That final point is very important, SEGA gave the team behind Yakuza around 100 people but their flagship character only got 60?! And yet they managed to at least pull this off. I hope SEGA is kicking themselves at what they could’ve done with more of a budget and more team members. Sonic Team clearly has the motivation, One Way Dream is actually a message from Sonic Team to the fans/world

That scene you replaced with the falshbacks of eggmans previous creations was PERFECT. If that was in the game I would've been very moved, rather than just laughing about a scene that is meant to be emotional.

As great as Frontiers is, I feel the biggest enemy of Sonic is SEGA themselves. They actually wanted to release this a year earlier. Showing they learned nothing from 2006.

The devs said they are treating the reception of the game as a "global playtest" and are really taking seriously all the feedback about the game, so I think sonic frontiers is going to have some kind of life suport, and continue updating thing that still are not good enough in the game, personally I hope they update the battles against the 4°boss and the 5°boss, I think there is many things that can improve here.

I feel like this game is being held back by sega restrictions & time restraints. I hate this company so much, this game has the dna of a masterpiece. Controls like a dream, has a gripping story, the best character interactions in the series, and yet the head company cant give their own mascot some time. Still love this game to bits but sega really needs to prioritize development time, or they're going to lose more people even with a good game.

For the Elder Coco, create a drop down menu when you choose speed or ring capacity, where he then asks how many levels do you desire with a slider to decide how many times to level up; you then also have a max level button when you press it, a warning pops up and tells you this will use all of your available Cocos, then you use them to get as many levels as you can get while keeping the rest if not enough to round up…. Simple

Honestly this is the most fun I had on a 3D Sonic game since Colors. (Please note I didn't play Sonic Generations in 2011 since I didn't have the right consoles or PC at the time).

I stared to cry in when Sonic talking to tails

Okay The End fight hot take: I don't think the fight being Ikaruga and some QTEs isn't that bad. I think the health on the fight could be shaved down by a bit to speed it up, and maybe make the QTEs a bit more involved, but I honestly was fine with the concept and general layout of it The REAL problem imo is that it comes after Ouranos and ESPECIALLY the Supreme fight. The Supreme fight is super underwhelming and honestly killed any enthusiasm I had for the end before The End could even make it's entrance. I think if Supreme were longer and more climactic, The End would have served perfectly fine as a victory lap

This is the most fun I had with a sonic game since Generations and Riders. I hope Sonic team keeps up this confidence and energy for newer games! I give this game a solid 7-8 / 10 but personally 9 / 10 for me.

Gotta say, while some people don't like Island 5, I definitely love it's music. Shame it didn't last the whole way through 56:51 bruh

Personally, I really liked the Egg Memos, i feel like they gave us (or at least me) a side of Eggman that i don’t think we’ve seen much of, if at all.

The title is an accurate description of the game.

1:01:42 Good news, the japanese Sonic Twitter officially announced they were hiring, it was retweeted by Sam Procrastinator. Too little too late, I'd say, but it's a start As for what I hope for the next game, here's a list: - "Run" with the open zone design, it's the one thing many agree has potential, but play more with momentum, do something more akin to stuff like Sonic Utopia or Project Hero - More varied biomes like the classic games: the classic games go from grassy lands to underwater temples to broken down temples to carnivals to an enemy flying fortress to an icy mountain to the enemy's launch site. I'll just leave a cookie here because the reference is obvious. Speaking of which... - Less 4th wall breaking/franchise staple references, Ian, please. Looking at you, "end goal" joke. They work in an action/comedy show like Sonic Boom, but in a more serious story it undermines the tone What might come next? I don't know, but I'd like to see Sonic Team tackle another Sonic Adventure 1 styled story mode. Iizuka said he wanted to make another Adventure game, and each character's propositions, especially Tails's proposition of blazing his own trail, are a perfect starting point for this narrative. Heck, Tails's story, for example, could possibly not have Sonic appear at all

Thank you for mentioning the outer pits for the pinball minigame that you’re just completely helpless against. It took me 4 tries on my first playthrough. I never once lost a ball due to a failure on my part. Every lost ball was to those goddamn outer pits. One time was right as I hit the 6mil point requirement. I had to walk away for a bit after that one.

