Sonic Frontiers New Combat Trailer

[Shiny Gems]

Here is the official thing. What do you all think?

[ZinogreVolt]

Combat looks like a net win overall. There are things I'd change about it (camera angles for every special move are unnecessary, parry seems too easy for how powerful it is) but I quite like the direction they've taken with it. The overall emphasis on mobility and positioning suits Sonic well, and isn't a flat-out departure from the base gameplay like the Werehog being an entire genre shift. Divorcing it from Cyberspace was also a good choice in my book, since the open zone is somewhere you'll likely be taking your time in anyway. Also gotta praise the overall boss/enemy diversity, we're seeing one or two more enemies pretty much per trailer, and the bosses so far all seem pretty good.

[mayday2592]

Seems like the Cyloop breaks the game when it comes to traversal and combat. Why worry about increasing  defense or dying at all when you can just quickly run in a circle to spawn some more rings? I thought that infinite rings trick was a bug in the demo, but apparently that's a legit tactic.

[Voyant]

1 hour ago, ZinogreVolt said:

Combat looks like a net win overall. There are things I'd change about it (camera angles for every special move are unnecessary, parry seems too easy for how powerful it is) but I quite like the direction they've taken with it. The overall emphasis on mobility and positioning suits Sonic well, and isn't a flat-out departure from the base gameplay like the Werehog being an entire genre shift. Divorcing it from Cyberspace was also a good choice in my book, since the open zone is somewhere you'll likely be taking your time in anyway. Also gotta praise the overall boss/enemy diversity, we're seeing one or two more enemies pretty much per trailer, and the bosses so far all seem pretty good.

 

This is all looking pretty solid yeah. Parry being the way it is doesn't bother me toooo much again from an avid bayo player doing parries is actually very very easy.

All you needed to do was tap the joystick in the direction the enemy was facing you when they were going to attack. The frame perfect version causes witch time to trigger while the regular one just knocks the enemy back. In frontiers landing it in general seems to trigger witch time. Curious how this will be balanced (or not balanced at all) but even so this looks pretty solid and fun. Frontiers doesn't need bayo depth to be fun it just needs to get the surface level stuff enjoyable.

Phantom Rush seems to just be a devil trigger for him... but it looks like you have to do the rush attack in general to trigger it. The camera changes are unnecesarry but my biggest worry was these attacks being super static. I was happy to see that there are cancels in this where sonic can just contuining attack after doing one of the bigger attacks.

 

Still need to see how it feels for the full verdict but this is pretty soild. I don't mind bayo/dmc light combat in my sonic game at all. Think its a great fit.

[Sega DogTagz]

12 minutes ago, mayday2592 said:

Seems like the Cyloop breaks the game when it comes to traversal and combat. Why worry about increasing  defense or dying at all when you can just quickly run in a circle to spawn some more rings? I thought that infinite rings trick was a bug in the demo, but apparently that's a legit tactic.

All of these open world games have to do a balancing act on that front. There is often nothing stopping you from inhaling items from the pause menu to return to full health mid fight lol.

 

That being said, Frontiers addresses it in a couple of ways. For starters, the larger enemies don't care how many rings you can gobble up because word is Sonic still dies to a single blow from pinch damage. Secondly, a lot of the bosses that are designed to be more of a challenge, remove Sonic from his native environment to fight on a makeshift cyber-track. We see it with the squid boss and again here with Rail Guardian. Not only does it prevent Sonic from siphoning rings from the earth or running away to get more, but it also allows the devs to control how hard they want to make these bosses by limiting your access to rings. On Chronos, the squid boss leave rings behind during the chase sequences. In later islands, it may leave fewer or none to up the challenge.

 

 

As for the video, its pretty flashy how well Sonic can seem to chain special attacks together once you learn the combat system. That sequence toward the end where he pulls out every trick in his bag in rapid succession is the kind of silly eye candy that will make people want to learn the system over just mashing the same combo over and over. Still looks like something that could turn out to be a lot of fun. The parry does seem to be even more OP than the last time we saw it (he's deflecting lasers now?!) but again, that's a reward for pushing the skill ceiling, so I have little problem with it.

 

The trailer also goes out of its way to tell you that late game enemies will be bullet sponges if you haven't been leveling your Hedgie, so maybe that will calm some of the fears about the pushover difficulty people.

and it goes without saying that the enemy variety continues to rise with every video. I'm very impressed that the reveals have yet to plateau and we keep seeing more and more.

