going to utilize a similar mechanic, or the same one, even. Obviously, it ended up being cut, of course. I do think though it would not be a bad idea to revisit as long as they don't rush the Sonic game they try to include it in again.

[SticksSuperFan14]

If boost does get removed in the next game, what could the in-universe explanation be? Mine would be that Cyberspace gave Sonic long-term effects, preventing him from tapping into his boost and forcing him to go faster another way.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

10 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

So in Advance 2, you actually accelerate faster with more rings. Get your ring count up (or use a Game Shark to permanently have 999 rings) and you'll activate boost mode almost immediately after you reach maximum normal running speed. It always surprises me that no other game has used this idea quite so plainly. Frontiers only toys with the concept of unlocking a second boost tier at max rings.

I actually don't like this, especially since Advance 3 screwed up the balance and you rocket forward if you have more than like ten rings. The character's base movement shouldn't be up to too much chance.

[Iko]

48 minutes ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

I actually don't like this, especially since Advance 3 screwed up the balance and you rocket forward if you have more than like ten rings. The character's base movement shouldn't be up to too much chance.

I might be wrong, but as far as I know Advance 3 does not feature that system... the characters' speed value depends on the partner, and in some cases the physics are so screwed up that it becomes hard to control.

I like the concept of rings enhancing Sonic's (and other characters') abilities, it could be expanded futher IMO (give Tails more flight stamina the more rings he has, make Knuckles create bigger shockwaves the more rings he has, etc.). The acceleration being tied to the amount of rings can be a bit more complex, because it can get into the way of platforming, but I think that if well balanced it might be a cool feature, especially in an "open zone" setting where platforming is not the main focus, and you mostly run into an open space.

In my opinion, the effect of rings on the acceleration should be noticeable only at high speeds, while in slow precision platforming it should not have any effect (you should accelerate faster only after a certain speed, when you are already fast enough to make platforming hard even at 0 rings).

The problem of the ring system in Advance 2 is that when your ring count is too low, the character would take forever to accelerate from standing, and some apparently easy jumps would become hard or impossible to perform due to the more limited air mobility. Being able to reach the boost mode faster with more rings is cool though; I think the system can be improved and it would be interesting because it would make rings more meaningful overall (this also and especially applies to Frontiers' gameplay formula, where it could have been interesting if the fighting moves were altered by the amount of rings, and if dealing good hits would make you gain rings from the enemy, so that you can increase the amount during a fight and improve your powers without having to grind around the open zone).

[Blue Blood]

1 hour ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

I actually don't like this, especially since Advance 3 screwed up the balance and you rocket forward if you have more than like ten rings. The character's base movement shouldn't be up to too much chance.

Advance 3 just did awful things to the physics. It doesn't handle well at all. And tbh, I'm unsure if it actually features the same ring-based acceleration as Advance 2.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I played Advance 3 fairly recently (only as Sonic + Tails, too), and I am all but certain control felt way worse when I had a higher number of rings. I was pretty sure the reason I never understood the control criticism is because as a kid I usually got hit enough that the game really didn't feel any different from 2, which I still hold as true.

[Wraith]

The second tier when you have 100 rings was a satisfying middle ground. I actually hope the idea of a buff when you can keep Sonic topped off like that returns even when the boost doesn't. Brought back the thrill of holding onto a lot of rings without having Lives to rack up.