@@fullriver1234 to be fair crayfish can get large haha. I live in VA, crayfish catching is a childhood pastime and some of those things are like 2in long!!
the aliens looking like chaos is actually fully intentional. in egg memos eggman explains that chaos (and the chao) descended from the ancients. really cool continuity.
@Nono Chaos was once a Chao before it evolved into a water-thing. They are just the descendants of the few ancients that remained and left the islands.
I liked that too. Although, didn't they say before that Chaos was just a chao mutated from Chaos emeralds radiation or smth like that? Anyway I like the version where he is an alien much more.
@@user-sq3bk1zc6b The Chao are devolved Ancients, and Chaos is a Chao that evolved into something similar, but not quite the same. That's basically how it is.
I feel like the randomly placed assets in openzone would be actually kinda sweet if they put in effort to make them fit the aesthetic of the rest of the environment. Like rails being branches coming off from giant trees or something
Sunset Overdrive did it so well, yet that game is often overlooked as a platformer and only looked at as a shooter despite being from Insomniac. Sonic team could learn a thing or three from that game.
For real though. Cliche example I know, but if you look at DK Country Tropical Freeze that game integrates the platforming with its environments seemless. It's not like you are jump across some random floating platform, your jumping across like tree tops and what not. I say this as someone who liked the game, have beaten it twice: the floating platforming segments look really out of place. Also looks even worse when the game has really bad pop in problems.
The writing in this game really was refreshing Tails' "I'm wildly inconsistent" line and Eggman's memos on Sonic's friends wasting their potential in his shadow + Amy taking so long to find her way seriously stuck out to me as like Ian Flynn saying to the audience "Yeah, don't worry, I know this shit's fucked" and trying to course correct as hard as possible lmfao
I the writing is one of the most flawed aspects of the game. Everything in it is predicated on the player's knowledge of previous Sonic games, and people who just jump into it are gonna have no fucking clue when it references shit from Sonic Adventure or something. It's incredibly clumsy and feels like it came right out of a marvel movie.
I still hate that Flynn name dropped Sticks the Badger of all things. That was the one time when he should have not introduced the reference. Sonic Boom needs to die and be forgotten. Nothing from that trash fire is worth salvaging.
I like to think of Frontiers as "the band-aid game" where the intent of the story and gameplay are to address serious concerns people have had with the franchise for the last decade, get people back on board, and then go all out for the next game after Frontiers. Hopefully SEGA loosens the mandates and will give Sonic Team a bigger development team because 60 people for a AAA game like this is just not gonna cut it.
@Xiatter Yep, Iizuka confirmed that back in June/July (I think it was one of the Summer Games Fest interviews he did). But I think it's very clear that Sonic Team knows exactly what most people are wanting now. The only thing they have to do is convince SEGA to give them the budget they need to fully realize it. With the success of the Sonic Movie this year, here's hoping SEGA will give them more freedom 🙏
Considering things were actually a little different this game, not just in (some) mechanics and gameplay, but with character emotions as well, I have a feeling they may allow them to do something similar to what they allowed in Unleashed. Maybe not go full on ‘06 and straight up nearly kill the character, but something more along the lines where “This is actually serious, and we can’t just sit around with our dick in our hands passing jokes.”
@WolframSV2 we have limited time on this earth and yet you decide to use the little time you have watching and commenting on something you know you don't like How about instead of trying to rile up random internet strangers who will forget your existance in a day, you spend time with people you love, or just doing things you enjoy rather than things you dislike Just a suggestion though, if you feel you're not wasting your time then who am I to stop you
@@MarcusGronkowski What's there to say beyond "it's a bunch of botched ports"? You can't get a full video out of that without just repeating yoursself a hundred times.
@@HOTD108_ true, but Cybershell and classic sonic go together like bread and butter. Can’t deny that Origins has the first official widescreen port of S3&K
Knowing that this will be the last cybershell video for at least a month is harder than knowing frontiers will be the last sonic game for at least 2 years
I'm surprised you didn't know Sticks was canon to the main series. Yes, while we haven't actually seen her in it directly, the Japanese official website includes her in the overall Sonic series character roster, complete with Yuji Uekawa art, confirming that she does in fact exist.
Not just that, she even appeared in comics on Sonic Channel, and appeared in Yuji Uekawa's wallpapers four years in a row. She also appeared in mainline Sonic stuff before, like Sonic Runners and Mario & Sonic 2016. It's easy to brush it all off as non-canon, but she definitely exists.
If you make an infinity symbol with the cyloops you will gain a boost buff that will last longer. Especially at max rings. Also you can redo it at anytime.
The question is, does it really explain the Emerald's origins? After all, the Ancients had no knowledge of the Master Emerald or how and why it pulled the Chaos Emeralds to Sonic's world... that seems to imply that the Emeralds are something that they had simply discovered too.
Yeah, emeralds always felt (and in some comics outright stated) to be interdimensional sources of great power that many civilizations and worlds encountered. Likely there arent just 7 of them, but many, with only Master Emeralds being rare and few on each planet.
That's really the thing. The original Classic Lore(That may or may not be changed by Origins, that whole collection is a mess canonically) claims that the creation of the Master Emerald and the sealing of the 7th Chaos Emerald on West Side Island were done by "the gods". Early in the game, I expected something deeper to be revealed due to the grand scale of the ancients and their enemy(And because of the broken emerald on Ares Island)...but the way the events are told, it's entirely impossible for either side of the conflict to have anything to do with this, so we still don't know the truth of the legends.
Yeah they are practically the Infinity Stones of this Universe. And it'd better stay that way, because the 2nd movie version of their creation just sucks. Sucks out all the mystery and just them being backstoryless unlimited source of power for different fractions to fight for.
@@lpfan4491 maybe after one encounter with dark Gia they flew off to another planet in need for a bit only to return back to earth since the master emerald is still there 😊
Consisering the Gaia lore and their connection to the Master Emerald it seems to me that they _were_ originally from Earth and just ended up elsewhere for a while.
Feels weird that Sticks is canon now, since they're in a different continuity. That means there's no stopping them bringing back some rando like Johnny Lightfoot or Wes Weasly, they're about as important.
just budget constraints lol. I think the Chaotix will get a chance to be playable again before Sega even considers adopting an IDW character into the games.
To be fair, I feel like "The End" is absolutely going to reappear in a future game. That boss fight feels more like a lore bomb to establish what it is.
Don't expect things like that this is Sega and Sonic Team we are talking about. Especially as apparently hackers already found out that parts of the boss fight were cut late into development so it seems so rushed might be entirely down to that.
I’m hoping they keep on improving it. I’ve said it before on other videos about Frontiers and I’ll say it again here. Were it not for Frontiers reusing Green Hill after Mania and Forces did so. I would be interested in a game set on just South Island. I mean in addition to both versions of Sonic 1, 8-Bit Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos, and Sonic Blast took place there and I think it’d be fun to see how each zone is connected together. * Yellow Desert being in a remote part of South Island entered through a tunnel in Green Hill or Underground Zone * Red Volcano being deep within Underground Zone * Underground Zone and Jungle Zone being linked together by Marble and Spring Yard Zone * Aqua Lake being near Labyrinth Zone * Turquoise Hill being near the coast, far from Green Hill * Green Hills from 8-Bit Sonic 2 being the outskirts of normal Green Hill.
@@iananderson4754 when I saw Rhan Parody show up in my subscription feed I was elated. I care less about sonic now, but back then Cybershell was my favourite youtuber.
I just wish we got more CD rep other than stardust speedway and metal sonic. Mania proves that they can do really good with CD zones like they did with metallic madness
Honestly this gives me at least some hope for the future of the series. I'm glad they're acknowledging some of their mistakes, Tails saying he's inconsistent genuinely made me smile. edit: wow y’all are liking this fast
I am of the opposite spectrum. The corporate farts at the top of SEGA will only see the success and not the effort. "Do it again. You did it once so it should be easier." Like how Mania did well so SEGA rushed them to make Origins which people unanimously agree was "okay". Not worth the price and not worth removing the original games off of steam making it the only option if you wanna purchase it now. If news comes out that a Sonic game is being rushed then it''ll just repeat the cycle over and over again.
We're not in the safe zone yet unfortunately, this could be like the 2010's where we got some good games at the start of the decade then it got progressively worse as the decade went on. Like I pray to God this is a sign of things to come, but I've had a similar hope with generations and look how that turned out. Hopefully this is different.
@@thegungerbrospodcast7671 thing is even in gens you could tell sonic team and sega were slowly going off their roots, here you can feel they want to go back to that 2000s era sonic charm
I am praying that Sonic Team hires more staff for their next project. It's more clear than it's ever been that there just isn't enough man power at the studio to achieve the vision they're aiming for. I had a lot of fun with Frontiers but it is anything but a smooth experience. I really hope the next one just takes what works about Frontiers and polishes it to a mirror sheen.
