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it's gimmick enemies all the way, but springbot is my friend
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Feb 7, 2023 02:28
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 10:38 |
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Oh BTW congrats on doing the single and sole secret Cyloop trick and not even noticing. Welcome to the club.
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Feb 7, 2023 02:59
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I loving hate Strider. I fought it once for trophy reasons and never again. Possibly the Guardian I hate the most, or at least tied for that dubious honor.Shitenshi posted: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. I think I had gotten all the skills by the time I made it to the third island or right before clearing the second, don't recall which. From then on, I just watched Sonic collect skill points until the counter just read 99+. I would've loved the skill costs to be a little higher so the system got more mileage throughout the game. Fedule posted: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. I actually hate the music used in Titan fights. I'm really tired of Sonic being associated with rock or whatever the gently caress it's classified as.
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Feb 7, 2023 04:16
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Sword_of_Dusk posted:I think I had gotten all the skills by the time I made it to the third island or right before clearing the second, don't recall which. From then on, I just watched Sonic collect skill points until the counter just read 99+. I would've loved the skill costs to be a little higher so the system got more mileage throughout the game. Word, especially with the 99+ thing. I know I mentioned MMOs earlier and I'm just thinking they could have something with how Warcraft does specializations. That way there could be endless potential customization for both the main game with Sonic as well as the additional playable characters coming up, without making any of them feel stale or redundant.
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Feb 7, 2023 05:04
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Sonic is synonymous with buttrock, the greatest genre of music
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Feb 7, 2023 11:35
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EricFate posted: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. I think we were having fun with Giganto, we were just really really confused. I just thought the combat loop was pretty intuitive with beat on enemy until you fill up your gauge, then dodge like crazy to maintain your meter for as long as possible. This might be because I'm a massive Bayonetta fan and I didn't realise I was actually playing Dante in DMC5. Sword_of_Dusk posted:I actually hate the music used in Titan fights. I'm really tired of Sonic being associated with rock or whatever the gently caress it's classified as. I enjoy a lot of the music in this game and generally a lot of the general sonic rock themes, but I think the super sonic theme in this game is a little weaker than what I usually see out of Sega's team. For better or for worse Sonic has always had great music.
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Feb 7, 2023 17:02
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I've never liked rock to begin with. I can deal with it better when there are no vocals, but the moment someone starts singing, I really can't stand to listen any further. That said, one of the remaining Titans had a theme that wasn't immediately making me want to turn the volume all the way down. I don't recall which Titan though.
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Feb 7, 2023 21:41
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So. Sonic has to do lines to feel better now?
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Feb 8, 2023 11:03
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He’s more into speed
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Feb 8, 2023 11:27
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Feb 9, 2023 00:47
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Absolutely the last thing I expected to love in Frontiers is the character chatter, and yet here we are. Look at Sonic and Knuckles snarking at eachother. Pulling those stupid expressions. Flinging those backhanders around. The writers sell it completely. It doesn't even occur to me to question it. loving home run poo poo.
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Feb 9, 2023 02:42
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Tea with the blind run sweep! 
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Feb 9, 2023 08:46
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Yeah, the first time I aced one of the cyberspace levels, I'm pretty sure I had to retry it several times. Well done Tea.
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Feb 9, 2023 22:39
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Feb 11, 2023 03:53
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I had no idea those enemies could steal Chaos Emeralds until now. I always just killed the poo poo out of them as soon as I saw them.
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Feb 11, 2023 07:28
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That shark fight was pretty cool. Do you guys listen to Sonic The Comic The Podcast? They're at the run-up to issue 100 at the moment.
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Feb 11, 2023 16:47
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Tenebrais posted:That shark fight was pretty cool. I did not know that this existed. So you can pretty much guarantee that I will listen to it soon.
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Feb 11, 2023 18:22
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Natural 20 posted:I did not know that this existed. https://stctp.zone/ if you want a convenient link!
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Feb 11, 2023 19:12
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Shark sucks to fight after the first couple of times, until you power up enough to take it in one cycle. I much prefer taking on a different Guardian on Ares Island. Hopefully we'll see it soon.
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Feb 12, 2023 02:35
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Shark is, like, a neat looking concept, big spectacle, but just kind of a wet fart after the novelty wears off, which is very fast. It wastes a bunch of time, its main gimmick is completely static in execution even if it is kinda cool that each one has its own little path it wants to drag you around, and like Strider it's just a gimmick phase followed by a button-mashing phase.
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Feb 12, 2023 03:21
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Feb 14, 2023 00:16
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Yep, the fishing minigame is quite handy. I won't say why, but you should check it out at least once before clearing up the main story beats with this island.
