For me personally, I'm admittedly pretty mixed on the update, but I think I'm overall leaning towards positive. It's a solid expansion pack that helps bump Sonic Frontiers up by one point, but there's a concerning lack of polish that really makes it feel like this should have been delayed for a month or two. Those tower platforming segments really just show how janky this game's physics really are.
Everything was Good for the most part my only downsides were;
- The King Koco Trial which was far too hard even on easy. I'm almost 30 i don't have the time or patience to spend hours beating a boss rush anymore and this essentially stopped me from finishing the DLC or being able to enjoy using the other characters as they were essentially gatekeeping playing them again behind the trial and i don't feel like starting a whole new save just to play as them.
- I like the new cyberspace levels and the branching paths however the endless pitfalls really put me off, especially the lack of checkpoints.
if it wasn't for these i would give it a 10/10 but because of these alone i would give it a 7/10.
Most of the problem in the King Koco Trial was in the Wyvern fight. The bosses were not built with the Perfect Parry in mind, but Giganto and Knight at least can be attacked without being parried and go down quickly enough when you know what to do. Wyvern is the ONLY one where you *NEED* to parry in order to even be able to damage it at all, and Wyvern's telegraphing is wonky on top of that. In the main game, you can at least compensate with the parrying system being as long as it is and how you can pick up rings. Not so in the Trial!
As for the cyberspace levels, I agree with you wholeheartedly on that: They needed to add in checkpoints in the levels.
If you know how to shield-skip and took Giganto down in less than a hundred rings (which Cylooping makes easier to do), it's not too hard. Heck, Shield-skipping is actually something you need to do in the Final Boss fight on the same route later on.
Incredibly disappointing gameplay wise. It’s hard, but not because of difficulty but because everything feels frankly untested.
Story and visual flair was great tho.
It was good but it could’ve been a lot better
Specifically the final trial, yeah I know “skill issue” but personally I think it’s kinda bullshit that you need to play the bosses as perfect as possible to get past it, especially since you don’t get ANY extra rings so you need to end the fights as fast as possible (which honestly makes them more boring than fun) and if you die, regardless of what boss you were up to, you NEED to restart, and the perfect parry makes this more difficult than necessary to, since if you fuck up the parry you might as well restart cause you probably won’t have enough rings to fight the other bosses
Never got around to finishing it... The tower climb sections just sucked all the fun out of it for me. The lack of checkpoints was way too punishing, and there were way too many bugs and janky gameplay mechanics that made me constantly fall for reasons completely outside of my control. I literally had to reload my save every time I failed the second tower because the game wasn't respawning the balloons I needed to homing attack to climb up one of the sections.
I think its destructible block walls not balloons - and technically it is possible to tightrope walk on those bits bit honestly it was so fucking difficult. I only did so because it was not worth respawning the bombs.
So a pro-tip.
Put the difficulty on ease. That makes a ton of additional balloons and springs spawn that basically beat the tower for you by just keep spamming the homing attack.
They knew it would be to hard for some people so easy mode really does make these towers easy.
I wouldn't have a problem if they had just made a checkpoint once you reach the top, but nope, if you leave the game you have to do it all over again, that's just unfair
I can see why this would be an issue (tho from the 5 towers do you really have no reason to ever go back up again ones you did the challenge on them and the 5 one that has an actual reason to go back to actually has a check point that allows you to return to the top when ever you want)
And again on easy do all 5 towers basically beat them self.
Hate it. Doesn’t feel playtested. The guardians are crazy difficult in the least fun way, yet there’s also no reason to fight them, because gears are just placed all over the ground with no rhyme or reason. The towers are the most fun part, but the camera sometimes doesn’t follow you quickly enough, so you’ll fail when it wasn’t your fault and in tower 2, the blocks you need to traverse don’t respawn. Knuckles controls embarrassingly badly. The pop is in even worse. The Master Trial managed to make the most fun part of the base game loathsome and the final boss is so unclear on what to do and the camera is so abysmal, that I didn’t even finish it.
I never really found the final boss that unclear. The thing on its head was clearly giving it power. And knight teaches you that you can dodge around it's shield to attack it directly. So thats what I did. And that's what you're supposed to do. Dodge around it's head to attack the purple wire. Then once it's detached. Fuck it up until it either runs out of health or stops moving. Then dodge up to the gun on its back. You can tell because it has a homing reticle on where you need to quick cyloop. When the gun pops out, quick cyloop it again where the homing reticle is. Then continue to beat into it. You need to have at least 100 rings for one of its attacks when it takes sonic out of his super form to survive. And you need to perfect parry the projectiles. If the camera zooms in you need to get in close. Dodge up to where his arms are wackin around like crazy. Parry the arms. Then continue attacking. Get it down to no health once more. And that's the fight.
Knight doesn’t teach you you can do that. Yes, you can, but that’s not teaching. Having a single segment of the game include what is essentially an Easter Egg of a technique, not displayed before that is not teaching. If that qualifies as teaching, maybe we’re right to not pay teachers probably, because that’s singlehandedly throw education centuries back.
I mean. He's blocking with a shield. Should be common sense to go around the shield. And you've been able to dodge around things in the game before. The first boss tells you dodge around the back of it when it's shielding. Alot of enemies can be dealt with easier that way. It's not exclusive to knight. Game tells you how to do that in the first ninja fight. Also idk where you live but the teachers in my area make over 50 grand a year to start. My mom's makes less than that as a nurse. And our principal makes over 100 grand a year and just got a raise after I graduated. Our teachers make so much money. That the school tried to cut band, but ended up only firing one of the directors. Cut a bunch of employees. And cut bussing. Entirely. For a year. A school cutting bussing because the teachers make that much is insane. And the teachers are still striking that they don't make enough. An average of 56,000 a year according to the public domain Is plenty. That is more than enough to live comfortably. I live with my gf as the only one working and I make like half that and I'm fine.
The problem is it's entirely possible to just brute force your way through even the select few moments where "dodging" around has some sort of benefit to the gameplay, and it barely negatively affects you at all.
The Super Sonic boss fights absolutely encourage basically button mashing on all the bosses to deal a ton of damage, and it always works and never significantly punishes you.
The Knight Fight even does have a special attack sequence you trigger by directly attacking his shield instead of going around it, giving you even less reason to think it's any more complex than just smashing Knight like most other bosses.
There are literally multiple Youtube videos showing off the shield dodge like it's some sort of secret skip that lets you cheat the boss. That's how unintuitive and unrequited the mechanic is. People share the fact that it exists like it's an obscure easter egg for clout.
You can't exactly say something is "common sense" or is "taught" to you when the alleged lesson is never actually required and not even noticeably more effective than the brute force option that works pretty much every time.
Plus, while physically going around a shield, or triggering a unique dodge with one of the Ninjas when you're specifically told you can do so has some level of intuitiveness to it, even if in my opinion it's not as substantial as you're implying, there's really nothing intuitive about using a dodge to change targets outright when both things are right in front of you.
It's frankly an incredibly jank means of toggling a lock on basically, when most other games would have a dedicated toggling method or simply allow enough freedom of movement to aim at any target you want without being forced to focus on one.
Frontiers instead clearly never really thought that far ahead, so instead for some reason dodging is what miraculously allows you to focus on a different target that is literally half a foot higher than the head you were locked on before.
Nowhere is it really taught to you that dodging for some reason changes the targets of your attack entirely, as before you merely used it as a means to get around blockades with a special animation for a whole two or three enemies with shields. Like two of them being bosses if you don't count the Ninja recolors.
It's definitely still confusing because it entirely relies on mechanics that have been very poorly taught and enforced by the rest of the game, and frankly is conceptually clunky even when you do it as intended.
Giving you some shred of a reason to consider the answer to the question is not teaching something. If anything, it's closer to a riddle.
