96 reviews liked by yaboyflurry


Anyone hating on the game for anything other than sub 60fps performance on pc and unlocked fps on ps5 are nuts it’s like perfect

The people who rag on this glorious masterpiece are amateurs who don’t even know what a Coup De Grâce Is

This review contains spoilers

Game deadass tells you "okay, for this mission you gotta stay in front of a crashing meteor and the crater will be the battlefield" and you want to tell me this isn't peak?

If this game nails something is that it goes HARD. You just came from AC1 and PP and first thing is that FMV with that dope music and let me tell you I'm already absolutely digging it.

Another thing is how the pacing here is basically perfect: switching from the arena to the missions is great and most missions are very well designed and have a way better understanding of how the mechanics work than AC1 and PP. It's just having tons of fun from beginning to end and oh boy WHAT AN END.

It's basically everything getting the cherry on top: you see The Hustler One being first in the rankings, you basically are second place and you're not fighting him in an average ass Arena, hell no. You get a whole last mission based around Nine-ball and let me tell you it's gonna wipe that bitter taste Stinger-Phantasma gave you and leave you with a fight that you won't soon forget, to say the least.

Intro goes HARD.
Music goes HARD.
Game goes HARD.

AC:MOA goes HARD. And I fucking love it.

If you want to play the original JP King's Field DO NOT PLAY THIS VERSION. Emulate a fan translation of the original PSX rom.
The game runs fine enough and the gameplay loop is engaging but the end of the game is nearly impossible compared to the original. Almost every enemy in the final area can one shot you with their ranged magic, all of the grinding spots in the original are entirely unavailable, almost all of the endgame loot is bugged and unobtainable and the final boss has a health pool that can make the fight take literal hours. It's sort of baffling that this was ever even made, it's so insanely hostile even when compared to all of fromsofts other games and it's entirely by accident it seems.

people do nothing but bitch and moan about bethesda but remember this was the shit interplay was putting out

Boring shooter: soulless, trend chasing, everything wrong with the industry

Boring shooter but the main character is a grumpy old man who has to take care of a girl: peak fiction, groundbreaking, modern classic

This is basically klonoa 3.

The mark of any good racing game is if you lean your body every time you turn and R4 passes with flying colors on that front.

Video games are fucking real again.

This review contains spoilers

///Low-key this might have spoilers so oof///

This game might be a little bit of peak fiction...

Sonic Frontiers was a very well anticipated game for me in the midst of the last year or so, for better or for worse, and now that I finally have it, I can pretty confidently say i'm satisified at least. It's got a couple of weird things about it i'm like, mixed on at most, but I think it overall is a really fun package, from it's open zone stuff to it's cyberspace levels, and especially it's writing be actually really cool.

Starting on Gameplay stuff, I think Sonic is really fun to control, I like how the boost is handled in this game for the most part (it can be a bit unruly at times), and I do like you can customize just how you like sonic in the open world at least. I don't always like how they make it work in Cyberspace levels but eh. Combat-wise I think it's pretty ok battle system. Sonic gets a lot of moves, a lot of them either good for damage, evasion, comboing, etc., and the parry is weird because you can just hold it and win, which feels weird, but it's good I guess (tbf I didn't realize that til' late game, so i rarely used it). I think it's got some neat depth, and it's cool to string everything together, especially when you can cancel longer moves via boosting. It's not my favorite, I wouldn't want to have a game with this combat system alone, and I do think that enemies are overall a bit too lax to get much out of them at times (even on hard mode), but I think it's fine for what it is.

Moving onto the general loop of the game, I think the open worlds are pretty fun, and honestly a really good way to make use of sonic's speed, since instead of a level to be blitzed through, you have a whole world to pick through, but can get it done quicker due to sonic's speed. That and the loop of being able to sequence break challenges because of some boost exploit is really funny, and hopping from challenge to combat admist looking for tokens or map challenges is really fun. And hey, if you want the sonic levels meant for speedrunning like typical, the Cyberspace levels gotcha covered. They make use of Sonic's past as themeing for the levels, sometimes even using bits and pieces of SA2 or Generations game design for certain parts, and I honestly think they make it work pretty well. I would've liked more themes tbh, and that Drift level is best beaten by skipping over it's gimmick, but it's overall pretty fun. And if you want something else to do aside from that, you could always do the fishing minigame. It's not Yakuza 3 fishing, but it's good enough, especially for the odd variety we get out of it. It's also cool that spending time here can get you exactly what you need to complete the game, meaning you barely have to interact with the islands, which is really funny. I did to get all the tokens, but shut up.

Also as a small note, Tokens were weird for my entire playthrough. I thought they were a currency or something, but side stories with allies kept just unlocking themselves, but no it's just how the game does stuff, collecting tokens does still count towards it, same with keys to chaos emeralds. I dunno why it didn't click with me for awhile, but hey tokens stop mattering after awhile into completing an island anyways, so eh. Thought it was at least worth mentioning for a chuckle at my expense. Ha.

Anyways inspeaking of Side Stories, let's talk writing. Over Sonic's journey through the isles, you can interact with who ever is the friend at the island (Amy, Knuckles, Tails), alongside new character Sage. You have to interact with these to progress the game (which require tokens normally), but optional ones also exist adding extra context to things. You also see Eggman is doing in cyberspace and even get memos going over his thoughts leading up to and going through the events of the game (prior to the 4th island at least).