When looking at the concept art of Frontiers in the artbook, I can't imagine how beautiful and surreal the game would look visually. Imo Unleashed is still better looking than Frontiers because there is a noticeable level of contrast that can drop your jaw out of astonishment. I want Sonic Team to be given more man power to pump out the best they envision
@@minty6623 sonic team NEEDS to be disbanded. the only way we get a sonic game we dont say "it's ok FOR A SONIC GAME about is if real developers make the game. im tired of false hope, they ned to be fired and "grinding" has been lame since the 90s
Or they could rebrand it as Hero Team. But hey, if anything the publisher SEGA actually considered giving them big budget, so I believe Iizuka should step out of the comfort zone and actually work with big team that is in between 100-200 + Dimps.
It's one of the most "good not great" games that I've play in a while. I think in the long run I'm gonna feel a bit underwhelmed by it looking back but overall still had a good time with it.
Comparable to Adventure 1. But the community has become more critical of the games due to social media speading opinions way faster than two decades ago.
I find Frontiers more inspired by Shadow of the Colossus than Breath of the Wild tbh. Abandoned lands, ancient, giant bosses, mysterious voice guiding you? All SoTC classics.
Actually this game is very similar to halo infinites open world and monster hunter imo. Where it serves as a hub for the more traditional style levels and there are monsters you can fight around the map or normal enemy’s.
This is my first time seeing the Tangle reference! If they follow up on this then they could really open the floodgates and introduce other IDW characters like Whisper and Surge into the main canon (hopefully as playable characters).
same here, and I didn't even know who Tangle was since I didn't read the comics (or apparently, play the mobile games that have a full 3D model of her). And I thought it was a deep cut mentioning Sticks in a mainline game (who hasn't been mentioned outside of the Boom universe... and that one olympics game lol)
Cybershell, if you read this, if you're just sapped for ideas to get impassioned about, watch your past videos, in many of them you say 'maybe I'll do a video on that later' or 'but that warrants its own video'. None of those videos have been made yet to my knowledge, and many of them sound like really good ideas, that I'd totally watch. And I'm not even a huge sonic dood. You're just good at the game of youtubes.
Here's my headcanon. Cyberspace is all about extracting and collecting memories and such. So, what if entering Cyberspace and getting digitized kinda made everybody's memories more clear? Tails even mentions something like that I think. So, maybe that's why characters make so many references and callbacks to old stuff. These things are just fresher in their minds.
I love the references to previous games. Continuity is barely a thing in Sonic. It's really good to see. This has the best story in the series in quite a while. I can tell that the guy knows his lore and characters.
I didn't really like this one but I'm looking forward to the version they release 2-3 games from now that's super polished & feels good to play (& everyone else suddenly turns on because they're sick of these & want something else)
Oh God, I can't hear this argument anymore. Every game since generations was just a "solid foundation" and they never built anything upon it, fans litterally say this for over 10 years at this point, it's just cringe by now. By now it seems everything sonic team throws out are foundations
Apparently there are unused files in the game for The End that suggest it would have gotten a proper bossfight, but I imagine due to time constraints they weren't able to finish it and instead cobbled together the Ikaruga boss instead of cutting it entirely
Your rings are your life bar. Enemies do set amounts of ring damage which scale up during the game. So you can take more hits when you have 999 rings, also you have more time during Super Sonic.
I can see where you're coming from with the story, and I think part of it for me was approaching it as a soft reboot of sorts. Tails has been super inconsistent, Knuckles has been flanderised and Amy's been MIA for ages, so taking this chance to start from square one with them was taken, which makes sense because Ian Flynn is very good at writing interactions. I guess also this is meant to have more of a mystery vibe I also personally feel like the Cyber Space levels get more engaging once you're out of the Generations territory and seeing the Unleashed and SA2 layouts, which lend themselves much better to Frontiers' moveset. I do wish the three more obvious themes were done in a different way. It's hard to explain but the city theme has this real sense of being dreamlike, half-formed memories filling in the gaps resulting in a mishmash of City Escape, Crisis City and Empire City. It definitely creates a sense of wrongness that just seeing the clean visuals of Green Hill, Chemical Plant and Sky Sanctuary don't really do. Anyway, I can see why this game is sorta divisive, but I've got permanent brainrot from playing Sonic since I was 4 so I love it, and the fact that this feels like a genuine effort from Sonic Team, even if it isn't perfect, already puts this head and shoulders over a lot of the output of the last decade or so.
Perfect explanation for the city stages. I kept asking myself if it was central city, empire city or station square and felt a slight uncanny feeling when it didn't completely click.
@@alantezoni9813 Missing In Action. It's a mostly military term to describe someone who disappeared while doing a specific task and nobody working with them has a way to contact them. It's usually assumed that people who are MIA are dead, but there just isn't any proof of it yet.
I don't care about Sonic nor do I own videogame consoles, or have played videogames in 15 years. I still have notifications on for your videos cause you're an amazing storyteller.
At the end of the second boss fight when Super Sonic is talking to Knuckles. He flinched when Knuckles goes to fist bump him because he remembers Knuckles knocked the emeralds out of him in Sonic 3 opening of Angel Island Zone. That was a really nice touch in my opinion. Obviously since Knuckles is still digitized he couldn’t have hit him anyways, but it was just funny that it made him worried for a brief second.
6:30 I found late in my playthrough that the drop dash is very sticky compared to normal boost/movement. I was able to climb up fairly steep slopes using it, and even climb over the ice on the mountains of island 3. Not sure if it's intentional, but it is a pretty fun trick when used right.
I've been trying to think of a rage against the machine joke ever since sage said she could awaken their rage against you, and I finally settled on "rage against the blue teen"
The fantastic character writing was what kept me going through to the end. They managed to remember and nail every character's core traits, every SINGLE line by sonic contains some reference to speed or impatience just as an example. It's really a marvel of how to do a whole lot with very little, Introspective Eggman is something I never knew I wanted but definitely would like to see going forward!
Sonic Frontiers feels like a really good starting point for a new era of sonic: -The characters are finally back to being themselves after a decade of bad writing -There is finally a sense of continuity in the series -New gameplay style with promise If they take what works in frontiers and improve it and fix what doesn't work, then I feel like we might get a masterpiece. Personally I really hope they stick with this gameplay style and it improve by: 1. Making the open zone areas more visually interesting, both in aesthetics and level design, I feel like a major thing that holds back the Starfell Islands is that all of the platforming is done with floating stage elements rather than actual terrain. If they actual terrain more it would make the islands look more interesting and also probably fix the pop-in issue, with such a heavy reliance on stage elements like rails and platforms; pop-in is an inevitable issue. 2. Polish up the combat: Make sonic weaker and make the enemies stronger and more varied. Sonic is way too overpowered, his """parry""" is basically just a block that insta-kills enemies, and his moveset is full of very strong attacks that can be spammed. Maybe put his special attacks on a cooldown or give him an energy gauge that he has to use them or make them consume rings to use. The enemies on the other hand, they are interesting and you have to tackle them in unique ways BUT the way they are designed makes the potential enemy encounters VERY LIMITED. In Frontiers' encounters you only ever fight 1 special enemy or 4-6 regular enemies. There needs to be a wider variety of enemies that can fought as a group. I feel like Sonic Frontiers has better combat that Sonic Unleashed, but enemy variety is something Unleashed definitely did better, in that game there were minions, shield enemies, little guys and minibosses and all could be fought in one encounter. I feel like an open-world combined with a fast-paced combat system really suits Sonic, I hope they keep this gameplay style and improve it because it has a lot of untapped potential. One last thing, the story. -------------SPOILERS---------------- I really enjoyed the story for the first 3 islands, the mystery of the ancients is well built-up and character interactions were really fun, I also enjoyed Sage a lot more than I thought I would, It kinda sucks though that the father/daugher bond between Sage and Eggman is only really explored in the Egg Memos because its a really interesting, funny and sweet idea. BUT WOW my enjoyment of the story ended completely at island 4, they build up Sonic's corruption so well throughout the game, and the scene were he finally succumbs to corruption is genuinely powerful and unsettling, but then he just gets magically healed by his friends saying a line each and holding hands. They built up something so interesting only to throw it away instantly, imo that was even worse than the brainwash moment in sonic colors. From that point onwards the story kinda sucks, they build up "The End" really well and truly make it seem like the biggest threat ever, all 4 titans couldnt defeat it, they could only seal it away. BUT THEN SONIC AND SAGE JUST DEMOLISH IT WITH EASE, no struggle whatsoever, then Sage sacrifices herself in the most forced way possible and Sonic shrugs it off like nothing even happened. Its a massive shame honestly, I really dig the vibe of "The End" mysterious space rock, eerie , cool boss music, seems really powerful because destroyed a powerful and intelligent civilisation who had mechs and the chaos emeralds. Its just a shame the gameplay of its boss is uninspired, and we learn absolutely nothing about "The End" It amounts to just being a very cliché final boss with a ton of tropes, very disappointing because it had some real potential. In the end Sonic Frontiers' story really just feels like its mimicking shadow of the colossus mixed with nier automata mixed with previous sonic games, just pretty lame conclusion to a story with so much promise. It really feels like some meddling happened behind the scenes with the final stretch of the plot, there's no way Ian Flynn wanted to write it that way, the story goes from competent to forces levels of bad within the span of one scene.