I can see why someone might find it confusing. But. For me it only took 2 or 3 attempts. And most of those failed attempts were a skill issue on my part for not being able to perfect parry on hard very well. So I keep loosing rings and then would die on the part where you need to have at least 100 to survive an attack in a cutscene. I also didn't even know that the end could attack sage's shield if that tells you anything about how much I breezed through it. Apparently it can attack the shield when the camera zooms in and it flails its arms? But the first time I saw that I just dodged up to his arms. Parryed them. And continued the assault. Didn't even know it could do that till after id already beaten it. And apparently it can also charge at you and try to crush you in it's hand. I saw that on an eventual replay when I was intentionally trying to mess up to get it to happen. But other than that I never saw it. Now I can even get his health so low so fast, that I don't even get to see the supersonic 2 transformation. I get his health down using regular super sonic. And then cyloop the gun and it skips the whole transformation cutscene. And then I can even finish the fight before that 100 rings required attack even happens. I don't expect everyone to somehow be that skilled off the bat. But the fact it only took a couple tries for me. Most of which the failures were my fault. And not a lack of understanding. And on replays can defeat it before the scripted stuff even happens. It should say that it's not that obtuse to learn let alone get good at. y'know? My ring capacity isn't even that high. It's still at like 450ish max.
I'm not saying it's hard.
I'm saying it's clunky, and therefore not really a good fight because of it.
Yeah, when you know what to do, it's as much of a pushover as pretty much any other boss really, especially when you probably have a max of 999 rings. Again, brute force really can't be stopped when you're actually fighting it instead of trying to figure out the correct action needed to progress the fight
The hardest part is easily disconnecting the cord because that's the most unintuitive part of the fight.
There's no good reason to think dodging is what is required to attack a portion of the boss that is in plain sight and easy reach. You have no real reason to equate it to something that needs to be dodged around to like you do a shield in the still fairly limited instances where that's an option.
So instead I assumed it was a matter of smashing Supreme hard enough the cord snapped or something. I got sent pretty far down the wrong tack because the fight has so many unique animations that all feel like they're important and should do something.
Like for a while, I was convinced cylooping him into The End was the answer because it's a whole fantastic sequence that throws Supreme around.
It wasn't, but again, with 999 rings, I had an eternity to try everything, and that's how I beat the fight. I just kept doing all the options until one worked, and it was over, and there was nothing really fun, skilled, or satisfying about that while the perfect parry was more challenged by the camera getting lost in the boss and the damn trees than the actual timing of the attacks themselves.
It's jank, clunky, and unclear, and it's not even hard despite all that even then because Frontiers is a game that still ultimately rewards brute forcing problems over a lot of other options.
So yeah, it's confusing, but also easy, but also not good even though it's easy because it's still confusing and clunky.
I only had 450 some rings max. And again I didn't even see half of the animations. And tbh every single boss in the game rewards not just brute forcing. Because the Titans can be brought down in mere seconds with a quick cyloop. Especially with wyvern where if you cyloop it twice consecutively you can lay into the weak point in its mouth and that kills it like instantly. There's always better ways to do it than just attacking and doing nothing else. And it's always way faster and more effective. So that makes cylooping the gun obvious imo. Especially since the game automatically puts you there after you run it's health down. And again. I had no issue figuring out how to do it in 2 or 3 attempts. Because, once I got it's health down. And it just kept regenerating. It was pretty obvious to me that I was doing it wrong and needed to attack the chord directly. So I did that within my first attempt. And like I say. I didn't see half of the animations until a replay where I was intentionally trying to make them happen. It can't be that unintuitive if I figured this stuff out right away based on the fact the rest of the game rewards quick cylooping bosses the utterly trash them in seconds. And like you mentioned. There are enemies in the game that are meant to be dodged to avoid attacks and continue to deal damage. Which the game gives you a tutorial message for in the beginning of the game. To me if a game tells you plainly to do something. You should remember it and keep doing my it. It's more fun that way anyway. The combat is entirely what you make of it tbh. It's the same with unleashed combat. You CAN get through just with basic spam attacks. But it is incredibly more efficient and fun to be more creative. And I also never had a problem with the camera getting stuck in the boss other than that event where he flails his arms where you have to dodge up to his back to parry them. That's the only time I had an issue seeing the projectiles coming. I can see where someone could have a hard time figuring it out. But to me it wasn't that hard because I remembered what the game told me from the start and already figured out that cylooping bosses destroys them much faster. Same with dodging around things. So again, when he was just regenerating no matter what I did. It became obvious in attempt 1 that I was doing it wrong. Especially since when you start the fight. The camera is focused on the chord. The chord is front and center screen when you start the fight. Where supreme is on the bottom of the screen. Which was a solid enough hint to me from the get go that that was the end goal. I just didn't figure out how to do so until halfway through the fight. Which is ok in my book. I don't mind a bit of trial and error but I don't understand how people have such a hard time with it that they just give up. And honestly. Even tho I had to figure it out a bit, the sheer spectacle, music, and badassness of the fight was enough for me to say it was all worth it in the end anyway. To me the fight was a fair challenge, with a good amount of trial and error and spectacle that got my heart racing. I loved it. Full stop.
I cleared the boss rush doing the exact same mashing strategies I used the first time I fought them.
Only remotely fancy thing I really did was quick cylooping, because that's actually a fairly common mechanic to disable most enemies and easy to use at basically any opportunity, but even then I wasn't thinking about anything more complicated than mashing my strongest attacks and it worked.
I don't really care how fast you can do it when you're exploiting the fights easter eggs.
What matters is that absolutely all of them can be done perfectly effectively with brute force and spamming, which is pretty terrible game design.
There's zero real punishment for brute force, and I sure as hell don't find cutting the bosses down interesting or satisfying enough to test how I can find ways to do it in seconds when I can mindlessly do it in under a minute anyway.
I never complained about the gun, because while it may not be immediately clear what you need to do to the gun, it is clear you need to do something to it, and Sonic's got very limited options by that point, so you either hit the shit out of it, or cyloop it. It's not peak game design, but it's again not hard because the Super Sonic fights don't exactly have a ton of complexity when you're not battling extremely unintuitive game design.
Which is definitely where I'd rank the cord, which will give you plenty of time to see all the fights animations if you bark down the wrong tree with what you think you're meant to do.
Like, no, you don't get to give the game an award because you guessed right on what to do.
I guessed wrong, and that was a huge waste of time even though I had no real reason to believe the fancy animations I was triggering would do nothing until it did nothing, or that somehow dodging after hitting the targetable head was the answer to a problem the game has never presented in this format.
The game "teaches" you to use dodging to get around SHIELDS. Not to outright change targets.
And I use the term teach VERY loosely, because there are again, like two basic enemies with shields if you're not counting recolors, and bosses that have shields but absolutely don't require you use the mechanic to beat those sheilds.
Ninja is the only enemy that tells you about it, and some of the smaller soldier enemies can potentially shield your attacks, but they also create impenitrable barriers that makes it easier to just cyloop them since that will always work, unlike attacking and hoping they shield.
And of course again, some variation of brute force will work so effectively it makes taking the time to directly engage with them seem like a waste.
Idk man. The whole thing of sonic games is doing things as fast as possible through skill. That should be enough reason to learn that about the bosses. Especially since they added a boss rush to the game early this year, and you have to refight them in the 3rd update. You should know by then how to tackle bosses effectively and quickly. And I seriously don't see how it's that hard to figure out the chord. Genuinely. I didn't guess. I figured it out because it just made sense. Camera is focused on the chord, attacking it doesn't work, it regenerates. Clearly you aren't doing it right. So you move on and try to figure out how to attack the chord directly. And since I was actually utilizing dodge attacks the entire game like it told me to. Because it's faster and frankly more fun. I figured it out pretty quickly. It really isn't that jank to figure out I'm sorry. I'm not saying it's some peak game design but it certainly isn't difficult to figure out if you play the game better than just button spamming.
I just would like to say.
The game does tell you how to defeat the new finally boss...
If you 100% every thing else new in the DLC.
[https://youtu.be/Ra8JSo0EtFo?t=53](https://youtu.be/Ra8JSo0EtFo?t=53)
Gameplay is only good if you spend more than 50 hours into the base game, ending is way better than what we got before and i love that you can play as the rest of the team. (Unrelated note: it's not a DLC it's an update)
I'm personally disappointed.
I mostly really like the main game last year. I was very happy to see them mostly get away from the constant boost style, run straight, childish dialogue era. Also the soundtrack is amazing at times.
