I'm preemptively giving this 5/5 stars cause I know deep in my boners this is gonna be the second coming of god, step aside Jesus, Sonic's here and he's gonna beat you up call you names and snatch your lunch money, cause we have a new god and his names Sonic The Fucking Hedgehog!
edit, disappointment, just like what my father told me when he found out I was a Sonic fan
edit, disappointment, just like what my father told me when he found out I was a Sonic fan
This is basically the sonic equivalent of getting hit by a car as soon as you leave the hospital
Fun but way too easy
Faz pouco tempo que a atualização gratuita chamada The Final Horizon foi lançada, o objetivo dela é consertar o final do jogo base porque muitas pessoas ficaram decepcionadas pelo final "anticlimático", o resultado disso foi meio misto porque eu vi que muita gente gostou e ao mesmo tempo muita gente que não gostou.
Essa atualização não apaga o final do jogo base, basicamente é um final alternativo.
A maior novidade é que agora podemos jogar com a Amy, Knuckles e Tails, faz MUITO tempo que os personagens "secundários" não são mais jogáveis em um jogo da série principal, aqui vai um breve resumo do que eu achei de cada um:
-Amy: gostei bastante dela, de longe foi a jogabilidade que achei a mais polida da três, tudo funciona perfeitamente com ela, a Amy pode usar as cartas tarô para atacar e ajudar ela nos pulos, o clássico martelo Piko Piko volta também mas ele não está tão presente no moveset dela.
-Knuckles: jogar com o Knuckles foi a minha maior decepção, não achei ele uma merda mas podia ter sido bem melhor, planar com ele é desconfortável e escalar paredes é o maior pesadelo do universo, quando ele solta de uma parede fudeu boa sorte tentando controlar ele ! Faltou polimento, ainda prefiro um trilhão de vezes a jogabilidade no Adventure 1 e 2.
-Tails: eu também gostei muito dele, ele é meio que uma mistura do Adventure 1,2 e 2006, ele voa mas pode usar as ferramentas para atacar inimigos e pode usar o Cyclone do Adventure 2 pra voar e isso é muito foda, só não é perfeito porque ele não pode fazer Homing Attack (e isso faz uma diferença gigante).
A história do Final Horizon é um Reboot da Ouranos Island, no jogo base a Ouranos Island também é a ilha final mas aqui ela sofre diversas mudanças: os novos personagens jogáveis, um monte de sessões de plataforma são adicionadas, os Puzzles são mais difíceis, novos tipos de Koco aparecem, os Guardiões estão muito mais difíceis e novas fases do Cyberspace. O tamanho do mapa da Ouranos Island ficou BEM melhor e maior, tão grande que não ironicamente é mais longo que o Sonic Forces inteiro kkkkkkk.
A maioria das sessões de plataforma foram feitas para os novos personagens e são mais difíceis em relação ao jogo base mas ainda assim são muito boas porque exploram as habilidades de cada personagem.
Os Guardiões (ou Mini Bosses) estão muito mais difíceis, eles tem muito mais HP e a maioria dos ataques são novos, eu não gostei tanto assim porque a recompensa de derrotar eles é uma Engrenagem que libera uma Fase de Cyberspace mas as Engrenagens estão espalhadas pela ilha inteira, não há razão para enfrentar os Guardiões aqui.
Uma coisa que eu não esperava era novas fases do Cyberspace, no jogo base 95% delas eram fases reaproveitadas de outros jogos mas dessa vez todas elas estão mais originais e também estão mais difíceis, além da ausência de Checkpoints os objetivos também mudaram, agora não tem mais Red Star Rings e sim as Number Rings, Silver Moon Rings e os Animais.
Para quem já jogou Sonic Lost World e Forces deve se lembrar das Number Rings que são anéis que temos que coletar em uma ordem específica do número 5 até 1.
Silver Moon Rings também estavam no Forces e elas retornam do mesmo jeito, coletar elas em um tempo limitado.
Os animais estão espalhados na fase e o Sonic deve levar elas até uma parte específica da fase.
Além disso existem fases com portais secretos e com corridas contra uma versão malvada do Tails.
Outra coisa nova são os Desafios das Torres, assim como na penúltima ilha do jogo, aqui também existem 5 torres em que o Sonic deve escalar mas agora existe um desafio depois de subir a torre inteira, os 4 desafios não são tão difíceis assim mas o último é o mais icônico entre os jogadores por ser difícil demais até na dificuldade fácil, esse desafio é nada mais do que uma Boss Rush entre os três titãs mas dessa vez todos os seus atributos estão resetados no nível 1, você deve fazer o Parry Perfeito e os anéis são bem limitados, falando assim não parece nada demais mas é a maior frustração para muitas pessoas, eu pessoalmente achei difícil mas não tão frustante assim como muitas pessoas estão achando.
O final foi drasticamente alterado e ficou muito melhor, agora o Sonic tem uma nova transformação chamada Super Sonic 2 e o Final Boss ficou bem melhor também mas não vou falar aqui por motivos de Spoilers.
E por fim a trilha sonora é simplesmente PERFEITA, não esperava que as músicas novas fossem tão boas assim, agora temos mais músicas cantadas também e isso ficou incrível.
The Final Horizon é um divisor de opiniões, eu dou um 9,5 porque eu esperava mais do Knuckles mas o resto é incrível, Sonic Frontiers ainda é o meu jogo favorito da série de todos os tempos e com as atualizações o jogo só ficou melhor ainda.
Essa atualização não apaga o final do jogo base, basicamente é um final alternativo.
A maior novidade é que agora podemos jogar com a Amy, Knuckles e Tails, faz MUITO tempo que os personagens "secundários" não são mais jogáveis em um jogo da série principal, aqui vai um breve resumo do que eu achei de cada um:
-Amy: gostei bastante dela, de longe foi a jogabilidade que achei a mais polida da três, tudo funciona perfeitamente com ela, a Amy pode usar as cartas tarô para atacar e ajudar ela nos pulos, o clássico martelo Piko Piko volta também mas ele não está tão presente no moveset dela.
-Knuckles: jogar com o Knuckles foi a minha maior decepção, não achei ele uma merda mas podia ter sido bem melhor, planar com ele é desconfortável e escalar paredes é o maior pesadelo do universo, quando ele solta de uma parede fudeu boa sorte tentando controlar ele ! Faltou polimento, ainda prefiro um trilhão de vezes a jogabilidade no Adventure 1 e 2.
-Tails: eu também gostei muito dele, ele é meio que uma mistura do Adventure 1,2 e 2006, ele voa mas pode usar as ferramentas para atacar inimigos e pode usar o Cyclone do Adventure 2 pra voar e isso é muito foda, só não é perfeito porque ele não pode fazer Homing Attack (e isso faz uma diferença gigante).
A história do Final Horizon é um Reboot da Ouranos Island, no jogo base a Ouranos Island também é a ilha final mas aqui ela sofre diversas mudanças: os novos personagens jogáveis, um monte de sessões de plataforma são adicionadas, os Puzzles são mais difíceis, novos tipos de Koco aparecem, os Guardiões estão muito mais difíceis e novas fases do Cyberspace. O tamanho do mapa da Ouranos Island ficou BEM melhor e maior, tão grande que não ironicamente é mais longo que o Sonic Forces inteiro kkkkkkk.
A maioria das sessões de plataforma foram feitas para os novos personagens e são mais difíceis em relação ao jogo base mas ainda assim são muito boas porque exploram as habilidades de cada personagem.
Os Guardiões (ou Mini Bosses) estão muito mais difíceis, eles tem muito mais HP e a maioria dos ataques são novos, eu não gostei tanto assim porque a recompensa de derrotar eles é uma Engrenagem que libera uma Fase de Cyberspace mas as Engrenagens estão espalhadas pela ilha inteira, não há razão para enfrentar os Guardiões aqui.
Uma coisa que eu não esperava era novas fases do Cyberspace, no jogo base 95% delas eram fases reaproveitadas de outros jogos mas dessa vez todas elas estão mais originais e também estão mais difíceis, além da ausência de Checkpoints os objetivos também mudaram, agora não tem mais Red Star Rings e sim as Number Rings, Silver Moon Rings e os Animais.
Para quem já jogou Sonic Lost World e Forces deve se lembrar das Number Rings que são anéis que temos que coletar em uma ordem específica do número 5 até 1.
Silver Moon Rings também estavam no Forces e elas retornam do mesmo jeito, coletar elas em um tempo limitado.
Os animais estão espalhados na fase e o Sonic deve levar elas até uma parte específica da fase.
Além disso existem fases com portais secretos e com corridas contra uma versão malvada do Tails.
Outra coisa nova são os Desafios das Torres, assim como na penúltima ilha do jogo, aqui também existem 5 torres em que o Sonic deve escalar mas agora existe um desafio depois de subir a torre inteira, os 4 desafios não são tão difíceis assim mas o último é o mais icônico entre os jogadores por ser difícil demais até na dificuldade fácil, esse desafio é nada mais do que uma Boss Rush entre os três titãs mas dessa vez todos os seus atributos estão resetados no nível 1, você deve fazer o Parry Perfeito e os anéis são bem limitados, falando assim não parece nada demais mas é a maior frustração para muitas pessoas, eu pessoalmente achei difícil mas não tão frustante assim como muitas pessoas estão achando.
O final foi drasticamente alterado e ficou muito melhor, agora o Sonic tem uma nova transformação chamada Super Sonic 2 e o Final Boss ficou bem melhor também mas não vou falar aqui por motivos de Spoilers.
E por fim a trilha sonora é simplesmente PERFEITA, não esperava que as músicas novas fossem tão boas assim, agora temos mais músicas cantadas também e isso ficou incrível.
The Final Horizon é um divisor de opiniões, eu dou um 9,5 porque eu esperava mais do Knuckles mas o resto é incrível, Sonic Frontiers ainda é o meu jogo favorito da série de todos os tempos e com as atualizações o jogo só ficou melhor ainda.
missing an arm and leg, my body is caked in my own blood
"S-skill issue!"
"S-skill issue!"
This review contains spoilers
Brief recap on my feelings regarding the base game of Frontiers (www.backloggd.com/u/SunlitSonata/review/560239/). Despite its jank and extraneous systems like stats and a skill tree, I liked it and fondly think back on how distinct an experience it felt. I liked that we were getting a weightier plot in a Sonic game for the first time in a long time that feels aware of how much fans spent time with these characters over the decades, and an open world that gave players numerous directions and microchallenges to quickly jaunt between. Elements like combat and the Cyberspace stages weren’t very deep but they added variety as quick segways outside of the open world exploration to keep the experience fresh despite its repetitive core structure. They each had their moments; combat shining in the more Sonic Adventure-esque boss encounters and Cyberspace shined when you could properly plan movement across the stages but neither were pushed that hard over the run. The first two additional updates bringing legacy Sonic songs to find in the worlds, high score challenges and most importantly a spin dash elevated the exploration and focus on world movement to a satisfying degree; Cyberspace practically got a new layer with how fast you were. So, I was looking forward to how the last update would continue to play with the foundation.
With that being the case, oh boy is this update split in quality. There’s stuff that’s incredibly fun to play around with and exciting to imagine expansions for, and then there’s stuff I seriously question what was going on with putting Frontiers’s existing game systems up to the task, sometimes in the same place! It’s wild. Thinking more about what the update means for Sonic’s future instead just what’s here as a free expansion to an already released game, I’m more positive than most on here but it more than ever highlights the biggest strengths and weaknesses that exist in Frontiers’s current foundation.
One of the most attention-grabbing points I’ve seen going around is just how ludicrously difficult this update apparently is, like the game suddenly turned into Kaizo Frontiers or The Lost Levels or something like that due to its challenging tower climbs and trials attached to them. I’ll be honest though, while a few can be challenging the only tower that annoyed me with it was Tower 2 because part of it required nudging Sonic very slightly with the analog stick to balance on the narrow tops of platforms which is the opposite of speed. You had boxes on your first go to propel you up but they wouldn’t respawn upon a fall off, forcing players to inch their way forward if they fall below even once
(Update: This was fixed in a patch to make the pink blocks reappear if you cause them to despawn so you no longer have to incur a load screen, neat).
It’s also the only one that had a challenge involving thinking of enemy behavior in a specific way beyond being able to tank hits and spamming retaliation moves so while initially frustrating getting it down was fairly satisfying, not unlike a Devil May Cry secret mission.
There’s been quite a few comparisons made to KH3’s Re:MIND DLC. While weighed down by charging $30 compared to this being free, they’re both very conceptual addons that feed into stuff the fans wanted and pushed the game to its limits. The big difference though is that KH3’s main verb was its combat system and the fanbase was more than willing to get smacked in the face by superbosses even if game journalists weren’t. The reason Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix went on to be seen as the peak of the series for at least a decade was because of its superboss challenges. Fans adored Lingering Will and the Data Organization and hoped for something like that for years to fairly test their meddle after subsequent games dropped the ball there. KH3 had some clunk when it first launched, but the updates made a lot of Sora’s varied attacks feel smoother and more kinetic while the extra bosses genuinely topped what Kingdom Hearts II’s battles had to offer in terms of spectacle, music and even challenge while still being fair. The fanbase was prepared and even excited to be walloped.
Meanwhile, Sonic games have been incredibly easy for the past 14 years, so I can believe a lot of the fanbase was just lulled into thinking they never would test players meddle to this extent and got skill issued from most of the stuff here, especially with the option to switch to Easy Mode alleviating a lot of it (Extreme is a bad difficulty but that’s independent of this expansion). But the bigger issue in Frontiers specifically is that the combat worked best as a drive by occurrence to occasionally break up exploration and battle phases, not an actual system. The first, third and fourth challenges are all a cakewalk if you can just tank the hits and mash away with the canned animations. The fifth and final trial prior to the new final boss is to fight the first three bosses with only 400 Rings, Level 1 attack and a practically frame perfect parry on anything besides Easy Mode and to me this very thoroughly missed the point on one of the base game’s most beloved components.
In the base game of Frontiers, the first three Titan fights were the culmination of an entire island of exploration. Sage threatened you with the might of one at the start of each island, Sonic was on the back foot trying to get away from them, and the island progressed as Sonic collected Chaos Emeralds, helped reassure his friends, whilst the island music grew intense and bombastic, leading into the explosive action, cinematic moments with hard af metal vocals as payoff for the gradually building mundanity before. They were a surprisingly great example of setup and payoff communicated through all aspects of the game working in harmony.
In this, your incredibly tight timer means it’s harder to enjoy the spectacle and instead you must think about which interchangeable move deals damage the fastest while watching the same cinematic animations over and over for every new attempt. Getting up to Wyvern’s level once in the base game was epic. Doing it multiple times when retrying gets very tedious and stale very fast as you hear the same lyrics and see the same animations again and again. Before even battling Knight he jankily spins around and spawns a quick spike shield to knock you down. Not too bad in the base game since you’d likely increased your rings plenty for protection at that point but in this challenge it’s a death sentence since there’s no shot you’ll have enough rings left after taking a hit there. Thus, sending you to do the first two battles again just to get back there. It’s the one mandatory portion of the DLC I would call outright bad and seriously question how much playtesting it got.
(This ALSO got patched to make the challenge more fair and less tedious, tho not sure how it affects difficulty levels other than Easy Mode, your get out of jail free card is at least more easy to grab at the door).