Pretty much my thoughts on the game, word-by-word. With Frontiers success, especially in Japan, being the fastest selling Sonic game since SA2, I PRAY that SEGA actually gives a shit about Sonic Team and pour the money, time, and resources into a sequel that builds upon the Frontiers formula. This is by far, my favorite Sonic formula to date and is one with the most potential. If SEGA can give the proper funding to ST and if ST can give that extra polish and care, we might have one of the best Sonic games ever made.

when i first saw this in my sub feed I thought the review would be bloated with filler cause of the long run time but i actually enjoyed every minute of it and wish it was longer lol

I love how Game Apologist is just Ron Swanson who enjoys Sonic.

I’m glad I could be Markiplier for this video. Thanks for having me boo. ❤️

You can just feel that they had more in store for this game, but simply didn’t have time

When Sonic was holding his head during gameplay on the 3rd island i assumed it was the cyber corrupt putting a tol on him. Visually showing that Sonic is not doing so good which gets worse on the 4th island

You use my exact sliders. Got Sonic to feel as close to Genesis era as possible. You really feel that speed cap as well. Only differences being Steering, that greatly affects 2d sections, so I only lower it for that, and top speed simply because of the camera.

This is an extremely well thought out piece, Pup. Thanks for giving this the due time and consideration it needed.

i thought it would be cool if you faught the moon and then Sage throws you like a rocket for a super cy-loop that cracks it open like a dragon egg (type of crystal) and then you fight... something inside it...

Knuckles is Sonic's secret true love. I always knew it.❤️

The game is honestly sonic at its absolute best, and I feel this format will definitely work for future installments, but there are SEVERAL points where the game suffered from its 60 manpower infrastructure. From Rhea and Oureanos islands originally being a part of Kronos (that were split up to rep 5 islands in advertising) to the true final boss fight being a minigame because the devs literally just ran out of resources for a proper boss fight, there was obviously a lot just left undone to no fault of its own. This said though the game is still phenomenal and has reversed a lot of the curses of the franchise, the sales being the highest since SA2 and the high scores reflect this. This entry is the most important entry in over 10+ years for modern sonic

i loved the story so much and loved that egg man was shown in a diffrent light then just a sterotypical villian he has feelings hes still a person and im happy that he had the father daughter dynamic with sage i wonder if egg man had a daughter before and she was killed and thats why he cares for her so much or maybe shes just his creation but i love EGGDAD and i hope sage is a reacurring character and they can both be happy together sorry ive just been listening to dear father on repeat and just wish to express my love for sage and egg man they deserve all the happiness when they take ove the world 🥲

At this point, would have liked emerald hills being a remix of green hills and emerald coasts.....instead of green hills again

While Sonic Frontiers does indeed have flaws, it definitely paves the way for the new "Open Zone" style. Besides, take Sonic 1 for example. It's a great classic Sonic game with high speed thrills, but it wasn't perfect by any means. Then came Sonic 2, a game that took what was great about the first installment, and refined it into something amazing. I have strong hopes that Sonic Team will continue to improve upon the foundation of Sonic Frontiers, just as they did with Sonic 1 and 2 from the very beginning.

Do u know how many times I laughed at the Sage & Eggman montage

I was watching a stream of the game where someone suggested that it might have been better for the pacing of the game if it hadn't tried to go for 5 islands, and had instead merged the last 2. since island 4 is a huge lore drop vs island 5 is mostly Sonic and Sage reiterating stuff the player has already figured out by that point. It doesn't help that Supreme is the weakest of the titan bosses either :/

3:57 nice His World reference

I personally didnt mind the fan service cause after years of the games feeling so disconnected it was nice to hear Sonic call back to something old, felt like stuff was actually connected and part of the world forreal. I also agree about wishing the terrain in the sky was more akin tot he aesthetic of the island, its odd cause on Kronos there's actually tons of platforms and/or rails that are styled to be part of the aesthetic, but for some reason going forward the game doesnt seem to continue this. For example, why black boxes in the desert? Rocks would have worked even better!