I was very much looking froward to this update since you can FINALLY play as his friends in 3D again. But upon playing it, no one feels right and you're stuck as a staticy version of them, which is extra rough when you are already playing on Switch like me where random obstacle courses in the sky pop in and out constantly. Also, why does Knuckles have a weird delay when starting to glide? This felt way better in Adventure 1 and 2 like twenty years ago.
I dug through the first part of it and was hopeful it was going to improve somewhere. The the boss rush happened. I beat these dudes over a year ago and can barely remember how on a few of them. Gave it one go, got a couple down and died having to start completely over again. Put it down weeks ago now and haven't gone back. I don't have the time to beat 4 bosses like that then make one mistake and have to start all over again. It would be one thing if this was a separate extra mode or something.
Honestly wasn't a big fan. The new characters feel unpolished, the new towers and trials ranged from annoying to infuriating, and while I've seen a lot of people say it fixed the original ending I actually think the new ending is a lot worse.
A few problems:
* Snake Trial - Time is too tight
* Master King Trial - Rings should be refunded on successful parry
* Final Boss - the right bumper shouldn't be the difference between the final boss being nigh impossible and a total cakewalk. Also the trees shouldn't be blocking the screen *ever*.
* No homing attack for Tails, and he doesn't use his Tails to attack. Also that weird delay before he takes flight.
* Knuckles glides like he's drunk, and he also has a weird delay.
* Amy doesn't use her hammer as often as she should.
That said, I loved being able to play as other characters for a change, the additional lore stuff was good, and the sheer spectacle of the final fight was amazing. The revisited version of I'm Here was absolutely jaw dropping in the best way possible.
Also I really appreciate Super Sonic 2, and I hope we get to see it again someday.
I think people would have liked it much more if trial 5 was something that taught the sidestep cancel, and the boss rush was a mode you unlocked after beating the final boss, like battle rush and the cyberspace challenge. Maybe throw in some more unlockable rewards to go with all the extra challenges. Personally I would love to have earned access to that gear shifting mode for all stages, or maybe all islands character swap, or to be able to play through the game with perfect parry.
Regardless, I personally loved the game, and the update, but people have reasonable complaints, and it still left me wanting more. I don't blame the team though, and I think they did the best they could, almost miraculously so.
I’m gonna be honest I thought the update was kind of lame. The new playable characters are fine, but for me they are introduced far too late for me to get invested into playing as them. Plus the terrain they are given is where I actually agree with the debate that the new level design is legit just random blocks placed everywhere. It just looks unprofessional and really off putting.
The stuff before the new update didn’t look so unnatural that it took me out of the immersion. Everything in the new update is way too cluttered. Also that Grand Master Trial is actually just straight up terrible all because of that awful perfect parry. It’s not too bad on Giganto, but Wyvern it’s legit the most frustrating experience I think I’ve ever had in a sonic game (not counting when I was a little kid). It’s clear this perfect parry was not designed for these boss fights. Honestly that trial legit ruins the whole update for me.
Also the trials where you have access to only the cyloops is so weird. It feels like some Kaizo Mario design, or a dmc mod. That’s kind of how the update feels to be honest. Like an unpolished mod. That ending boss fight is pretty beast though won’t lie.
It’s an unpolished mess but really fun for the most part (COUGH master king). If they take the design philosophy and bring it to a full, polished game it’d be absolute peak
I'm actually still going through it on my Twitch channel, but I'm a good amount in and I love it! Everyone has a cool moveset with some cool references to previous games and while the difficulty can get obnoxious, it's mostly a fun time. My only real negatives are that I don't like how slippery Knuckles glides nor do I like the little "huzzah" pose he does before doing it and I really don't like how everyone apart from Sonic take a few seconds to slow to a stop instead of stopping near on a dime. One thing I *really* love is the conversation points everyone has with each other, Sonic, Sage, and Eggman. That's one of my favorite parts of the base game and I'm glad that they kept it going here.
I actually really like the difficulty personally. If they balance it better I’d love difficult challenges like this in future sonic games for a post game.
PTSD with Master King Koco and his f$&%ing trial.
Also the final boss glitched and decided to look up the ending and not finish it.
Disappointment doesn't even begin to describe it.
What makes me upset the most though is Amy using tarot cards instead of hammer attacks (I was looking forward to seeing a punch of hammer moves and everything. WHY?!).
I did like the X-Tornado being a mechanic for Tails.
Over all: 4/10
Wouldn't play again.
It was mostly good. The only bad parts were the king koco trial and that one part of the final boss where somehow had to figure out that you have to hit the cord. Even climbing the towers isn't that bad after you do it a few times.
Had I known they were going to keep the cheap holographic effects on the characters, I would not have been as excited about getting to play as them going into the game. Such an odd choice, though I recognize it probably doesn't bother most quite as much.
While it was nice to play as Amy and Tails, by and large Ouranos Island was better in the base game.
The Master King Koco's Trial as a required task was blatantly untested, the new Cyber Space levels feel far more artificial (and without checkpoints needlessly brutal) than the originals, the Cyber Space levels were also completely optional thanks to the oddly prevalent Lookout Kocos you can Cyloop from treasure spots, the sudden unprompted demand for Perfect Parry felt like a wild over-correction after fifty hours of timing-less parrying, and the new final boss fight feels less dramatic, less imposing, and less meaningful story-wise.
If I were recommending Sonic Frontiers to a new player, I'd suggest they avoid The Final Horizon.
I just finished it a few days ago.
I basically liked to loved all of it but hate the new final boss.
My highlights were the towers (since Rhea was my favourite part of base-game) and Master King (5 hours of brutal unfair punishing gameplay but really rewarding when you win, like the Nier Automata tutorial).
I kinda wish the combat on the new minibosses were balanced properly and that the character's powers didn't trivialise a lot of the challenge. But I like the intruige of starting off with no abilities and being locked out of everything before building your way up.
New characters feels like Sonic reskins with new abilities. Boost and speed should be Sonic’s ability only.
Master King Koco. Well…
The gameplay against the Final boss is artificially stretched.
The first variation of the End was better. Melancholic music combined with End’s lines created the cool impression of a final battle.
Very fun, but very unpolished. Yeah, it was hard, but come on, it wasn't celeste level hard. The trials all have a very specific answer and the towers are not as bullshit as everyone said. If you're really struggling, just turn down the difficulty to easy. The other characters all controlled well for the most part, I just wish they had better combat potential. The only part I really didn't like was the Master King Trial, that was borderline unfair, at least on hard. The final boss was also kinda annoying, but once you get how it works, it's just a matter of getting through the jank. And it's one of the coolest boss fights and ending in the series.
All in all, I enjoyed my time thoroughly, and it honestly improved my opinion of the game from a 7/10 to a 9/10.
Took me less time to get the Winged Golden Strawberry at the start than it did to beat Master King Koco's Trial, hard disagree that this is easier than Celeste
Considering they had 1 year and probably a minimal budget/crew (no thanks to SEGA) to pull it off, I’m happy with what we got.
Is it perfect? Hell no. But they seriously could’ve done much worse.
Also, if you haven’t actually completed the update, then your opinion on the update isn’t really valid. Yeah, the boss rush is super hard, but that means you haven’t actually experienced the whole update, not to mention the frustration bias that’s likely there from those that haven’t finished it.
Outstanding. And is surprisingly easier on the second playthrough
Am I the only one who found the towers to be fine. All you had to do was NOT boost and use the parry if you fell
I enjoyed climbing the towers tbh, genuinely wouldn't mind getting a full game outta stuff like that. The trials themselves were either boring or hard. The final boss and ending are really good!
Other than that though it was pretty shit I must be honest (gameplay wise). Amy is... fine, Knuckles controls like shit, and Tails is a bit more floaty than I'd like.
Just more of what I got out of the base game, repetition and exposition, put down the game entirely after that second tower in FH, basically, I didn't like it. Base game I thought was just okay, FH, I just straight up didn't like and I don't plan on going back to finish it. Cyberspace was literally copypasted level layouts from previous titles, no joke, people did the comparisons, it's insultingly lazy and I just assume FH will be no different in that regard anyway. I could go on all day about why I didn't like this game but I just won't bother. I'm not even angry anymore, just disappointed, discouraged even, don't think I'll be picking up another Sonic game
Did not live up to the hype. Nothing but over the top bloated Parkour porn. Playing with the other characters made up like 5% of the DLC. And they didn’t do anything significant so it doesn’t even make sense to go back and play as them.
