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 Tea and I are genuinely confused about this.
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Feb 4, 2023 00:35
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If only there were a combat maneuver that could throw an attacking enemy off balance and make them easier to damage...
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Feb 4, 2023 00:58
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EricFate posted:If only there were a combat maneuver that could throw an attacking enemy off balance and make them easier to damage... You're hinting at a mechanic that I genuinely don't remember.
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Feb 4, 2023 01:15
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EricFate posted:If only there were a combat maneuver that could throw an attacking enemy off balance and make them easier to damage... It's communicated very poorly, they're not the first I've seen have this issue. The mid-air spin thingy just seems like a gimmick for enemies with shields when introduced.
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Feb 4, 2023 01:18
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you can use all of sonic's moves in super sonic state, like the cyloop, the stomp, the projectile, etc. the controls aren't really different aside from being super. this includes all the different combo moves, which are a lot more effective at dealing damage. also you're supposed to parry the attacks
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Feb 4, 2023 01:29
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I'll admit I haven't been paying close attention through the entire LP, so I don't know what all your options are, but it looks to me like you were told to use all your techniques then proceeded to mash basic attack repeatedly, visibly not do enough damage then complain the combat is bad. I don't know what you are supposed to be doing here but I'd have at least tried making a cyloop around it or something. Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 01:44
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Tenebrais posted:I'll admit I haven't been paying close attention through the entire LP, so I don't know what all your options are, but it looks to me like you were told to use all your techniques then proceeded to mash basic attack repeatedly, visibly not do enough damage then complain the combat is bad. In my defense I tried the cyloop but a tooltip says the boss is immune to it?
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Feb 4, 2023 02:01
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the boss is definitely not immune to it
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Feb 4, 2023 02:23
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 Then this is very confusing!
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Feb 4, 2023 02:39
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that's a 'quick' cyloop, not the manual cyloop
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Feb 4, 2023 02:40
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Natural 20 posted:
Quick Cyloop is a move in the skill tree. Most people I have seen unlocked a few more moves and so hurt this thing much faster. I think it's a side effect of coming so quickly to it. MonsterEnvy fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 02:47
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Yeah, you have to manually cyloop Giganto to throw him off balance. That said, it isn't necessary to achieve victory. Basic attacks just don't do enough damage by themselves, especially if you haven't been boosting Sonic's Power score. This is definitely the time to start learning how to do Sonic's special moves, which can tack on lots of damage. Normals are okay once you enter Phantom Rush, though you still need to utilize special moves. Oh, and make sure to parry Giganto's attacks and follow up with Grand Slam. Hurts like hell. Sword_of_Dusk fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 02:51
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Part of the problem is that the game's practice demo that shows in between Gigantos downing the hatch with Sonic and reloading for another try, while it oulines the actual answer to this fight, it still doesn't explain how debilitating and universal the solution is. You'd think it's just useful for missile attacks. It doesn't at all just explain how much it can wreck enemies in melee combat. As in one of the guardian enemies that Nat and Tea squared off with in an earlier episode and promptly gave up on is made ten times easier if you actively use the same ability against it. And it's definitely the same here. If you know what you're supposed to be doing as Super Sonic? This fight feels like you're playing an epic action movie. Shitenshi fucked around with this message at 08:18 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 08:09
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Natural 20 posted:You're hinting at a mechanic that I genuinely don't remember. That is because you never use it. The next time you are fighting something on the ground, and you see the little lightning symbol that shows they are in the process of attacking -- Try holding down the L1 and R1 buttons. Watch what happens.
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Feb 4, 2023 13:50
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In fairness, giganto is the first point in the game that blocking is properly required - everything else at this stage is going down to a basic melee combo and the game is only now expecting something beyond that
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Feb 4, 2023 16:14
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Namtab posted:In fairness, giganto is the first point in the game that blocking is properly required - everything else at this stage is going down to a basic melee combo and the game is only now expecting something beyond that The game does a poor job at conveying it, but parrying is something that makes fighting Ninja a breeze. Really should be the point at which it requires you to block, as waiting until you get to Giganto can be frustrating, as seen here.
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Feb 4, 2023 18:22
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Sword_of_Dusk posted:The game does a poor job at conveying it, but parrying is something that makes fighting Ninja a breeze. Really should be the point at which it requires you to block, as waiting until you get to Giganto can be frustrating, as seen here. Come to think of it, I can't recall when it even comes up in the game. I can't remember whether I learned it from one of the little white-room tutorial asides, from one of the challenges that explicitly directs you to use the mechanic, from seeing it on the command list, or from just flubbing a dodge and accidentally hitting both buttons.