@@bakedbeans5494 Ikr. I'm sick of people saying Ian Flynn fixed things. The tone is still completely in the toilet, with serious moments being completely undercut by a dumb "Well, that was a thing" line from Sonic. We're still firmly stuck in the awful meta era, unfortunately.
@@HOTD108_ if alot of people even cybershell say the character interactions are pretty good, then it must be for a reason, i think you guys just have a bias against ian flynn
I know the name drops were kinda meh but I actually screamed over Sticks being mentioned. I do like her character a lot and I wish she was canon to the main timeline. Her design being a little tweaked and her character being slightly adjusted for the main timeline (but not too much because I feel it would work really well with the canon timeline), I would be extremely happy with Sticks.
For real it would be a shame for a cool character like Sticks to be stuck in Boom Purgatory, the same way Knuckles Chaotix is stuck on 32X Purgatory, yes I love Chaotix.
Its a weird reference because canon sonic feels removed from Boom; is this THAT sticks? A similar stick in this universe we haven’t met yet? Its a little confusing for me, it’s like if they mentioned sally acorn. Is mark the tapir canon too…?
I actually really do want them to remove the boost moving forward. I have not liked most of the Boost era games for how tanky it makes Sonic feel to control, so I’m glad this game de-emphasized the boost mechanic while also making Sonic feel much closer to controlling like the Adventure era games.
I can't be the only one for whom this game is reminiscent of Code Lyoko. The environments and enemies being digital, the towers, Sage being a part of the digital world like Aelita, also just aesthetically sometimes.
I'm 100% certain that parry was changed in the last weeks of development, and that it WAS timing based previously. It's the only explanation for the parry challenges that makes sense.
Putting it out there; I REALLY hope we don’t crucify Ian for the namedrops. Cheesy? Yeah. But it was attempting to build continuity and attempt both necessary fixes and assist the current state of the franchise. It’s not just ‘mindless name drops’, as much as it’s a symptom of a wider, well meaning attempt at writing. We can make fun of it, but I don’t want to spread the precedent that what he did was ill founded.
You wouldn't be saying that if they didn't reboot the franchise every time or actually adhered to the "everything is canon" tweet because its not really helping the continuity all that much and just making it more confusing
@@FloridusMan I’m confused as to what you’re talking about. All I’m saying is that the writing team is referencing the older games to create a sense of continuity for the characters and the overall adventure. I feel like by scolding this, we’re attacking a genuine attempt at fixing the characters, and de-isolating the standalone titles, just because it comes off a little corny. I’m lost on the thing about tweets and reboots. I also don’t understand how doing this is confusing either. The worst thing that Frontiers has done was have the characters acknowledge their history.
14:40 "Hey Sonic, these ruins look like the ones on Angel Island!" And the game shows a still from Sonic 3. Like, not a relevant still from Sonic 3. Like, the part in the opening where Knuckles appears for the first time. Like... what the fuck Edit: 15:46 Yeah, that one.
there had been a while since your last video but as always man , it's so entertaining to hear your openions those games from the blue blur any way , there had been a while since last time i discovered about a channel named as "Pariah 695" and dude , i can't even begin to describe how in depth this guy's videos when it comes to analysing both game play and stories of sonic games , or how many facts i've never heard before regarding story elements , characters , and and lore elements that i'm wondering how we've never thought of them before , this guy's sonic's content is under rated , so please don't forget to give it a shot
Listened to this video on a very fast paced day so I was grateful for the really mellow recount of your experience with sonic frontiers. I found that pace to be kind of ironic since it’s a review of the fast blue hedgehog himself and I think that added a funny element to the video. Thanks cyber, you rock man
I think Shigeru Miyamoto (of all people) put it best: if the character is fun to move, the game will be fun. I know that there are issues and it's honestly a hard sell to show a screenshot with the realistic environment against floating rails and ziplines just hanging in the void, but when you actually get the game in your hands it just feels good. Moving Sonic around the environment and having all these elements to interact with just feels good, and the fact that you can even tweak how Sonic responds to get a more personalized feel. I don't even have a problem with the map puzzles; you're still controlling Sonic and you're still interacting with the world and you're still using his moveset to solve these little puzzles. (Mostly; there are a few duds, but they're over so quick it's not like you're trapped there for minutes on end.) Overall it's... well, it's like my love for the Adventure games; I know it's not perfect but god DAMN is it just plain fun. (Also I think the Parry a Shot is in there because otherwise who would remember Parrying is a mechanic in a Sonic game? It was actually because of that silly puzzle I remembered it for the Titan fights.) This is really a solid start both in terms of gameplay and narrative feel going forward. Personally I'm not at all a fan of the Boost Era games and found them all kind of a repetitive slog to finish, but this fusion of Adventure-era exploration with the short, fast-paced levels, plus the change to Boosting (making it an additional movement mechanic rather than the crux of the gameplay) is really doing it for me. Even if a hypothetical sequel were just more of the same I'd personally be quite happy.
I loved the change to boosting too, and I wasn't the biggest fan of boost-era mechanics. This felt like kind of a happy middle-ground to me where boosting was still available and could give you quite an edge, but it was a part of a whole rather than the whole itself. Pretty much what you said hahahaha I look forward to where Sonic is going next too!
This video is literally my opinion on frontiers. As a sonic fan, whos not blindly ignoring everything and not generically hating everything. 100% covers my feelings towards it!
The 1-2 S Rank Requirement actually was the hardest mission I have encountered in the whole game. 55 Seconds for all of that was borderline impossible for me, I had to really chizzle of the seconds everywhere it counted and it took me a good 40+ minutes to finally get an S Rank. Then I played on and got S Rank without much hassle for every following mission, that is one *goofy* difficulty spike. Good game tho, I had fun.
I personally think that the end is the antithesis to the chaos emeralds because of how much it mentioned bringing order to the chaos of life. Order and chaos. But if they were going with that route they should've hinted at it more
Given some of The End's dialogue such as "this incarnation" and "they were finite, I am infinite," has led to theories that it isn't truly dead and might return in the future and/or that it was the creator of the original Phantom Ruby...
If there's one complaint I have about other peoples'... well, complaints. It's that we should really quit comparing stuff to Sonic Utopia, it's more of a proof of concept than a game. They did say they were going to make it a full game but, let's face it, it's been years and that's clearly not happening. If anything Sonic Robo Blast 2 deserves all the praise, since it has momentum-based classic-style 3D gameplay, except unlike Utopia, it has ACTUAL levels. Trust me, I want the next 3D Sonic to have real momentum and rolling mechanics as much as the next guy, but we did get the Drop Dash in Frontiers which does let you roll down hills, as well as grindrail jumping and boosting off of slopes keeping your momentum. Even some recently-discovered janktech with homing attack-air boost-cancelling, so I'm happy with what we got.
tbh i think we need to call “momentum” a different name, because we do have momentum in these games even if it is not that much. slope physics would be a much better term
What fans mean by momentum is the speed cap to be unlocked, thats "momentum" for them, so yeah pretty much sonic team always give us momentum, is us who dont explain our selfs good enoughh
@@Banana807 I think the other main complaint people has is that jumping actually slows you down, so it's not keeping your momentum. People want to boost on the ground then fly through the air, which would feel fun and satisfying but on the gamedev side of things would be an utter nightmare to design around and maintain any type of challenging level design.
momentum doesn't need a name change, it accurately describes what people are talking about. "slope physics" just centers the conversation specifically around ramps/slopes, when momentum applies to more than just that.
Glad to see you back with a new video and hear your thoughts on Frontiers. I personally really enjoyed it and hope they continue to improve on it for future games.
this video solidified my choice not to get the game way more than any actually negative ones, purely because of how mostly unbiased the actual coverage and footage of the game was. it even kinda shows through in cybershell himself, it's just... hard to care, anymore. there's stuff that's fine and maybe even kinda good in here but it's just so distinctly sonic team, and given their performance and treatment of both fans and developers with origins, i just can't stomach how this franchise is at the moment.
Personally, the meta surrounding the franchise is what's been killing any interest i had in it. Sega's continued abuse of the teams it has working on sonic games, Sonic Team's technical inadequacy, the likes of Flynn and his desperate attempts to give the setting some kind of solid ground despite the limits clearly imposed on anyone writing for it, the trend chasing, ect. Surprised it didn't come with a battle royal mode. I bet they're really glad the free advertising fell into their lap through Korone.