With all of it in mind, it's half surprising how good it is. It's not that surprising cause Ian Flynn was writing it, and his work in IDW from what I know is pretty top knotch, but it's more surprising just how much this game got away with referencing older stuff and weaving it into the plot. Eggman does that plenty in the Memos, and there's a lot of lines from the cast using prior adventures as context to things they see now. Notable ones were Unleashed, the Team Sonic Racing games, SA1 and 2, the classic games, it even throws a line with the Babylon Rogues somewhere, and Sticks in their near the end, that's fucking crazy. You know what's also crazy, they actually used Forces weird writing to course correct Tails in a really cool way. They use all of his sidelining and even brief disappearance in Forces to build into an arc questioning his worth (even Eggman goes to mention something about it), which leads to him and Sonic talking things out finally, and things being resolved with Tails wanting to gain experience of his own after the end of Frontiers. It's interesting that they doubled down on it, and it turned out to work in the end, much better than if they just pretended those games didn't exist.

Though honestly, I think the highlights in the game were Sage and Eggman. Sage does fall into the troupe of "the AI learning to be human", but it's done really well as she knows something really bad will happen if Sonic doesn't stop, or if he and Eggman don't work together, even for a bit, to solve things. So seeing her caught between the two is interesting. I love her dynamics with Sonic, as the game slowly spends time letting her open up more, and when they are able to finally be open, they get some pretty intriguing, and even heartwarming conversations. Even Sonic believes Eggman can show he cares, just in his weird way. And inspeaking of him, I think especially near the endgame, his and Sage's dynamic becomes more familial, and we get some of the oddest, but most sentimental moments we've ever seen Eggman have. The scene before the Final Final Boss always gets me, because you can hear the pain in his voice as he sends Sage off. Plus you hear plenty about his growing appreciation of Sage in the memos. He even has to at some point ask if Sage had any pronoun preferences, and I think that's just adorable.

I also think the Voice Work in this game is really well done as well. I mean I think Eggman is weirdly the best, but everyone did a great job. I think I especially have to give that to Roger Craig Smith as Sonic, he made him sound a lot deeper voiced than other apperances, and it works really well, especially if you go with the idea that this is a sonic with a lot of exprience under his belt, and is probably just an adult at this point.

While I think the cast is really neat for their writing and voice work, and I think the references are warmly welcomed (especially as a fan of the series), I think they also help spin into the main theme of the game really well. Sonic has been at this for a long time, adventuring, stopping eggman, all that stuff. He's had hard times, but he's never ran away, but instead would charge headfirst. Sage repeatedly warns, threatens, and even sicks titans on Sonic to deter him, but he still keeps going. Sonic is exhausted through most of this game, and is carrying on more and more cyber corruption to save his friends, and is consistently getting weaker and weaker, but he still presses on. He keeps on no matter what, and that kind of determination is enough to rub off on all his friends, even with Sage especially. Many of the allies reflect on their past, and are in some ways troubled by it, but Sonic's idealism, compassion, and actions help let them come to terms with what's done and want to search out new horizons. For Amy to help all around, for Knux to get to know the world below, and Tails to come back one day stronger than ever, and even if it's sad to say goodbye, Sonic is rootin' for all of them, and is working ever harder to beat the odds and see things through.

What I think all of this ties together in is a theme of moving forward. To persist on even when the present is dreadful and seemingly insurmountable, whether it's the past that ties us down, or the future holds terrifying uncertainty. Sonic continues on in spite of it simply because that's who he is. He makes it an absolute point to live the way he wants to live, and that to him means doing right by the ones he cares for most and seeing what the world has in store for him. Because he's able to live true to himself, despite the odds continually growing bigger as the game progresses, he still is able to keep on, as long as he can keep moving. That kind of determination is infectious too, pretty obviously seen in Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, but also Sage, who by the end of things, is fighting for that hope rather than trying to snuff it out, so much that she got Eggman to help out, of all people.

It's maybe a simpler message, but it's got good merit, especially for why Sonic sticks around in people's minds nowadays despite a long, tumultuous, and kind of crazy history. I think it's made a bit stronger considering a lot of the past is brought up, because while some of it is reference, others are genuine hang-ups or achievements, and they all help inform us of how to move forward. Working out how from there is up to those in the present, but eh.

Story stuff aside, let's finish with boss, because they're really good. They let Super Sonic come out for some of the coolest fights in the series, ones that would probably be final bosses in other games, and back it with some of the coolest backing tracks these games can have. For the most part, the gameplay for those is basically normal sonic, but he's got the flying and quirks of super form (a.k.a., ring depletion, invincibility, increased power on all moves, etc.), with the main exception of the Final Final Boss you can only fight on Hard Mode. To keep spoilers brief, the true final boss is my favorite in the game, but out of the 4 titans you fight, the 2nd is my least favorite (partly due to my misunderstanding of parries, but also cause the fight feels like it drags on for awhile longer than I want), and the 3rd is my favorite pretty easily (partly because it turned out to be an intense fight, even with full rings, but also the ending is the sickest shit sonic does with a sword since black knight).

Also this should probably go without saying, but the music in this game is really good. I mean I have a problem remembering music for the most part, but I know I liked what I heard for sure. I just think it's actually kind of insane that every Cyberspace level has a theme unique to itself, and most of them are really good.

Overall, I think this game fucking sucks 0/10 easy.

For real though, this game is really fun, I think it's pretty easily one of the best sonic games to come out in awhile, I guess since Mania. This game has a lot of good will, and despite some small things I guess, those nitpicks are well overpowered by how much of that good will is gotten across with how fun this game can be, and how well Sonic and the rest of the cast were played. I'll be honest, I kind of need to play Unleashed again beause I really want to see if I end up liking that game more or this one more, it's pretty neck and neck right now. I'm excited to see where things will go from here.

Took all the issues with RE7 and fixed them. Proper mix of action, horror, suspense, the whole shebang.

10/10.