The alternate ending in Frontiers is just that; an alternate ending. The plot of this scenario more thoroughly carries tension compared to the entirety of the final island in the base game, and if you didn’t like the original ending bc it didn’t feel epic enough compared to games like Sonic Adventure 2 or Unleashed, here you go. There’s some sick soul stuff going on here if you’re willing to deal with a camera constantly getting stuck on trees, a finnicky targeting reticle and adjusting to a much stricter parry (less strict post the December 6th patch), but it does fundamentally alter the mood of Frontiers’s final moments to something closer to most prior 3D Sonics. One worry I had going in was that this ending would effectively patch out the original ending invalidating anyone who liked that conclusion but no. It’s contextually presented as another choice Sage could have suggested before heading into the base game’s final battle. In that regard, this would’ve best fit as a dialogue option right after clearing Rhea, but I can also imagine it would be too much to ask players to create new saves just to get back there when most people interested in this have clear files.
The main passion and thought I see in this update in regard to the future went toward the three new characters and the Cyberspace stages, funny enough.
Amy’s pretty fun to run around with in this game and if there's anything I'll go back to beside the Cyberspace challenges it's playing as her. Some people wish she used her hammer more often than her Tarot cards, but looking at her kit from a functional perspective I appreciate what was done with her here. Giving her the highest basic jump of the cast is a great way to differentiate her from the rest and tie into her Adventure 1 and Rise of Lyric movesets, without a doubt the biggest influences here. Once you unlock them it’s fun to bounce around for insane height as she flips around in the air to do a short hover that feels pretty smooth. She also has a cute variation on the multihoming attack from Lost World which was neat to see from an animation/speed perspective, as well as a more seamless variant on her hammer spin move from Sonic Adventure 1. It helps too that Amy is the most similar to Sonic at her core among the three new characters so her moves largely feel seamless in Frontiers’s foundation with a specific focus on vertical height. Honestly, Peak 3D Amy.
Tails takes a bit to get used to. He’s the only one of the cast with no homing attack, instead having a projectile as a weapon and his flight working like an initial horizontal motion followed by a big jump. I like how in classic Tails fashion you can easily kiss the level design goodbye hopping in his Sonic Adventure 2 plane I was genuinely shocked they brought back here. The plane replacing his boost can be annoying at max rings if you just want to get more speed while grounded since there’s still no option to turn skills off but you can unlock a spin dash so it isn’t too bad if you get him to that point. Any moment where you need to jump on a spring is questionable given the lack of homing, but it is compensating for Tails being the only character to consistently hold air position if you want him to. I could see him working in the future if speed was handed to him more by the environment or using his laser cannons were faster but there’s a foundation to do so and challenges playing to his uniqueness.
Knuckles. . . really needs more work. Gliding and attacking isn’t close to as seamless as it was back in Sonic Adventure 2 twenty-two years ago, with a second delay every time you start a glide and stopping in the air before doing a slower divebomb, compared to SA2’s quick and instantaneous drop. Even gliding itself is initially stiff to get used to, not nearly as bad as 06 Knuckles since the downward arc is more natural and you can reliably jump off the walls, but something you need to get used to.
(Update: A recent patch made Knuckles’s glide turning a lot less stiff than it once was on top of removing the second delay when pressing the jump button which is well appreciated. But you still can’t swap characters without going to one spot on the map over and over, somehow).
He’s saved by the actual challenges themselves, testing the player to glide carefully and think about wall climb travel. His skill tree has some fitting quirks but nothing to fit the enemies on the island at all with their overtuned speed and crazy beefy health bars. The fact that even HIS moveset, for the guy known for being the muscle of the group, barely attempts to make combat interesting or exciting makes me wonder if Sonic Team even wants the combat experiment to continue.
(Update: Strength parameters have been adjusted so leveling actually means more, but giving the characters stats at all was still a bad idea, even thought this about Sonic in the base game).
Still, I hope not; the fun of base Frontiers and even this expansion was using the various character abilities to seamlessly explore, not stopping for combat over a long period nudged by mostly vestigial stats.
But the Cyberspace stages, surprisingly, are a real highlight and the biggest straight up BUFF over the base game. In the base game, Cyberspace levels could often be fully 2D, not being particularly fast. The levels were very short and even with multiple objectives including a ring count check, time and Red Ring collecting a lot of them were one and dones. There were only two stages that changed up the gameplay and one of them (drifting) worked terribly without evolving on a base mechanic. Now, introducing Sonic’s sprawliest 3D only level design since Sonic 06, objectives that require exploring the stages, gimmicks that complement speed in interesting ways and game design built around speed tech like your insane spindash and magnet dashing. I really hope we see more level designs along these lines in the future because I liked every single one I attempted. The biggest issue here is that by the very nature of exploring you’re never incentivized to go to any of them. If you’ve been Cylooping the various glowing ground spots as the characters, you’ll get more than enough Lookout Koco to never even think about trying these. And sure, you COULD get vault keys in the original game from Big the Cat, but that was a choice to avoid exploration and use currency in a specific way, not a consequence of being curious. But I’m glad the team realized the inherent potential these could have as a side order to the main game and I hope this is where they expand on particularly, perhaps even incorporating aspects of this design into the maps themselves.
Overall, this update was perfectly acceptable and carried by its fun character movement, new level/world designs, and general fact that it is free, but I feel like certain aspects, such as the high difficulty outside of Easy Mode, or the incredibly poorly thought out fifth trial are VERY wrongly seen by some as being a transfer into the next game. Sonic Frontiers being in the position that it is would only be this hard when it’s feeding into the existing audience playing the game months after launch, not the general gaming public buying it for the first time after seeing reviews from major publications. I hope the focus on more sprawling sequence breaky level design remains alongside the varied methods for traversal and alternate characters in dense worlds more in Sonic’s typical vibrant art style for the next game’s tone and I’ll look forward to what modders can accomplish with the new toys they were given to play with in the meantime.
As is often the case, the music hit pretty hard. The new Final Boss theme is much more bombastic than the version in the base game and is pretty in line with the hyper anime energy Sonic used to have, the chapter themes for each of the main characters can get repetitive but are pretty atmospheric, the Cyberspace remixes are really rad and more intense to fit with the crazier stage layouts, and the particular theme that plays when you first switch back to Sonic, excellent stuff right there. With that in mind. . .
For the love of god Sonic Team, P L E A S E, PLEASE fix the pop-in for the next game! It’s more jarring here than in the base game because the new characters have some form of flight. Switch 2 is on the horizon so make the mandatory Nintendo representation only be on that platform. We don’t need the PS5 game held back by its Switch limitations any further when this style of game could look exciting to explore when so many platforms and objects aren’t appearing right in your face the moment you approach them.
With that being the case, oh boy is this update split in quality. There’s stuff that’s incredibly fun to play around with and exciting to imagine expansions for, and then there’s stuff I seriously question what was going on with putting Frontiers’s existing game systems up to the task, sometimes in the same place! It’s wild. Thinking more about what the update means for Sonic’s future instead just what’s here as a free expansion to an already released game, I’m more positive than most on here but it more than ever highlights the biggest strengths and weaknesses that exist in Frontiers’s current foundation.
One of the most attention-grabbing points I’ve seen going around is just how ludicrously difficult this update apparently is, like the game suddenly turned into Kaizo Frontiers or The Lost Levels or something like that due to its challenging tower climbs and trials attached to them. I’ll be honest though, while a few can be challenging the only tower that annoyed me with it was Tower 2 because part of it required nudging Sonic very slightly with the analog stick to balance on the narrow tops of platforms which is the opposite of speed. You had boxes on your first go to propel you up but they wouldn’t respawn upon a fall off, forcing players to inch their way forward if they fall below even once
(Update: This was fixed in a patch to make the pink blocks reappear if you cause them to despawn so you no longer have to incur a load screen, neat).
It’s also the only one that had a challenge involving thinking of enemy behavior in a specific way beyond being able to tank hits and spamming retaliation moves so while initially frustrating getting it down was fairly satisfying, not unlike a Devil May Cry secret mission.
There’s been quite a few comparisons made to KH3’s Re:MIND DLC. While weighed down by charging $30 compared to this being free, they’re both very conceptual addons that feed into stuff the fans wanted and pushed the game to its limits. The big difference though is that KH3’s main verb was its combat system and the fanbase was more than willing to get smacked in the face by superbosses even if game journalists weren’t. The reason Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix went on to be seen as the peak of the series for at least a decade was because of its superboss challenges. Fans adored Lingering Will and the Data Organization and hoped for something like that for years to fairly test their meddle after subsequent games dropped the ball there. KH3 had some clunk when it first launched, but the updates made a lot of Sora’s varied attacks feel smoother and more kinetic while the extra bosses genuinely topped what Kingdom Hearts II’s battles had to offer in terms of spectacle, music and even challenge while still being fair. The fanbase was prepared and even excited to be walloped.
Meanwhile, Sonic games have been incredibly easy for the past 14 years, so I can believe a lot of the fanbase was just lulled into thinking they never would test players meddle to this extent and got skill issued from most of the stuff here, especially with the option to switch to Easy Mode alleviating a lot of it (Extreme is a bad difficulty but that’s independent of this expansion). But the bigger issue in Frontiers specifically is that the combat worked best as a drive by occurrence to occasionally break up exploration and battle phases, not an actual system. The first, third and fourth challenges are all a cakewalk if you can just tank the hits and mash away with the canned animations. The fifth and final trial prior to the new final boss is to fight the first three bosses with only 400 Rings, Level 1 attack and a practically frame perfect parry on anything besides Easy Mode and to me this very thoroughly missed the point on one of the base game’s most beloved components.
In the base game of Frontiers, the first three Titan fights were the culmination of an entire island of exploration. Sage threatened you with the might of one at the start of each island, Sonic was on the back foot trying to get away from them, and the island progressed as Sonic collected Chaos Emeralds, helped reassure his friends, whilst the island music grew intense and bombastic, leading into the explosive action, cinematic moments with hard af metal vocals as payoff for the gradually building mundanity before. They were a surprisingly great example of setup and payoff communicated through all aspects of the game working in harmony.
In this, your incredibly tight timer means it’s harder to enjoy the spectacle and instead you must think about which interchangeable move deals damage the fastest while watching the same cinematic animations over and over for every new attempt. Getting up to Wyvern’s level once in the base game was epic. Doing it multiple times when retrying gets very tedious and stale very fast as you hear the same lyrics and see the same animations again and again. Before even battling Knight he jankily spins around and spawns a quick spike shield to knock you down. Not too bad in the base game since you’d likely increased your rings plenty for protection at that point but in this challenge it’s a death sentence since there’s no shot you’ll have enough rings left after taking a hit there. Thus, sending you to do the first two battles again just to get back there. It’s the one mandatory portion of the DLC I would call outright bad and seriously question how much playtesting it got.
(This ALSO got patched to make the challenge more fair and less tedious, tho not sure how it affects difficulty levels other than Easy Mode, your get out of jail free card is at least more easy to grab at the door).
The alternate ending in Frontiers is just that; an alternate ending. The plot of this scenario more thoroughly carries tension compared to the entirety of the final island in the base game, and if you didn’t like the original ending bc it didn’t feel epic enough compared to games like Sonic Adventure 2 or Unleashed, here you go. There’s some sick soul stuff going on here if you’re willing to deal with a camera constantly getting stuck on trees, a finnicky targeting reticle and adjusting to a much stricter parry (less strict post the December 6th patch), but it does fundamentally alter the mood of Frontiers’s final moments to something closer to most prior 3D Sonics. One worry I had going in was that this ending would effectively patch out the original ending invalidating anyone who liked that conclusion but no. It’s contextually presented as another choice Sage could have suggested before heading into the base game’s final battle. In that regard, this would’ve best fit as a dialogue option right after clearing Rhea, but I can also imagine it would be too much to ask players to create new saves just to get back there when most people interested in this have clear files.
The main passion and thought I see in this update in regard to the future went toward the three new characters and the Cyberspace stages, funny enough.
Amy’s pretty fun to run around with in this game and if there's anything I'll go back to beside the Cyberspace challenges it's playing as her. Some people wish she used her hammer more often than her Tarot cards, but looking at her kit from a functional perspective I appreciate what was done with her here. Giving her the highest basic jump of the cast is a great way to differentiate her from the rest and tie into her Adventure 1 and Rise of Lyric movesets, without a doubt the biggest influences here. Once you unlock them it’s fun to bounce around for insane height as she flips around in the air to do a short hover that feels pretty smooth. She also has a cute variation on the multihoming attack from Lost World which was neat to see from an animation/speed perspective, as well as a more seamless variant on her hammer spin move from Sonic Adventure 1. It helps too that Amy is the most similar to Sonic at her core among the three new characters so her moves largely feel seamless in Frontiers’s foundation with a specific focus on vertical height. Honestly, Peak 3D Amy.
Tails takes a bit to get used to. He’s the only one of the cast with no homing attack, instead having a projectile as a weapon and his flight working like an initial horizontal motion followed by a big jump. I like how in classic Tails fashion you can easily kiss the level design goodbye hopping in his Sonic Adventure 2 plane I was genuinely shocked they brought back here. The plane replacing his boost can be annoying at max rings if you just want to get more speed while grounded since there’s still no option to turn skills off but you can unlock a spin dash so it isn’t too bad if you get him to that point. Any moment where you need to jump on a spring is questionable given the lack of homing, but it is compensating for Tails being the only character to consistently hold air position if you want him to. I could see him working in the future if speed was handed to him more by the environment or using his laser cannons were faster but there’s a foundation to do so and challenges playing to his uniqueness.
Knuckles. . . really needs more work. Gliding and attacking isn’t close to as seamless as it was back in Sonic Adventure 2 twenty-two years ago, with a second delay every time you start a glide and stopping in the air before doing a slower divebomb, compared to SA2’s quick and instantaneous drop. Even gliding itself is initially stiff to get used to, not nearly as bad as 06 Knuckles since the downward arc is more natural and you can reliably jump off the walls, but something you need to get used to.
(Update: A recent patch made Knuckles’s glide turning a lot less stiff than it once was on top of removing the second delay when pressing the jump button which is well appreciated. But you still can’t swap characters without going to one spot on the map over and over, somehow).
He’s saved by the actual challenges themselves, testing the player to glide carefully and think about wall climb travel. His skill tree has some fitting quirks but nothing to fit the enemies on the island at all with their overtuned speed and crazy beefy health bars. The fact that even HIS moveset, for the guy known for being the muscle of the group, barely attempts to make combat interesting or exciting makes me wonder if Sonic Team even wants the combat experiment to continue.
(Update: Strength parameters have been adjusted so leveling actually means more, but giving the characters stats at all was still a bad idea, even thought this about Sonic in the base game).
Still, I hope not; the fun of base Frontiers and even this expansion was using the various character abilities to seamlessly explore, not stopping for combat over a long period nudged by mostly vestigial stats.