16:51 well seeing as the ruins on starfall islands do actually look a lot like the gia temples in unleashed mainly the large rectangular room underground on ares island i wouldn't be surprised if the two were related somehow
3:45 for this part, in one of the side story interactions with Sage, its said that in order for cyberspace to be a physical plane for sonic to traverse through, it goes into Sonics brain and takes parts from places Sonic has been to before, and builds off of that. Hence the reused levels and designs.
They probably made the parry a hold-to-parry mechanic instead of a timing thing because of the input: since they needed two buttons for dodging (since they decided to have side-stepping on the bumpers and have those inputs also be for dodging), the lack of button real estate left them with "just hold both dodge buttons to parry," but the result of THAT was that if they made parrying a timing-based thing, they'd need to expect the player to time a simultaneous-two-button-input, at which point the window would NEED to be more-than-instantaneous just to make sure the player would parry when they mean to parry instead of accidentally dodging. So I guess they just decided, "Eh, make it a hold action."
2:20 the term sonicy environments doesn't really make sense because sonic has been in a whole wide variety of environments from realistic like frontiers to cartoonish like lost world and plus i think the more realistic look for frontiers fits well considering the story
I'm surprised you didn't actually talk about how useful the dropdash actually is. Not only does it have actual momentum for when you go down hills, but it's the best way to get up steep slopes. I've skipped so much of the level and accessed parts early thanks to that move. It's inclusion might be better than Mania.
Drop dash and rail jump mechanics can give you enough momentum to get on top of the Volcano on the 3rd island, which was not intended due to the steep incline, but people found a way.
Then again with Mania being a huge success maybe Sonic Team stuck it in there because they think it would make Frontiers as successful, but even then it’s still a great traversal move when going uphill like you said.
"Poochie the dog" and "the fireworks factory" Sound so at home in the Sonic universe that it took me a second to realize it was a simpsons reference. I was like "yeah whatever, that random character and zone from some sonic game"
i cant wait for sega and sonic team to respond to the good reception by making a sonic game with physics like sonic 4 that takes classic zones from games you love like green hill zone, chemical plant and sky sanctuary
Well, I know this will sound corny, but man, seeing this notification brought a tear to my eye, so great seeing the Sonic Lore Master again, and not just on Twitter.
God I loved this game. I won't deny it definitely has flaws, but I also can't deny it was so goddamn fun. I think the best thing about this game, though, is the potential it carries for the future of Sonic games. I genuinely would not mind hating this game in the future if it means that something _this_ fun is the new precedent for bad Sonic games. Because that means we've hit quality levels unheard of in ages.
There is SO MUCH ignorance when it comes to the cycles and behind the scenes issues with this game, for one, Sonic Team DID NOT WANT Cyberspace stages in the game. The last two Islands were NOT supposed to be a thing at all, like I get the idea that Sonic Team could've done better, but they are SEVERELY understaffed and SEGA DOES NOT take them seriously in ANY capacity. Hell the ONLY reason we had Classic Sonic was because of SEGA in Forces. Everyone is always so quick to say oh Sonic Team this, not realizing that NINETY NINE percent of the issues with every generally perceived "failure" of a Sonic game was because of SEGA. Sonic 4 wasn't even supposed to be a console game, 06 is a known story but they still get disrespected for that. I mean I can only imagine how many people don't know that this game was supposed to release last year, but Iizuka, the head of Sonic team begged SEGA for it to be delayed and pushed back a year. But god forbid we blame SEGA for anything, it's just Sonic Team right? Fifteen years of this blatant ignorance for this severely mistreated and disrespected dev team. Not a rage comment either, but man, why don't people do research anymore.
@@orlandofurioso7329 Exactly, and it's so frustrating because if people would actually look at the facts and start calling out SEGA, there's no guarantee that anything would change, but Sonic Team shouldn't be taking the blame for something they quite literally cannot control.
Such a deeply flawed but still charming game. They do need to make a sequel and iron out all the problems, not least the camera, which feels like an antagonist 😂
@@user_Z- yes, slightly confusing design choices in the game too. Many parts felt like Ratchet and Clank, which is a good place to start with any game, but Sonic is so distinctive it did feel a bit inauthentic.
I imagine to someone who is unfamiliar with sonic would treat the excessive references as family guy cutaway gags
"Man, this is worse than the time I fought the Biolizard."
"Man this is like that time I got drugged outside the casino with Tails."
“Hey Tails this is like that time where I tried to give Eggman that fake emerald you made”
This loading screen is worse than that time Dr. Robotnik froze me with his super supreme stopper zapper!
this is worse than the time Johnny challenged me to a race on the wavebike.
finally, The Sonic Guy is finally talking about the new sonic game. truly an incredible moment in time
Ikr
issa beaut 🥲
He’s like the Sus Guy finally playing Among Us!
was waiting for this since the game came out.
truly the moment of all moments
Cybershell closing the video on the differences between lobsters and crayfish was exactly what I needed
Crayfish, lobster, and squat lobster comparison video when
Same
Honestly
I thought he was going to comment on why it's even called a crayfish since it's so big
@@fullriver1234 to be fair crayfish can get large haha. I live in VA, crayfish catching is a childhood pastime and some of those things are like 2in long!!
This has a Fishing mini game, making it OBJECTIVELY soulful. This metric has literally never failed me. It's that simple.
the fishing game has no skill and you get the same fish each time you try..
@@elaborateecho6830 The fishing game has no QTEs and Big doesn't even appear in the game
@@elaborateecho6830 Sonic Frontiers doesn't exist
Very based.
Dangerously based
the aliens looking like chaos is actually fully intentional. in egg memos eggman explains that chaos (and the chao) descended from the ancients. really cool continuity.
@Nono that’d be dope to explore in the next game. Fighting other relatives of Chaos and the Ancients.
@Nono Chaos was once a Chao before it evolved into a water-thing. They are just the descendants of the few ancients that remained and left the islands.
I liked that too. Although, didn't they say before that Chaos was just a chao mutated from Chaos emeralds radiation or smth like that? Anyway I like the version where he is an alien much more.
@@user-sq3bk1zc6b The Chao are devolved Ancients, and Chaos is a Chao that evolved into something similar, but not quite the same. That's basically how it is.
Eh I'd rather them be some like essense of the planet type thing like ff7 than aliens but W/e
I feel like the randomly placed assets in openzone would be actually kinda sweet if they put in effort to make them fit the aesthetic of the rest of the environment. Like rails being branches coming off from giant trees or something
every Heroes level
I know.
Even it being realistic isn't an excuse as 06 managed to make almost all of its game-y elements look like solid parts of the world.
Sunset Overdrive did it so well, yet that game is often overlooked as a platformer and only looked at as a shooter despite being from Insomniac. Sonic team could learn a thing or three from that game.
It legitimately looks like a placeholder mod a 17 year old threw together that you play while waiting for the really good one to come out... >__>
For real though. Cliche example I know, but if you look at DK Country Tropical Freeze that game integrates the platforming with its environments seemless. It's not like you are jump across some random floating platform, your jumping across like tree tops and what not. I say this as someone who liked the game, have beaten it twice: the floating platforming segments look really out of place. Also looks even worse when the game has really bad pop in problems.
The writing in this game really was refreshing
Tails' "I'm wildly inconsistent" line and Eggman's memos on Sonic's friends wasting their potential in his shadow + Amy taking so long to find her way seriously stuck out to me as like Ian Flynn saying to the audience "Yeah, don't worry, I know this shit's fucked" and trying to course correct as hard as possible lmfao
“in his shadow”
Ha
I the writing is one of the most flawed aspects of the game. Everything in it is predicated on the player's knowledge of previous Sonic games, and people who just jump into it are gonna have no fucking clue when it references shit from Sonic Adventure or something. It's incredibly clumsy and feels like it came right out of a marvel movie.
I still hate that Flynn name dropped Sticks the Badger of all things. That was the one time when he should have not introduced the reference. Sonic Boom needs to die and be forgotten. Nothing from that trash fire is worth salvaging.
@@whatsupbossanova Almost like it's the 30th anniversary title or something
You should also use this complaint for Generations
@@Hynotama Sticks is cool
I like to think of Frontiers as "the band-aid game" where the intent of the story and gameplay are to address serious concerns people have had with the franchise for the last decade, get people back on board, and then go all out for the next game after Frontiers. Hopefully SEGA loosens the mandates and will give Sonic Team a bigger development team because 60 people for a AAA game like this is just not gonna cut it.
Wait, Frontiers was made by just 60 people?