Ian Flynn made me laugh at baldy nosehair. That gives me hope

also the only way I'd accept them bringing back GHZ and such would be if they did something completely new. SOUTH ISLAND as an area. WEST ISLAND as another. ANGEL ISLAND as the last. They can have GHZ but that also includes marble, labyrinth, etc.

I think the game was awesome....until the third Island were everything started to fall apart....and then the ending completly derailed all of it in my opinion.

The End was the best boss fight in the game. Tons of fun. And that music. Beautiful. Pure 9/10 Get good

I hate to admit it, but I kinda laughed at Sage's flashback.

I am glad that you did a full spoiler review of Sonic Frontiers, As a guy who does not own the game (but will shortly), I think that Sonic Frontiers is a decent experience at least despite it being a unfinished Magnum Opus, but your review of the game is amazing and I hope that Sonic Team can improve the Frontiers Formula in the sequel to Sonic Frontiers.

The style of the final boss was unexpected but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't engaged.

I still think this is one of the best Sonic games period. It has the most content, we can actually throw hands in gameplay this time which adds more depth to "combat", the boss battles are the best in the franchise, story is great, ost is godly and Sonic's control is the best we've had since SA2. All the boost games made sonic control like a truck(including generations) and they lacked storytelling. Times when Sonic tried to have more involved combat it didn't do it so well like the werehog. Due to the lacking combat,sonic bosses before this game were very limited(this includes dark gaia and final hazard too) Sonic frontiers almost has it all despite it's technical issues. With more staff, a sequel could easily be a masterpiece.

I think this is going to set us up with SA3. Remember an sa2 two everyone had their own storylines and missions. I think at some point in the game all their story lines really converge again to fight one common enemy.

i really enjoyed this game! the gameplay and cutscenes were really good. it definitely wouldve been even better if they took their time with the end of the story, and the last three islands. it had a great buildup, but was executed way too fast in the end :( i also wish they focused on sonic's corruption more; it was resolved in just a cutscene, which was kinda underwhelming. thank you pup for explaining more of the story and plot!

Ahh... unfinished... i never heard that one before...

I watched until the end, and this is quite a fair review!

I think when Sonic Team made SA1, they used Mario 64’s open world playground design as a base to find what works safely before making their own game later. SA2 was supposed to be their refinement after finding what worked, SA2 essentially being the true first 3D Sonic game. The weird part is that I guess they didn’t realise until 24 years later that big open playgrounds work perfectly for sonic.

18:22 I really appreciated your attempt to improve the sage memory scene.

Great review! Also in 32:38. I like Sam is want to die if the next Sonic Game have Green Hill Zone again- xD

For a unfinished game this is way better than any sonic game I’ve played

Tbh this is the first sonic game I’ve played since 06 and I’ve had a great time with it. 3D to 2D and Boost were definitely things to get used to considering I’d never played those play styles before but I had fun nonetheless

Great movie, Pup. It really touched on everything this game had to offer. There is so much to love here, but there are clearly a few rough edges. Overall, it isn't perfect, but you can tell that the level of effort put into this game is the most Sonic Team has provided since at least Generations. Maybe even Unleashed, but combat in Frontiers is MUCH better. I don't outright dismiss the Werehog like some people, but those night stages wore out their welcome pretty quickly. You can also just run past most fights if you want, which I'm sure most people would have been fine with given the option in Unleashed.

An unfinished masterpiece is the best way to describe this game as some concepts put some, not all are not really fleshed out or some things should've been added to add to the experience. But at its core , the fundamentals are so good that despite some of its problems the game really is a masterpiece in my eyes. Ever since I saw the ign teaser on May 31st I knew this was going to be a good game

I wonder if the black arms were followers of the end 🤔

Now that i think about it, a good compromise for the final boss vs no budget and time, would be reusing all the bosses in a sudo boss rush where the end changes attacks between them. So you can have a ikaruga moment for breaking the barriers and than the boss turns into one of those bosses, and you have to fight as super sonic against them. That would still be a very under budget looking solution, but more climatic. The end trash talking, to me was a cool thing they've done that they could do more often.