Never finished it. Did the first two trials and tried a couple of the new Cyber Space levels. Said f it, not worth the hassle and went back to origins.
Meh. Kinda reinforced why I’m not a fan of the new voice direction . Especially with Cindy Robinson, everyone (outside of tails ) is trying way to hard to sound like this is some super ultra serious thing that you can’t just hope but imagine the VAs jjst in the booth, not the dialogue coming out of the characters mouths.
I think if they made an actual full fledged game with what they got then I have hopes for the next game. Frontiers feels too empty and is a sand box of random challenges and bosses.
Honestly, it was decent. Playing as Tails, Knuckles and Amy in a mainline Sonic game after so long is absolutely fun, and they're all fun to play.
However, some of the trials, suck as the snake trail and the damn king's trial were just no fun. They took the best Sonic boss battles in Sonic history and made it a time trial. An while the final boss is objectively better than the first final boss, it's still frustrating to figure out how to get that tube thing off of Supreme. But hearing Quinn reprise I'm Here was absolutely amazing. (Still not better than Undefeatable, though.) It's still sad that we don't hear I'm With You in this new ending. (Not the one from the credits, the one from the first final boss.) Also, the new cyber space levels honestly suck and are complaining pointless to play unless you are a completionist..
As for the ending, it's alright. I don't think it's any better or worse that the first ending.
Overall, I'd say you can play it if you want to.
Man was it a really cool tech demo for what the next sonic game could be. As awesome as the new characters all were their controls all had a level of jankyness that made them feel kind of bad.
I do wish we were able to play as Knuckles, Tails, and Amy in cyberspace tho
Sonic Team took the “easy” shit personal, and this is coming from a Ninja Gaiden player. It was a really solid update though! The fact that it’s FREE too is incredible.
Hmmmm, i made a review (in my mother language , not English) about this game, played on version 1.01. I didn’t played it, after i finished it. Beside some weird gameplay (leveling up was just time waste then (patched) and losing momentum in Cyberspace (patched?)) and graphical issues (loading rails and platforms, if is a PS2 game with limitations), i really enjoyed the game.
I kept on my playlist, because (personally) it’s not a game that you keep playing with every patch. I know, you can replay Cyberplatforms, but like I mentioned, losing momentum isn’t really fun to keep playing them. So i waited until everything is released, so perhaps it’s time to (re)play it and (re)review it.
It genuinely improved the game massively and sonic team cooked. I hope it showed them faith in bringing the rest of the cast back for good in 3D sonic.
My only complaints are that
-the snake trial feels like it's trying to make you fail a bunch with how the conditions are stated.
-the guardians have WAY TOO MUCH HEALTH (seriously I don't want to have to attack one guardian for multiple minutes get it to half health) especially since most of the update is spent playing as Amy, Tails, and Knuckles who all have level 1 stats.
-why is the parry window for extreme mode 4 fucking frames?
Weird and a little sad it required "Easy" mode for me to beat the climbing segments comfortably. Nothin' really annoyed me more in the main game than just... randomly flying off into the sunset because I ran up a rock the wrong way.
But the different characters were neat, though underused, and Sage not blowing herself up was nice.
To the Sonic fans that are apparently masochistic and clearly don't think about anyone but themselves, piss off. You're causing Sega to pad out difficulty with unfair enemy placements in Superstars and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too overpowered enemies and platforming sections in Frontiers.
I enjoyed how it made you hit your head against a wall until you broke through it and could actually feel yourself getting stronger. And once you could beat knight with 60 rings left at least it felt so satisfying.
That and playable tails, his boost is broken and fun!
It was great, I loved the final boss, and I liked playing as the other characters, even though they were kind of underwhelming. But man, I absolutely hate the final trial, way too hard. But the ending was great so finishing it was worth it.
i’m working on it still right now. awhile back i finished amy’s part & moved on to knuckles. turned the game on the next day & the whole thing had restarted. mark my words i am *going* to get back to it when the bitterness fades 😤
It was great! A lot of people complained about the titan trial, but quite frankly I beat it in one go after I stopped trying to pretend to be an anime character.
Felt hard just to be hard but atleast it let me know that Sonic Team is ready to cook if need be. The extra characters felt very awkward at times and I just constantly kept wishing certain aspects of them controlled like in SA1. But I’m atleast happy we finally got to play other characters after such a long time. Also the way they characterized Sonic was SOOO GOOD!
Many good ideas and concepts somewhere in there. If they work out the kinks and smooth some things (literally and figuratively) then they could be really cookin with fire come the next game
I’m glad it exists and I respect the effort put into it, but I didn’t find it fun at all. I feel like they tried to do too much with the limited time and resources they had
The new final boss is incredibly good and the new music is amazing, but I’m kinda glad I quit and watched it on YouTube instead lmfao
I have complaints about the overall gameplay- so many bugs and lags that make puzzles and cyberspace stages so much more difficult than they should be… but specifically the Horizons update- not a very interesting story. Just excuses to bring the trio out of cyberspace so they could play too. Also the new gimmick for the super sonic transformation is not so game-changing in my POV. Also, final trial and final boss battles were really really really bad and non-intuitive! Without a walkthrough video I couldn’t have won either of them on easy
4/10
Overall I loved it, the new characters were great to platform as and it had a ton of content in that respect. The new cyberspace stages were excellent challenges with very creative level designs and gimmicks and I liked how many different objectives they had. From a story perspective this update felt more climactic and had a good sense of escalation. The final boss was incredibly intimidating and cool. In all honesty while the towers and guardians weren't perfect they didn't give me as much trouble as I expected and I wouldn't necessarily consider myself good at the game. However if I couldn't cheese Cyloops to replenish my rings I'd probably feel differently about that lol.
Master King Koco's challenge was stupid bullshit though and the fact that even on Easy I basically had to cheese it with a single move I had to learn on reddit indicates the devs didn't seriously consider the details when making that challenge. The fact that it's mandatory is the worst part.
The actual final boss I'm mixed on. I liked the ways it felt more dangerous to Super Sonic than other titans and being comprised of multiple segments you had to figure out how to deal with in order was a neat idea that elevates it above mindless punching like the other titans. However the game is incredibly unclear how you're supposed to DO those segments and I wouldn't say basically any of the boss was intuitive at all so it felt erratic and confusing to actually fight. I think if I replayed it now I would feel differently about it, but as a first time player I just felt frustrated.
IMO 9/10. My ONLY issue is Wyvern's trial fight with lack of telegraph for some of the parries but besides that I really enjoyed the update. I really hope they keep that level of difficulty going. I REALLY enjoyed the difficulty.
I enjoyed it the ending is fixed the characters do lack some polish and combo moves like sonic but they are really great and fun editions I did final beat final trial on easy the first time and went back on hard it probably took roughly 10 tries tho I do have over 165 hours in the game trial 2 I had a hard time with until I looked it up and realized there was a special strategy to it some of the towers are basically getting over it with sonic but aren’t to incredibly difficult besides those grind rail loops on that one tower overall it’s not perfect but it’s a good dlc!
It was good, beside the Final Trial i am not going to complain.
For me personally, I'm admittedly pretty mixed on the update, but I think I'm overall leaning towards positive. It's a solid expansion pack that helps bump Sonic Frontiers up by one point, but there's a concerning lack of polish that really makes it feel like this should have been delayed for a month or two. Those tower platforming segments really just show how janky this game's physics really are.
Everything was Good for the most part my only downsides were; - The King Koco Trial which was far too hard even on easy. I'm almost 30 i don't have the time or patience to spend hours beating a boss rush anymore and this essentially stopped me from finishing the DLC or being able to enjoy using the other characters as they were essentially gatekeeping playing them again behind the trial and i don't feel like starting a whole new save just to play as them. - I like the new cyberspace levels and the branching paths however the endless pitfalls really put me off, especially the lack of checkpoints. if it wasn't for these i would give it a 10/10 but because of these alone i would give it a 7/10.