But the Cyberspace stages, surprisingly, are a real highlight and the biggest straight up BUFF over the base game. In the base game, Cyberspace levels could often be fully 2D, not being particularly fast. The levels were very short and even with multiple objectives including a ring count check, time and Red Ring collecting a lot of them were one and dones. There were only two stages that changed up the gameplay and one of them (drifting) worked terribly without evolving on a base mechanic. Now, introducing Sonic’s sprawliest 3D only level design since Sonic 06, objectives that require exploring the stages, gimmicks that complement speed in interesting ways and game design built around speed tech like your insane spindash and magnet dashing. I really hope we see more level designs along these lines in the future because I liked every single one I attempted. The biggest issue here is that by the very nature of exploring you’re never incentivized to go to any of them. If you’ve been Cylooping the various glowing ground spots as the characters, you’ll get more than enough Lookout Koco to never even think about trying these. And sure, you COULD get vault keys in the original game from Big the Cat, but that was a choice to avoid exploration and use currency in a specific way, not a consequence of being curious. But I’m glad the team realized the inherent potential these could have as a side order to the main game and I hope this is where they expand on particularly, perhaps even incorporating aspects of this design into the maps themselves.
Overall, this update was perfectly acceptable and carried by its fun character movement, new level/world designs, and general fact that it is free, but I feel like certain aspects, such as the high difficulty outside of Easy Mode, or the incredibly poorly thought out fifth trial are VERY wrongly seen by some as being a transfer into the next game. Sonic Frontiers being in the position that it is would only be this hard when it’s feeding into the existing audience playing the game months after launch, not the general gaming public buying it for the first time after seeing reviews from major publications. I hope the focus on more sprawling sequence breaky level design remains alongside the varied methods for traversal and alternate characters in dense worlds more in Sonic’s typical vibrant art style for the next game’s tone and I’ll look forward to what modders can accomplish with the new toys they were given to play with in the meantime.
As is often the case, the music hit pretty hard. The new Final Boss theme is much more bombastic than the version in the base game and is pretty in line with the hyper anime energy Sonic used to have, the chapter themes for each of the main characters can get repetitive but are pretty atmospheric, the Cyberspace remixes are really rad and more intense to fit with the crazier stage layouts, and the particular theme that plays when you first switch back to Sonic, excellent stuff right there. With that in mind. . .
For the love of god Sonic Team, P L E A S E, PLEASE fix the pop-in for the next game! It’s more jarring here than in the base game because the new characters have some form of flight. Switch 2 is on the horizon so make the mandatory Nintendo representation only be on that platform. We don’t need the PS5 game held back by its Switch limitations any further when this style of game could look exciting to explore when so many platforms and objects aren’t appearing right in your face the moment you approach them.
😬
I like that this is just Sonic Frontiers ReMind, especially with the way it felt like the devs went "Oh the game was too easy? Ok, how about this?". Hard mode actually lives up to it's name now and I'm here for it. Amy has her fun moments and so does Tails (skipping over entire platforming sections oh how I missed you) and Knuckles was my least favorite, they did him dirty with his glide. The delay on some of the moves for these three is weird and it's even more apparent when you're back in control of Sonic. He was my favorite part of the update, I dig the tower climbing segments. The trials themself are another story, not sure who was asking for this much combat and with all these restrictions too. There's some jank here and there but overall for a free update this was solid
This review contains spoilers
I promised myself I wouldn't write massive reviews but oops have too much to say for this.
Man...it bums me out to say this. After coming back to Frontiers from launch and messing with the Koco challenges and spin dash, my hopes were extremely high for this update. Sadly, it let down big time.
The new characters are rough. Like, really rough. Even though they all technically control somewhat like Sonic, they don't have the same snappiness. Gliding with Knuckles and flying with Tails has this stupid animation every single time you activate it, and there's no way to turn it off. So you're always brought to a pace breaking halt to do something that sometimes you don't actually intend to do.
The difficulty is amped up to an insane degree. This results in the guardian fights being kind of stupid and I ended up just avoiding most of them. Same goes for the challenges once you reach the top of the towers. They are ridiculously difficult, especially the "boss rush" one that was created seemingly to say "fuck you, here's your difficulty" and nothing more. It's so much more difficult than it has any right to be mainly because you get introduced to a brand new "perfect parry" that has nothing clearly designed for it, and just feels wrong in a game where you are supposed to hold it down.
Climbing the towers can actually be pretty fun. I enjoyed the challenge, and even if I fell I was always ready to climb back up them. I think their difficulty was overstated.
The new Cyber Space stages are also really good. They feel substantial, and even though the S rank times can be crushed, that doesn't mean they are extremely easy, either. It feels like they actually planned on a spin dash and power boost and I think designing with that in mind let them go wild in terms of design. They're no Unleashed stages, but they're like a decent Generations stage.
The final boss was also not great. I had no idea why sometimes my attacks would deal damage and others didn't, but once you figure out you have to break the moon line (which is a whole thing trying to cyloop) it's somewhat easy. I still just wasn't a big fan of it, though. The perfect parry is still such a stupid thing to have to add in a game where you are supposed to hold it down. It doesn't help that the trees block the orbs that you have to parry back either. I'm sorry, but I think I would rather take a lame Ikaruga clone than this.
It's clear that they tried with this. They cared, and I'm happy we're seeing that from Sonic Team. But that doesn't excuse this from being overall disappointing to me. They pushed the Frontiers frame to its limits, and I think at a point it eventually crumbles under it.
Man...it bums me out to say this. After coming back to Frontiers from launch and messing with the Koco challenges and spin dash, my hopes were extremely high for this update. Sadly, it let down big time.
The new characters are rough. Like, really rough. Even though they all technically control somewhat like Sonic, they don't have the same snappiness. Gliding with Knuckles and flying with Tails has this stupid animation every single time you activate it, and there's no way to turn it off. So you're always brought to a pace breaking halt to do something that sometimes you don't actually intend to do.
The difficulty is amped up to an insane degree. This results in the guardian fights being kind of stupid and I ended up just avoiding most of them. Same goes for the challenges once you reach the top of the towers. They are ridiculously difficult, especially the "boss rush" one that was created seemingly to say "fuck you, here's your difficulty" and nothing more. It's so much more difficult than it has any right to be mainly because you get introduced to a brand new "perfect parry" that has nothing clearly designed for it, and just feels wrong in a game where you are supposed to hold it down.
Climbing the towers can actually be pretty fun. I enjoyed the challenge, and even if I fell I was always ready to climb back up them. I think their difficulty was overstated.
The new Cyber Space stages are also really good. They feel substantial, and even though the S rank times can be crushed, that doesn't mean they are extremely easy, either. It feels like they actually planned on a spin dash and power boost and I think designing with that in mind let them go wild in terms of design. They're no Unleashed stages, but they're like a decent Generations stage.
The final boss was also not great. I had no idea why sometimes my attacks would deal damage and others didn't, but once you figure out you have to break the moon line (which is a whole thing trying to cyloop) it's somewhat easy. I still just wasn't a big fan of it, though. The perfect parry is still such a stupid thing to have to add in a game where you are supposed to hold it down. It doesn't help that the trees block the orbs that you have to parry back either. I'm sorry, but I think I would rather take a lame Ikaruga clone than this.
It's clear that they tried with this. They cared, and I'm happy we're seeing that from Sonic Team. But that doesn't excuse this from being overall disappointing to me. They pushed the Frontiers frame to its limits, and I think at a point it eventually crumbles under it.
Yeah its really cool there are new playable characters, but this entire thing just kept pissing me off more and more. These new characters all start at level 1, which yeah i get its reason to do the open world stuff, but FUCK man i just came off max level'd Sonic which feels fucking awesome and now I gotta play as these slow ass nerds AND the difficulty is higher like COME ON.
The floating geometry is also just not as fun because all 3 characters share the island at the same time, so you might just start a thing and then that character just can't do it. OR they might just be harder then I fall down and like I dont wanna climb that shit again. In the main campaign you know everything just works for Sonic and feel fucking great.
A combination of me not wanting to fucking level people, and the confusion of the floating geometry just led me to not knowing how the fuck get to the main objective as tails and the game was actively just draining me and I was having ZERO fun.
And the worst part IS I DIDNT EVEN GET TO THE FUCKING NEW LEVELS. I WANTED TO PLAY THE NEW LEVELS AND I DIDNT EVEN GET TO AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
The floating geometry is also just not as fun because all 3 characters share the island at the same time, so you might just start a thing and then that character just can't do it. OR they might just be harder then I fall down and like I dont wanna climb that shit again. In the main campaign you know everything just works for Sonic and feel fucking great.
A combination of me not wanting to fucking level people, and the confusion of the floating geometry just led me to not knowing how the fuck get to the main objective as tails and the game was actively just draining me and I was having ZERO fun.
And the worst part IS I DIDNT EVEN GET TO THE FUCKING NEW LEVELS. I WANTED TO PLAY THE NEW LEVELS AND I DIDNT EVEN GET TO AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I ain't finished it yet but Sonic Team can't cook. The open world additions are fine and dandy but the Koco Trials and new Cyberspace levels are horribly designed. They're not even hard, just abysmal and embarrassing.
I think the cherry on top of this steaming pile of shit is that they make you do the "run up" before every Titan boss. Meaning, instead of actually fighting the boss. You're wasting 5 minutes doing nothing but running in a straight line before you can actually fight it such as in the case of Wyvern. Oh and if you lose this bullshit boss rush? Have fun wasting 5 minutes all over again!!!
After finishing this, can safely say that final boss was not worth the entire slog of this update. The open world additions, new playable characters, and music are positives but everything else is 🚮
I think the cherry on top of this steaming pile of shit is that they make you do the "run up" before every Titan boss. Meaning, instead of actually fighting the boss. You're wasting 5 minutes doing nothing but running in a straight line before you can actually fight it such as in the case of Wyvern. Oh and if you lose this bullshit boss rush? Have fun wasting 5 minutes all over again!!!
After finishing this, can safely say that final boss was not worth the entire slog of this update. The open world additions, new playable characters, and music are positives but everything else is 🚮
someone pissed some nigga at the sonic team office off so bad
This is an utterly amateurish DLC for a game studio of this magnitude to put out. The level design has the intention of it being harder to complete. The thing is Final Horizon has the worst mechanics-to-level design implementation I have seen since , ironically enough, Sonic '06. Luckily you can cheese everything as Tails and Knuckles. Amy has cool moves but the level designers are just making shit up to meet a deadline and making it everyone else's problem. Sonic's part makes want to shit blood from anger. They must have payed the play testers with shitty Mpreg Sonic feet worship commissions instead of the good stuff and it shows.
Sloppy, bad, broken and boring three hour add-on to a game that already feels like a tech demo pitch. Sonic fans are eating good here.
Sloppy, bad, broken and boring three hour add-on to a game that already feels like a tech demo pitch. Sonic fans are eating good here.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
Playing through Sonic Frontiers for the first time, it was hard not to have a big, dumb smile on my face when Kellin Quinn’s vocals for Undefeatable or Break Through it All accentuated some of the series’ most spectacular boss fights in recent memory. I appreciated talking to Amy, Knuckles, and Tails, and having these characters feel like characters again, for the first time in a long time. I loved the melancholic story and desolate environments. Although they felt incongruous with the last decade of Sonic’s output, it felt like another bold step forward for Sonic Team, a new horizon, uncharted territory – starting nearly from scratch and reinventing Sonic’s movement yet again was a big gamble, and one that I felt paid off.
Sonic Frontiers was not a perfect Sonic game by any stretch of the imagination. For every triumph there was comparable failure: everything from the stripped down boost gameplay in Cyberspace stages, to the lackluster combat, to the abhorrent pop-in, and obviously much more I won’t discuss here. You’ve probably heard all this before.
Sonic Frontiers was and is not a perfect Sonic game, but if not a step in the right direction - it's at least a proper reorientation, a much-needed weaning from the over-streamlined boost formula from Sonic Forces, and a manifesto that Sonic Team could still, in fact, create a game that - even at its worst - pushed the series forward.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
I’ve loved Sonic the Hedgehog since I was a kid. I met my best friend, Garrett, sixteen years ago on YouTube through shared interest in Sonic the Hedgehog. We used to play Xbox Live together. He visited me for my high school graduation. We played through Sonic ‘06 the Summer of 2015. We still visit each other every year or so.
I took a short break from the series when I couldn’t finish Sonic Unleashed, and then jumped back in with Sonic Generations. I remembered why I loved these games to begin with.
Sonic Mania is my favorite game of all time.
When the Sonic Symphony World Tour show was announced in Los Angeles, I asked Garrett to visit me again. We both took a week off work.
This is the same week that Sonic Frontiers’ third and last update was released: the Final Horizon. We agreed to play through it together.
For the first time since Sonic ‘06, we were able to play as Amy Rose in 3D. Exploring Ouranos Island and coming to grips with Amy’s moveset was a joy, at first. She has a triple jump again! She can glide now! We ran into a mini-boss that killed us immediately.
“Let’s just ignore that one,” I told Garrett.
We realized our speed/ring/attack/defense stats had returned to Level One. Amy Rose was a clean slate. No upgrades. We were certainly in no condition to fight an endgame mini-boss.
We hit the story beats we needed to, then the game let us control Knuckles. This was a surprisingly emotional moment. Although it hadn’t been sixteen years since we’d controlled Knuckles, it felt like meeting an old friend.
“Oh, God,” Garrett groaned suddenly as he started to glide around the map.
“What’s wrong?”
He handed me the controller, “Feel this.”
I picked up the controller and started to glide as Knuckles. I understood what he’d meant. The windup was unusual. The turn radius was abysmal. The input delay was horrific.
“What the fuck?” I said out loud. It took a few more minutes before I put the above criticisms into words.
“Yeah,” Garrett laughed, summating, “it doesn’t feel good.”
We spent the most time as Knuckles and, subsequently, experienced two Starfall events, which have a chance to occur randomly each night cycle and allow players to (essentially) farm Koco to upgrade their character’s stats.
The Final Horizon wants to have its cake and eat it, too. Multiple playable characters necessitate a highly varied moveset for each, but to balance it properly, any upgrade materials earned as Sonic do NOT carry over to other characters. Amy, Knuckles, and Tails have their own upgrade materials, their own upgrade trees, their own level progression. HOWEVER, the new Ouranos Island is built in such a way that every character must have a Cyloop ability, and each character must unlock their respective Cyloop ability using their upgrade tree, which requires exploring Ouranos Island and earning enough upgrade points to unlock the Cyloop ability for each character in the first place, so they can explore the island even more and, eventually, complete their main objectives.
It feels unusual, however, to block progression in such a way as to force players to upgrade their characters here. In the base game, Sonic learns new attacks through his skill tree, but none of these are essential to making progress (except for the Cyloop, which is the first ability that Sonic unlocks anyway).
Here, having to use the skill tree to unlock basic abilities for characters like “melee attack” and “parry” that were already regular abilities for Sonic feels arbitrary. It’s not like it takes too long to unlock these abilities anyways, players need only find two or three special Koco to obtain these abilities, but it feels unnecessary.
It’s disappointing. I play with Knuckles for a certain amount of time and learn that he can only climb on certain surfaces, so as to keep the game balance intact. It makes sense, but it doesn’t cushion the blow any. I discovered a challenge that requires Knuckles’ ability to latch onto walls and climb. A cannonball hits me and I fall to my death. I try again. A cannonball hits me. I try to recover and latch onto the wall, but Knuckles doesn’t respond. I fall to my death. I try again.
I remember playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on my Nintendo Wii. The year is probably 2007 or 2008. I remember playing through the Hero Story for the first time and finally being able to play as Knuckles. I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
You know me, the fighting freak Knuckles, and we’re at pumpkin hill. You ready?
