Sonic Frontiers is, in fact, a game that exists.

Looking at all the hype this game was getting, I was reminded of the fact that, at one point in my life (at the ripe age of about 10/11/12 or so) I was in fact a Sonic junkie (in fact, I was in a bit of a chinnibiyou phase between Mario and Sonic, and then Xenoblade 1 happened to rip me away from that and leave me with indifference with both household series). And all things considered, I was expecting this game to make me feel like a kid again... only for it to fall short of that in ways that I don't... entirely think was its fault? But still left be with this abstract indifference regardless.

Let's start with the main thing that bugs me about this game - the exceedingly crude optimisation, and that shitty camera. Or rather, let's get some pre-amble out of the way as context for why those are (otherwise self-explanatory) problems. The massive hub worlds that comprise the islands of Cyber Space are... okay, overall, even if massive, MMORPG-esque areas like this are a bit tonally dissonant for a Sonic game. There's a bit of an interactive oxymoron in that Sonic (despite being a lot slower than he should be for his disposition) doesn't actually feel slow at all, it's just that the islands feel that big, and with the hodgepodge nature of the islands giving you plenty to find as far as collectables and other miniature platforming challenges (a few I accidentally cleared backwards lmao, thanks for giving us opinions, at least?), you're rarely unclear on where you need to go (even if this is the 2nd 3-star game made by either SEGA or ATLUS that feels like you're 'bumblefucking about' for a while (see my SMT IV review for more on that)).

So how do you wreck that immersion? A camera that either locks itself arbitrarily or will not stop spazzing the fuck out like the daughter of a mid-50s Karen who works at the local asylum for the epileptic, has no depth perception at times, making certain platforming challenges an utter chore, and on top of that, those same platforming challenges (most notably some of the tower climbing missions to get the Chaos Emeralds in alt story) have certain gimmicks that I swear hand to a cross only work whenever it feels like it.

There was one notable moment when fighting the 'Ghost' miniboss in DLC story (one that I didn't know was optional, but I'm going to say it anyway) where you have to jump on a lot of boxes (culminating in same over an insta-death pit) where, to accommodate for you and the boss, the game pulls the camera WAY back, and there's sod all you can do to fix it. To whichever of the devs on the desks of Nippon thought this was a good idea: you will now watch Leon Massey's "how high is this jump?" Video for the BASICS on this kind of camera design, and you will study that shit in your sleep until you're on the ground weeping for your crimes. I mean hey! The Japanese suicide rate is only a few million high! What difference is 300 of you in an office cubicle going to make?!

LowTierGod-esque salt and incitement disguised as humour aside, I guess we should move on to the story and characters, and to continue with the 'I wish this made me feel like a kid again' train of thought, the story of this game is... not something I have many thoughts on. I get this being as a result of being out of the loop for a good 10 years or so on Sonic stories, and me having not played either of the Adventure GCN games as of yet (of which I'm guessing that the Ancient's chaos species are supposed to be a nod to), but I went in expecting a neat, self-contained story as is to be expected with these games, and came out with... not a lot. The second that the Ancients tried being dramatic with their YTP forward-reversed 'state of the art sentence mixer' speech patterns, I had kinda checked out of the story. Which is a damn shame, because Roger Craig Smith is directed well as Sonic as far as the 'grittier tones' are concerned (there are even interviews he did joking about how taken aback he was about the changes in said direction), Mike Pollock is frankly hilarious as ever as Eggman, while his relationship with Sage gives him some more sombre tones that have no right working as well as they do, of which... speaking of Sage, Ryan Bartley did a great job bringing Sage's development to the fore (if you recall my opinion on Alex from Strange Journey Redux - the whole 'not that dynamic but at least compelling' thing applies equally here), and everyone else is about what I remember from when I last played Generations back in... I dunno, late 2013, early 2014 or so? I think the only time I didn't gel with a delivery was Cindy Robinson as Amy, and even that was more of a directional issue I'd allocate specifically to the DLC and not many places else off the top of my head.

Music's neat. I think we've all heard I'm Here (Remix), Find Your Flame and Break Through It All to know why this OST has been the subject of many Metal Gear Rising-esque memes in the past 18 months since it's release. And the game doesn't look bad, but I would note the extremely choppy draw distance (which I know seems rich coming from a Pokemon fan, and I'm not endorsing it there either), which I think brings us to... the Alt story [DUM DUM DUUUUUUUUM].