@Xiatter Yep, Iizuka confirmed that back in June/July (I think it was one of the Summer Games Fest interviews he did). But I think it's very clear that Sonic Team knows exactly what most people are wanting now. The only thing they have to do is convince SEGA to give them the budget they need to fully realize it. With the success of the Sonic Movie this year, here's hoping SEGA will give them more freedom 🙏
Considering things were actually a little different this game, not just in (some) mechanics and gameplay, but with character emotions as well, I have a feeling they may allow them to do something similar to what they allowed in Unleashed. Maybe not go full on ‘06 and straight up nearly kill the character, but something more along the lines where “This is actually serious, and we can’t just sit around with our dick in our hands passing jokes.”
How many Sonic games have there been, though, where it felt like if Sega just fixed these certain issues we'd be in a whole new era?
@WolframSV2 we have limited time on this earth and yet you decide to use the little time you have watching and commenting on something you know you don't like
How about instead of trying to rile up random internet strangers who will forget your existance in a day, you spend time with people you love, or just doing things you enjoy rather than things you dislike
Just a suggestion though, if you feel you're not wasting your time then who am I to stop you
The fact that he hasn't made the sonic origins video yet already speaks for itself about the game.
Thats not a game, its a compilation, and a rather underwhelming one compared to what fans have given us in the past.
@@Bionickpunk true, but I still would’ve enjoyed a full Cybershell review on the game, especially after he made a video about it before it came out
@@MarcusGronkowski What's there to say beyond "it's a bunch of botched ports"? You can't get a full video out of that without just repeating yoursself a hundred times.
@@HOTD108_ true, but Cybershell and classic sonic go together like bread and butter. Can’t deny that Origins has the first official widescreen port of S3&K
@@HOTD108_ are you saying you want LESS Cybershell content? He already barely uploads as it is
Knowing that this will be the last cybershell video for at least a month is harder than knowing frontiers will be the last sonic game for at least 2 years
About that.
@@tehdragogood point
I'm surprised you didn't know Sticks was canon to the main series. Yes, while we haven't actually seen her in it directly, the Japanese official website includes her in the overall Sonic series character roster, complete with Yuji Uekawa art, confirming that she does in fact exist.
Cool
Most people didn't know that Sticks was canon,people didn't think that art meant much.
Not just that, she even appeared in comics on Sonic Channel, and appeared in Yuji Uekawa's wallpapers four years in a row. She also appeared in mainline Sonic stuff before, like Sonic Runners and Mario & Sonic 2016.
It's easy to brush it all off as non-canon, but she definitely exists.
Canon to what? The games clearly not, counting olympics games is funny as hell.
@@polkadi Did you call Sonic Runners and The Olympics 'mainline'?
If you make an infinity symbol with the cyloops you will gain a boost buff that will last longer. Especially at max rings. Also you can redo it at anytime.
The question is, does it really explain the Emerald's origins? After all, the Ancients had no knowledge of the Master Emerald or how and why it pulled the Chaos Emeralds to Sonic's world... that seems to imply that the Emeralds are something that they had simply discovered too.
Yeah, emeralds always felt (and in some comics outright stated) to be interdimensional sources of great power that many civilizations and worlds encountered. Likely there arent just 7 of them, but many, with only Master Emeralds being rare and few on each planet.
That's really the thing. The original Classic Lore(That may or may not be changed by Origins, that whole collection is a mess canonically) claims that the creation of the Master Emerald and the sealing of the 7th Chaos Emerald on West Side Island were done by "the gods". Early in the game, I expected something deeper to be revealed due to the grand scale of the ancients and their enemy(And because of the broken emerald on Ares Island)...but the way the events are told, it's entirely impossible for either side of the conflict to have anything to do with this, so we still don't know the truth of the legends.
Yeah they are practically the Infinity Stones of this Universe. And it'd better stay that way, because the 2nd movie version of their creation just sucks. Sucks out all the mystery and just them being backstoryless unlimited source of power for different fractions to fight for.
@@lpfan4491 maybe after one encounter with dark Gia they flew off to another planet in need for a bit only to return back to earth since the master emerald is still there 😊
Consisering the Gaia lore and their connection to the Master Emerald it seems to me that they _were_ originally from Earth and just ended up elsewhere for a while.
If this was realistic, this video would be posted in about 9 years
Feels weird that Sticks is canon now, since they're in a different continuity. That means there's no stopping them bringing back some rando like Johnny Lightfoot or Wes Weasly, they're about as important.
just budget constraints lol. I think the Chaotix will get a chance to be playable again before Sega even considers adopting an IDW character into the games.
Wes Weasly in a mainline Sonic game would be hilarious
To be fair, I feel like "The End" is absolutely going to reappear in a future game. That boss fight feels more like a lore bomb to establish what it is.
Yeah it's said it's moon form was just one incarnation
Don't expect things like that this is Sega and Sonic Team we are talking about.
Especially as apparently hackers already found out that parts of the boss fight were cut late into development so it seems so rushed might be entirely down to that.
@@user-mz9xo3hx1h “This incarnation”
@@iam4026 same meaning I just worded it differently
@@rynobehnke8289 what parts were cut? Did you play as the titan at one point? Cus if that was cut ima be so fuckin’ sad
I’m hoping they keep on improving it.
I’ve said it before on other videos about Frontiers and I’ll say it again here.
Were it not for Frontiers reusing Green Hill after Mania and Forces did so. I would be interested in a game set on just South Island. I mean in addition to both versions of Sonic 1, 8-Bit Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos, and Sonic Blast took place there and I think it’d be fun to see how each zone is connected together.
* Yellow Desert being in a remote part of South Island entered through a tunnel in Green Hill or Underground Zone
* Red Volcano being deep within Underground Zone
* Underground Zone and Jungle Zone being linked together by Marble and Spring Yard Zone
* Aqua Lake being near Labyrinth Zone
* Turquoise Hill being near the coast, far from Green Hill
* Green Hills from 8-Bit Sonic 2 being the outskirts of normal Green Hill.
Aren't you the one made that comment about holding onto the hope for Cybershell returning a few years back? If so glad to see your hope paid off.
i kinda wanna see a game set on Christmas Island
That's just fanservice
@@iananderson4754 when I saw Rhan Parody show up in my subscription feed I was elated. I care less about sonic now, but back then Cybershell was my favourite youtuber.
I just wish we got more CD rep other than stardust speedway and metal sonic. Mania proves that they can do really good with CD zones like they did with metallic madness
Honestly this gives me at least some hope for the future of the series. I'm glad they're acknowledging some of their mistakes, Tails saying he's inconsistent genuinely made me smile.
edit: wow y’all are liking this fast
I am of the opposite spectrum. The corporate farts at the top of SEGA will only see the success and not the effort. "Do it again. You did it once so it should be easier." Like how Mania did well so SEGA rushed them to make Origins which people unanimously agree was "okay". Not worth the price and not worth removing the original games off of steam making it the only option if you wanna purchase it now. If news comes out that a Sonic game is being rushed then it''ll just repeat the cycle over and over again.
We're not in the safe zone yet unfortunately, this could be like the 2010's where we got some good games at the start of the decade then it got progressively worse as the decade went on.
Like I pray to God this is a sign of things to come, but I've had a similar hope with generations and look how that turned out. Hopefully this is different.
edit: wow likes mean nothing and nobody cares how many you have
@@HOTD108_ never said I cared about them
@@thegungerbrospodcast7671 thing is even in gens you could tell sonic team and sega were slowly going off their roots, here you can feel they want to go back to that 2000s era sonic charm
I am praying that Sonic Team hires more staff for their next project. It's more clear than it's ever been that there just isn't enough man power at the studio to achieve the vision they're aiming for. I had a lot of fun with Frontiers but it is anything but a smooth experience. I really hope the next one just takes what works about Frontiers and polishes it to a mirror sheen.
When looking at the concept art of Frontiers in the artbook, I can't imagine how beautiful and surreal the game would look visually. Imo Unleashed is still better looking than Frontiers because there is a noticeable level of contrast that can drop your jaw out of astonishment.
I want Sonic Team to be given more man power to pump out the best they envision
@@minty6623 sonic team NEEDS to be disbanded. the only way we get a sonic game we dont say "it's ok FOR A SONIC GAME about is if real developers make the game.
im tired of false hope, they ned to be fired and "grinding" has been lame since the 90s
Or they could rebrand it as Hero Team.
But hey, if anything the publisher SEGA actually considered giving them big budget, so I believe Iizuka should step out of the comfort zone and actually work with big team that is in between 100-200 + Dimps.
It's one of the most "good not great" games that I've play in a while. I think in the long run I'm gonna feel a bit underwhelmed by it looking back but overall still had a good time with it.
Agreed
Comparable to Adventure 1. But the community has become more critical of the games due to social media speading opinions way faster than two decades ago.
I find Frontiers more inspired by Shadow of the Colossus than Breath of the Wild tbh. Abandoned lands, ancient, giant bosses, mysterious voice guiding you? All SoTC classics.