Nostalgia is a potent drug, strong enough to trick us into believing that even the most unremarkable chapters of our lives are golden, perfect snapshots. Only when we return to these chapters, we find reality is oftentimes much less kind than our memories tend to be.
I’ve replayed almost every mainline Sonic game countless times. I know that I love Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 in spite of their flaws.
I know that I love the sensation of gliding through the air as Knuckles, the pure joy of nose-diving in rapid circles, of sticking to each and every surface, of burrowing underground to find hidden treasure. Rats. I know that I love playing as Knuckles. I know that I was disappointed when I played as Knuckles in Sonic Frontiers because it wasn’t the Knuckles I remembered. It wasn’t the Knuckles I fell in love with.
“You’d think they would’ve figured this out by now,” I said to Garrett, mostly out of frustration after another cheap death, “it’s like… I’m thinking about, like, sewers.”
He didn’t know what I meant by that. I tried to explain it and probably ended up sounding like a doofus – completely unintelligible.
“I’m sure there are people who know how to make sewers, and maintain them,” I waffled around the point I was trying to make, “but, you know, I’m not sure that we know how to make them.”
“What?”
“Like, you don’t think about this? That making sewers isn't common knowledge?”
“What are you talking about?”
“How many people know how to make sewers? How many people will know how to make sewers? Imagine everyone who knows how sewers work – one day, they all die, and nobody wrote it down. Like, imagine it’s all tribal knowledge, or something.”
What I meant is that I’m worried. I have so much anxiety about the future. Sometimes I’m worried that nobody is worrying enough. There are entire lexicons, pillars of society, professions, sectors, that will be lost to time – just slowly fading out, forgotten, and by the time somebody realizes that nobody put the fundamentals down to paper, it’ll already be too late.
Another library of Alexandria is lost, every day, for the rest of time, forever.
Somehow, Sonic Team remains incapable of emulating the movement of either Sonic Adventure. It eludes them even now.
In a series where increasingly chaotic galaxy-ending terrors converge on an anthropomorphic hedgehog who has the ability to go Super Saiyan, with each entry escalating in scope, ambition, and performance – the ease of basic movement remains a foreign concept.
The sewers are overflowing with noxious waste. Vile, repugnant sludge. The streets are drowned in garbage. Your home is sinking into bedrock. It’s always been like this.
I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
I remember gliding between the stony mountaintops, scaling the rocky pumpkin obelisks, evading ghosts, chasing oscillating signals of the shattered Emerald. It’s closer…
I remember the sunset skybox. I remember the JPEG artifacts eating the edges of the stony pumpkin mountain faces like sweet fire. I remember the background music, looping around back to its first verse.
We finally got to play as Tails. There was catharsis, exhalation. Our baby boy could fly again. Another finger of the monkey’s paw curled inward.
Our opinions of the Final Horizon diverged much more around this point. Garrett was content to play these characters again, and I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
We traded the controller often. Sometimes one puzzle or platforming section was too difficult or obtuse and either of us would tap in while the other tapped out. Some platforming challenges were puzzles in and of themselves. Every time we died or found ourselves at an impasse, we’d give each other a look, or laugh out loud.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
“This is… uh,” I stammered, “this is… like, the next Sonic ‘06.” I said.
Garrett laughed, “Don’t say that.”
Neither of us hated Sonic ‘06, not like a lot of people do. Then again, it was our childhood. Our biases were impossible to avoid. I couldn’t shake the thought. This was the next Sonic ‘06, I thought to myself. For better or for worse.
When we finally assumed control of Sonic and the game directed us to our first (of five) towers, we hit a wall. Although Rhea Island was notorious for its long, perilous tower ascents, it was at least kind enough to provide checkpoints; as we struggled upwards, only to come crashing down once more, we realized there would be no checkpoints.
Sonic Frontiers had become Getting Over It.
Every time we came hurtling back down to earth, I’d start singing $uicideboy$.
One last pic and I’ll be gone
Make it count
Put the flash on
Never really felt like I belonged
So I’ll be on my way
And It won’t be long
We continued, swapped the controller between each other for each attempt, each time a little closer to heaven… nearly an hour later, we’d finally conquered the summit.
We did this, again, and again, and again, until we finally reached the fifth and final tower.
To be fully transparent, there is a lot to like about the Final Horizon. Beyond the novelty of being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy in 3D again for the first time in over a decade is an achievement, and praiseworthy on its own. Once I was comfortable with Sonic’s movement again, the towers were actually very engaging and memorable platforming challenges that I felt were deserving of their endgame difficulty. Lastly, the additional Cyberspace stages were also fun, much more challenging and interesting ideas with unique gimmicks for each stage – I only wished these were part of the main quest, and not relegated to completely optional content.
That being said, the experience of the final “trial” is probably the worst Sonic Frontiers has to offer. This penultimate boss rush might be the most cynical idea of difficulty I’ve seen in any Sonic game ever. The perfect parry mechanic retroactively cheapens these encounters by demanding frame-perfect timing, and ruins the spectacle by requiring mechanical mastery to proceed.
I’ve finished every Fromsoft Souls game (except for Sekiro) and there wasn’t a single one with parrying mechanics that were this demanding. For my first two attempts, I grappled with Giganto and attempted only to learn the parry timing; if Sonic loses one ring as Super Sonic each second, and the game only gives you 400 rings total for this encounter, that means a regular attempt will average around six-and-a-half minutes. During the thirteen minutes I attempted to learn Giganto’s parry window, I only managed to successfully parry him twice.
This is straight up not finished. Nobody playtested this. Almost every user I’ve seen discussing this boss rush has mentioned that dropping the difficulty down to Easy “fixes” the perfect parry (and it does) but this is not how difficulty should be designed. If almost every player can unanimously clear 99% of the game on the hardest difficulty, but can only progress at the eleventh hour by dropping the difficulty down to Easy, that’s a huge problem.
The new final boss is also marginally better than the older one, by default. This updated final battle features a beefier Super Sonic with blue eyes(!) and a new second phase for Supreme. It also features the absolute worst camera for any Sonic boss fight I’ve played, a brand new targeting mechanic that isn’t explained anywhere, and a cutscene that outright kills you if you don’t have enough rings.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
Rolling the final cutscene on the Final Horizon and watching Sonic launch himself through the image of an Eldritch God should’ve been an easy victory lap, but it wasn’t.
“We’re so fucking back,” for better or for worse.
Garrett and I and our friend Jordan (another longtime Sonic fan) were strapped for time as we watched the credits roll. It was 6:15pm. The concert started at 8. We were ready to leave before the credits had finished. I wore the hoodie I bought at the Sonic Speed popup cafe in San Diego. It was 7pm when we hit serious traffic a mile away from the Dolby Theatre.
Garrett and Jordan took turns adding songs to a growing playlist of Sonic OSTs. I sat in near-gridlock, frozen bumper-to-bumper in an ocean of automobiles. Jordan played E102’s theme from Sonic Adventure.
“This makes me feel an emotion that doesn’t exist,” he said.
My eyes glazed over in silent terror. It was 7:30pm. It was only a concert. I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal if we were late. I wanted death. Old habits made playthings of my emotions, paralyzed me. Old anxieties like nightmare tendrils, looming deadlines overhead – the hands of the clock a guillotine ready to drop. I bit my lip. I still wanted death.
Cars moved inches at a time, each red light another eternity. 7:45pm. We finally hit another artery, the lifeblood of the city flowed freely again, us along with it. I found the parking I reserved ahead of time after circling the area once. It’s 7:55pm.
We reached the Dolby Theatre at 8pm on the dot. The three of us walked inside the wide auditorium together as the final countdown began. We sat down. The lights dimmed. As the orchestra started playing, a wave of relief washed over me. We'd made it.
Watching the show, I had to appreciate the accompanying background montage which appeared on a massive monitor above the orchestra, as it highlighted the many flourishes and creative liberties of the performance. The music synchronized to Sonic as he took incoming damage in Labyrinth Zone, prompting audience laughter; or the dramatic flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone; or the first appearance of Metal Sonic in Collision Chaos and his eventual defeat in Stardust Speedway.
It was then I realized that Sonic’s greatest strength, as a series, was its many iconic moments. Not only the dramatic story beats, as in cutscenes, but its many instances of semi-interactive storytelling; as in the flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone, or running away from an Orca, or an oversized truck, or traversing an upside down castle.
After the intermission, however, was our main event. Not only what we’d been craving all night, but our entire lives.
I've been in love with this series for well over half my life now. When I was a kid, I always used to listen to Sonic the Hedgehog soundtracks. I thought Zebrahead’s His World was the rawest thing I’d ever listened to when I was thirteen. I listened to Crush 40 religiously, each vocal track another unforgettable experience – a story’s climactic end heralded by Johnny Gioeli’s radical vocals.
As the second act began and the first chords of Shadow the Hedgehog’s (I am) All of Me filled the Dolby Theatre, setting the crowd alight, I remembered why I fell in love with the series again.
I don’t even like Shadow the Hedgehog anymore, man. That game sucked!
However, what I’ve always loved was Shadow’s soundtrack –its dark, industrial sounds and heavy metal ethos seeped into every crack and crevice of its experience. When I was a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
So imagine the experience of seeing Crush 40 live, playing a song you’ve unconsciously memorized the lyrics to forever ago, backed by a full orchestra, in a room filled with Sonic fans screaming the lyrics alongside you.
I never thought I’d be here.
As a kid, I never thought I’d get to see Crush 40 live, and yet here they were. I’d fulfilled one of my oldest wishes. I was able to see Crush 40 live with my best friend.
Kellin Quinn made an appearance for the encore, and performed Break Through It All and Undefeatable. Better memories of Sonic Frontiers resurfaced.
For the final song, Johnny Gioeli joined Kellin Quinn for Live & Learn. Quinn provided backup vocals. Hearing him scream, “Hold on to what if?” cut deep into my soul.
The performance ended.
“Los Angeles,” Johnny addressed us, “we’ve made a beautiful memory here tonight.”
We made our exit shortly after. Garrett told me his only regret was not being able to attend the 3:30 showing as well. Rarely do we get to experience these moments twice.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog, and yet it was hard to not be disappointed by the Final Horizon.
What should’ve been a resounding triumph was neither an encore nor a reprise, but yet another new direction – an unwelcome challenge, a pale imitation of old glories. I was disappointed. But seeing Crush 40 live reminded me why I loved Sonic in the first place.
I’ll cherish these memories. They won’t always be perfect, but sometimes they are.
I know I’ll return to Sonic Frontiers again one day, but for now, yet another chapter of the blue blur’s legacy comes to a close.
In hindsight, I know that even if Sonic Frontiers ended up being poorly received, it wouldn’t kill Sonic. If Sonic ‘06 couldn’t kill Sonic, nothing can kill Sonic. Regardless of whichever new journey the hedgehog embarks on next, I know I’ll be there day one, eager to see what’s in store. After all, the adventure is never solely the end; the adventure ends up being the memories we take with us.
Playing through Sonic Frontiers for the first time, it was hard not to have a big, dumb smile on my face when Kellin Quinn’s vocals for Undefeatable or Break Through it All accentuated some of the series’ most spectacular boss fights in recent memory. I appreciated talking to Amy, Knuckles, and Tails, and having these characters feel like characters again, for the first time in a long time. I loved the melancholic story and desolate environments. Although they felt incongruous with the last decade of Sonic’s output, it felt like another bold step forward for Sonic Team, a new horizon, uncharted territory – starting nearly from scratch and reinventing Sonic’s movement yet again was a big gamble, and one that I felt paid off.
Sonic Frontiers was not a perfect Sonic game by any stretch of the imagination. For every triumph there was comparable failure: everything from the stripped down boost gameplay in Cyberspace stages, to the lackluster combat, to the abhorrent pop-in, and obviously much more I won’t discuss here. You’ve probably heard all this before.
Sonic Frontiers was and is not a perfect Sonic game, but if not a step in the right direction - it's at least a proper reorientation, a much-needed weaning from the over-streamlined boost formula from Sonic Forces, and a manifesto that Sonic Team could still, in fact, create a game that - even at its worst - pushed the series forward.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
I’ve loved Sonic the Hedgehog since I was a kid. I met my best friend, Garrett, sixteen years ago on YouTube through shared interest in Sonic the Hedgehog. We used to play Xbox Live together. He visited me for my high school graduation. We played through Sonic ‘06 the Summer of 2015. We still visit each other every year or so.
I took a short break from the series when I couldn’t finish Sonic Unleashed, and then jumped back in with Sonic Generations. I remembered why I loved these games to begin with.
Sonic Mania is my favorite game of all time.
When the Sonic Symphony World Tour show was announced in Los Angeles, I asked Garrett to visit me again. We both took a week off work.
This is the same week that Sonic Frontiers’ third and last update was released: the Final Horizon. We agreed to play through it together.
For the first time since Sonic ‘06, we were able to play as Amy Rose in 3D. Exploring Ouranos Island and coming to grips with Amy’s moveset was a joy, at first. She has a triple jump again! She can glide now! We ran into a mini-boss that killed us immediately.
“Let’s just ignore that one,” I told Garrett.
We realized our speed/ring/attack/defense stats had returned to Level One. Amy Rose was a clean slate. No upgrades. We were certainly in no condition to fight an endgame mini-boss.
We hit the story beats we needed to, then the game let us control Knuckles. This was a surprisingly emotional moment. Although it hadn’t been sixteen years since we’d controlled Knuckles, it felt like meeting an old friend.
“Oh, God,” Garrett groaned suddenly as he started to glide around the map.
“What’s wrong?”
He handed me the controller, “Feel this.”
I picked up the controller and started to glide as Knuckles. I understood what he’d meant. The windup was unusual. The turn radius was abysmal. The input delay was horrific.
“What the fuck?” I said out loud. It took a few more minutes before I put the above criticisms into words.
“Yeah,” Garrett laughed, summating, “it doesn’t feel good.”
We spent the most time as Knuckles and, subsequently, experienced two Starfall events, which have a chance to occur randomly each night cycle and allow players to (essentially) farm Koco to upgrade their character’s stats.
The Final Horizon wants to have its cake and eat it, too. Multiple playable characters necessitate a highly varied moveset for each, but to balance it properly, any upgrade materials earned as Sonic do NOT carry over to other characters. Amy, Knuckles, and Tails have their own upgrade materials, their own upgrade trees, their own level progression. HOWEVER, the new Ouranos Island is built in such a way that every character must have a Cyloop ability, and each character must unlock their respective Cyloop ability using their upgrade tree, which requires exploring Ouranos Island and earning enough upgrade points to unlock the Cyloop ability for each character in the first place, so they can explore the island even more and, eventually, complete their main objectives.
It feels unusual, however, to block progression in such a way as to force players to upgrade their characters here. In the base game, Sonic learns new attacks through his skill tree, but none of these are essential to making progress (except for the Cyloop, which is the first ability that Sonic unlocks anyway).
Here, having to use the skill tree to unlock basic abilities for characters like “melee attack” and “parry” that were already regular abilities for Sonic feels arbitrary. It’s not like it takes too long to unlock these abilities anyways, players need only find two or three special Koco to obtain these abilities, but it feels unnecessary.
It’s disappointing. I play with Knuckles for a certain amount of time and learn that he can only climb on certain surfaces, so as to keep the game balance intact. It makes sense, but it doesn’t cushion the blow any. I discovered a challenge that requires Knuckles’ ability to latch onto walls and climb. A cannonball hits me and I fall to my death. I try again. A cannonball hits me. I try to recover and latch onto the wall, but Knuckles doesn’t respond. I fall to my death. I try again.