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Feb 4, 2023 18:49
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EricFate posted:Come to think of it, I can't recall when it even comes up in the game. I can't remember whether I learned it from one of the little white-room tutorial asides, from one of the challenges that explicitly directs you to use the mechanic, from seeing it on the command list, or from just flubbing a dodge and accidentally hitting both buttons. I honestly don't remember either. I probably just looked up the button combo in the skill menu and recognized the prompt later on.
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Feb 4, 2023 19:07
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Sword_of_Dusk posted:The game does a poor job at conveying it, but parrying is something that makes fighting Ninja a breeze. Really should be the point at which it requires you to block, as waiting until you get to Giganto can be frustrating, as seen here. If you run into Ninja again it explains parrying.
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Feb 4, 2023 20:24
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MonsterEnvy posted:If you run into Ninja again it explains parrying. I recall getting the info the next time I fought Ninja... but that was after Giganto for me, since the only Guardians I took on multiple times at this stage were Squid and Asura. By that time, I already knew how to parry. EDIT: After checking out Nat and Tea's skill page again, they do at least have the Stomp Attack, which when combined with Grand Slam, should be enough to win. It also helps to go into the fight with full rings. May even want to actually upgrade the ring count too. Sword_of_Dusk fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Feb 4, 2023 |
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Feb 4, 2023 23:10
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It feels a tiny bit mean to point out that the game rather incessantly dropped a parry tutorial in between each of those retries. But no. Realtalk. This is that carelessness again. There is an intended flow in which you learn a couple different combat mechanics, parry in particular, and how to string them together, of all of which Giganto is supposed to be your exam. But there just... aren't any means of accounting for what happens if players happen not to go through it, which is extremely possible. Not being able to ordinarily quit out of the boss fight is also very sloppy, like, come on, what is this, Pla- no no it's okay I caught it, I'm not going to do that thing here. The result of all this is, whoops, you've accidentally produced a misery engine again. It's the game designer's literal job to ensure that either structures or systems exist to teach players things that need to be known, and Sonic Frontiers doesn't have any, it just, usually works out okay? Usually? But not this time. All together now, children;
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Feb 4, 2023 23:12
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The game made you walk to the walking tutorial, so I had high hopes after that.
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Feb 5, 2023 08:24
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I think that we're both idiots but also that if two people both can't figure out what to do then even if they're morons something has gone wrong.
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Feb 6, 2023 13:47
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If a game requires you to use a mechanic in the boss fight then it should make sure you’re taught that mechanic. Blocking attacks is needed throughout the game but the fact that sonic frontiers is an open world means that you may not necessarily encounter anything that requires you to block. Yes there’s the early fight against ninja but you can easily brute force it with melee, then once you’re past it you may never fight another ninja again. Other than that the only thing that you need to block is the wheel enemy that chases you to explode but the game doesn’t tell you to block (they’re how I learned to block, but only because I looked up the mechanic when facing then). The challenge in an open world game is how you teach the player core mechanics. There is some evidence of an attempt at tutorialising in the first section - everything until after the first giganto cutscene is fairly linear. After that though you’re only really taught game mechanics via the loading screen challenges which teaches you things in abstract but not in context - you’re getting a blocking tutorial but nothing saying “this is what you’re doing wrong”. In essence they’re relying on people’s game sense for a title which may very well be someone’s first game ever. This isn’t even the worst design decision
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Feb 6, 2023 14:09
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There definitely looks like a tutorialising problem here. Which is interesting, because there's been a lot of tutorials. The game probably could have done more to show that the moves it's teaching you can and should be used outside the specific circumstances of the tutorials. Getting a bunch of progression-skipping items as a preorder bonus probably didn't help either! As well as being a bad move in general. It would be one thing if the rewards were earlier access to stat boosts and skill unlocks, but this stuff has let you skip levels and minibosses. If you're offering "skip part of the game" as a reward that's a bad sign for your game.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:09
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The game doesn’t really require you to engage with the majority of its content to begin with. The intended gameplay loop is that you do challenges in the overworld to get the tokens to progress the story, and you get gears from guardians to unlock levels which in turn give you keys for chaos emeralds. Fishing means you can skip all of that though, and even if you don’t fish you only have to do about 3 levels per island.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:20
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The mandatory combat outside of boss fights is almost nil. It's such a weird oversight.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:22
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The worst design decision btw is tying 2 stats to a single collectible so that you have to do each level up manually up to 99 times per stat
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Feb 6, 2023 14:26
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Namtab posted:The worst design decision btw is tying 2 stats to a single collectible so that you have to do each level up manually up to 99 times per stat I often wonder about the person responsible for this system. Here I am trying like a chump to learn to temporarily empty my head of thoughts so I might briefly know peace from the hell world and this mfer is able to inhabit that state of mind by default. It must be pleasant to be so unaware of anything.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:33
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The hellworld of my brain made me collect the 5,000+ collectibles (through fishing) and then do the 99 levels because I was going for platinum. The dopamine hit was not worth it
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Feb 6, 2023 15:04
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Tenebrais posted:There definitely looks like a tutorialising problem here. Which is interesting, because there's been a lot of tutorials. The game probably could have done more to show that the moves it's teaching you can and should be used outside the specific circumstances of the tutorials. I'm reminded of how otherwise-excellent Platinum brawlers have a bad habit of tutorializing the shop by putting a critical skill in there, but doing nothing to make that skill stand out from the bajillion others you can buy. Even if they make you buy that one first there's nothing to signpost it because it's disguised as "by the way, the shop is open for new skills" instead of "this is a really important skill you're missing, let's go get it."