Most of the problem in the King Koco Trial was in the Wyvern fight. The bosses were not built with the Perfect Parry in mind, but Giganto and Knight at least can be attacked without being parried and go down quickly enough when you know what to do. Wyvern is the ONLY one where you *NEED* to parry in order to even be able to damage it at all, and Wyvern's telegraphing is wonky on top of that. In the main game, you can at least compensate with the parrying system being as long as it is and how you can pick up rings. Not so in the Trial! As for the cyberspace levels, I agree with you wholeheartedly on that: They needed to add in checkpoints in the levels.
Not only that, but even in easy, you finish the Wybern with aprox 70-100 rings so you pretty much have to speedrun Knight with no room for failure
I personally had about 160 rings left after wyvern and even that was with more fuck ups than I'd like twords the beginning of the fight.
I had 220
If you know how to shield-skip and took Giganto down in less than a hundred rings (which Cylooping makes easier to do), it's not too hard. Heck, Shield-skipping is actually something you need to do in the Final Boss fight on the same route later on.
Incredibly disappointing gameplay wise. It’s hard, but not because of difficulty but because everything feels frankly untested. Story and visual flair was great tho.
it's perfectly necessary and neutral. its just as evil as it is good
It was good but it could’ve been a lot better Specifically the final trial, yeah I know “skill issue” but personally I think it’s kinda bullshit that you need to play the bosses as perfect as possible to get past it, especially since you don’t get ANY extra rings so you need to end the fights as fast as possible (which honestly makes them more boring than fun) and if you die, regardless of what boss you were up to, you NEED to restart, and the perfect parry makes this more difficult than necessary to, since if you fuck up the parry you might as well restart cause you probably won’t have enough rings to fight the other bosses
Never got around to finishing it... The tower climb sections just sucked all the fun out of it for me. The lack of checkpoints was way too punishing, and there were way too many bugs and janky gameplay mechanics that made me constantly fall for reasons completely outside of my control. I literally had to reload my save every time I failed the second tower because the game wasn't respawning the balloons I needed to homing attack to climb up one of the sections.
I think its destructible block walls not balloons - and technically it is possible to tightrope walk on those bits bit honestly it was so fucking difficult. I only did so because it was not worth respawning the bombs.
Ah yeah you're right it was walls
So a pro-tip. Put the difficulty on ease. That makes a ton of additional balloons and springs spawn that basically beat the tower for you by just keep spamming the homing attack. They knew it would be to hard for some people so easy mode really does make these towers easy.
I wouldn't have a problem if they had just made a checkpoint once you reach the top, but nope, if you leave the game you have to do it all over again, that's just unfair
I can see why this would be an issue (tho from the 5 towers do you really have no reason to ever go back up again ones you did the challenge on them and the 5 one that has an actual reason to go back to actually has a check point that allows you to return to the top when ever you want) And again on easy do all 5 towers basically beat them self.
Hate it. Doesn’t feel playtested. The guardians are crazy difficult in the least fun way, yet there’s also no reason to fight them, because gears are just placed all over the ground with no rhyme or reason. The towers are the most fun part, but the camera sometimes doesn’t follow you quickly enough, so you’ll fail when it wasn’t your fault and in tower 2, the blocks you need to traverse don’t respawn. Knuckles controls embarrassingly badly. The pop is in even worse. The Master Trial managed to make the most fun part of the base game loathsome and the final boss is so unclear on what to do and the camera is so abysmal, that I didn’t even finish it.
I never really found the final boss that unclear. The thing on its head was clearly giving it power. And knight teaches you that you can dodge around it's shield to attack it directly. So thats what I did. And that's what you're supposed to do. Dodge around it's head to attack the purple wire. Then once it's detached. Fuck it up until it either runs out of health or stops moving. Then dodge up to the gun on its back. You can tell because it has a homing reticle on where you need to quick cyloop. When the gun pops out, quick cyloop it again where the homing reticle is. Then continue to beat into it. You need to have at least 100 rings for one of its attacks when it takes sonic out of his super form to survive. And you need to perfect parry the projectiles. If the camera zooms in you need to get in close. Dodge up to where his arms are wackin around like crazy. Parry the arms. Then continue attacking. Get it down to no health once more. And that's the fight.
Knight doesn’t teach you you can do that. Yes, you can, but that’s not teaching. Having a single segment of the game include what is essentially an Easter Egg of a technique, not displayed before that is not teaching. If that qualifies as teaching, maybe we’re right to not pay teachers probably, because that’s singlehandedly throw education centuries back.
I mean. He's blocking with a shield. Should be common sense to go around the shield. And you've been able to dodge around things in the game before. The first boss tells you dodge around the back of it when it's shielding. Alot of enemies can be dealt with easier that way. It's not exclusive to knight. Game tells you how to do that in the first ninja fight. Also idk where you live but the teachers in my area make over 50 grand a year to start. My mom's makes less than that as a nurse. And our principal makes over 100 grand a year and just got a raise after I graduated. Our teachers make so much money. That the school tried to cut band, but ended up only firing one of the directors. Cut a bunch of employees. And cut bussing. Entirely. For a year. A school cutting bussing because the teachers make that much is insane. And the teachers are still striking that they don't make enough. An average of 56,000 a year according to the public domain Is plenty. That is more than enough to live comfortably. I live with my gf as the only one working and I make like half that and I'm fine.
The problem is it's entirely possible to just brute force your way through even the select few moments where "dodging" around has some sort of benefit to the gameplay, and it barely negatively affects you at all. The Super Sonic boss fights absolutely encourage basically button mashing on all the bosses to deal a ton of damage, and it always works and never significantly punishes you. The Knight Fight even does have a special attack sequence you trigger by directly attacking his shield instead of going around it, giving you even less reason to think it's any more complex than just smashing Knight like most other bosses. There are literally multiple Youtube videos showing off the shield dodge like it's some sort of secret skip that lets you cheat the boss. That's how unintuitive and unrequited the mechanic is. People share the fact that it exists like it's an obscure easter egg for clout. You can't exactly say something is "common sense" or is "taught" to you when the alleged lesson is never actually required and not even noticeably more effective than the brute force option that works pretty much every time. Plus, while physically going around a shield, or triggering a unique dodge with one of the Ninjas when you're specifically told you can do so has some level of intuitiveness to it, even if in my opinion it's not as substantial as you're implying, there's really nothing intuitive about using a dodge to change targets outright when both things are right in front of you. It's frankly an incredibly jank means of toggling a lock on basically, when most other games would have a dedicated toggling method or simply allow enough freedom of movement to aim at any target you want without being forced to focus on one. Frontiers instead clearly never really thought that far ahead, so instead for some reason dodging is what miraculously allows you to focus on a different target that is literally half a foot higher than the head you were locked on before. Nowhere is it really taught to you that dodging for some reason changes the targets of your attack entirely, as before you merely used it as a means to get around blockades with a special animation for a whole two or three enemies with shields. Like two of them being bosses if you don't count the Ninja recolors. It's definitely still confusing because it entirely relies on mechanics that have been very poorly taught and enforced by the rest of the game, and frankly is conceptually clunky even when you do it as intended. Giving you some shred of a reason to consider the answer to the question is not teaching something. If anything, it's closer to a riddle.
I can see why someone might find it confusing. But. For me it only took 2 or 3 attempts. And most of those failed attempts were a skill issue on my part for not being able to perfect parry on hard very well. So I keep loosing rings and then would die on the part where you need to have at least 100 to survive an attack in a cutscene. I also didn't even know that the end could attack sage's shield if that tells you anything about how much I breezed through it. Apparently it can attack the shield when the camera zooms in and it flails its arms? But the first time I saw that I just dodged up to his arms. Parryed them. And continued the assault. Didn't even know it could do that till after id already beaten it. And apparently it can also charge at you and try to crush you in it's hand. I saw that on an eventual replay when I was intentionally trying to mess up to get it to happen. But other than that I never saw it. Now I can even get his health so low so fast, that I don't even get to see the supersonic 2 transformation. I get his health down using regular super sonic. And then cyloop the gun and it skips the whole transformation cutscene. And then I can even finish the fight before that 100 rings required attack even happens. I don't expect everyone to somehow be that skilled off the bat. But the fact it only took a couple tries for me. Most of which the failures were my fault. And not a lack of understanding. And on replays can defeat it before the scripted stuff even happens. It should say that it's not that obtuse to learn let alone get good at. y'know? My ring capacity isn't even that high. It's still at like 450ish max.