I remember playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on my Nintendo Wii. The year is probably 2007 or 2008. I remember playing through the Hero Story for the first time and finally being able to play as Knuckles. I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
You know me, the fighting freak Knuckles, and we’re at pumpkin hill. You ready?
Nostalgia is a potent drug, strong enough to trick us into believing that even the most unremarkable chapters of our lives are golden, perfect snapshots. Only when we return to these chapters, we find reality is oftentimes much less kind than our memories tend to be.
I’ve replayed almost every mainline Sonic game countless times. I know that I love Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 in spite of their flaws.
I know that I love the sensation of gliding through the air as Knuckles, the pure joy of nose-diving in rapid circles, of sticking to each and every surface, of burrowing underground to find hidden treasure. Rats. I know that I love playing as Knuckles. I know that I was disappointed when I played as Knuckles in Sonic Frontiers because it wasn’t the Knuckles I remembered. It wasn’t the Knuckles I fell in love with.
“You’d think they would’ve figured this out by now,” I said to Garrett, mostly out of frustration after another cheap death, “it’s like… I’m thinking about, like, sewers.”
He didn’t know what I meant by that. I tried to explain it and probably ended up sounding like a doofus – completely unintelligible.
“I’m sure there are people who know how to make sewers, and maintain them,” I waffled around the point I was trying to make, “but, you know, I’m not sure that we know how to make them.”
“What?”
“Like, you don’t think about this? That making sewers isn't common knowledge?”
“What are you talking about?”
“How many people know how to make sewers? How many people will know how to make sewers? Imagine everyone who knows how sewers work – one day, they all die, and nobody wrote it down. Like, imagine it’s all tribal knowledge, or something.”
What I meant is that I’m worried. I have so much anxiety about the future. Sometimes I’m worried that nobody is worrying enough. There are entire lexicons, pillars of society, professions, sectors, that will be lost to time – just slowly fading out, forgotten, and by the time somebody realizes that nobody put the fundamentals down to paper, it’ll already be too late.
Another library of Alexandria is lost, every day, for the rest of time, forever.
Somehow, Sonic Team remains incapable of emulating the movement of either Sonic Adventure. It eludes them even now.
In a series where increasingly chaotic galaxy-ending terrors converge on an anthropomorphic hedgehog who has the ability to go Super Saiyan, with each entry escalating in scope, ambition, and performance – the ease of basic movement remains a foreign concept.
The sewers are overflowing with noxious waste. Vile, repugnant sludge. The streets are drowned in garbage. Your home is sinking into bedrock. It’s always been like this.
I remember Knuckles’ second level: Pumpkin Hill.
I remember gliding between the stony mountaintops, scaling the rocky pumpkin obelisks, evading ghosts, chasing oscillating signals of the shattered Emerald. It’s closer…
I remember the sunset skybox. I remember the JPEG artifacts eating the edges of the stony pumpkin mountain faces like sweet fire. I remember the background music, looping around back to its first verse.
We finally got to play as Tails. There was catharsis, exhalation. Our baby boy could fly again. Another finger of the monkey’s paw curled inward.
Our opinions of the Final Horizon diverged much more around this point. Garrett was content to play these characters again, and I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
We traded the controller often. Sometimes one puzzle or platforming section was too difficult or obtuse and either of us would tap in while the other tapped out. Some platforming challenges were puzzles in and of themselves. Every time we died or found ourselves at an impasse, we’d give each other a look, or laugh out loud.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
“This is… uh,” I stammered, “this is… like, the next Sonic ‘06.” I said.
Garrett laughed, “Don’t say that.”
Neither of us hated Sonic ‘06, not like a lot of people do. Then again, it was our childhood. Our biases were impossible to avoid. I couldn’t shake the thought. This was the next Sonic ‘06, I thought to myself. For better or for worse.
When we finally assumed control of Sonic and the game directed us to our first (of five) towers, we hit a wall. Although Rhea Island was notorious for its long, perilous tower ascents, it was at least kind enough to provide checkpoints; as we struggled upwards, only to come crashing down once more, we realized there would be no checkpoints.
Sonic Frontiers had become Getting Over It.
Every time we came hurtling back down to earth, I’d start singing $uicideboy$.
One last pic and I’ll be gone
Make it count
Put the flash on
Never really felt like I belonged
So I’ll be on my way
And It won’t be long
We continued, swapped the controller between each other for each attempt, each time a little closer to heaven… nearly an hour later, we’d finally conquered the summit.
We did this, again, and again, and again, until we finally reached the fifth and final tower.
To be fully transparent, there is a lot to like about the Final Horizon. Beyond the novelty of being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy in 3D again for the first time in over a decade is an achievement, and praiseworthy on its own. Once I was comfortable with Sonic’s movement again, the towers were actually very engaging and memorable platforming challenges that I felt were deserving of their endgame difficulty. Lastly, the additional Cyberspace stages were also fun, much more challenging and interesting ideas with unique gimmicks for each stage – I only wished these were part of the main quest, and not relegated to completely optional content.
That being said, the experience of the final “trial” is probably the worst Sonic Frontiers has to offer. This penultimate boss rush might be the most cynical idea of difficulty I’ve seen in any Sonic game ever. The perfect parry mechanic retroactively cheapens these encounters by demanding frame-perfect timing, and ruins the spectacle by requiring mechanical mastery to proceed.
I’ve finished every Fromsoft Souls game (except for Sekiro) and there wasn’t a single one with parrying mechanics that were this demanding. For my first two attempts, I grappled with Giganto and attempted only to learn the parry timing; if Sonic loses one ring as Super Sonic each second, and the game only gives you 400 rings total for this encounter, that means a regular attempt will average around six-and-a-half minutes. During the thirteen minutes I attempted to learn Giganto’s parry window, I only managed to successfully parry him twice.
This is straight up not finished. Nobody playtested this. Almost every user I’ve seen discussing this boss rush has mentioned that dropping the difficulty down to Easy “fixes” the perfect parry (and it does) but this is not how difficulty should be designed. If almost every player can unanimously clear 99% of the game on the hardest difficulty, but can only progress at the eleventh hour by dropping the difficulty down to Easy, that’s a huge problem.
The new final boss is also marginally better than the older one, by default. This updated final battle features a beefier Super Sonic with blue eyes(!) and a new second phase for Supreme. It also features the absolute worst camera for any Sonic boss fight I’ve played, a brand new targeting mechanic that isn’t explained anywhere, and a cutscene that outright kills you if you don’t have enough rings.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog.
Rolling the final cutscene on the Final Horizon and watching Sonic launch himself through the image of an Eldritch God should’ve been an easy victory lap, but it wasn’t.
“We’re so fucking back,” for better or for worse.
Garrett and I and our friend Jordan (another longtime Sonic fan) were strapped for time as we watched the credits roll. It was 6:15pm. The concert started at 8. We were ready to leave before the credits had finished. I wore the hoodie I bought at the Sonic Speed popup cafe in San Diego. It was 7pm when we hit serious traffic a mile away from the Dolby Theatre.
Garrett and Jordan took turns adding songs to a growing playlist of Sonic OSTs. I sat in near-gridlock, frozen bumper-to-bumper in an ocean of automobiles. Jordan played E102’s theme from Sonic Adventure.
“This makes me feel an emotion that doesn’t exist,” he said.
My eyes glazed over in silent terror. It was 7:30pm. It was only a concert. I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal if we were late. I wanted death. Old habits made playthings of my emotions, paralyzed me. Old anxieties like nightmare tendrils, looming deadlines overhead – the hands of the clock a guillotine ready to drop. I bit my lip. I still wanted death.
Cars moved inches at a time, each red light another eternity. 7:45pm. We finally hit another artery, the lifeblood of the city flowed freely again, us along with it. I found the parking I reserved ahead of time after circling the area once. It’s 7:55pm.
We reached the Dolby Theatre at 8pm on the dot. The three of us walked inside the wide auditorium together as the final countdown began. We sat down. The lights dimmed. As the orchestra started playing, a wave of relief washed over me. We'd made it.
Watching the show, I had to appreciate the accompanying background montage which appeared on a massive monitor above the orchestra, as it highlighted the many flourishes and creative liberties of the performance. The music synchronized to Sonic as he took incoming damage in Labyrinth Zone, prompting audience laughter; or the dramatic flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone; or the first appearance of Metal Sonic in Collision Chaos and his eventual defeat in Stardust Speedway.
It was then I realized that Sonic’s greatest strength, as a series, was its many iconic moments. Not only the dramatic story beats, as in cutscenes, but its many instances of semi-interactive storytelling; as in the flooding sequence in Chemical Plant Zone, or running away from an Orca, or an oversized truck, or traversing an upside down castle.
After the intermission, however, was our main event. Not only what we’d been craving all night, but our entire lives.
I've been in love with this series for well over half my life now. When I was a kid, I always used to listen to Sonic the Hedgehog soundtracks. I thought Zebrahead’s His World was the rawest thing I’d ever listened to when I was thirteen. I listened to Crush 40 religiously, each vocal track another unforgettable experience – a story’s climactic end heralded by Johnny Gioeli’s radical vocals.
As the second act began and the first chords of Shadow the Hedgehog’s (I am) All of Me filled the Dolby Theatre, setting the crowd alight, I remembered why I fell in love with the series again.
I don’t even like Shadow the Hedgehog anymore, man. That game sucked!
However, what I’ve always loved was Shadow’s soundtrack –its dark, industrial sounds and heavy metal ethos seeped into every crack and crevice of its experience. When I was a kid, I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
So imagine the experience of seeing Crush 40 live, playing a song you’ve unconsciously memorized the lyrics to forever ago, backed by a full orchestra, in a room filled with Sonic fans screaming the lyrics alongside you.
I never thought I’d be here.
As a kid, I never thought I’d get to see Crush 40 live, and yet here they were. I’d fulfilled one of my oldest wishes. I was able to see Crush 40 live with my best friend.
Kellin Quinn made an appearance for the encore, and performed Break Through It All and Undefeatable. Better memories of Sonic Frontiers resurfaced.
For the final song, Johnny Gioeli joined Kellin Quinn for Live & Learn. Quinn provided backup vocals. Hearing him scream, “Hold on to what if?” cut deep into my soul.
The performance ended.
“Los Angeles,” Johnny addressed us, “we’ve made a beautiful memory here tonight.”
We made our exit shortly after. Garrett told me his only regret was not being able to attend the 3:30 showing as well. Rarely do we get to experience these moments twice.
I love Sonic the Hedgehog, and yet it was hard to not be disappointed by the Final Horizon.
What should’ve been a resounding triumph was neither an encore nor a reprise, but yet another new direction – an unwelcome challenge, a pale imitation of old glories. I was disappointed. But seeing Crush 40 live reminded me why I loved Sonic in the first place.
I’ll cherish these memories. They won’t always be perfect, but sometimes they are.
I know I’ll return to Sonic Frontiers again one day, but for now, yet another chapter of the blue blur’s legacy comes to a close.
In hindsight, I know that even if Sonic Frontiers ended up being poorly received, it wouldn’t kill Sonic. If Sonic ‘06 couldn’t kill Sonic, nothing can kill Sonic. Regardless of whichever new journey the hedgehog embarks on next, I know I’ll be there day one, eager to see what’s in store. After all, the adventure is never solely the end; the adventure ends up being the memories we take with us.
Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon is Sonic at its most unhinged. Ranging from excitement, to frustration, this feels like an experience that I can't help, but admire, despite having a dislike for the direction it takes as well. Something about how bonkers the level design gets got a thrill out of me and it's genuinely nice to have more playable characters again, especially Amy. While, I don't think I want to play a Sonic game that pushes me to my limit like this, there's a sense of satisfaction that came from overcoming it all. It punches above its weight as the main game did, but to an utterly insane degree. With all that fucking build up, I wanted the finale to blow my damn mind and yeah, it had me in tears too. I love this beautiful mess...
DK64: Prepare To Die Edition
this update finally answers my biggest question
what if sonic frontiers was dogshit?
thank you sonic team!
what if sonic frontiers was dogshit?
thank you sonic team!
After finishing Sonic Frontiers, I was ready to back up over it, peel out, and leave it in the rear-view. I was done, I was out, I had no obligation to play its insipid DLC much less touch the case, except to move it out of the way for RoboCop: Rogue City, a proper damn video game.
But The Final Horizon, Sonic Frontiers' free story DLC, is a strange thing. Complaints about its difficulty and lackluster implementation of Sonic's friends, who hasn't been playable since Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), are common despite its current 3.0 average. Video guides often depict gameplay set to easy mode, and the first walkthrough I pulled up for the Master Koco Trial - an apparently common point of frustration - leads by calling it "unfairly difficult". I know what you're thinking, Sonic Team fumbling the ball? How could that be!
All this has left me with a nagging curiosity, a growing itch on my back that can only be satisfied by reinstalling Sonic Frontiers and experiencing The Final Horizon first hand. I'm a weak man, a cowardly little creature, and so I found myself sitting in front of Sonic Frontiers' title screen, basking in its stupid weepy music yet again.
Before getting into The Final Horizon, let's briefly talk about the state of Sonic Frontiers a year out from release. Loading up the game hits you with a barrage of notifications about what's changed, including adjustable sliders for speed (as always, sliders go to the right), other little tweaks, and the inclusion of birthday bonuses. I'm not a fan of how obtrusive the birthday UI is, but I do like that you can run around and collect tracks from past Sonic games to put into a playlist. Being able to listen to Palmtree Panic instead of the forgettable noise that comprises Frontiers' soundtrack is a marked improvement, and it's nice that I can put on the theme to the Mystic Ruins considering this game still has the pop-in of a Dreamcast title.
Poor draw distancing was already a major problem in the base game, severely impacting the readability of the open zones and often requiring the player to slowly trace geometry as it draws in. The problem only becomes worse in The Final Horizon as Tails, Amy, and Knuckles are all built around verticality, resulting in objective markers being placed far higher or further outside the island's bounds. This clip of me staring at an objective hovering over the middle of the fucking ocean is a perfect distillation of the Frontiers experience, a riddle solved only by remembering what game you're playing.
I don't care much for Donkey Kong 64's roundabout level design and segmentation of collectables and have been told this might pre-dispose me against collectathons. Well maybe there's a nugget of truth there, because The Final Horizon veers into DK64 territory, segmenting its collectables between Sonic's friends, resulting in the player frequently running by color-coded Koco that cannot be interacted with unless you're playing as the corresponding character, who until the end game is likely locked for story reasons. If anything, I think The Final Horizon should've gone whole hog here, litter the environment with color-coded rings, I might respect it more. Not enough non-euclidian design here, if you ask me!
Sonic's friends just aren't fun to play as, either. Tails' flight, Knuckles' glide, and Amy's Tarot Card Goobercycle all have an initiation delay that makes them feel lousy to jump into, and I don't even know what Amy's cycle is meant to offer considering her faster spindash makes it redundant. Knuckles' climbing feels like maneuvering a tank as 'forward' inputs only seem to register in the direction the camera is facing, resulting in him feeling about as awkward to control as he was in Sonic 2006; his glide is incredibly stiff to the point of near uselessness, too. I am not kidding when I say all of these characters played better in Sonic Adventure, though you can make use of some of their abilities to bypass platforming sections to great effect. I'd usually claw my way up to a collectable and then find that I was high enough to simply fly, glide, or hover-jump over to one or two more without needing to actually platform my way through another obstacle course, and frankly I see that as a positive.