[ES-32]

Happy the ZigZag attack has a name now, I honestly love how Wild Rush looks in action it's gonna fun to use

Only the move name I'm not big on is Sonic Boom since that would imply an explosion-based or a boost type move, they should of called it Sonic Slash since the projectiles are crescent shaped and look like Sonic is cutting the air with the rapid kicks but that's just a minor small thing with me

I'm honestly pretty excited to play the game in a couple weeks

[Sega DogTagz]

 Name is fine

 

[McGroose]

Why the heck did the original upload go private? Were we not supposed to get this trailer right now? Strange 

[Razule]

4 minutes ago, McGroose said:

Why the heck did the original upload go private? Were we not supposed to get this trailer right now? Strange 

I'm guessing releasing a trailer late in the evening in EST wasn't their intention. Probably accidentally set the video to publish when it was uploaded. 

[Shiny Gems]

The initial post has been updated with the official version of the video in a tweet.

[DaBigJ]

I'm starting to think that I just don't like combat. It still looks really button mashy to me most of the time, and it looks more "flashy for the sake of flashy" instead of fun. I dunno, it just looks repetitive

[Zaysho]

I just don't like how slow combat and hits in general look in this game. There is a heavy emphasis on impact with nearly every attack and none of them stand out on their own. Even in the cyber levels where Sonic homing attacks enemies, there's this slight slowdown effect on impact there too and it looks out of place since I don't remember any boost game, or really any 3D Sonic, doing this. If anything the most interesting to me was seeing Sonic's standard abilities, including Drop Dash.

It's a shame because I initially thought combat looked really cool but that was when Sega left us hanging for a year and the more I see it, the more it feels like the weakest aspect of the game to me. The moves look cool and feel like things I could see Sonic doing (the flurry kick is still my favorite looking one) but that's kind of just it.

[Kuzu]

I can't put my finger on it, but something just feels "off" about combat.

[DaBigJ]

6 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I can't put my finger on it, but something just feels "off" about combat.

To me it's just another example of "style over substance". It looks insanely flashy, but it doesn't look like it'll have long lasting appeal, especially for a supposedly over 20 hour game. 

Maybe that's my issue with Frontiers? Lot of it looks like it's style over substance.

[Blue Blood]

The combat honestly really does look naff. It's flashy purely for the sake of being flashy, but the animations aren't very interesting and it looks like you're doing little more than button mashing. I really, really hate that every single hit results in that same weak sound effect. It drives home how uninteresting it all is.

Fighting larger enemies and bosses by running around them with the cyloop and performing small movement/platforming puzzles seems like it's going to be much better. I'm not exactly thrilled by the concept of grinding in circles or running up the sides of those giant bosses with random boosters lining them for no apparent reason, but it looks better than the standard combat.

It's a shame that combat seems to be so especially dry, when the rest of the open zone looks... Potentially enjoyable? Just controlling Sonic in them and doing mini challenges seems like something I'm going to find a fair bit of fun in. But the combat seems to be so middling. And the cyberspace levels look bad, no mincing my words there. 

[NoKaine]

Besides all of the impressions of people who played the game and say the exact opposite--in fact, I'm pretty sure the combat got praised more than the open zone or cyberspace on average--I genuinely cannot see how people can think the combat looks 'button-mashy" and most of all "slow."

Maybe it's because it's a trailer about Sonic's moves and people think the footage of several different Wild Rushes means you're going to do that in game? But it's a trailer about what Sonic can do, not how he can get his ass kicked lol. That's why they don't show the dodge.

This was a franchise where "combat" 99% of the time was hitting the enemy once and that was it. You'd think that expectations would adjust to that; this was never going to be DMC or Bayonetta levels of complex and it doesn't need to be.

The variety of moves, parry system, dodging, and how all of that interacts with the enemies--and the fact that there are a lot of enemies with different ways to fight them--make the combat infinitely more interesting even if the basic combo strings aren't making enemies fly around like they're having a stroke like some seem to think they should lol. The actual big hits Sonic does have impact and that is the most important thing. The basic attacks not doing crazy reaction is because they're supposed to be able to hit you in the middle of attacking to make you stop button mashing.

The only disappointing aspect is the size of the skill tree. It's small if that's all it is, but you probably spend more points improving those skills as well. The skill point distribution will probably mean it takes a while for you to fill out the skill tree too.