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Feb 6, 2023 17:14
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Having just completed the second island Nat, if you decide to continue playing and kick this Evangelion fucker's head in, I strongly emphasize that you play and get the fishing mini-game down pat before you engage with the second titan. People who've played this far will know exactly what I'm talking about. I just had some other thoughts with the parry discussion. Some of the skills like Quick Cyloop and some of the later ones show up to input a certain button combo to activate them. Whenever Giganto takes a swing at you, show the button combo to use it. That is a good way to introduce it and make it routine, make the gameplay palatable. The other thing with comparing this way of introducing Parry in a manner akin to Quick Cyloop is that when it comes to that skill and others, not all of them show up to activate all the time and this works to provide game balance especially during the more frantic fights because that would make them overpowered even on Hard Mode. That mindset could have been the same with introducing Parry. But as it is now, it IS overpowered. Especially just because for such an early game skill, it can break the difficulty over your knee in pretty much most circumstances save some of the more gimmicky Guardian fights. You can use it whenever you want, but on the down side, the game still makes no attempt to formally introduce it save for a training demo which doesn't emphasize how good it is in melee fighting. By contrast, treating it like Quick Cyloop, showing the button combo to activate it when necessary but not all the time for fear of it cheapening the difficulty, would have improved combat tenfold, preserving the balance of difficulty as well as properly introducing it's use. Especially for a fight like this one where it's more of a cutscene/puzzle boss fight and Giganto's attacks are spaced out enough that there's almost naturally a rhythm to using it without feeling like you're spamming it Shitenshi fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Feb 6, 2023 |
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Feb 6, 2023 17:15
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Namtab posted:The worst design decision btw is tying 2 stats to a single collectible so that you have to do each level up manually up to 99 times per stat This poo poo right here. Having to boost Speed and Ring Count up to Lv.99 one at a goddamn time, when Power and Defense can be increased simultaneously and by multiple levels at once, is an absolute nightmare. The two trophies obtained when those stats hit 99 were two of the most annoying to obtain.
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Feb 6, 2023 21:26
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Bruceski posted:I'm reminded of how otherwise-excellent Platinum brawlers have a bad habit of tutorializing the shop by putting a critical skill in there, but doing nothing to make that skill stand out from the bajillion others you can buy. Even if they make you buy that one first there's nothing to signpost it because it's disguised as "by the way, the shop is open for new skills" instead of "this is a really important skill you're missing, let's go get it." Funny story about that is Platinum eventually agreed with you in Wonderful 101 Remastered, where they immediately point you to the shop, go "Hey look at those massively discounted skills, might wanna get those", and make you buy them before proceeding to Operation 001.
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Feb 6, 2023 21:58
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bladeworksmaster posted:Funny story about that is Platinum eventually agreed with you in Wonderful 101 Remastered, where they immediately point you to the shop, go "Hey look at those massively discounted skills, might wanna get those", and make you buy them before proceeding to Operation 001. That's good, W101 and Revengance are the worst offenders that come to mind, though I'm sure there's others. Can't recall if Bayonetta ever had that issue but I examine every new accessory carefully.
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Feb 6, 2023 22:11
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Episode 08 - Strider Art will be up shortly!