1:03:34 good news... because of sonic Frontier's success sega decided to finally give so ic team a higer budget! And hire more developers for the sonic team

i like the reference at the start when it says leave inmediately

I'm confident that with a couple of huge updates, Frontiers can and will be even better than what it is now. Having said that, as it is right now Frontiers is AWESOME.

9:15 holy hell dude XD

I have to say, I was a bit worried with those mandatory quests the first time I did one. Herding Koco isn't fun. Herding 50 Koco isn't better. Herding 50 Koco with a time limit can be downright infuriating. My concern going in would be that every one of these would be as bad or worse than the first. As it turns out, the first one was by far the worst of the bunch. They brought back Koco herding with Knuckles later, but they lowered the required number to 15 and threw in an interesting sandstorm element which I was fine with. Overall, there was only one mandatory quest I would like to do ever again, and that was Koco stacking with Knuckles. Hands down the best mission of them all.

Imagine Super Supreme with Sonic moveset vs The End for hard ending

36:12 that sort of makes sense but the thing is that chemical plant wasn't made by the anchients, im pretty sure that chemical plant was constructed by eggman & the city theme which is capital city from SA2 isn't on one of the 3 islands.

Something I wanna point out about the first Sage song near the end The melody itself actually matches that with Dear Fathers

8:38 The pain away!

People are saying that this may be the Sonic Adventure 3.... That has been long over do For fans.... It's not a bad game, but it definitely has a long way to go. To be an SA3 🔵💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨💨

18:09 personally i dont think they should've done the flashbacks at all remove the sob music playing in the background just have it be in silence with sage crying in tears its alot more subtle and somber that way

That in the universe reason for the levels coming back is stupid because you go through a sky rail, inspired level design which is a stage that shadow went through so it couldn’t even be a part of sonic’s memories.

the flashback sad song scene at 16:15 wanted to be the Sonic Chip in sunset adabat scene so bad

8:36 ayeee, that caught me so off guard

Sega did a great job making sure there were plenty of ways to progress though the game. Between the Cyber Stages, fishing, combat and exploration of the islands themselves, Sega just dumps you off on this playground and leaves it up to you to make your own way forward. I haven't described a Sonic game as a playground in a while. It feels so refreshing. By the way, I bought everything through fishing for that last island on my first playthrough. The Gears, the Keys, and even the Memory Tokens. I wanted to see if it was possible, and it definitely is. Fishing definitely has a nice Animal Crossing vibe to it, with a bit of a Sonic twist with that button timing. Good practice in case there are any of those pesky QTEs in the boss fights.

Frontiers is better than Generations... FIGHT ME!

On that pinball mini game- yeah, my experience was similar. I've also played the game twice now, first time I did it first try and it was just overally long, not too annoying. I shit you not though, on my second play through, I lost THREE TIMES IN A ROW while at the end when the portal became active because the ball decided to randomly go in the corner.

Sonic Frontiers is more polished and less glitchy than Pokemon Scarlet and Violet! Let that sink in

Brother was pretty bad at Ouranos then because it was both easy and my favorite island tbh. Also, hot take but I love THE END cause it utilizes the mini game that was hard that you used on mechanical equipment and expands upon on it with the true final boss. It’s different but Kirby does these like this and I respect it. So same case here. Also it being a very hard fight was 👌🏽

3:57 omggg his world

the Hitstun on slide kicks is shorter than homing attacking, I usually end up using it as a replacement for the boost hitbox since they removed that

It's not a perfect game, it doesn't deserve a 10/10, and it won't win any GOTY awards. But it's a BIG step in the right direction that Sega and Sonic Team NEED to stay with. They don't need to pull an Ubisoft and kill off their plans before fruition (still pissed they killed off Desmond when it was building up to MODERN DAY ASSASS-ING). Hopefully Frontiers gets some QoL updates, and the cliffhanger ending leads me to believe there's plans for DLC, maybe a sneak peak at Tails and Knuckles?

