Note: I'm still at the beginning of the game. I've obtained one Chaos Emerald and S-ranked 1-1 and 1-2, but otherwise done nothing of note. Most of my play time has been spent on digital-world levels.
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I've always considered Sonic games to be kind of design-ideologically about maintaining momentum through a level, but Frontiers totally eliminates any physical concept of momentum. You can gain speed on the ground to a degree, but as soon as you jump you're locked into the standard jump speed. Hitting bumpers similarly completely resets your speed. It surprises me every time.
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One of the most common actions I want to take in Sonic Frontiers is "veer about 15° left or right from my current heading", especially in the air. But (even with all the turning sliders at minimum) this game seems dead set on sending me 70° instead, making me feel like I have no control over my character.
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Given that Sonic is historically all about bright splashy colors it baffles me that the overworld theme is what I might call "Pacific Northwest winter".
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Holding down the dash button without pressing forward results in sonic standing completely still, or coming to a dead stop if he was previously in motion. All my years of kart racers tell me that holding accelerate should cause forward movement but that doesn't work here.
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You're only allowed one dash in the air per jump, which makes sense, but this dash isn't reset upon hitting bounce pads or elevator grabs despite them sapping your momentum and allowing you another jump. It is reset if you hit a grind rail or do a stomp attack, though. There's also no visual indicator (that I've been able to identify) of whether you have a dash available or not.
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Light dashing, where you collect a string of coins all in one go, always causes Sonic to pause in place for a fraction of a second at the end of it, and is thus largely unsuitable for use when chasing low times. This would be fine, except that it's bound to L3 which is extremely easy to press accidentally during high-tension moments, such as for example when you're chasing low times.
Anyway I'm still enjoying the game despite these annoyances, but I wanted to write them down somewhere so they don't just bounce around in my head forever driving me crazy.
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Why is there a double jump? It gains almost no height, it feels tremendously out-of-place in a Sonic game, and it means that I have to switch to another button to dash at enemies.
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Other than 1-2, the S-rank "challenge" times are laughable. I S-ranked 1-4 by nearly 10 seconds on my first try with a number of obvious improvements I could have made. If you don't want to gate progress on genuinely challenging times, why not just give out the key for A ranks instead?
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On a similar note, why doesn't it make at least a passing note of your personal best timing? It's such a gimme for attracting speedrun types, and it seems like Sega of all companies would have "arcade high score" at the top of their minds.
I do think the overworld stuff is basically genius though! Incredibly mixed game, classic seven out of ten. I wish all AAA games were this interestingly flawed.
I love how nearly every review of this game has completely different opinions on it. This must be how anime people feel about chainsaw man