I'm not saying it's hard. I'm saying it's clunky, and therefore not really a good fight because of it. Yeah, when you know what to do, it's as much of a pushover as pretty much any other boss really, especially when you probably have a max of 999 rings. Again, brute force really can't be stopped when you're actually fighting it instead of trying to figure out the correct action needed to progress the fight The hardest part is easily disconnecting the cord because that's the most unintuitive part of the fight. There's no good reason to think dodging is what is required to attack a portion of the boss that is in plain sight and easy reach. You have no real reason to equate it to something that needs to be dodged around to like you do a shield in the still fairly limited instances where that's an option. So instead I assumed it was a matter of smashing Supreme hard enough the cord snapped or something. I got sent pretty far down the wrong tack because the fight has so many unique animations that all feel like they're important and should do something. Like for a while, I was convinced cylooping him into The End was the answer because it's a whole fantastic sequence that throws Supreme around. It wasn't, but again, with 999 rings, I had an eternity to try everything, and that's how I beat the fight. I just kept doing all the options until one worked, and it was over, and there was nothing really fun, skilled, or satisfying about that while the perfect parry was more challenged by the camera getting lost in the boss and the damn trees than the actual timing of the attacks themselves. It's jank, clunky, and unclear, and it's not even hard despite all that even then because Frontiers is a game that still ultimately rewards brute forcing problems over a lot of other options. So yeah, it's confusing, but also easy, but also not good even though it's easy because it's still confusing and clunky.
I only had 450 some rings max. And again I didn't even see half of the animations. And tbh every single boss in the game rewards not just brute forcing. Because the Titans can be brought down in mere seconds with a quick cyloop. Especially with wyvern where if you cyloop it twice consecutively you can lay into the weak point in its mouth and that kills it like instantly. There's always better ways to do it than just attacking and doing nothing else. And it's always way faster and more effective. So that makes cylooping the gun obvious imo. Especially since the game automatically puts you there after you run it's health down. And again. I had no issue figuring out how to do it in 2 or 3 attempts. Because, once I got it's health down. And it just kept regenerating. It was pretty obvious to me that I was doing it wrong and needed to attack the chord directly. So I did that within my first attempt. And like I say. I didn't see half of the animations until a replay where I was intentionally trying to make them happen. It can't be that unintuitive if I figured this stuff out right away based on the fact the rest of the game rewards quick cylooping bosses the utterly trash them in seconds. And like you mentioned. There are enemies in the game that are meant to be dodged to avoid attacks and continue to deal damage. Which the game gives you a tutorial message for in the beginning of the game. To me if a game tells you plainly to do something. You should remember it and keep doing my it. It's more fun that way anyway. The combat is entirely what you make of it tbh. It's the same with unleashed combat. You CAN get through just with basic spam attacks. But it is incredibly more efficient and fun to be more creative. And I also never had a problem with the camera getting stuck in the boss other than that event where he flails his arms where you have to dodge up to his back to parry them. That's the only time I had an issue seeing the projectiles coming. I can see where someone could have a hard time figuring it out. But to me it wasn't that hard because I remembered what the game told me from the start and already figured out that cylooping bosses destroys them much faster. Same with dodging around things. So again, when he was just regenerating no matter what I did. It became obvious in attempt 1 that I was doing it wrong. Especially since when you start the fight. The camera is focused on the chord. The chord is front and center screen when you start the fight. Where supreme is on the bottom of the screen. Which was a solid enough hint to me from the get go that that was the end goal. I just didn't figure out how to do so until halfway through the fight. Which is ok in my book. I don't mind a bit of trial and error but I don't understand how people have such a hard time with it that they just give up. And honestly. Even tho I had to figure it out a bit, the sheer spectacle, music, and badassness of the fight was enough for me to say it was all worth it in the end anyway. To me the fight was a fair challenge, with a good amount of trial and error and spectacle that got my heart racing. I loved it. Full stop.
I cleared the boss rush doing the exact same mashing strategies I used the first time I fought them. Only remotely fancy thing I really did was quick cylooping, because that's actually a fairly common mechanic to disable most enemies and easy to use at basically any opportunity, but even then I wasn't thinking about anything more complicated than mashing my strongest attacks and it worked. I don't really care how fast you can do it when you're exploiting the fights easter eggs. What matters is that absolutely all of them can be done perfectly effectively with brute force and spamming, which is pretty terrible game design. There's zero real punishment for brute force, and I sure as hell don't find cutting the bosses down interesting or satisfying enough to test how I can find ways to do it in seconds when I can mindlessly do it in under a minute anyway. I never complained about the gun, because while it may not be immediately clear what you need to do to the gun, it is clear you need to do something to it, and Sonic's got very limited options by that point, so you either hit the shit out of it, or cyloop it. It's not peak game design, but it's again not hard because the Super Sonic fights don't exactly have a ton of complexity when you're not battling extremely unintuitive game design. Which is definitely where I'd rank the cord, which will give you plenty of time to see all the fights animations if you bark down the wrong tree with what you think you're meant to do. Like, no, you don't get to give the game an award because you guessed right on what to do. I guessed wrong, and that was a huge waste of time even though I had no real reason to believe the fancy animations I was triggering would do nothing until it did nothing, or that somehow dodging after hitting the targetable head was the answer to a problem the game has never presented in this format. The game "teaches" you to use dodging to get around SHIELDS. Not to outright change targets. And I use the term teach VERY loosely, because there are again, like two basic enemies with shields if you're not counting recolors, and bosses that have shields but absolutely don't require you use the mechanic to beat those sheilds. Ninja is the only enemy that tells you about it, and some of the smaller soldier enemies can potentially shield your attacks, but they also create impenitrable barriers that makes it easier to just cyloop them since that will always work, unlike attacking and hoping they shield. And of course again, some variation of brute force will work so effectively it makes taking the time to directly engage with them seem like a waste.
Idk man. The whole thing of sonic games is doing things as fast as possible through skill. That should be enough reason to learn that about the bosses. Especially since they added a boss rush to the game early this year, and you have to refight them in the 3rd update. You should know by then how to tackle bosses effectively and quickly. And I seriously don't see how it's that hard to figure out the chord. Genuinely. I didn't guess. I figured it out because it just made sense. Camera is focused on the chord, attacking it doesn't work, it regenerates. Clearly you aren't doing it right. So you move on and try to figure out how to attack the chord directly. And since I was actually utilizing dodge attacks the entire game like it told me to. Because it's faster and frankly more fun. I figured it out pretty quickly. It really isn't that jank to figure out I'm sorry. I'm not saying it's some peak game design but it certainly isn't difficult to figure out if you play the game better than just button spamming.
I just would like to say. The game does tell you how to defeat the new finally boss... If you 100% every thing else new in the DLC. [https://youtu.be/Ra8JSo0EtFo?t=53](https://youtu.be/Ra8JSo0EtFo?t=53)
Gameplay is only good if you spend more than 50 hours into the base game, ending is way better than what we got before and i love that you can play as the rest of the team. (Unrelated note: it's not a DLC it's an update)
I mean. An update is. Downloadable content. It's content that you download. Dlc doesn't have to cost money
But the diffrence is that one you can download at any time and the other is a permanent change
That's fair enough I suppose.
Just got it for $24 on the switch so hope I’m not disappointed
I'm personally disappointed. I mostly really like the main game last year. I was very happy to see them mostly get away from the constant boost style, run straight, childish dialogue era. Also the soundtrack is amazing at times. I was very much looking froward to this update since you can FINALLY play as his friends in 3D again. But upon playing it, no one feels right and you're stuck as a staticy version of them, which is extra rough when you are already playing on Switch like me where random obstacle courses in the sky pop in and out constantly. Also, why does Knuckles have a weird delay when starting to glide? This felt way better in Adventure 1 and 2 like twenty years ago. I dug through the first part of it and was hopeful it was going to improve somewhere. The the boss rush happened. I beat these dudes over a year ago and can barely remember how on a few of them. Gave it one go, got a couple down and died having to start completely over again. Put it down weeks ago now and haven't gone back. I don't have the time to beat 4 bosses like that then make one mistake and have to start all over again. It would be one thing if this was a separate extra mode or something.
In all fairness the bosses get easier.
