Sonic Frontiers - Chaos Island Battle Rush (S-Rank)

After the Ares Island Battle Rush is the one featuring the next island, Chaos Island. This is not so much a singular island (well, not anymore, at least) as much as it is a series of islands, fragmented due to a battle that broke out here long ago. This time, this Battle Rush has only 9 rounds, though since these guys are trickier and more complex than the ones before, but don’t have quite as many deliberately time-consuming attack patterns, the S-Rank time limit finds itself longer than Kronos Island but shorter than Ares Island:
S-Rank Time: 7 minutes 30 seconds
That being said, there are some rounds here where some things happen to align and you get to finish them quickly, or, more frustratingly, things are always misaligning, and you lose a lot of time. I suppose that fits the name of “Chaos Island.”
00:04 - Round 1: Squid
Well, lookie here, guess who’s back! Among the Guardians, there are Squid on both Kronos Island and Chaos Island. By the time you reach Chaos Island though, Sonic’s speed and attack have been considerably improved, and by then, they’re not putting up as much of a fight as they did on Kronos.
00:32 - Round 2: Four Soldiers
The Soldiers on Chaos Island are even stronger-not only do they create shields like the ones on Ares Island, as you can see, they can also conjure walls of spikes. Their HP is still low though, so you’d best Cyloop them to disarm them before fighting them. (This is also the first Battle Rush where you don’t fight the Soldiers first.)
00:49 - Round 3: Shinobi
This is a stronger variant of the Ninja. They have a lot more HP and can counterattack if Sonic isn’t careful. For this one, it can’t take a Cyloop and the subsequent hits when stunned, but the camera sometimes has other ideas. Not this time though.
01:16 - Round 4: Excavator
The Excavator is a unique Guardian in the same family as the Tower back on Kronos Island, but this one shoots more missiles, has more HP per segment, and can slam the floor once it’s done floating around shooting stuff at Sonic. The head is the weak point; the moment you can reach it, Excavator is done for. The Shinobi and Excavator are unique Guardians, with onyl one specimen of each in the game.
01:48 - Round 5: Four Cyclones
This time, there are no platforms to navigate to finish off these minor bad guys. They’re just four Cyclones on a hillside. The timing can be tricky, however.
02:04 - Round 6: Eagle
Eagles are common enemies, but they’re annoyingly common around Chaos Island, especially the convoluted way to defeat them: you must first parry the laser, dodge the subsequent swoop, Homing Attack the bar between its feet, swing up so Sonic lands on its back, then guide the Eagle to crash it into the ground as the Eagle resists randomly. You’ll see here that I can defeat some Guardians faster than I can defeat an Eagle.
02:28 - Round 7: Spider
Not to be confused with the Strider, this is an imposing Guardian, found near where Sonic first sets foot on the island. You must Cyloop each leg tip to break the first barrier around its head. Homing Attack the head to send Sonic upwards, where he needs to go through glowing blue hoops, enough of which will take down the head’s second barrier, upon which you can then attack. The Spider keeps moving out of frame though, messing with the Homing Attack for a direct hit. I’m not very good with the first part, as you can see with my reduced rank as of this one.
04:01 - Round 8: Fortress
This Guardian is big and imposing, and it can be seen from all over the island, flying around the volcano. it’s not as tough as it looks though: once it goes above the ocean, grind rails will appear from behind it to allow Sonic to catch up to it. Glowing blue portions let him travel faster. For something this big, its HP is pathetically low, so once Sonic’s caught up with it, the Fortress is finished.
05:14 - Round 9: Knight
Knight is the Titan of this island. There are four Titans in all, and personally, I feel this one is the most annoying to finish off quickly because of how it moves fast, as well as the annoying part where Super Sonic rides Knight’s shield and has to guide it back to Knight while the missiles come at Super Sonic unceasingly. The second part also needs you to deflect the shield at Knight’s head. This time though, at least the finishing blow is not timed. After Super Sonic shoves Knight’s sword strike back at it near the end, the timer finishes, and that’s your final time for the Chaos Island Battle Rush.

[@strategist9]

I don't understand why the Spider fight is so....involved. Like this is an enemy you can just stumble onto when exploring, right? Even with max upgrades you still have to go through multiple phases and that just seems...ugh. I think a lot of Sonic fans look past the combat's flaws just because it looks cool. Like it's just pure spectacle but it kind of ruins the flow of the game. People mostly praise the aesthetics and general controls for Sonic in this game, but when I look at some of this stuff plus the random open world stuff you can do it just looks really unfun.

[@Overhazard]

Not only can you stumble across the Spider, this is the one physically closest to Sonic when he first lands on Chaos Island and thus likely the first Guardian boss Sonic will encounter there. From where you begin, you just have to go west for about 12 seconds, and you can see it in the distance. It's also not quite intuitive on what you're supposed to do, considering you can Homing Attack the leg tips still glowing red.
Sonic Frontiers hasn't gone through a full phase of the Sonic Cycle yet. Typically, there's a lot of praise for a Sonic game when it's new, then opinions sour as the years go by. (If there are a lot of complaints when it's new, like with Sonic 2006 or Sonic Forces, then the opinions just get worse as time goes on.) With Sonic Superstars out, I think we can start seeing more displeasure from the Sonic fans in the near future.
For now, they like it for basically not being Sonic Forces, even if it has the same development team. They expected Sonic Frontiers to be a disaster because Morio Kishimoto returned from Sonic Forces to direct this one. It was also the Sonic fans who first found out about Takeshi Iizuka requesting for it to be delayed, and it was approved under the condition that Sonic Frontiers must sell well (and it did)--SEGA is not generally kind to delays, and if Sonic Frontiers didn't sell, they would fire the entire development team, Kishimoto and Iizuka included. That, and the story is leagues better than Sonic Forces and is presented via "show, don't tell."

[@BigKlingy]

@@Overhazard I've been personally enjoying this game so far, but I like it for weird reasons: I typically don't like open world games (especially Zelda BotW), as a lot of the gameplay feels like it's spent walking and doing basically nothing. You essentially spend most of your time not playing a game. When controlling Sonic, the simple act of moving from place to play is fun and is basically the core gameplay, so that gets rid of the open world issue to me.

[@Overhazard]

I see. For me, I didn’t like how Sonic would get interrupted by fights like this so often. Not helping is the Starfall mechanic, I doing the work I would do clearing the islands of enemies. I know I can leave the boss battles at any time (with a few exceptions, like Sumo or Fortress), but it’s still annoying nonetheless (especially Squid).

[@BigKlingy]

@@Overhazard I believe turning off the "Starfall Slot Machine" in the options menu actually turns off Starfalls entirely. Maybe not the enemy respawning part though.
In general I'm more okay with it because Sonic is fast enough to run away or dodge most fights. One of my jokes with this game is "I don't need a Fast Travel system, I AM the Fast Travel system." (Though unlocking the actual fast travel is convenient when cleaning up each island)