In fact, Final Horizon does address a pretty big complaint I had about the base game automating too many of its platforming sequences. The training wheels have been completely blown off the bike - along with my legs - and this is kind of a double-edged sword. You have to actually engage with the game now, and I think that's where a lot of the perceived difficulty is coming from, especially with the trial towers. Sonic fans being asked to actually play their game instead of drinking in the spectacle as it's played for them, you love to see it happen.
Not that my snide, cynical take should rob anyone of their criticisms about Final Horizon's difficulty, but I think the root of the problem is that Sonic just doesn't control well and is unsuited to platforming in an environment that isn't open or which requires precision. There's a reason Sonic Team chose to affix the player and guide them through platforming challenges, and I believe Final Horizon lays bare why.
I didn't have any trouble with the combat trials and in fact found them to be absurdly easy even on hard mode, but the Master Koco Trial is one of the worst boss rushes I've ever played. I didn't get into it much in my review of the base game, but I think Super Sonic fights are usually the weakest part of any Sonic title, and the fact that all of Frontiers' major bosses are modeled as such made me despise them. So needing to go through them back-to-back, platforming sequences, unskippable cutscenes and all, was just tiresome. You need to perfect parry each boss and trap them in a stunlock using your cyloop which kinda feels like not the way you're supposed to defeat them, but it's certainly the most efficient method. Shoutouts to Knight killing me during the final quick time event because a tiny part of my thumb barely touched the X button enough to register an input, and that's an auto-fail for the entire boss rush. Very cool!
It was about at this point I started to wish Sonic was a Konami franchise, because at least they would've demoted Iizuka to parking attendant years ago.
All of this culminates in a bare-knuckle battle against Sonic's longest, greatest, most deadly adversary: an uncooperative 3D camera. I love to spend the majority of a boss fight requiring perfect parries stuck behind Super Mario 64 trees. At least you get a new Super Sonic form, despite Iizuka refusing to so much as utter the words "Hyper Sonic" in fear that he'd somehow introduce "power creep" to the series, which you might note is literally an insane thing to believe. Mr. Egg Person does finally get a happy ending as he's reunited with his precious daughter, a note that is entirely too sentimental and undeserved for his character. This is a man whose previous years long diabolical plan was to build an amusement park. But, you know, like an evil amusement park, which is bad. I think if Ian Flynn writes hoaky tripe like this regularly then he's just as poor at what he does as Ken Penders, albeit less interestingly so.
I remember people saying that Sonic Frontiers may have issues but it laid out a promising groundwork for things to come. I also remember questioning the wisdom in that and guess what, they followed it up with this.
But The Final Horizon, Sonic Frontiers' free story DLC, is a strange thing. Complaints about its difficulty and lackluster implementation of Sonic's friends, who hasn't been playable since Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), are common despite its current 3.0 average. Video guides often depict gameplay set to easy mode, and the first walkthrough I pulled up for the Master Koco Trial - an apparently common point of frustration - leads by calling it "unfairly difficult". I know what you're thinking, Sonic Team fumbling the ball? How could that be!
All this has left me with a nagging curiosity, a growing itch on my back that can only be satisfied by reinstalling Sonic Frontiers and experiencing The Final Horizon first hand. I'm a weak man, a cowardly little creature, and so I found myself sitting in front of Sonic Frontiers' title screen, basking in its stupid weepy music yet again.
Before getting into The Final Horizon, let's briefly talk about the state of Sonic Frontiers a year out from release. Loading up the game hits you with a barrage of notifications about what's changed, including adjustable sliders for speed (as always, sliders go to the right), other little tweaks, and the inclusion of birthday bonuses. I'm not a fan of how obtrusive the birthday UI is, but I do like that you can run around and collect tracks from past Sonic games to put into a playlist. Being able to listen to Palmtree Panic instead of the forgettable noise that comprises Frontiers' soundtrack is a marked improvement, and it's nice that I can put on the theme to the Mystic Ruins considering this game still has the pop-in of a Dreamcast title.
Poor draw distancing was already a major problem in the base game, severely impacting the readability of the open zones and often requiring the player to slowly trace geometry as it draws in. The problem only becomes worse in The Final Horizon as Tails, Amy, and Knuckles are all built around verticality, resulting in objective markers being placed far higher or further outside the island's bounds. This clip of me staring at an objective hovering over the middle of the fucking ocean is a perfect distillation of the Frontiers experience, a riddle solved only by remembering what game you're playing.
I don't care much for Donkey Kong 64's roundabout level design and segmentation of collectables and have been told this might pre-dispose me against collectathons. Well maybe there's a nugget of truth there, because The Final Horizon veers into DK64 territory, segmenting its collectables between Sonic's friends, resulting in the player frequently running by color-coded Koco that cannot be interacted with unless you're playing as the corresponding character, who until the end game is likely locked for story reasons. If anything, I think The Final Horizon should've gone whole hog here, litter the environment with color-coded rings, I might respect it more. Not enough non-euclidian design here, if you ask me!
Sonic's friends just aren't fun to play as, either. Tails' flight, Knuckles' glide, and Amy's Tarot Card Goobercycle all have an initiation delay that makes them feel lousy to jump into, and I don't even know what Amy's cycle is meant to offer considering her faster spindash makes it redundant. Knuckles' climbing feels like maneuvering a tank as 'forward' inputs only seem to register in the direction the camera is facing, resulting in him feeling about as awkward to control as he was in Sonic 2006; his glide is incredibly stiff to the point of near uselessness, too. I am not kidding when I say all of these characters played better in Sonic Adventure, though you can make use of some of their abilities to bypass platforming sections to great effect. I'd usually claw my way up to a collectable and then find that I was high enough to simply fly, glide, or hover-jump over to one or two more without needing to actually platform my way through another obstacle course, and frankly I see that as a positive.
In fact, Final Horizon does address a pretty big complaint I had about the base game automating too many of its platforming sequences. The training wheels have been completely blown off the bike - along with my legs - and this is kind of a double-edged sword. You have to actually engage with the game now, and I think that's where a lot of the perceived difficulty is coming from, especially with the trial towers. Sonic fans being asked to actually play their game instead of drinking in the spectacle as it's played for them, you love to see it happen.
Not that my snide, cynical take should rob anyone of their criticisms about Final Horizon's difficulty, but I think the root of the problem is that Sonic just doesn't control well and is unsuited to platforming in an environment that isn't open or which requires precision. There's a reason Sonic Team chose to affix the player and guide them through platforming challenges, and I believe Final Horizon lays bare why.
I didn't have any trouble with the combat trials and in fact found them to be absurdly easy even on hard mode, but the Master Koco Trial is one of the worst boss rushes I've ever played. I didn't get into it much in my review of the base game, but I think Super Sonic fights are usually the weakest part of any Sonic title, and the fact that all of Frontiers' major bosses are modeled as such made me despise them. So needing to go through them back-to-back, platforming sequences, unskippable cutscenes and all, was just tiresome. You need to perfect parry each boss and trap them in a stunlock using your cyloop which kinda feels like not the way you're supposed to defeat them, but it's certainly the most efficient method. Shoutouts to Knight killing me during the final quick time event because a tiny part of my thumb barely touched the X button enough to register an input, and that's an auto-fail for the entire boss rush. Very cool!
It was about at this point I started to wish Sonic was a Konami franchise, because at least they would've demoted Iizuka to parking attendant years ago.
All of this culminates in a bare-knuckle battle against Sonic's longest, greatest, most deadly adversary: an uncooperative 3D camera. I love to spend the majority of a boss fight requiring perfect parries stuck behind Super Mario 64 trees. At least you get a new Super Sonic form, despite Iizuka refusing to so much as utter the words "Hyper Sonic" in fear that he'd somehow introduce "power creep" to the series, which you might note is literally an insane thing to believe. Mr. Egg Person does finally get a happy ending as he's reunited with his precious daughter, a note that is entirely too sentimental and undeserved for his character. This is a man whose previous years long diabolical plan was to build an amusement park. But, you know, like an evil amusement park, which is bad. I think if Ian Flynn writes hoaky tripe like this regularly then he's just as poor at what he does as Ken Penders, albeit less interestingly so.
I remember people saying that Sonic Frontiers may have issues but it laid out a promising groundwork for things to come. I also remember questioning the wisdom in that and guess what, they followed it up with this.
Sonic Frontiers was a game I came away from in 2022 feeling pretty good on, all things considered. Maybe it was a combination of losing my job and being in the process of being massively let down by Bayonetta 3 within a short span of time before release that helped soften my viewpoint on it, but in spite of all its issues; from pop-in, a mediocre at best combat system and clumsy Cyberspace stages, I was overall feeling pretty optimistic about the series going forward; something I haven't felt since Sonic Generations, 11 years(!) prior.
So, the game getting a steady string of additional content, completely free of charge, was an incredibly nice surprise, with the final update promising new story, and playable characters. That's the one that caught everybody's eyes, marking the first time someone other than Sonic has been playable in a 3D title since Sonic 06, over 15 years ago. On top of that, it also meant the chance to fix the game's clearly rushed and limp conclusion, so this was only looking to be a net positive for the game on the whole. I was going in expecting that it'd be the push Sonic Frontiers needed to jump from a 7 to an 8.
If the already dry finale of the game was outright replaced by this, in a similar vein to the reworked Metal Sonic fight in Sonic Mania, I'd retroactively drop Sonic Frontiers' score to a 5, maybe even lower.
But let's start with the positives! We do, in fact, have Amy, Knuckles and Tails playable again in full 3D, and they're generally pretty fun! Being able to glide along massive swafts of the overworld as Knuckles is something I thought of from the day Frontiers launched, so seeing it become a reality is really nice, despite the second long delay on every single instance of activation. There's some fun movement options to be had with each cast member, they all have unique puzzles littered throughout the environment, and there's a fair bit to grab from each of their skill trees. The trio all play a bit similarly, but there's some fun to be had, especially with Tails' ability to get the Tornado Walker from SA2.
Honestly, my biggest issues come from the fact that the main campaign just doesn't give you nearly enough time with them. The game's constantly swapping you off of each of them after only a few story beats, forbidding you from swapping freely until the very tail end, and the game's upgrade system gets completely flipped around so levelling the cast up is way more of a slog. I was hoping that it'd just carry over the EXP you had as Sonic, but you're flat zero from the jump and have to find a specific Koco to earn your EXP in what feels like a pointless extra step. The map's also not full out at all by default, meaning that all three of the cast were sat on a whopping level 1 power and defence from beginning to end, because I had no idea where the fucking Koco to upgrade them was. Shame, but what's here is generally pretty alright, aside from the fact you need to unlock the Cyloop and basic melee attack option for every character for some insane reason. I also yearn to play the whole cast in the rest of the game's islands and the Cyberspace stages, because them being locked to the singular island provided feels so limiting, but it wouldn't be a Sonic game if I didn't have that "Maybe next time..." thought in my head.
And in the most bass-ackwards way possible, the Cyberspace stages ended up being a genuine highlight! Didn't wind up uncovering all of them, but from those I played, they're all original levels (design wise, aesthetically we're still on Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary and recoloured Speed Highway tile sets), and they're really fun challenges. Having the spin dash unlocked from the offset makes for a lot of fun speedrun skip opportunities, and while these aren't on the same level as a really good Unleashed, Colours, or Generations stage... these are good enough for now. Some weird level design, but they feel like the Unleashed DLC in terms of being designed to push players to the limits. They're also clearly designed more around using the spin dash, and one of them even gives you the traditional boost, allowing you to plow through enemies. That stage is probably the single best to come out of Cyberspace's entire catalogue, for my money.
Though, the challenges genuinely gave me PTSD to the nightmare hellscape of platinuming Sonic Forces, with the inclusion of moon rings and numbered rings, and some of the stages have you racing a holographic Tails to serve as a glorified staff ghost. Kind of a weird shakeup from the original Cyberspace stages, and most of them feel at odds with the designs therein, but having a super tough staff ghost in a Sonic game is something I can jive with.
But then you get to the real trials and tribulations of the environmental puzzles. There's some annoying ones throughout the new cast members, with one particular section as Tails walling me off for an hour because I didn't have his weird cyloop projectile upgrade. The earliest one I ran into with Knuckles, involving laser grids mere inches apart, and bullets that send you meteoring down into a bottomless pit, requires his Cyloop punch upgrade, and I'm sure plenty of other players have had similar instances of trying to circumvent the challenge for minutes at a time to no avail.
But the absolute worst is when the game throws you back in control of Sonic, and asks you to repeat the Rhea Island tower climbing if it was designed to be babby's first kaizo Mario 64 rom hack. From this point on, Sonic Frontiers' difficulty spikes like the dev team were having a bad day and one guy took people criticising the game for being too easy way, way too close to heart. Some genuinely tense platforming that's absolutely undermined by horrible design. Ever wanted to Cyloop on a one square big platform while avoiding two boost pads that'll send you flying off? How about having to fling the camera around mid jump in order to see where you're going, or making incredibly tight jumps onto rails? No? Too bad! Activating easy mode adds a few bandaids over a shotgun wound, by sprinkling a few balloons throughout, but it's also worth noting that a few homing attack points don't respawn if you fall, so it sure is a matter of one step forward and another step back.
And then there's the challenges on the top of each tower, brief combat encounters where Sonic is set to Level 1 and you need to handle fights in specific ways. Half of them are just basic punch-ups with regular Guardians, and the others are incredibly annoying, especially the encounter with the game's ever frustrating shielded enemies. And THEN the game tells you to go fuck yourself, having you fight Giganto, Wyvern and Knight, one after another, from climbing sequence to climax, with Sonic's stats all at level 1, so you do chip damage and only hold 400 rings. Oh, and you get zero rings between fights, and the game decides to only just now change the parry to be a traditional parry, rather than the "Hold forever and win" that anyone who's played the game would've grown accustomed to. A huge middle finger to balancing, and I'd genuinely be shocked if it was playtested at all.
I know you're probably thinking something along the lines of, "Oh, so it sucks because it's hard, then?", and no, that's not what I'm saying at all. Plenty of my favourite games of all time provide a good challenge, but it's a matter of balancing a scaling difficulty. Sonic Frontiers' entire main campaign is a brisk jog; I don't doubt many people found it too easy, but I don't mind an easy time as long as the game is fun. The Final Horizon's an incredibly obnoxious difficulty spike in its current state. It's not a fun challenge that makes you satisfied upon completing it, it's a constant stream of unfun bullshit, and one that I almost feel like the devs are going to have to address ASAP if they want any attempt at salvaging this entire expansion.
The final boss isn't worth all the hassle, either, with an incredibly asinine series of conditions to be met mid-fight, lest you be locked into a constant loop of the bastard healing his entire health bar. I had to actively consult the internet partway through, because the game goes about blocking your progression in incredibly aggrivating ways. One of which involves hitting RB, a button entirely reserved for Sonic quickly moving to the right, to target a separate part of the boss's body, which the game makes zero attempt to inform you of in any capacity, in order to stop him infinitely healing. Combined with constant camera issues throughout plaguing the entire battle, it's almost depressing how badly the climax fails on a gameplay front. And it stinks, because there's some genuinely hype moments! I don't know if I got off lucky or not, but some of the music synced absolutely perfectly with some of the cutscenes, and the climax would've had me losing my shit with hype if it weren't for the depressingly flat gameplay that accompanied it absolutely draining my hype to the point I couldn't even muster a smile.