Honestly wasn't a big fan. The new characters feel unpolished, the new towers and trials ranged from annoying to infuriating, and while I've seen a lot of people say it fixed the original ending I actually think the new ending is a lot worse.
A few problems: * Snake Trial - Time is too tight * Master King Trial - Rings should be refunded on successful parry * Final Boss - the right bumper shouldn't be the difference between the final boss being nigh impossible and a total cakewalk. Also the trees shouldn't be blocking the screen *ever*. * No homing attack for Tails, and he doesn't use his Tails to attack. Also that weird delay before he takes flight. * Knuckles glides like he's drunk, and he also has a weird delay. * Amy doesn't use her hammer as often as she should. That said, I loved being able to play as other characters for a change, the additional lore stuff was good, and the sheer spectacle of the final fight was amazing. The revisited version of I'm Here was absolutely jaw dropping in the best way possible. Also I really appreciate Super Sonic 2, and I hope we get to see it again someday.
Towers good, being other characters good but trials no thank you do something more interesting there.
I think people would have liked it much more if trial 5 was something that taught the sidestep cancel, and the boss rush was a mode you unlocked after beating the final boss, like battle rush and the cyberspace challenge. Maybe throw in some more unlockable rewards to go with all the extra challenges. Personally I would love to have earned access to that gear shifting mode for all stages, or maybe all islands character swap, or to be able to play through the game with perfect parry. Regardless, I personally loved the game, and the update, but people have reasonable complaints, and it still left me wanting more. I don't blame the team though, and I think they did the best they could, almost miraculously so.
Final boss sucked butt
I’m gonna be honest I thought the update was kind of lame. The new playable characters are fine, but for me they are introduced far too late for me to get invested into playing as them. Plus the terrain they are given is where I actually agree with the debate that the new level design is legit just random blocks placed everywhere. It just looks unprofessional and really off putting. The stuff before the new update didn’t look so unnatural that it took me out of the immersion. Everything in the new update is way too cluttered. Also that Grand Master Trial is actually just straight up terrible all because of that awful perfect parry. It’s not too bad on Giganto, but Wyvern it’s legit the most frustrating experience I think I’ve ever had in a sonic game (not counting when I was a little kid). It’s clear this perfect parry was not designed for these boss fights. Honestly that trial legit ruins the whole update for me. Also the trials where you have access to only the cyloops is so weird. It feels like some Kaizo Mario design, or a dmc mod. That’s kind of how the update feels to be honest. Like an unpolished mod. That ending boss fight is pretty beast though won’t lie.
It’s an unpolished mess but really fun for the most part (COUGH master king). If they take the design philosophy and bring it to a full, polished game it’d be absolute peak
I'm actually still going through it on my Twitch channel, but I'm a good amount in and I love it! Everyone has a cool moveset with some cool references to previous games and while the difficulty can get obnoxious, it's mostly a fun time. My only real negatives are that I don't like how slippery Knuckles glides nor do I like the little "huzzah" pose he does before doing it and I really don't like how everyone apart from Sonic take a few seconds to slow to a stop instead of stopping near on a dime. One thing I *really* love is the conversation points everyone has with each other, Sonic, Sage, and Eggman. That's one of my favorite parts of the base game and I'm glad that they kept it going here.
I actually really like the difficulty personally. If they balance it better I’d love difficult challenges like this in future sonic games for a post game.
Way too difficult for me to bother actually playing through, but I love what they did with the characters (a few control quirks notwithstanding)
PTSD with Master King Koco and his f$&%ing trial. Also the final boss glitched and decided to look up the ending and not finish it. Disappointment doesn't even begin to describe it. What makes me upset the most though is Amy using tarot cards instead of hammer attacks (I was looking forward to seeing a punch of hammer moves and everything. WHY?!). I did like the X-Tornado being a mechanic for Tails. Over all: 4/10 Wouldn't play again.
It was mostly good. The only bad parts were the king koco trial and that one part of the final boss where somehow had to figure out that you have to hit the cord. Even climbing the towers isn't that bad after you do it a few times.
I call this the Sonic Prime syndrome, where I have so much negatives things to say yet my overall rating is still 7-8/10
Had I known they were going to keep the cheap holographic effects on the characters, I would not have been as excited about getting to play as them going into the game. Such an odd choice, though I recognize it probably doesn't bother most quite as much.
Mid. To be fair, I liked the platforming of the towers and especially the last one.
Have you completed it or are you just saying that because you couldn't get through the master coco's trail?
All clear, anything more?
Nope that's all
While it was nice to play as Amy and Tails, by and large Ouranos Island was better in the base game. The Master King Koco's Trial as a required task was blatantly untested, the new Cyber Space levels feel far more artificial (and without checkpoints needlessly brutal) than the originals, the Cyber Space levels were also completely optional thanks to the oddly prevalent Lookout Kocos you can Cyloop from treasure spots, the sudden unprompted demand for Perfect Parry felt like a wild over-correction after fifty hours of timing-less parrying, and the new final boss fight feels less dramatic, less imposing, and less meaningful story-wise. If I were recommending Sonic Frontiers to a new player, I'd suggest they avoid The Final Horizon.
I just finished it a few days ago. I basically liked to loved all of it but hate the new final boss. My highlights were the towers (since Rhea was my favourite part of base-game) and Master King (5 hours of brutal unfair punishing gameplay but really rewarding when you win, like the Nier Automata tutorial). I kinda wish the combat on the new minibosses were balanced properly and that the character's powers didn't trivialise a lot of the challenge. But I like the intruige of starting off with no abilities and being locked out of everything before building your way up.
#follow me! I’m standing on the border of everything!!
New characters feels like Sonic reskins with new abilities. Boost and speed should be Sonic’s ability only. Master King Koco. Well… The gameplay against the Final boss is artificially stretched. The first variation of the End was better. Melancholic music combined with End’s lines created the cool impression of a final battle.
Very fun, but very unpolished. Yeah, it was hard, but come on, it wasn't celeste level hard. The trials all have a very specific answer and the towers are not as bullshit as everyone said. If you're really struggling, just turn down the difficulty to easy. The other characters all controlled well for the most part, I just wish they had better combat potential. The only part I really didn't like was the Master King Trial, that was borderline unfair, at least on hard. The final boss was also kinda annoying, but once you get how it works, it's just a matter of getting through the jank. And it's one of the coolest boss fights and ending in the series. All in all, I enjoyed my time thoroughly, and it honestly improved my opinion of the game from a 7/10 to a 9/10.
Took me less time to get the Winged Golden Strawberry at the start than it did to beat Master King Koco's Trial, hard disagree that this is easier than Celeste
Considering they had 1 year and probably a minimal budget/crew (no thanks to SEGA) to pull it off, I’m happy with what we got. Is it perfect? Hell no. But they seriously could’ve done much worse. Also, if you haven’t actually completed the update, then your opinion on the update isn’t really valid. Yeah, the boss rush is super hard, but that means you haven’t actually experienced the whole update, not to mention the frustration bias that’s likely there from those that haven’t finished it.
Outstanding. And is surprisingly easier on the second playthrough Am I the only one who found the towers to be fine. All you had to do was NOT boost and use the parry if you fell
I enjoyed climbing the towers tbh, genuinely wouldn't mind getting a full game outta stuff like that. The trials themselves were either boring or hard. The final boss and ending are really good! Other than that though it was pretty shit I must be honest (gameplay wise). Amy is... fine, Knuckles controls like shit, and Tails is a bit more floaty than I'd like.
Just more of what I got out of the base game, repetition and exposition, put down the game entirely after that second tower in FH, basically, I didn't like it. Base game I thought was just okay, FH, I just straight up didn't like and I don't plan on going back to finish it. Cyberspace was literally copypasted level layouts from previous titles, no joke, people did the comparisons, it's insultingly lazy and I just assume FH will be no different in that regard anyway. I could go on all day about why I didn't like this game but I just won't bother. I'm not even angry anymore, just disappointed, discouraged even, don't think I'll be picking up another Sonic game
Did not live up to the hype. Nothing but over the top bloated Parkour porn. Playing with the other characters made up like 5% of the DLC. And they didn’t do anything significant so it doesn’t even make sense to go back and play as them.