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Feb 7, 2023 00:24
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Very well done with improving on the combat
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Feb 7, 2023 01:30
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It seems like you are having fun with it again, which is good. I won't lie to you and say that you aren't going to run into other mechanics that you hate -- because this game is chock full of bad decisions -- but the net positives were strong enough that I never wanted to just shelve it and forget about it. The crazy part, is that only a select few of those positives wound up being things that have ever been considered a strength of the game franchise. (namely plot.) The biggest hook for me was the desire to untangle the story and see how this whole thing was going to play out.
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Feb 7, 2023 01:49
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So now we can do the obligatory praise of the boss music, right? Tomoya Ohtani is like institutionally incapable of missing. It just cannot be done. Undefeatable would pass as a final boss track in any other game, but here it's just the first of a few. I absolutely love the flow of music in this game, from the laid back overworld theme, to the Titan approach which is frankly an exceptional fakeout to make you think the whole fight soundtrack is going to be discount knockoff SotC, and then they hit you with the fuckin' Kellin Quinn vocals. Absolute king poo poo. By the way, keep an eye out for lyrical coincidences between songs, there's a couple of them. The obvious one right now is the little echo of "find another way" between the second verse and the little cutscene right after the fight. But don't worry, it's not important. The Titan fights are... they're pretty decent, I guess? There's not really a whole lot to them. As has been observed, Sonic's combat systems map 1:1 onto Super Sonic's, so as long as that key fact clicks the process of fighting is pretty intuitive, and looks really loving cool, which is... exactly what you want, frankly, it's just, those combat mechanics aren't exactly top tier to start with. The whole conceit reminds me of Bayonetta entering her poo poo-got-real mode during boss fights (and also, now I think about it, literally flying), with a bunch of spectacle-boosted attacks all working similarly to the normal ones. It's just that, y'know, Bayonetta is, well, loving Bayonetta, at its most basic a perfectly tuned genre-defining action game with combat that sings, and Sonic is... well, they didn't even bother to put timing on the parry, so that tells you something about where Sonic stands. But oh well. When you're not bouncing off of them due to some bullshit, the Titan fights absolutely nail the vibe at least, and one way in which Sonic Team is very much the equal of PlatinumGames is in the music. I always said Revengeance felt like an escalation of Sonic Adventure. I'm delighted to see the circle complete. (Idly I wonder how far they dare develop the combat system. Obviously they're going to build on it somehow, but, like, you could take this thing in a million directions from this starting point. Personally I always took Sonic for more of a Witch-time dodger than a Zandatsu parrier but what do I know.) Anyway I loving hate Strider? Absolute garbage miniboss. Beyond the novelty of having to fill out the rings, it's not very interesting, a lot of his attacks are bullshit, like, the sparks seem like they should be colour-coded but they aren't, and they can hop rails and switch direction on a dime just to gently caress you, also sometimes he just fires them right on top of you so that's fun too, and it's far too easy not to be able to tell exactly which rail the lightning is targeting, and the giant pillars he's standing on pass in front of the camera so it's always loving with your eyes, and, oh, right, if you get hit, it is literally impossible to recover rings without disengaging, and there's a lot of work to have to redo if you fail. gently caress Strider. Frankly, none of the minibosses are very good, but this one sticks out. Literally. (Thinking back on the game, there is exactly one miniboss I actually like. We've not seen it yet.)
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Feb 7, 2023 02:10
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 13:55 |
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Sometimes that still bothers me is just how small the skill tree is. If you make it your mission to explore all the islands, you can be halfway done by the time you're done with the first island, and I had it all filled out as I was just doing errands on the second one. I know it might have been hard to think of interesting new stuff to do, but still, there are action games with all kinds of neat abilities that stretch all the way to the endgame. MMOs are built on this sort of mindset. And with how expansive and novel this game is, they could have added all sorts of cool new mechanics. On the plus side they are adding free DLC where you get to play as other characters so I guess Sonic can't be hogging all the glory with cool tricks. Strider gave me all kinds of trouble the first time I fought it and I was playing on Hard Mode with my attack and defense leveled up to around 23. The first phase isn't too bad, but the second with the red and purple fireballs that can change direction and even jump rails definitely set me off a bit. That's not getting into the blind spots with it's pillars and how sometimes just as it was shooting out more of the fireballs that no matter where you were, it would fire on top of you and there was nothing you could do about it. But then I remembered I could boost myself on rails and it wasn't just a thing you could use while running around on the ground. Things got a lot easier after that. Now I just see it as a cool bump in the road.
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Feb 7, 2023 02:25
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