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Feb 14, 2023 17:24
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The fishing minigame is the key to bending this game over your knee, particularly if you want to get big levels in your stats. It also holds an item that explains some of the story that you won’t be told about in standard play
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Feb 14, 2023 17:48
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Sumo is pretty good. The bouncing is kinda weird as a game design conceit because it seems to want you to try and line up the really nuts ricochet quantities but mostly you just want to do a couple of one-bounce shots in succession, but it's a fun and unique and most of all intuitive idea and the fight doesn't outstay its welcome or pull any stupid bullshit and that alone bounces this mfer right into the top tier of minibosses. Tank is really bad. Straight away it's a jarring environment change and most of your controls stop doing anything, his animations are weird to read and the hitboxes are difficult to discern, it's hard to make out what your status is or even where the gently caress you are, there's no indication of what you're actually supposed to be doing up there, or, when you do it, that you're making any progress. And, of course, it just feels really loving aggravating to fail because more often than not your first thought is gonna be "what the gently caress was I supposed to do" (a good (if not foolproof) litmus test for lovely game design). Also the loading screen tip makes no sense? I mean, in retrospect, you can see what it was talking about, but there is not, to my knowledge, any way to figure out what it means unless you already know how to do the tornado phase. This is a real shame because the actual thing you're supposed to do (using the homing attack to bounce between weak spots while being carried by the tornado) looks and feels pretty ballin'? Mystifying poo poo. You'll note a ton of minibosses fall into the pattern of having a phase where they're invincible and you engage with a gimmick (almost all unique, some intuitive, some fun, most not both) and then they get stunned and you get a few seconds to do combos on them with no resistance. This is why Sonic Frontiers isn't much of an action game despite its trappings; there aren't many opportunities to really get in and overpower stuff, you never get to really bring your (honestly pretty decent) combo game to bear to get stuff done, you just play a weird minigame and then button mash for a bit. There's a miniboss (Ninja) who's there to teach you how to parry, but only one other miniboss in the entire game (to my recollection (other than Ninja retreads)) against whom parrying is of any use.
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Feb 14, 2023 22:43
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Yeah, I don't know how to feel about the combat in this game, at least from what we've seen so far. On the one hand, there's a bunch of combat moves that look cool and interesting, and there's definitely potential to make a fun system with it. But the actual combat in the game doesn't really meet that potential. No matter what the enemy's gimmick is, at some point they all boil down to using a reliable attack combo to slowly grind down their health, broken up by some sort of gimmick section where you have to figure out how to make them not invincible. Not just the minibosses either, but the regular enemies too, and it just doesn't feel like the way a combat-oriented Sonic game should work? Like, Sonic as a character should be zipping around and smashing stuff, that's his whole deal. It'd feel a lot more in tune with that to have enemies go down in one or two hits with your combos focused on getting to the next one with the right rhythm to get in damage without being hit. You'd get more speed and flair out of more, weaker enemies, rather than having just a couple of them sitting around waiting for you to breakdance on their face for ten seconds until they die. I'm honestly not sure what they get out of every enemy making you go through multiple rounds of combat, other than justifying having you grind to upgrade your strength.
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Feb 14, 2023 23:30
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Sumo is one of my favorite Guardian fights. Between the gimmick of the fight and the solid music track, I tend to seek it out just for a fun fight. Tank, on the other hand, is one of my most disliked bosses. Fedule already covered why it sucks, so I don't have much to add as to why.
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Feb 15, 2023 13:04
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I like Ghost a lot.
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Feb 15, 2023 19:49
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Feb 15, 2023 23:53
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If I'm not much mistaken, that first stage was Radical Highway. The parabolic grind rails are a dead giveaway. For as much as I find it iffy that they did this whole thing about reusing level geometry like this, it says good things about past Sonic level design that so much of it is instantly recognisable. You're right about the stats not affecting the Cyber Space stages. Not only that, your control configurations don't work there either. It's almost literally an entire different game. The boost is so bad! I don't know how they messed it up so badly. Usually it's not a problem but in 2-7 (aka Generations Sky Sanctuary) it's a gigantic liability because a ton of intuitive approaches to those crumbling spiral paths will just get you killed. It's just generally a failure of design when a mechanic doesn't work the way it feels like it works.
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Feb 16, 2023 01:06
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Weird, I coulda sworn the cutscene where generic evil anime girl's name is revealed plays on the first island at least.
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Feb 16, 2023 01:42
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Yeah her name was mentioned by Eggman in cutscene back on island 1
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Feb 16, 2023 02:50
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Until you pointed out exactly what was messing you up with the boost, I wasn't sure why you were struggling with it so much, but now that you've spelled it out, it feels like a horrible implementation. Sonic is supposed to have momentum! You're supposed to press the opposite direction to make him stop on the off chance you actually want to do that, not just... let go.
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Feb 16, 2023 11:00
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Fedule posted:The boost is so bad! I don't know how they messed it up so badly. Usually it's not a problem but in 2-7 (aka Generations Sky Sanctuary) it's a gigantic liability because a ton of intuitive approaches to those crumbling spiral paths will just get you killed. It's just generally a failure of design when a mechanic doesn't work the way it feels like it works. I died like three times on those. Trying to boost past without anything fancy should work, yet the boost is so anemic that Sonic couldn't outrun the path. I had to air boost up enough to have a head start, and it was still close.
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Feb 16, 2023 12:28
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Namtab posted:Sonic is synonymous with buttrock, the greatest genre of music It's amazing what small things will remind you of how old you are. When I was growing up (the 2d Sonic era), Sonic was synonymous with House music.
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Feb 18, 2023 17:15
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Spookyelectric posted:It's amazing what small things will remind you of how old you are. I mean I grew up during that era too but he’s had buttrock a lot longer
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Feb 19, 2023 00:34
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A child who was born when Sonic kissed Princess Elise will be old enough to vote next year. Even the buttrock days are long in the past.
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Feb 19, 2023 01:06
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Tenebrais posted:Even the buttrock days are long in the past. Excuse me? The buttrock days are ongoing. The rock has never been buttier. It's moved on from Crush 40 but the spirit is alive and thriving.
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Feb 19, 2023 01:13
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Buttrock is eternal.
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Feb 19, 2023 07:17
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We all have our likes and dislikes. For me, none of the buttrock compares to tracks like Launch Base Zone or Labyrinth Zone. That said, I have a special place in my heart for Escape from the City. You can't play SA2 and not jive to that.
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Feb 19, 2023 07:59
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Feb 20, 2023 23:23
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