The worst thing I can say about Final Horizon is that it brings out the worst of Sonic Frontiers, so far out of the honeymoon phase at that. The combat and traversal are both at their absolute worst, and that's the exact opposite of how it should be. It absolutely sucks that this is the note Sonic Frontiers has to go out on, at least for the foreseeable future. Maybe they'll patch it up in a week to be less bullshit, and Kishimoto will make a public apology for everything, but for right now? This is one of the biggest letdowns of the whole year for me, and that's including losing a job I was just getting to enjoy after only 3 days of working there. But, would it really be a Sonic hype cycle without a smattering of disappointment somewhere? Sonic Superstars launches in just about 2 weeks. God, I hope it'll be a nice helping of mouthwash after this and Origins Plus.
Also shoutouts to Sega for conveniently killing off Hyenas, that weird ass hero shooter, and laying off a ton of their staff on the same day this released. Real classy, this is the kind of shit people joke about Nintendo doing all the time, but you don't see anyone kicking in Sega's door about it.
So, the game getting a steady string of additional content, completely free of charge, was an incredibly nice surprise, with the final update promising new story, and playable characters. That's the one that caught everybody's eyes, marking the first time someone other than Sonic has been playable in a 3D title since Sonic 06, over 15 years ago. On top of that, it also meant the chance to fix the game's clearly rushed and limp conclusion, so this was only looking to be a net positive for the game on the whole. I was going in expecting that it'd be the push Sonic Frontiers needed to jump from a 7 to an 8.
If the already dry finale of the game was outright replaced by this, in a similar vein to the reworked Metal Sonic fight in Sonic Mania, I'd retroactively drop Sonic Frontiers' score to a 5, maybe even lower.
But let's start with the positives! We do, in fact, have Amy, Knuckles and Tails playable again in full 3D, and they're generally pretty fun! Being able to glide along massive swafts of the overworld as Knuckles is something I thought of from the day Frontiers launched, so seeing it become a reality is really nice, despite the second long delay on every single instance of activation. There's some fun movement options to be had with each cast member, they all have unique puzzles littered throughout the environment, and there's a fair bit to grab from each of their skill trees. The trio all play a bit similarly, but there's some fun to be had, especially with Tails' ability to get the Tornado Walker from SA2.
Honestly, my biggest issues come from the fact that the main campaign just doesn't give you nearly enough time with them. The game's constantly swapping you off of each of them after only a few story beats, forbidding you from swapping freely until the very tail end, and the game's upgrade system gets completely flipped around so levelling the cast up is way more of a slog. I was hoping that it'd just carry over the EXP you had as Sonic, but you're flat zero from the jump and have to find a specific Koco to earn your EXP in what feels like a pointless extra step. The map's also not full out at all by default, meaning that all three of the cast were sat on a whopping level 1 power and defence from beginning to end, because I had no idea where the fucking Koco to upgrade them was. Shame, but what's here is generally pretty alright, aside from the fact you need to unlock the Cyloop and basic melee attack option for every character for some insane reason. I also yearn to play the whole cast in the rest of the game's islands and the Cyberspace stages, because them being locked to the singular island provided feels so limiting, but it wouldn't be a Sonic game if I didn't have that "Maybe next time..." thought in my head.
And in the most bass-ackwards way possible, the Cyberspace stages ended up being a genuine highlight! Didn't wind up uncovering all of them, but from those I played, they're all original levels (design wise, aesthetically we're still on Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary and recoloured Speed Highway tile sets), and they're really fun challenges. Having the spin dash unlocked from the offset makes for a lot of fun speedrun skip opportunities, and while these aren't on the same level as a really good Unleashed, Colours, or Generations stage... these are good enough for now. Some weird level design, but they feel like the Unleashed DLC in terms of being designed to push players to the limits. They're also clearly designed more around using the spin dash, and one of them even gives you the traditional boost, allowing you to plow through enemies. That stage is probably the single best to come out of Cyberspace's entire catalogue, for my money.
Though, the challenges genuinely gave me PTSD to the nightmare hellscape of platinuming Sonic Forces, with the inclusion of moon rings and numbered rings, and some of the stages have you racing a holographic Tails to serve as a glorified staff ghost. Kind of a weird shakeup from the original Cyberspace stages, and most of them feel at odds with the designs therein, but having a super tough staff ghost in a Sonic game is something I can jive with.
But then you get to the real trials and tribulations of the environmental puzzles. There's some annoying ones throughout the new cast members, with one particular section as Tails walling me off for an hour because I didn't have his weird cyloop projectile upgrade. The earliest one I ran into with Knuckles, involving laser grids mere inches apart, and bullets that send you meteoring down into a bottomless pit, requires his Cyloop punch upgrade, and I'm sure plenty of other players have had similar instances of trying to circumvent the challenge for minutes at a time to no avail.
But the absolute worst is when the game throws you back in control of Sonic, and asks you to repeat the Rhea Island tower climbing if it was designed to be babby's first kaizo Mario 64 rom hack. From this point on, Sonic Frontiers' difficulty spikes like the dev team were having a bad day and one guy took people criticising the game for being too easy way, way too close to heart. Some genuinely tense platforming that's absolutely undermined by horrible design. Ever wanted to Cyloop on a one square big platform while avoiding two boost pads that'll send you flying off? How about having to fling the camera around mid jump in order to see where you're going, or making incredibly tight jumps onto rails? No? Too bad! Activating easy mode adds a few bandaids over a shotgun wound, by sprinkling a few balloons throughout, but it's also worth noting that a few homing attack points don't respawn if you fall, so it sure is a matter of one step forward and another step back.
And then there's the challenges on the top of each tower, brief combat encounters where Sonic is set to Level 1 and you need to handle fights in specific ways. Half of them are just basic punch-ups with regular Guardians, and the others are incredibly annoying, especially the encounter with the game's ever frustrating shielded enemies. And THEN the game tells you to go fuck yourself, having you fight Giganto, Wyvern and Knight, one after another, from climbing sequence to climax, with Sonic's stats all at level 1, so you do chip damage and only hold 400 rings. Oh, and you get zero rings between fights, and the game decides to only just now change the parry to be a traditional parry, rather than the "Hold forever and win" that anyone who's played the game would've grown accustomed to. A huge middle finger to balancing, and I'd genuinely be shocked if it was playtested at all.
I know you're probably thinking something along the lines of, "Oh, so it sucks because it's hard, then?", and no, that's not what I'm saying at all. Plenty of my favourite games of all time provide a good challenge, but it's a matter of balancing a scaling difficulty. Sonic Frontiers' entire main campaign is a brisk jog; I don't doubt many people found it too easy, but I don't mind an easy time as long as the game is fun. The Final Horizon's an incredibly obnoxious difficulty spike in its current state. It's not a fun challenge that makes you satisfied upon completing it, it's a constant stream of unfun bullshit, and one that I almost feel like the devs are going to have to address ASAP if they want any attempt at salvaging this entire expansion.
The final boss isn't worth all the hassle, either, with an incredibly asinine series of conditions to be met mid-fight, lest you be locked into a constant loop of the bastard healing his entire health bar. I had to actively consult the internet partway through, because the game goes about blocking your progression in incredibly aggrivating ways. One of which involves hitting RB, a button entirely reserved for Sonic quickly moving to the right, to target a separate part of the boss's body, which the game makes zero attempt to inform you of in any capacity, in order to stop him infinitely healing. Combined with constant camera issues throughout plaguing the entire battle, it's almost depressing how badly the climax fails on a gameplay front. And it stinks, because there's some genuinely hype moments! I don't know if I got off lucky or not, but some of the music synced absolutely perfectly with some of the cutscenes, and the climax would've had me losing my shit with hype if it weren't for the depressingly flat gameplay that accompanied it absolutely draining my hype to the point I couldn't even muster a smile.
The worst thing I can say about Final Horizon is that it brings out the worst of Sonic Frontiers, so far out of the honeymoon phase at that. The combat and traversal are both at their absolute worst, and that's the exact opposite of how it should be. It absolutely sucks that this is the note Sonic Frontiers has to go out on, at least for the foreseeable future. Maybe they'll patch it up in a week to be less bullshit, and Kishimoto will make a public apology for everything, but for right now? This is one of the biggest letdowns of the whole year for me, and that's including losing a job I was just getting to enjoy after only 3 days of working there. But, would it really be a Sonic hype cycle without a smattering of disappointment somewhere? Sonic Superstars launches in just about 2 weeks. God, I hope it'll be a nice helping of mouthwash after this and Origins Plus.
Also shoutouts to Sega for conveniently killing off Hyenas, that weird ass hero shooter, and laying off a ton of their staff on the same day this released. Real classy, this is the kind of shit people joke about Nintendo doing all the time, but you don't see anyone kicking in Sega's door about it.
I don’t like making this review. Sonic is my second biggest interest, and I went into this update optimistic, as I had enjoyed the base game, and the tech that was being added, such as Spin Dash, really rejuvenated my hype. This could, and should have been the ending Frontiers deserved, but it’s focused on being the 3D Sonic equivalent of Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels far too often. The result is a product with ideas that I like, that dies by 1,000 cuts. Right out the way, playing as Sonic’s friends in 3D for the first time in 17 years is good. Amy is outright fun to use for once! Tails’ cyclone boost is absurdly fun, as is Knuckles’ infinite glide when you get used to it. Sadly, they don’t START this fun. You’re given these characters without the ability to so much as attack, cyloop, or parry initially, and their stats are the bare minimum too. It’s less than reassuring to start with Knuckles and Amy, two canonically extremely strong characters, only to be unable to fight effectively with them. Tails also cannot homing attack despite the lock on reticle, though his cyclone boost allowing him to fly whilst gaining speed offset that for me. Aesthetically, I find the DLC flounders when it promises “new areas,” only to be greeted with a reskinned Ouranos Island with blocks everywhere. Musically, it’s fundamentally a Sonic game, so it still hits. Sonic’s gameplay is akin to the Rhea Island tower climbs of the base game, but without checkpoints. Many of these towers are the equivalent of playing Getting Over It, as they are as challenging as they are frustrating, and you’ll often see progress vanish before your eyes. The second tower forces you to reload your saves if you fall, as blocks you homing attack to climb literally do not respawn. Similarly, the guardian design is less than enjoyable here, as though they’re reskins of what was in the base game, many have their HP inflated like the artwork many a fetishist within this fanbase draws, and demanding grueling reaction time. These fights would be fine in a game with the combat system to accommodate them, but Frontiers’ combat is not that, as it’s very mashy, designed that even the lowest common denominator of player could enjoy it. That’s fine, but not in the case of bosses like this. Cyberspace stages are shockingly highlights. After being so inconsistent in the base game, they were highlights here due to branching level design, demanding objectives and ranks, and a general encouragement of tech. So, full marks. Where I found the game to unfold was the trials. After you complete a tower as Sonic, you’re asked to complete a trial of the Koco, and there is a bizarre juxtaposition between an extremely precise cyloop trial, and being given 10 full minutes to defeat a single Ninja guardian. Where this killed me was the final one, which asks you to play the first three islands’ Super Sonic bosses in succession, without ring refills or checkpoints, with only 400 rings, minimum stats, and a shortened parry window. As these bosses literally spawned rings mid fight before, it’s just conflating removing convenience with an idea of challenge. I’m not against difficulty in Sonic or other games; my favorite 3D game is literally Unleashed, and I am a hyper-aggressive Mega Man speedrunner, but I draw a line at gating your game’s ending behind content which demands inhuman levels of precision and frame-perfect play for about 15 consecutive minutes. I drew the line here, because I was not going to make fights like these, ostensibly HIGHLIGHTS of the base game, with Knight’s fight being my favorite in the series, into something I hated for sake of seeing some alternate ending. I walked away from the base game enjoying it in spite of its rushed ending, and went into this optimistic. I leave this DLC dropping it because what it asks of me, as a player, does not respect my time and mistakes difficulty with tedium. I know I’m close to its finish line, but am I going to waste my entire day morphing into a cynical hater of fights I loved in the base game because the game asks me to employ speedrunner tactics to win, as someone who, while good at Sonic, just wants to beat the game? No. It’s just so many little paper cuts of inconvenience that stack, converging into some massive, origami buster sword that disembowels you by the end. Maybe I’ll go back to it and finish it, but it certainly won’t be today. I’m past the point of saying I need to complete media I’m miserable with for sake of personal pride, and I’d rather dedicate myself to difficult games that, while punishing, respect me as a player, or in general, games that give me joy. Here’s to hoping Superstars washes this bitter taste from my mouth in 2 and a half weeks. Cheers.
It's not a Sonic hype train if it doesn't end in disappointment
A constantly swinging pendulum of the absolute best and worst that Frontiers has to offer, with the best catering to what I love about the game the most.
Boss rush Wyvern can suck my nuts and the finale of this goes harder than anything in any other game this year.
Boss rush Wyvern can suck my nuts and the finale of this goes harder than anything in any other game this year.
I declared that I will make September, my birthday month, a month playing important games on my backlog I've been dying to play. Video games I know I will rate highly and greatly enjoy. I was able to pull that off, to some extent, but what a shame this incredible month of mine had to end with a whimper. Sonic Frontiers was my game of the year for 2022. To say I am disappointed in this DLC is a massive understatement.
What the fuck happened at Sonic Team this past year that moved them to make this vile, frustrating content update that convinced me to think less of Sonic Frontiers as a whole. I appreciate the effort to make this last update a challenging experience for all players. I really do! I found most of the trial towers and cyberspace levels to be fun! The Cyberspace levels in particular has me excited for what's to come in Sonic Team's 3D level design. Branching paths and precise platforming to access shortcuts are what I expect a 3D Sonic level to feature. Rumors spread about a remake of Sonic Adventure, and I am confident that Sonic Team is able to pull that off. Sorta. Not really. Not at all actually. In fact, I am very, very worried!
The other 90% of the update fucking reeks. Bullshit trials given by the Kocos on top of Ubisoft towers where falling once just breaks the whole fucking climb where some mechanics restart to help you try again but some others straight up don't, requiring a full save reload so that you're not teetering on the edge of platforms where the slightest miss input can send Sonic flying down towards the ground. Remember that you can Drop Dash? No? Well, you fucking will when you accidentally hold the jump button for too long so when you carefully land on a platform, Sonic just boosts his dumbass straight off. Finally when you reach the top you're either greeted with the most frustrating challenge that'll make you tear the sticks off the controller or a braindead, easy parry trial that you wish appeared more often. Until the game takes away your normal parry and forces you to perfect parry through an entire boss rush with essentially a fucking timer. Perfect parries are garbage and I swear, do not work. Hit detection and animation problems already infested the base game, therefore introducing a perfect parry mechanic right at the end of a whole-ass game where parry timing didn't matter at all is insanity. Who even gives a shit about the other playable characters when you barely have any time with them at all? Hell, all three new characters are able to glide over puzzles making their whole gameplay a snooze-fest. Nothing much to say there. I wish they were playable more often in other Sonic games, that's all I guess. Final boss was pretty cool but still filled with awkward jank.
Highly do not recommend trying this out. Watch the cutscenes on YouTube instead. What a shitter. I'm going to bed.