SOTC comparison goes way further than you might think lol
Honestly same especially with how somber it is
@@HellfireComms
Oh I know, but I didn't wanna say anything spoilery :P
@@HellfireComms wow it’s you guys! I discovered you through BrainScratch more than 10 years ago! Big fan ever since
Actually this game is very similar to halo infinites open world and monster hunter imo. Where it serves as a hub for the more traditional style levels and there are monsters you can fight around the map or normal enemy’s.
When the world needed him the most, he came back.
Shut up.
he's always here, he just take breaks from time to time.
That’s true,
Ugh. I hate this phrase.
He's what he is
Better late than never.
This is my first time seeing the Tangle reference! If they follow up on this then they could really open the floodgates and introduce other IDW characters like Whisper and Surge into the main canon (hopefully as playable characters).
Surge vs Sonic in the main games would be amazing.
@@HellfireComms
If Sonic is Goku then Surge definitely has to be Caulifla/Kale or Kefla!
same here, and I didn't even know who Tangle was since I didn't read the comics (or apparently, play the mobile games that have a full 3D model of her).
And I thought it was a deep cut mentioning Sticks in a mainline game (who hasn't been mentioned outside of the Boom universe... and that one olympics game lol)
@@raze2012_ Awful reference.
@@bakedbeans5494 Says the dude with a Dr. Doof. Profile pic. You have no leg to stand on. Get a life off your moms iPad, kid.
I can't wait for the Sonic Frontiers bonus video
The sonic GOAT
Couldn't have said it better than myself
joe mama
I love how the Cybershell community is willing to wait for a full year for one upload and won't even question it.
Good. Being patient is a positive trait.
I question it!
Cybershell, if you read this, if you're just sapped for ideas to get impassioned about, watch your past videos, in many of them you say 'maybe I'll do a video on that later' or 'but that warrants its own video'. None of those videos have been made yet to my knowledge, and many of them sound like really good ideas, that I'd totally watch. And I'm not even a huge sonic dood. You're just good at the game of youtubes.
Here's my headcanon.
Cyberspace is all about extracting and collecting memories and such.
So, what if entering Cyberspace and getting digitized kinda made everybody's memories more clear? Tails even mentions something like that I think.
So, maybe that's why characters make so many references and callbacks to old stuff. These things are just fresher in their minds.
I love the references to previous games. Continuity is barely a thing in Sonic. It's really good to see. This has the best story in the series in quite a while. I can tell that the guy knows his lore and characters.
Frontiers is a solid foundation for a great sonic game, but they have to improve a lot of things if they want to keep doing this.
Shame that Sega team tends to do something else completely different in the next game.
Yeah no shit
This might be Unleashed all over again
I didn't really like this one but I'm looking forward to the version they release 2-3 games from now that's super polished & feels good to play (& everyone else suddenly turns on because they're sick of these & want something else)
Oh God, I can't hear this argument anymore. Every game since generations was just a "solid foundation" and they never built anything upon it, fans litterally say this for over 10 years at this point, it's just cringe by now. By now it seems everything sonic team throws out are foundations
Apparently there are unused files in the game for The End that suggest it would have gotten a proper bossfight, but I imagine due to time constraints they weren't able to finish it and instead cobbled together the Ikaruga boss instead of cutting it entirely
Your rings are your life bar. Enemies do set amounts of ring damage which scale up during the game. So you can take more hits when you have 999 rings, also you have more time during Super Sonic.
I can see where you're coming from with the story, and I think part of it for me was approaching it as a soft reboot of sorts. Tails has been super inconsistent, Knuckles has been flanderised and Amy's been MIA for ages, so taking this chance to start from square one with them was taken, which makes sense because Ian Flynn is very good at writing interactions. I guess also this is meant to have more of a mystery vibe
I also personally feel like the Cyber Space levels get more engaging once you're out of the Generations territory and seeing the Unleashed and SA2 layouts, which lend themselves much better to Frontiers' moveset. I do wish the three more obvious themes were done in a different way. It's hard to explain but the city theme has this real sense of being dreamlike, half-formed memories filling in the gaps resulting in a mishmash of City Escape, Crisis City and Empire City. It definitely creates a sense of wrongness that just seeing the clean visuals of Green Hill, Chemical Plant and Sky Sanctuary don't really do.
Anyway, I can see why this game is sorta divisive, but I've got permanent brainrot from playing Sonic since I was 4 so I love it, and the fact that this feels like a genuine effort from Sonic Team, even if it isn't perfect, already puts this head and shoulders over a lot of the output of the last decade or so.
Perfect explanation for the city stages. I kept asking myself if it was central city, empire city or station square and felt a slight uncanny feeling when it didn't completely click.
Wtf is a "MIA"
@@alantezoni9813 Missing In Action. It's a mostly military term to describe someone who disappeared while doing a specific task and nobody working with them has a way to contact them. It's usually assumed that people who are MIA are dead, but there just isn't any proof of it yet.
@@ChocolateAsylum Sonic and the Backroom Liminal Spaces
Sonic Unleashed was already a soft reboot. Sega just needs to get its act together.
I don't care about Sonic nor do I own videogame consoles, or have played videogames in 15 years. I still have notifications on for your videos cause you're an amazing storyteller.
Try playing a game sometime lol
Hah nerd touch grass
Get a life
for reeeaaaal. you follow his other channels* right?
Maybe play one
At the end of the second boss fight when Super Sonic is talking to Knuckles. He flinched when Knuckles goes to fist bump him because he remembers Knuckles knocked the emeralds out of him in Sonic 3 opening of Angel Island Zone. That was a really nice touch in my opinion. Obviously since Knuckles is still digitized he couldn’t have hit him anyways, but it was just funny that it made him worried for a brief second.
6:30 I found late in my playthrough that the drop dash is very sticky compared to normal boost/movement. I was able to climb up fairly steep slopes using it, and even climb over the ice on the mountains of island 3. Not sure if it's intentional, but it is a pretty fun trick when used right.
really appreciate this followup to the Seaman video, giving us more fish-based action.
I've been trying to think of a rage against the machine joke ever since sage said she could awaken their rage against you, and I finally settled on "rage against the blue teen"
“Rage against Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine”
The references to past games felt like Family Guy cutaway set ups at times.
"Tails,this was worse than the fourth dungeon in Sonic Labyrinth! "
I liked the ending where Big the Cat invites Sonic and all his friends over for a crawfish boil.
The fantastic character writing was what kept me going through to the end. They managed to remember and nail every character's core traits, every SINGLE line by sonic contains some reference to speed or impatience just as an example. It's really a marvel of how to do a whole lot with very little, Introspective Eggman is something I never knew I wanted but definitely would like to see going forward!
Sonic Frontiers feels like a really good starting point for a new era of sonic:
-The characters are finally back to being themselves after a decade of bad writing
-There is finally a sense of continuity in the series
-New gameplay style with promise
If they take what works in frontiers and improve it and fix what doesn't work, then I feel like we might get a masterpiece.
Personally I really hope they stick with this gameplay style and it improve by:
1. Making the open zone areas more visually interesting, both in aesthetics and level design, I feel like a major thing that holds back the Starfell Islands is that all of the platforming is done with floating stage elements rather than actual terrain.
If they actual terrain more it would make the islands look more interesting and also probably fix the pop-in issue, with such a heavy reliance on stage elements like rails and platforms; pop-in is an inevitable issue.
2. Polish up the combat: Make sonic weaker and make the enemies stronger and more varied.
Sonic is way too overpowered, his """parry""" is basically just a block that insta-kills enemies, and his moveset is full of very strong attacks that can be spammed.
Maybe put his special attacks on a cooldown or give him an energy gauge that he has to use them or make them consume rings to use.
The enemies on the other hand, they are interesting and you have to tackle them in unique ways BUT the way they are designed makes the potential enemy encounters VERY LIMITED.
In Frontiers' encounters you only ever fight 1 special enemy or 4-6 regular enemies. There needs to be a wider variety of enemies that can fought as a group.
I feel like Sonic Frontiers has better combat that Sonic Unleashed, but enemy variety is something Unleashed definitely did better, in that game there were minions, shield enemies, little guys and minibosses and all could be fought in one encounter.
I feel like an open-world combined with a fast-paced combat system really suits Sonic, I hope they keep this gameplay style and improve it because it has a lot of untapped potential.
One last thing, the story.
-------------SPOILERS----------------
I really enjoyed the story for the first 3 islands, the mystery of the ancients is well built-up and character interactions were really fun, I also enjoyed Sage a lot more than I thought I would,
It kinda sucks though that the father/daugher bond between Sage and Eggman is only really explored in the Egg Memos because its a really interesting, funny and sweet idea.
BUT WOW my enjoyment of the story ended completely at island 4, they build up Sonic's corruption so well throughout the game, and the scene were he finally succumbs to corruption is genuinely powerful and unsettling, but then he just gets magically healed by his friends saying a line each and holding hands.