The Sonic and Tails scene is amazing. But like you said it's then immediately followed by an extremely cheesy scene with Sage. Her wanting to be a family is great but the part with the terrible song and nothing flashbacks is eye rolling. She and Eggman have barely any development until the end. So those flashbacks are just random scenes where she was just giving Eggman status reports. Tear jerking stuff there. As a whole I love this story though if a bit rough in places. We haven't gotten cool new lore in well over a decade. I love all the callbacks cus frankly continuity is barely a thing for Sonic. So any nods at all to previous adventures feels awesome.

to be fair that final boss was actually difficult tho- Speaking of which I would love for someone to show what the OLD final boss would of looked like in the files.

i'm honestly surprised that they didn't shoehorn, The Wisps, Classic Sonic and reuse Colors Final Boss as the Final Boss, those were my predictions, i was dead wrong, but they did have Green Hill actually, i think i found Frontiers Wisps, they are in God Of War: Ragnarök instead of Frontiers

Roger kinda goes a little too deep with his voice(probably letting out the inner Batman from inside) but i still dig it lol XD

If Green Hill is going to be a reoccurring thing in the Sonic games, I'd be okay with as long as it's just the first level AND ONLY THE FIRST LEVEL

in regards to rhea and ouranos, not even asset flips. same model as kronos outright just with actual object placements. infact, if you sequence break to where ouranos is in kronos, you can hear sonic mention tangle in ruins.

Hm... The point about the player earning fast travel rails, weirdly reminded me of Grow Up, an Indie-esque colectathon where you grow giant plant branches that can later be used as bridges with bulbs that act like springs that make vertical progression in said giant plant a lot easier. Have you played this I wonder, it's really cute.

Sonic Frontiers and the Xenoblade games are technically both respectable open zone games funnily enough

I'm back after defeating and 100% Kronos island. I was like... that's it? Half of the map is so big and there was literally so many wall riding spaces on the other side!. I was big sad

Well the Mágnum Opus is going to get finished after all

I think we need to accept that Sega isn't AAA it's only A, and once we embrace that we can embrace the lack of polish with less anger

23:58 all art is appreciated.

Watched the whole thing, I’ve been sick so I had the time, but I agree with all your points here! With the lack of polish, dumb pinball, Ouranos being stingy, cyberspace, Sonic Team needing more of a budget, etc

I hope they can continue this.

21:07 sonic lost world

Three key reasons to be excited for the future as a result of Frontiers: (1. This is the best received Sonic game done by Sonic Team since Sonic Generations, so there is now a foundation to build on for future games. (2. This is the best selling Sonic Game in Japan since Adventure 2, meaning SEGA will likely be more willing to splash out more money, time and staff for the development of a sequel. (3. There are no anniversaries on the horizon. One of the reasons this game was rushed was so it could still be the 30th anniversary game (even after it had been delayed for a year). The next anniversary of note is the 40th, there is no 'deadline' necessarily for the next game.

I was waiting for that 40:00

Also, I feel like the cyberspace levels could have been way more unique. They could have made cyberspace levels be levels that are mixtures of multiple zones from other games. For example, they could have 1 cyberspace zone take you trhough angel island, hydrocity, and marble garden, and the. The next cyberspace could continue with the next 3 zones. This could include other games as well, like sonic 1 and 2 (which both sort of have green hill zone, y8kes) but I think it would've been cooler that way.

Hm, personally, I didn’t really know what to think of the Final Boss, I thought it certainly was unique, but yeah, I was hoping for more. By the way, do you know of Touhou Project? Oh, also, did you know that one of the Ending Songs has a message from Sonic Team to the Sonic Fandom?