What the fuck happened at Sonic Team this past year that moved them to make this vile, frustrating content update that convinced me to think less of Sonic Frontiers as a whole. I appreciate the effort to make this last update a challenging experience for all players. I really do! I found most of the trial towers and cyberspace levels to be fun! The Cyberspace levels in particular has me excited for what's to come in Sonic Team's 3D level design. Branching paths and precise platforming to access shortcuts are what I expect a 3D Sonic level to feature. Rumors spread about a remake of Sonic Adventure, and I am confident that Sonic Team is able to pull that off. Sorta. Not really. Not at all actually. In fact, I am very, very worried!
The other 90% of the update fucking reeks. Bullshit trials given by the Kocos on top of Ubisoft towers where falling once just breaks the whole fucking climb where some mechanics restart to help you try again but some others straight up don't, requiring a full save reload so that you're not teetering on the edge of platforms where the slightest miss input can send Sonic flying down towards the ground. Remember that you can Drop Dash? No? Well, you fucking will when you accidentally hold the jump button for too long so when you carefully land on a platform, Sonic just boosts his dumbass straight off. Finally when you reach the top you're either greeted with the most frustrating challenge that'll make you tear the sticks off the controller or a braindead, easy parry trial that you wish appeared more often. Until the game takes away your normal parry and forces you to perfect parry through an entire boss rush with essentially a fucking timer. Perfect parries are garbage and I swear, do not work. Hit detection and animation problems already infested the base game, therefore introducing a perfect parry mechanic right at the end of a whole-ass game where parry timing didn't matter at all is insanity. Who even gives a shit about the other playable characters when you barely have any time with them at all? Hell, all three new characters are able to glide over puzzles making their whole gameplay a snooze-fest. Nothing much to say there. I wish they were playable more often in other Sonic games, that's all I guess. Final boss was pretty cool but still filled with awkward jank.
Highly do not recommend trying this out. Watch the cutscenes on YouTube instead. What a shitter. I'm going to bed.
1 star reviews, Sonic fans and gamers calling for Sonic Team's heads, so much frustrating jank that would make Heroes blush, and a slightly undercooked game/update with multiple playable characters. We are more back than ever before dark age heads.
Sonic Frontiers' Update 3 is a complete mess and a bizarre note to end Frontiers on, both exciting and concerning. Update 3 is reductive and bloated as hell for a 3D platformer, but I might like it anyways.
The three amigos finally return as playable characters in a mainline 3D entry and I'm surprised with how decent they control, given their more underdeveloped applications in the past. Tails has his best iteration in a 3D Sonic game, Amy has a decent showing with a nice focus on aerial/verticality applications calling back to the advance games, and I'm just happy Knuckles is playable again even if his gliding and punching still feels like a far cry to his surprisingly well-executed kits in SA 1 and 2. Most of the update was just me running around the zone as each of them since it still feels unreal that we can control them again finally in an open 3D field. Hopefully their gameplay becomes more developed and given more distinguishing factor in the future games as they all feel a little too similar to each other and each of their challenges suffer from this as well. The fact that none of them can or are even built for combat encounters outside of Sonic sucks, especially with Amy and Knuckles here.
The difficulty and its design within the new update is atrocious. Yeah the main game was piss easy (which still felt engaging given Frontiers' new style for a Sonic game), but at least it didn't expect you to play near-perfect in combat and boss trials that feels like a demented fan mod trying to mold the game into something it's clearly not built for. Can't say I enjoy the stipulations in the trials; I'd let all those kocos burn than do those missions on hard, even 'easy' for the boss rush trial gave me some trouble with how weak Sonic is versus the enemies. Playing on easy for these sections did allow for some fun in this chaos but I think they went a little too far in trying to up the challenge of the game with the trials.
I wasn't a fan of the towers at first but I slowly began to appreciate the more open and intricate approach that made them way more engaging than their Rhea counterparts. The cyberspace levels are all amazing and add so much creativity that I felt was lacking in much of the main game's cyberspace levels, and they are all in 3D and feel like a dream to blast through.
Fortunately, the ending is sick and feels way more complete than what the original ending was. Supreme is an actual fleshed out encounter, but still kinda easy and really annoying in his last phase when trying to target his life source provided by The End. Weird they focused on Sonic's new super form, only for it to gain just an easy perfect parry option, and then whatever his "cyber" form is that we probably won't see again. Wouldn't say the ending is an overall improvement but it is a solid and more formulated conclusion to Frontiers, though I miss the trash talking The End did during the random Shmup section. And the new versions of One-Way Dream and I’m Here are okay compared to the originals.
For as psychotic this entire update is, it's good to see that Sonic Team is willing to go even further with this open zone format, whether the results fully worked this time or not. Really hope the team and Sega don't look at the response to this as a reason to go back to the insufferably safe era of Sonic games prior to Frontiers.
Sonic Frontiers' Update 3 is a complete mess and a bizarre note to end Frontiers on, both exciting and concerning. Update 3 is reductive and bloated as hell for a 3D platformer, but I might like it anyways.
The three amigos finally return as playable characters in a mainline 3D entry and I'm surprised with how decent they control, given their more underdeveloped applications in the past. Tails has his best iteration in a 3D Sonic game, Amy has a decent showing with a nice focus on aerial/verticality applications calling back to the advance games, and I'm just happy Knuckles is playable again even if his gliding and punching still feels like a far cry to his surprisingly well-executed kits in SA 1 and 2. Most of the update was just me running around the zone as each of them since it still feels unreal that we can control them again finally in an open 3D field. Hopefully their gameplay becomes more developed and given more distinguishing factor in the future games as they all feel a little too similar to each other and each of their challenges suffer from this as well. The fact that none of them can or are even built for combat encounters outside of Sonic sucks, especially with Amy and Knuckles here.
The difficulty and its design within the new update is atrocious. Yeah the main game was piss easy (which still felt engaging given Frontiers' new style for a Sonic game), but at least it didn't expect you to play near-perfect in combat and boss trials that feels like a demented fan mod trying to mold the game into something it's clearly not built for. Can't say I enjoy the stipulations in the trials; I'd let all those kocos burn than do those missions on hard, even 'easy' for the boss rush trial gave me some trouble with how weak Sonic is versus the enemies. Playing on easy for these sections did allow for some fun in this chaos but I think they went a little too far in trying to up the challenge of the game with the trials.
I wasn't a fan of the towers at first but I slowly began to appreciate the more open and intricate approach that made them way more engaging than their Rhea counterparts. The cyberspace levels are all amazing and add so much creativity that I felt was lacking in much of the main game's cyberspace levels, and they are all in 3D and feel like a dream to blast through.
Fortunately, the ending is sick and feels way more complete than what the original ending was. Supreme is an actual fleshed out encounter, but still kinda easy and really annoying in his last phase when trying to target his life source provided by The End. Weird they focused on Sonic's new super form, only for it to gain just an easy perfect parry option, and then whatever his "cyber" form is that we probably won't see again. Wouldn't say the ending is an overall improvement but it is a solid and more formulated conclusion to Frontiers, though I miss the trash talking The End did during the random Shmup section. And the new versions of One-Way Dream and I’m Here are okay compared to the originals.
For as psychotic this entire update is, it's good to see that Sonic Team is willing to go even further with this open zone format, whether the results fully worked this time or not. Really hope the team and Sega don't look at the response to this as a reason to go back to the insufferably safe era of Sonic games prior to Frontiers.
Kishimoto was PISSED we took away his titty sucking porn
Sonic Team cooked so much that it's kinda burnt.
I had a bit of trepidation about this DLC when I first heard my friends’ reactions to it being extremely janky and a little overtuned, but I had fun with it for the most part! Honestly the thing that kinda bummed me out about not being able to finish it because I’m a baby who’s bad at video games was that I actually genuinely enjoyed messing around with the non-Sonic characters’ weird movement options, and I was kind of excited to maybe mess around with them in the endgame to fill out their skill trees and whatnot. Tails is my favorite to play as, as usual, but I had a surprisingly fun time with Amy (surprising considering her movement options usually aren’t quite as fun for me) and I still enjoyed Knuckles. They did each have their own janky edges to them that made some of their sections a little frustrating, but there’s something about getting to skip some sort of meticulously crafted platforming challenge because you happened to glide right over where you could drop down to it.
There’s definitely a weird edge to the difficulty, though. The minibosses are ridiculously overtuned to the point where I barely saw health bars going down even with Sonic at max power, but fortunately none of them were mandatory. “If it sucks, hit the bricks” is the name of the game, honestly, and I kind of appreciate that you can just go full Da Share Zone when it comes to the content you do or don’t want to do… for the most part.
I appreciated that you didn’t have to do seriously crappy minigames like the Koko herding that was the bane of my main game experience, but uhhh. Instead you had to do combat challenges, which were a little… dubiously balanced? They gave you nine minutes to fight a ninja miniboss that goes down in like thirty seconds but the snake trial with the shield enemies was so down to the wire. I wasn’t really good at the parry method so I did manage to do it with the cyloop method, but I can’t say it was good or fun… and then the final trial is just bizarrely hard. Like I’m sure it’s probably easy for some people who are really good at the combat but a boss rush where you play as Super Sonic and your ring amount counts down from 400 and the amount carries over between the boss fights is uh. Uhhh. Hmmm. I only played one cyberspace stage but I hear they’re kind of buckwild and the one I did play was nuts.
Anyway because the boss rush defeated me I watched the ending on youtube and it was fucking sick. I’m not ashamed to say I think it’s cool as hell. Cringe is dead, Sonic is the hypest anime of all time, I love this shit.
Honestly I guess you could say that this DLC encapsulated the things I liked most and least about Frontiers itself and just kind of amped it up in both directions? I loved exploring the island and just… playing, looking for secrets, using my movement options, Going Fast, etc., and I loved the character writing. I wish I’d gotten to see more of the conversations but again, that… kind of… requires beating the fifth trial, apparently, and ho boy I do not want to deal with that! And… yeah, the combat’s worse, and it even makes me kind of dislike the Super Sonic boss fights that I actually liked in the main game by making you do a boss rush with a bunch of unfun restrictions. Again, I’m sure it’s fun for some people, but it sure ain’t fun for me! I hate that something I was having a good time with had to end on such a sour note, but I’d rather move on to greener pastures instead of banging my head off of something I’m ultimately just going to find really frustrating.
Oh yeah I dipped my toes into the Sonic’s Birthday DLC alongside this and it’s cute. The alternate HUD is a little much on the eyes but I think the party hats and the reskin of the islands are funny as hell. I did not get many of the Big Kokos or S-Rank many of the action chain challenges. I appreciate that they’re there for the people who want it but it’s not for me. I did enjoy spin dash immensely in Final Horizon, it went so so so fast and therefore was fun as fuck.
There’s definitely a weird edge to the difficulty, though. The minibosses are ridiculously overtuned to the point where I barely saw health bars going down even with Sonic at max power, but fortunately none of them were mandatory. “If it sucks, hit the bricks” is the name of the game, honestly, and I kind of appreciate that you can just go full Da Share Zone when it comes to the content you do or don’t want to do… for the most part.
I appreciated that you didn’t have to do seriously crappy minigames like the Koko herding that was the bane of my main game experience, but uhhh. Instead you had to do combat challenges, which were a little… dubiously balanced? They gave you nine minutes to fight a ninja miniboss that goes down in like thirty seconds but the snake trial with the shield enemies was so down to the wire. I wasn’t really good at the parry method so I did manage to do it with the cyloop method, but I can’t say it was good or fun… and then the final trial is just bizarrely hard. Like I’m sure it’s probably easy for some people who are really good at the combat but a boss rush where you play as Super Sonic and your ring amount counts down from 400 and the amount carries over between the boss fights is uh. Uhhh. Hmmm. I only played one cyberspace stage but I hear they’re kind of buckwild and the one I did play was nuts.
Anyway because the boss rush defeated me I watched the ending on youtube and it was fucking sick. I’m not ashamed to say I think it’s cool as hell. Cringe is dead, Sonic is the hypest anime of all time, I love this shit.
Honestly I guess you could say that this DLC encapsulated the things I liked most and least about Frontiers itself and just kind of amped it up in both directions? I loved exploring the island and just… playing, looking for secrets, using my movement options, Going Fast, etc., and I loved the character writing. I wish I’d gotten to see more of the conversations but again, that… kind of… requires beating the fifth trial, apparently, and ho boy I do not want to deal with that! And… yeah, the combat’s worse, and it even makes me kind of dislike the Super Sonic boss fights that I actually liked in the main game by making you do a boss rush with a bunch of unfun restrictions. Again, I’m sure it’s fun for some people, but it sure ain’t fun for me! I hate that something I was having a good time with had to end on such a sour note, but I’d rather move on to greener pastures instead of banging my head off of something I’m ultimately just going to find really frustrating.
Oh yeah I dipped my toes into the Sonic’s Birthday DLC alongside this and it’s cute. The alternate HUD is a little much on the eyes but I think the party hats and the reskin of the islands are funny as hell. I did not get many of the Big Kokos or S-Rank many of the action chain challenges. I appreciate that they’re there for the people who want it but it’s not for me. I did enjoy spin dash immensely in Final Horizon, it went so so so fast and therefore was fun as fuck.
No Sonic Team, reusing Ouranos Island and slapping a bunch of blocks all over the place while making me play as the absolute worst versions of Amy, Knuckles and Tails does not count as a new DLC. I don't even care for the revamped final boss and "fixed" story, the fact that the new playable characters control as badly as they do on a game of this scale is downright insulting and i refuse to give this any more of my time. They figured how to make these guys fun to control all the way back in 1998 and they still find NEW and INNOVATIVE ways to fuck them up. THAT'S impressive.
Yeah… I’m not a fan. I’ve always disliked how janky Frontiers is and this is more of the same.
I appreciate that it’s free, but I can’t bring myself to finish this.
I appreciate that it’s free, but I can’t bring myself to finish this.
I played Sonic Frontiers when it released, and I went away with positive feelings towards the game. Sure, it had issues, but it seemed like it was a solid foundation to build future games upon. The Final Horizon was announced as a free DLC primarily marketed as having playable Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, and I was excited to try it out. This DLC is a combination of baffling decisions from start to finish, and it does nothing but shine a spotlight on all the flaws in this game. To begin, the three new characters have about 10 minutes of campaign each. Sure, you're free to explore a remixed version of the final map, but there's not much to do. Amy controls pretty well, being similar to Sonic but with a triple jump/float fall. Tails takes some getting used to, but his advanced mobility makes up for his oddities, while this version of Knuckles is probably the worst controlling version we've ever had (yes, including Sonic 06). The rest of the DLC focuses on Sonic, and a lot of noise has been made as this being "the hardest Sonic has ever been". I would have to agree with this assessment, but not in a fair, challenging way. Instead, it's a parade of cheap moves and unfathomable choices. There's a timed boss rush with no checkpoints! Vertical platforming sections with breakable objects that don't respawn if you fall! Combat trails where the instructions lie to you! It started out fine, but by the end I felt like progressing was an exercise in uncovering secret mechanics while being barraged by incessant projectiles, horrible cameras, and awful physics. The only thing that saves this game is that the new music they added is really excellent. The themes they use for playing as the three new characters are really well done, and probably my favorite three tracks in 3D Sonic in a decade. Oh and the DLC is free, thank god I didn't have to pay for this.