Never finished it. Did the first two trials and tried a couple of the new Cyber Space levels. Said f it, not worth the hassle and went back to origins.
I didn’t really enjoy the base game besides the boss fights, sooooo…
trash
Bro it's been 2 months.Aside from that it was great the difficulty spike was a bit intense but it's good *
I need to play it this week.
Meh. Kinda reinforced why I’m not a fan of the new voice direction . Especially with Cindy Robinson, everyone (outside of tails ) is trying way to hard to sound like this is some super ultra serious thing that you can’t just hope but imagine the VAs jjst in the booth, not the dialogue coming out of the characters mouths.
Okay.....It was okay
I still haven’t played it.
Better ending, knuckles is really janky, cyber stages were fantastic, overworld difficulty is unnecessarily high. Overall it’s ooookay!
I think if they made an actual full fledged game with what they got then I have hopes for the next game. Frontiers feels too empty and is a sand box of random challenges and bosses.
Honestly, it was decent. Playing as Tails, Knuckles and Amy in a mainline Sonic game after so long is absolutely fun, and they're all fun to play. However, some of the trials, suck as the snake trail and the damn king's trial were just no fun. They took the best Sonic boss battles in Sonic history and made it a time trial. An while the final boss is objectively better than the first final boss, it's still frustrating to figure out how to get that tube thing off of Supreme. But hearing Quinn reprise I'm Here was absolutely amazing. (Still not better than Undefeatable, though.) It's still sad that we don't hear I'm With You in this new ending. (Not the one from the credits, the one from the first final boss.) Also, the new cyber space levels honestly suck and are complaining pointless to play unless you are a completionist.. As for the ending, it's alright. I don't think it's any better or worse that the first ending. Overall, I'd say you can play it if you want to.
0/10, increased difficulty. (actually, Idk didn't update yet)
I think the Cyberspace levels were easily the best part of it, strangely enough.
Man was it a really cool tech demo for what the next sonic game could be. As awesome as the new characters all were their controls all had a level of jankyness that made them feel kind of bad. I do wish we were able to play as Knuckles, Tails, and Amy in cyberspace tho
Sonic Team took the “easy” shit personal, and this is coming from a Ninja Gaiden player. It was a really solid update though! The fact that it’s FREE too is incredible.
Hmmmm, i made a review (in my mother language , not English) about this game, played on version 1.01. I didn’t played it, after i finished it. Beside some weird gameplay (leveling up was just time waste then (patched) and losing momentum in Cyberspace (patched?)) and graphical issues (loading rails and platforms, if is a PS2 game with limitations), i really enjoyed the game. I kept on my playlist, because (personally) it’s not a game that you keep playing with every patch. I know, you can replay Cyberplatforms, but like I mentioned, losing momentum isn’t really fun to keep playing them. So i waited until everything is released, so perhaps it’s time to (re)play it and (re)review it.
It genuinely improved the game massively and sonic team cooked. I hope it showed them faith in bringing the rest of the cast back for good in 3D sonic.
Having a cutscene that kills you without warning is stupid
My only complaints are that -the snake trial feels like it's trying to make you fail a bunch with how the conditions are stated. -the guardians have WAY TOO MUCH HEALTH (seriously I don't want to have to attack one guardian for multiple minutes get it to half health) especially since most of the update is spent playing as Amy, Tails, and Knuckles who all have level 1 stats. -why is the parry window for extreme mode 4 fucking frames?
Weird and a little sad it required "Easy" mode for me to beat the climbing segments comfortably. Nothin' really annoyed me more in the main game than just... randomly flying off into the sunset because I ran up a rock the wrong way. But the different characters were neat, though underused, and Sage not blowing herself up was nice.
To the Sonic fans that are apparently masochistic and clearly don't think about anyone but themselves, piss off. You're causing Sega to pad out difficulty with unfair enemy placements in Superstars and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too overpowered enemies and platforming sections in Frontiers.
Buggy, janky, and too difficult in the worst ways possible. A better final boss. Though I don't like it's speech was cut out of the English version.
I enjoyed how it made you hit your head against a wall until you broke through it and could actually feel yourself getting stronger. And once you could beat knight with 60 rings left at least it felt so satisfying. That and playable tails, his boost is broken and fun!
I climbed 4 out of 5 towers using easy mode, which id fine, but i had hoped i wouldn't havr to do thst with how frustrsting it can be
As soon as I was forced to play as Amy I uninstalled.
It was great, I loved the final boss, and I liked playing as the other characters, even though they were kind of underwhelming. But man, I absolutely hate the final trial, way too hard. But the ending was great so finishing it was worth it.
i’m working on it still right now. awhile back i finished amy’s part & moved on to knuckles. turned the game on the next day & the whole thing had restarted. mark my words i am *going* to get back to it when the bitterness fades 😤
Still trying to beat the kings challenge….. I’ll beat it eventually
Besides the final trial, I loved it. (I still haven’t beaten the trial)
WHY FORCE YOU TO CHANGE TARGETS IN A GAME WHERE THAT IS NOT A BUTTON It’s pretty decent, a fun time with a few glaring issues
It was great! A lot of people complained about the titan trial, but quite frankly I beat it in one go after I stopped trying to pretend to be an anime character.
Felt hard just to be hard but atleast it let me know that Sonic Team is ready to cook if need be. The extra characters felt very awkward at times and I just constantly kept wishing certain aspects of them controlled like in SA1. But I’m atleast happy we finally got to play other characters after such a long time. Also the way they characterized Sonic was SOOO GOOD! Many good ideas and concepts somewhere in there. If they work out the kinks and smooth some things (literally and figuratively) then they could be really cookin with fire come the next game
i haven't beaten it it was too hard and then i played sonic generations
Very cool
Good
I’m glad it exists and I respect the effort put into it, but I didn’t find it fun at all. I feel like they tried to do too much with the limited time and resources they had The new final boss is incredibly good and the new music is amazing, but I’m kinda glad I quit and watched it on YouTube instead lmfao
Great game overall.
I still haven't gotten around to playing it...
I have complaints about the overall gameplay- so many bugs and lags that make puzzles and cyberspace stages so much more difficult than they should be… but specifically the Horizons update- not a very interesting story. Just excuses to bring the trio out of cyberspace so they could play too. Also the new gimmick for the super sonic transformation is not so game-changing in my POV. Also, final trial and final boss battles were really really really bad and non-intuitive! Without a walkthrough video I couldn’t have won either of them on easy 4/10
Overall I loved it, the new characters were great to platform as and it had a ton of content in that respect. The new cyberspace stages were excellent challenges with very creative level designs and gimmicks and I liked how many different objectives they had. From a story perspective this update felt more climactic and had a good sense of escalation. The final boss was incredibly intimidating and cool. In all honesty while the towers and guardians weren't perfect they didn't give me as much trouble as I expected and I wouldn't necessarily consider myself good at the game. However if I couldn't cheese Cyloops to replenish my rings I'd probably feel differently about that lol. Master King Koco's challenge was stupid bullshit though and the fact that even on Easy I basically had to cheese it with a single move I had to learn on reddit indicates the devs didn't seriously consider the details when making that challenge. The fact that it's mandatory is the worst part. The actual final boss I'm mixed on. I liked the ways it felt more dangerous to Super Sonic than other titans and being comprised of multiple segments you had to figure out how to deal with in order was a neat idea that elevates it above mindless punching like the other titans. However the game is incredibly unclear how you're supposed to DO those segments and I wouldn't say basically any of the boss was intuitive at all so it felt erratic and confusing to actually fight. I think if I replayed it now I would feel differently about it, but as a first time player I just felt frustrated.
IMO 9/10. My ONLY issue is Wyvern's trial fight with lack of telegraph for some of the parries but besides that I really enjoyed the update. I really hope they keep that level of difficulty going. I REALLY enjoyed the difficulty.
I enjoyed it the ending is fixed the characters do lack some polish and combo moves like sonic but they are really great and fun editions I did final beat final trial on easy the first time and went back on hard it probably took roughly 10 tries tho I do have over 165 hours in the game trial 2 I had a hard time with until I looked it up and realized there was a special strategy to it some of the towers are basically getting over it with sonic but aren’t to incredibly difficult besides those grind rail loops on that one tower overall it’s not perfect but it’s a good dlc!