I would love sth like wyvern you're following him trough space with my idea being that the music will be a thecno versian of live and learn

You know what's funny, for all the comparisons people have made with Sonic Frontiers to other open world games, the game it reminds me of the most is actually this little indie adventure game/fox simulator called Spirit of the North, where you're trying to defeat a corruptive entity in this blasted and post-apocalyptic tundra landscape. The atmosphere of beautiful devastation combined with the first stages of ecological recovery and the abandoned, partially overgrown vestiges of a dead civilization... well, which of the games am I even describing in that sentence, eh? :D In terms of art style and atmosphere the two are dead ringers for each other. BTW I *think* the city theme in the cyberspace levels with all the military theming is supposed to be Radical Highway which is... an interesting choice, but at least it's something that's not copy-pasted from Generations....

WARNING: this is a very long comment :| I wrote this comment on a video of rhea Island's music and I made a slight rewrite in a string of consciousness kind of way. First of all, rhea island is not given a space on the thing where you see how much you explored of each of the islands. Treating it the same as the first three islands is just making it seem like there is more to the game than there actually is. One story thing I think I would change is make it so we see that supreme is actually the true form of the end and the ancients modeled giganto, wyvern and knight after it to fight against it. That detail will matter in a second, anyway… While sonic is activating the towers, Sage tells sonic that the end is manipulating him to his end by running him ragged waving his friends in his face and giving him his cyber corruption. so once sonic gets fully corrupted, amy, knuckles, and tails come back to realize that the end is ready to destroy them all since sonic is neutralized. The end wasn't lying when they said they would bring back sonic's friends, but they didn't specify the context. The end just wanted to watch his friends see their beloved sonic stuck in between dimensions to make them lose hope. Tails, Amy, and Knuckles realize that only super sonic could have a chance at fighting back against the end, so they all go and collect the chaos emeralds (sage is able to help them all get the emeralds without the need for vault keys) and they bring sonic back with the chaos emeralds (calling back to 06 in the process) and Sonic fights supreme with im here playing but without lyrics. Then once the first phase is completed Sage realizes she would need to help super sonic fight supreme in space now and then I’m here plays with lyrics. The whole time supreme/the end is using moves similar to giganto , wyvern, and knight. Finally, to stop the end from firing a laser to destroy earth, sage sacrifices herself like in the game (possibly remembering how shadow turned out and deciding to take a gamble and hope she could come back) and super sonic falls back to the islands where his friends are and they celebrate and sonic mourns sage before remembering what happened to shadow and is like “I think we will see her again soon someday” and then the credits roll. We still see the same cutscene with eggman showing that sage was saved. After that, you can explore ouranos island as postgame content. It is explained by sonic coming back to the islands just because he hasn’t finished exploring all of them yet. On ouranos island you cannot collect chaos emeralds anymore, but now the portals let you relive memories and refight the titans whenever you want. Let’s just say since sonic just wants to finish exploring the starfall islands, it only now allows you to travel back to the other islands as well because if you did that before it didn’t make any sense. After you get to the post game and you can travel back to Kronos island, rhea island is added to your map on Kronos island, and you can go back there for some hard to trigger dialogue having sonic come to conclusions about the lore and story. Some other lore reveals and clarifications also happen on ouranos Island, completely from sonic figuring things out himself and some cyberspace shenanigans or something, I just don't want sage to explain everything anyway I hoped you liked my long rewrite and headcannon dump, let me know what you think in the replies

I’d love to see the next game continue this new open world formula but with more momentum focused gameplay in mind, the movement at the moment is really solid, just remove those speed caps and allow us to roll. But instead of an ancient or abandoned theme similar to Sonic Boom, it would be great to go back to a more modern and lively atheistic, imagine if they brought back Station Square but we’re allowed to fully explore it this time. So much potential here I really hope they don’t take any steps back. Also, I feel like we really don’t need dash pads anymore, they got really annoying in the open world, let us, the players earn the speed ourselves! Great video Pup 👏

Now if Sonic Team took this structure, cleaned it up a bit & applied this to remaking SA1 & SA2, we'll have something amazing.