Now, you may recall my earlier salty comments about the 'Ghost platforming' incident earlier in this review, and while that is only one instance of my ire towards this mode, it is one microcosm of my issues with this free 'DLC'. If you're wondering what the big discrepancy between my 3-star rating of the main game and 1.5 star rating of the Final Horizon update is supposed to be, now you know (and that latter rating pertains ONLY to the story in question, and not the full update in the context of those who had played this game for a long time, of which I was not around for).

I'll say this now - I am in the process of brainstorming a Substack article in which I talk about bosses antithetical to game design and the... ahem 'accusation' that I somehow hate difficulty in games like this (Ft. Mem Aleph, Disciple Lorithia and Kevin Winnicott (I know you Enelcordians are hiding in the bushes, you can come out now...)), and at that point you're probably thinking 'oh boy, he's going to dunk on the remixed End fight, isn't he?' To which I say... yes and no.

Sure, Supreme + The End is piss annoying in Final Horizons if you go in blind (to say nothing of the low-to-the-ground FOV making parrying an abject headache because some pile of Asian cartilage thought it'd be a good idea to keep the camera deep in the bushes like a paparazzi hooked to the ass of a drag queen), but I think the more pressing issue is that you get the power to 'perfect parry' from the Trial before the fight... a boss rush of the other three titans not built with this power in mind, only for the Grand Master running the test to lock your stats to minimum, give you only 400 rings to ration across 3 fights unless you drop the difficulty to easy (in which you get 600, and get whatever attack stat you had going in), and basically say 'lmao, have fun suffering' with a PP window that only works if it's feeling especially generous that day (even with audio cues taken into account, it just did NOT want to respond sometimes) - ALL for a power that is only relevant for... 3/4s of a phase in what I can only describe as a 2.5-phase fight. And that's not even taking into account the fact that there are instances (this happens in main game, but especially in DLC) where you just end up clipping inside the Titan bosses and either hitting nothing, or the bosses just... do nothing, for long, protracted amounts of time.

One of the last things I'll mention here is that the the upgrade system, while at least functional, and allowing you to practice ability inputs as and when, varies in viability between using Unibeams to basically melt health bars once you figure out a specific input (and even THAT is particularly finicky sometimes), and the one or two powers that are never used (if using Cyloop to farm EXP wasn't a thing, the fact that quick Cyloop is a mandate for the Final DLC Boss would have probably made me quit).

Speaking of optimisation stuff for the player, I noticed that Koco drops on the final island are quite common, and while that's great... I feel too strongly that this only compensates the player for a final leg that feels like padding, even if the alternate playstyles with Tails/Amy and the like are appreciated, you get the sense quite early that they're only a temporary thing, so there isn't as much investing in them as there should be. You might notice that, from what I've put so far, the 1.5 star rating for Final Horizons might seem unwarranted, but as has been established, it's where the camera problems and other general issues became somehow even more pronounced, and made me go from 'OK, that's kinda annoying' to 'yeah no, this is bullshit'.

This might actually be my longest review yet next to... maybe my DDS2 and SJR reviews? (If not longer?) - so I'll wrap it up there.

I think this game is going to take a replay to give proper thoughts on, as while I did see the credits roll at the end of Turnabout Goodbyes a couple of years ago, I found Rise from the Ashes to be such a slog, that I didn't get around to finishing it off until now (in other words, I wasn't sure how or when to quantify this game as 'complete' because I was hearing conflicting reports on if Rise from the Ashes was actually canon?). And from what I recall (because my memory from then is rather hazy), that's not independent of this games... let's call it 'structure' for now. Damn shame, too, because the first two cases of this game were so strong as an introduction to the series... and then 1-3 was ultimately filler, and 1-4... look, I'm not out here about to write some dissertation on why 'Von Karma did nothing wrong' (I'm no longer a Smogon player, after all... I seem to have fallen out with all their asses), but something about how the Defence 'wins' via an only vaguely related case just didn't sit "wright" with me (pun only slightly intended).

I think the big thing that made PWAA1 such molasses to get through is that it's not really a game... it's an interactive novel, in a generation where transcripts and LPs aren't hard to come by. So it's more like you're playing alongside these resources rather than in spite of them, unlike... I dunno, the rest of the medium? And I can't count how many times the game turns around and asserts 'absolute, singular pieces of evidence', when 2/3/4 other objects of the case are just as damming, meaning that this game doesn't feel as nuanced as it should do (even if the humour is pretty respectable).

Looks like I'll be doing my own investigating for a bit, I guess.