They built up something so interesting only to throw it away instantly, imo that was even worse than the brainwash moment in sonic colors.
From that point onwards the story kinda sucks, they build up "The End" really well and truly make it seem like the biggest threat ever, all 4 titans couldnt defeat it, they could only seal it away.
BUT THEN SONIC AND SAGE JUST DEMOLISH IT WITH EASE, no struggle whatsoever, then Sage sacrifices herself in the most forced way possible and Sonic shrugs it off like nothing even happened.
Its a massive shame honestly, I really dig the vibe of "The End" mysterious space rock, eerie , cool boss music, seems really powerful because destroyed a powerful and intelligent civilisation who had mechs and the chaos emeralds.
Its just a shame the gameplay of its boss is uninspired, and we learn absolutely nothing about "The End"
It amounts to just being a very cliché final boss with a ton of tropes, very disappointing because it had some real potential.
In the end Sonic Frontiers' story really just feels like its mimicking shadow of the colossus mixed with nier automata mixed with previous sonic games, just pretty lame conclusion to a story with so much promise.
It really feels like some meddling happened behind the scenes with the final stretch of the plot, there's no way Ian Flynn wanted to write it that way, the story goes from competent to forces levels of bad within the span of one scene.
Ian Flynn didn't fix anything.
@@bakedbeans5494 Ikr. I'm sick of people saying Ian Flynn fixed things. The tone is still completely in the toilet, with serious moments being completely undercut by a dumb "Well, that was a thing" line from Sonic. We're still firmly stuck in the awful meta era, unfortunately.
@@HOTD108_ Yeah. Sega lost big time after Shiro Maekawa left in 2009. Even worse is that characters like Amy and Tails had bad iterations yet again.
@@HOTD108_ if alot of people even cybershell say the character interactions are pretty good, then it must be for a reason, i think you guys just have a bias against ian flynn
I know the name drops were kinda meh but I actually screamed over Sticks being mentioned. I do like her character a lot and I wish she was canon to the main timeline. Her design being a little tweaked and her character being slightly adjusted for the main timeline (but not too much because I feel it would work really well with the canon timeline), I would be extremely happy with Sticks.
For real it would be a shame for a cool character like Sticks to be stuck in Boom Purgatory, the same way Knuckles Chaotix is stuck on 32X Purgatory, yes I love Chaotix.
Its a weird reference because canon sonic feels removed from Boom; is this THAT sticks? A similar stick in this universe we haven’t met yet? Its a little confusing for me, it’s like if they mentioned sally acorn. Is mark the tapir canon too…?
I just hope that it just means the idw comics are converging with the inline sonic games.
@@beanoptodon I mean Tangle is also mentioned in frontiers.
Overall, I think Sonic Frontiers is a decent game but it definitely feels like a prototype to set the groundwork for future sonic games.
The fact that cybershell is making vids again reminds me that there’s still hope in the world
I actually really do want them to remove the boost moving forward. I have not liked most of the Boost era games for how tanky it makes Sonic feel to control, so I’m glad this game de-emphasized the boost mechanic while also making Sonic feel much closer to controlling like the Adventure era games.
I can't be the only one for whom this game is reminiscent of Code Lyoko. The environments and enemies being digital, the towers, Sage being a part of the digital world like Aelita, also just aesthetically sometimes.
Yeah, its the red tech, along with the eye motifs on some of the Ancient tech that reminds of Xana. Sage is a mix of Xana and Aelita.
19:00
So about that "cool new form", huh?
I'm 100% certain that parry was changed in the last weeks of development, and that it WAS timing based previously. It's the only explanation for the parry challenges that makes sense.
It was infinite in the game fest thing aswell
It scares me how excited I am for this cybershell video
Putting it out there; I REALLY hope we don’t crucify Ian for the namedrops.
Cheesy? Yeah.
But it was attempting to build continuity and attempt both necessary fixes and assist the current state of the franchise.
It’s not just ‘mindless name drops’, as much as it’s a symptom of a wider, well meaning attempt at writing.
We can make fun of it, but I don’t want to spread the precedent that what he did was ill founded.
You wouldn't be saying that if they didn't reboot the franchise every time or actually adhered to the "everything is canon" tweet because its not really helping the continuity all that much and just making it more confusing
@@FloridusMan I’m confused as to what you’re talking about.
All I’m saying is that the writing team is referencing the older games to create a sense of continuity for the characters and the overall adventure. I feel like by scolding this, we’re attacking a genuine attempt at fixing the characters, and de-isolating the standalone titles, just because it comes off a little corny. I’m lost on the thing about tweets and reboots.
I also don’t understand how doing this is confusing either. The worst thing that Frontiers has done was have the characters acknowledge their history.
14:40 "Hey Sonic, these ruins look like the ones on Angel Island!" And the game shows a still from Sonic 3. Like, not a relevant still from Sonic 3. Like, the part in the opening where Knuckles appears for the first time. Like... what the fuck
Edit: 15:46 Yeah, that one.
Now about that sonic frontiers bonus video
there had been a while since your last video but as always man , it's so entertaining to hear your openions those games from the blue blur
any way , there had been a while since last time i discovered about a channel named as "Pariah 695" and dude , i can't even begin to describe how in depth this guy's videos when it comes to analysing both game play and stories of sonic games , or how many facts i've never heard before regarding story elements , characters , and and lore elements that i'm wondering how we've never thought of them before , this guy's sonic's content is under rated , so please don't forget to give it a shot
It really seems like the parry had timing to it and then they decided it was too clunky and just made it free.
Sega: We made a new Sonic game!
me: whats the first level
Sega: green hillz on
When Sonic said "this is like that one time I got nursed by a CWC caricature" I really felt it.
That City Escape skip you did was hype as fuck
We’re never gonna get a game like that eith moment from and physics from sonic team. Kishimoto: I GOT YOU
He played spark 3 and learned what momentum is
I'm not the biggest momentum fanatic,but pre update sonic just felt so sluggish,I'm glad they fixed it
Listened to this video on a very fast paced day so I was grateful for the really mellow recount of your experience with sonic frontiers. I found that pace to be kind of ironic since it’s a review of the fast blue hedgehog himself and I think that added a funny element to the video. Thanks cyber, you rock man
Thanks for making videos, I always enjoy them, I haven't yet watched this one but I already know I'm going to like it :D
Best thumbnail ever made
I think Shigeru Miyamoto (of all people) put it best: if the character is fun to move, the game will be fun.
I know that there are issues and it's honestly a hard sell to show a screenshot with the realistic environment against floating rails and ziplines just hanging in the void, but when you actually get the game in your hands it just feels good. Moving Sonic around the environment and having all these elements to interact with just feels good, and the fact that you can even tweak how Sonic responds to get a more personalized feel. I don't even have a problem with the map puzzles; you're still controlling Sonic and you're still interacting with the world and you're still using his moveset to solve these little puzzles. (Mostly; there are a few duds, but they're over so quick it's not like you're trapped there for minutes on end.) Overall it's... well, it's like my love for the Adventure games; I know it's not perfect but god DAMN is it just plain fun.
(Also I think the Parry a Shot is in there because otherwise who would remember Parrying is a mechanic in a Sonic game? It was actually because of that silly puzzle I remembered it for the Titan fights.)
This is really a solid start both in terms of gameplay and narrative feel going forward. Personally I'm not at all a fan of the Boost Era games and found them all kind of a repetitive slog to finish, but this fusion of Adventure-era exploration with the short, fast-paced levels, plus the change to Boosting (making it an additional movement mechanic rather than the crux of the gameplay) is really doing it for me. Even if a hypothetical sequel were just more of the same I'd personally be quite happy.
I loved the change to boosting too, and I wasn't the biggest fan of boost-era mechanics. This felt like kind of a happy middle-ground to me where boosting was still available and could give you quite an edge, but it was a part of a whole rather than the whole itself. Pretty much what you said hahahaha
I look forward to where Sonic is going next too!
are you ok Cybershell? you didn't told me to watch a piece of obscure media before watching this video, you seems pretty serius here
This video is literally my opinion on frontiers. As a sonic fan, whos not blindly ignoring everything and not generically hating everything. 100% covers my feelings towards it!
The 1-2 S Rank Requirement actually was the hardest mission I have encountered in the whole game. 55 Seconds for all of that was borderline impossible for me, I had to really chizzle of the seconds everywhere it counted and it took me a good 40+ minutes to finally get an S Rank.
Then I played on and got S Rank without much hassle for every following mission, that is one *goofy* difficulty spike. Good game tho, I had fun.
I personally think that the end is the antithesis to the chaos emeralds because of how much it mentioned bringing order to the chaos of life. Order and chaos. But if they were going with that route they should've hinted at it more
Given some of The End's dialogue such as "this incarnation" and "they were finite, I am infinite," has led to theories that it isn't truly dead and might return in the future and/or that it was the creator of the original Phantom Ruby...