 

[DaBigJ]

8 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

Besides all of the impressions of people who played the game and say the exact opposite--in fact, I'm pretty sure the combat got praised more than the open zone or cyberspace on average

I dunno about you, but I'd rather trust what I've been seeing of the game myself through the footage that has been made public over what other people personally think. Isn't it better to form your own opinions anyways instead of letting other people persuade you? I think so, at least.

Obviously what I think isn't fact...but neither are the impressions. Impressions are identified as "an idea, feeling, or opinion about something or someone" for a reason, and to use them in the context as to why you disagree seems silly to me, because it ultimately isn't a deciding factor if something is good or not. 

Of course I'm aware of the fact that you explained your opinion, and I'll agree to disagree, but you probably shouldn't of used other impressions as a "besides the fact" sort of thing in my opinion, if that was the intent.

[NoKaine]

16 minutes ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

I'd rather trust what I've been seeing of the game myself through the footage that has been made public over what other people personally think. Isn't it better to form your own opinions anyways instead of letting other people persuade you? I think so, at least.

Your point is true in the inverse as well: the combat could look like what you think is good, but play worse. You can't judge a video game by how it looks, even if sometimes it can look bad and be bad (or look good and be good).

The impressions are notable since they almost always run by the idea of "the game plays much better than it looks." It's one thing to say "this was fun!", it's another thing to say "actually playing the game is a drastically different experience than simply seeing it", and it's an opinion that makes me put a lot of stock in. I'll take "this game isn't button-mashy" from people who have the controller in their hand than "this trailer, cut up to show you what Sonic can do on a basic level, looks button-mashy."

EDIT: And obviously, your own place experience may differ from others, but these opinions are pretty consistent. The negative opinions don't really talk about the same aspects either.

Besides that, I obviously like how it looks, so having people who played it confirm pretty much what I think it is is good too.

[Kuzu]

If I don't think it looks good, I have a right to say as much. And I can change my mind if it does in fact play better.

 

Really, most of it comes down to Sonic's character design not being suited for this type of combat. It looks really awkward with his stubby limbs.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

They’re literally on the right track, but…

They still found the most odd way to do it.

I like the idea, don’t get me wrong, as it might very well get them closer to something better. But these moves could have much better flow to them. Combat would be better off if it worked in conjunction with Sonic’s movement—use single, powerful strikes with fewer hits, like a homing attack that sends you over the enemy to give you an opportunity to stomp over them.

And Sonic Boom would be an awesome move, but it would be even better if you could do it while in motion. 

I don’t know. Just not really liking the moments where Sonic is stationary while executing these moves. It’s just…odd.

Still, I can’t help but think it’s a good start for potential future titles of this continues. If all goes well, they might refine it more down the line.

[Sega DogTagz]

8 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

And Sonic Boom would be an awesome move, but it would be even better if you could do it while in motion.

To be fair, we have seen that.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

32 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

To be fair, we have seen that.

I must’ve missed it then. Cuz I didn’t.

[Sega DogTagz]

Where you you when we were making Sonic Kamehameha jokes?

 

first 5 seconds of this vid is basically a Sonic Boom attack w/ the ability to move.

Spoiler

 

[Blue Blood]

1 hour ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Where you you when we were making Sonic Kamehameha jokes?

first 5 seconds of this vid is basically a Sonic Boom attack w/ the ability to move.

  Hide contents

 

Wow that almost looks like an animation glitch. 

But I think that it's also not what @CrownSlayer’s Shadowis asking for. Sonic is barely moving at all in that footage, and it seems as though what movement there is actually just a part of the attack. Notice that he drops like a rock as soon as the attack is over. He doesn't preserve any momentum. You should remain in control of Sonic whilst performing his attacks, naturally combining running into his combat moveset. But instead, once you execute an attack you pretty much lost any control you had before.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

48 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Where you you when we were making Sonic Kamehameha jokes?

Working on a personal project and probably playing Freedom Planet 2. So I’ve missed a number of things.

48 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

first 5 seconds of this vid is basically a Sonic Boom attack w/ the ability to move.

  Hide contents

 

Eh, I was thinking something more akin to the boost slide from Vanquish. You can move around while still shooting from a far.

Maybe not with the slo-motion effects, but you get the idea.

Either way, like I said, it’s a rough start.