I’ve beaten the first two areas of Sonic Frontiers and I have some fairly spoiler free thoughts.
1. The voice direction caught me off guard and took a bit to get used to but I really like it. It’s good to hear that Roger can hit a more serious tone after what Colors/Lost World/ Forces had.
2. The controls feel a little hit or miss. I have a lot of fun zooming around the wide open playgrounds of the Starfall Islands. But the aerial handling feels weird especially when the air boost can’t be held and is just a short burst but it does give some height making it more like a triple jump. Jumps and springs also feel like they cut momentum by a lot. it makes playing the cyber space levels feel a little awkward and certain S ranks tricky to get
3. The level design of the cyber space levels feels really good. They’re fairly short but in the same way Neon White levels are. It feels designed around quick bursts of speed running platforming but the real kicker is that it feels very much like SA2 design with more exploration and less hallways which feels fun to navigate and less “boost to win” The problem with that is that the only collectibles are Red Rings and even those tend to be on the main path. The reward for taking the slower more exploration paths ends up just being some rings and not as satisfying as say the powerups/Chao items/shields in the Adventure titles. There are plenty of different collectibles and currencies in the overworld portions I feel like they would have been fine throwing some into the levels (especially since they’re easily grindable elsewhere already).
4. The writing and lore I dont want get too in depth with to be spoiler free and since I’m only a bit into the game, but I’m really interested in the world they’re building here. They find interesting ways to tie in bits of lore from the other games without it feeling too forced. There’s a lot of optional dialogue that really adds to the experience and I think is worth seeking out.
While not a perfect game by any standard I’ve been having a lot of fun with the game both in terms of gameplay and writing which is a balance I feel Sonic hasn’t done well in a good while. I’ll probably do another one of these once it’s done spoilers and all but I just had a lot of thoughts to get out and wanted those who are avoiding spoilers to still get an idea of what to expect.
found a twitter tweet that was like “oh yeah content warning hatoful boyfriend has a lot of gore and violence” and every single person in the notes/retweets/qrts/whatever the fuck terms twitter has was going “WHAT THE FUCK IT HAS WHAT” and i find that hilarious because. large amounts of gore and violence is a tremendous understatement about the amount of stuff that goes down in hatoful boyfriend
my full trigger list for hatoful boyfriend (and its sequel), for anyone curious is:
war and genocide
suicide (including coerced suicide)
murder (including decapitation and dismemberment)
cannibalism
guns
terminal illness and biological weaponry
persuing monster-based horror
unreality
scientific experimentation-based horror
racism
childhood trauma and parent death
infanticide (or more accurately, bird abortion)
emotional manipulation
unhealthy/codependent relationships
death of a romantic interest
twisted morality and gray morality
general heartbreakery
just on the off chance anyone reading this doesn’t know what Hatoful Boyfriend is
Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?
They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.
Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?
So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.
And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn’t compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn’t sell.
And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at… putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.
If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn’t have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that’s what they did.
I don’t know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.
considering that people can experience phantom limb syndrome, I wouldn’t be surprised if a robot girl COULD feel bliss as you careful repair her chassis, feeling every click as you unplug connections and pull out old cables for new ones
Have you ever had a cable plugged into a live guitar amp before you plug it into the guitar? Have you picked up the explosed cable tip? Your bioelectric field generates a notable hum just being nearby, and a pretty loud one if you actually touch it. Any analog signal cables in a robot girl would absolutely know if your hand was anywhere near it.