Adventure boots are dark brown Timbs. This is my head cannon, and I’m not dropping it.
6:37 and its funny because the drop dash is actually faster than the boost if you go downhill
If there's one complaint I have about other peoples'... well, complaints. It's that we should really quit comparing stuff to Sonic Utopia, it's more of a proof of concept than a game. They did say they were going to make it a full game but, let's face it, it's been years and that's clearly not happening. If anything Sonic Robo Blast 2 deserves all the praise, since it has momentum-based classic-style 3D gameplay, except unlike Utopia, it has ACTUAL levels.
Trust me, I want the next 3D Sonic to have real momentum and rolling mechanics as much as the next guy, but we did get the Drop Dash in Frontiers which does let you roll down hills, as well as grindrail jumping and boosting off of slopes keeping your momentum. Even some recently-discovered janktech with homing attack-air boost-cancelling, so I'm happy with what we got.
I like how the Sonic community despite being in a constant state of Civil War agrees on one thing - the soundtrack is always good.
We gonna need another frontiers video once all the updates are said and done
11:08 😮 I did not expect THAT to be a shortcut in the game
tbh i think we need to call “momentum” a different name, because we do have momentum in these games even if it is not that much. slope physics would be a much better term
With momentum people also refer to a consistent extremely high speed.
Also i've seen a comment that says sonic fans probably just want the speed cap in frontiers to be unlocked
What fans mean by momentum is the speed cap to be unlocked, thats "momentum" for them, so yeah pretty much sonic team always give us momentum, is us who dont explain our selfs good enoughh
@@Banana807 I think the other main complaint people has is that jumping actually slows you down, so it's not keeping your momentum. People want to boost on the ground then fly through the air, which would feel fun and satisfying but on the gamedev side of things would be an utter nightmare to design around and maintain any type of challenging level design.
momentum doesn't need a name change, it accurately describes what people are talking about. "slope physics" just centers the conversation specifically around ramps/slopes, when momentum applies to more than just that.
Glad to see you back with a new video and hear your thoughts on Frontiers. I personally really enjoyed it and hope they continue to improve on it for future games.
I wasnt even expecting a vid this soon. I cant wait for the bonus video
Cyberspace levels have different physics from open zone, so they should have just made boost faster in cyberspace
this video solidified my choice not to get the game way more than any actually negative ones, purely because of how mostly unbiased the actual coverage and footage of the game was. it even kinda shows through in cybershell himself, it's just... hard to care, anymore. there's stuff that's fine and maybe even kinda good in here but it's just so distinctly sonic team, and given their performance and treatment of both fans and developers with origins, i just can't stomach how this franchise is at the moment.
absolutely based response.
Based response. It's still eh especially the combat.
Personally, the meta surrounding the franchise is what's been killing any interest i had in it. Sega's continued abuse of the teams it has working on sonic games, Sonic Team's technical inadequacy, the likes of Flynn and his desperate attempts to give the setting some kind of solid ground despite the limits clearly imposed on anyone writing for it, the trend chasing, ect. Surprised it didn't come with a battle royal mode. I bet they're really glad the free advertising fell into their lap through Korone.
100% my thoughts on this game.
the absolute state of the sonic franchise... what other game series is like this.
@@frankbrocker2963 literally every other modern game series. They just pioneered unfinished trash. Now every game is 06 or forces
16:51 well seeing as the ruins on starfall islands do actually look a lot like the gia temples in unleashed mainly the large rectangular room underground on ares island i wouldn't be surprised if the two were related somehow
I was going to watch this but then accidentally clicked on the video above which is a long play of Klonoa for the Wii
3:45 for this part, in one of the side story interactions with Sage, its said that in order for cyberspace to be a physical plane for sonic to traverse through, it goes into Sonics brain and takes parts from places Sonic has been to before, and builds off of that. Hence the reused levels and designs.
I’m just a normal Sonic fan who likes Sonic Frontiers a normal amount.
This game truly did make me shed a frontear.
They probably made the parry a hold-to-parry mechanic instead of a timing thing because of the input: since they needed two buttons for dodging (since they decided to have side-stepping on the bumpers and have those inputs also be for dodging), the lack of button real estate left them with "just hold both dodge buttons to parry," but the result of THAT was that if they made parrying a timing-based thing, they'd need to expect the player to time a simultaneous-two-button-input, at which point the window would NEED to be more-than-instantaneous just to make sure the player would parry when they mean to parry instead of accidentally dodging. So I guess they just decided, "Eh, make it a hold action."
I'm still enjoying this era of consistent cybershell content, like this is pretty sweet.
Can't wait to watch! Damn these family get-togethers, of all days.
2:20 the term sonicy environments doesn't really make sense because sonic has been in a whole wide variety of environments from realistic like frontiers to cartoonish like lost world and plus i think the more realistic look for frontiers fits well considering the story
It always a treat when Cybershell makes a video
The lamppost break at the start 😂😂😂
I'm surprised you didn't actually talk about how useful the dropdash actually is. Not only does it have actual momentum for when you go down hills, but it's the best way to get up steep slopes.
I've skipped so much of the level and accessed parts early thanks to that move.
It's inclusion might be better than Mania.
Drop dash and rail jump mechanics can give you enough momentum to get on top of the Volcano on the 3rd island, which was not intended due to the steep incline, but people found a way.
The momentum unfortunately dips in the cyberspace levels
It can also be use for combos as well. Watch a video of a player going ham on some bad guys.
And for combat, it's fun to use mid combo
Then again with Mania being a huge success maybe Sonic Team stuck it in there because they think it would make Frontiers as successful, but even then it’s still a great traversal move when going uphill like you said.
I am still incredibly envious of Ian Flynn, the man has the greatest job being the guy that professionally writes about Sonic the Hedgehog.
"Poochie the dog" and "the fireworks factory" Sound so at home in the Sonic universe that it took me a second to realize it was a simpsons reference. I was like "yeah whatever, that random character and zone from some sonic game"
i cant wait for sega and sonic team to respond to the good reception by making a sonic game with physics like sonic 4 that takes classic zones from games you love like green hill zone, chemical plant and sky sanctuary
Well, I know this will sound corny, but man, seeing this notification brought a tear to my eye, so great seeing the Sonic Lore Master again, and not just on Twitter.
the bar for sonic has been set so, so, so low that any flaws this game definitely has just seem so minor compared to what we've been dealing with.
Always happy to have more Cybershell content, I always miss it.
Finally, the only Sonic-obsessed youtuber I trust is back to talk about Breath of the Hedgehog.
God I loved this game. I won't deny it definitely has flaws, but I also can't deny it was so goddamn fun.
I think the best thing about this game, though, is the potential it carries for the future of Sonic games. I genuinely would not mind hating this game in the future if it means that something _this_ fun is the new precedent for bad Sonic games.
Because that means we've hit quality levels unheard of in ages.
Same
I cannot believe that Cybershell is now going to have to make a bonus video now
Love to see a brand new cybershell vid after work
There is SO MUCH ignorance when it comes to the cycles and behind the scenes issues with this game, for one, Sonic Team DID NOT WANT Cyberspace stages in the game. The last two Islands were NOT supposed to be a thing at all, like I get the idea that Sonic Team could've done better, but they are SEVERELY understaffed and SEGA DOES NOT take them seriously in ANY capacity. Hell the ONLY reason we had Classic Sonic was because of SEGA in Forces. Everyone is always so quick to say oh Sonic Team this, not realizing that NINETY NINE percent of the issues with every generally perceived "failure" of a Sonic game was because of SEGA. Sonic 4 wasn't even supposed to be a console game, 06 is a known story but they still get disrespected for that. I mean I can only imagine how many people don't know that this game was supposed to release last year, but Iizuka, the head of Sonic team begged SEGA for it to be delayed and pushed back a year. But god forbid we blame SEGA for anything, it's just Sonic Team right? Fifteen years of this blatant ignorance for this severely mistreated and disrespected dev team.
Not a rage comment either, but man, why don't people do research anymore.
Yeah, they keep blaming Iizuka and Sonic Team, even when Headcannon themselves said they are not at fault at all.
@@orlandofurioso7329 Exactly, and it's so frustrating because if people would actually look at the facts and start calling out SEGA, there's no guarantee that anything would change, but Sonic Team shouldn't be taking the blame for something they quite literally cannot control.
Such a deeply flawed but still charming game. They do need to make a sequel and iron out all the problems, not least the camera, which feels like an antagonist 😂
They need to make the aesthetic more “Sonic-like” too if they ever do this again. I don’t mind the new art direction but that would give it more charm
@@user_Z- yes, slightly confusing design choices in the game too. Many parts felt like Ratchet and Clank, which is a good place to start with any game, but Sonic is so distinctive it did feel a bit inauthentic.