Since the start of June, more information has been revealed for Sonic Frontiers. The first gameplay has been released, showing of the general gameplay, combat, and some enemies. I have also just finished playing through Sonic Adventure 2, and as a fan of the first Adventure game I have compared it with that one during my plathrough. Having thought about the Adventures games, Frontiers, and with recent comments from Sonic Team's Creative Officer, Takashi Iizuka, I decided to bundle up my current Sonic thoughts into a post.
Sonic Frontiers
I wasn't impressed with the inital gameplay, quite frankly. It looks a bit stiff, for lack of a better word. Combat looks weird and slow, and the new enemies seem to take a lot of hits to kill. To be fair with the combat, I can't think of a single instance where Sonic's combat has been more than one-hitting enemies by bouncing or homing in on them (excluding the Werehog stages in Sonic Unleashed). Simply running around looks a bit weird though; Sonic's running speed doesn't seem that fast, and one clip of Sonic running on rocky ground looks a bit weird. It's been confirmed that the game will have an XP system, which will probably tie into and fix the former with speed upgrades. As for the latter, I'd rather have fun gameplay than cool graphics, and as rocky sections like the formerly mentioned one are typically painful to navigate, I don't mind the magnetism at play here.
I've seen comments describing a potential reason why the game looks bad, and I just say I agree with them. HelixSnake posted a thread on Twitter in which he mentions the game isn't being played as good as it could've been. IGN's videos show them failing at a puzzle, getting hit by enemies (multiple times), and failing on making progress during certain sections. Gameplay demos usuall show a game being played at higher skill levels, the way they're meant to be played. I made the same mistake when making my first gameplay trailer. I remember thinking "hey, we've implemented losing a life and respawning thereafter, gotta show it off", but it gives off a vibe of "man, you're dying in your own game? If even they can't handle it, how unfair could it be to us typical players?". Show off the game being played at high levels and people should get interested. Show off something people want to perform themselves.
Anyway, while the gameplay we've seen doesn't look too impressive at this stage, I'm very interested in hearing more impressions. IGN's first impressions were positive, and from what I've heard about the demo shown during Summer Games Fest's media event this weekend it seems they weren't the only ones who were impressed. I'm very much interested in having a 3D Sonic game that everyone enjoys again, and so I remain cautiously optimistic about Frontiers. If anything, it's at least not Boost gameplay, so it's the most interested I've been in a 3D Sonic game since Lost World (a game I have yet to play).
Sonic Adventure 2
Beyond: Sonic in the future
With the first look at Frontiers and with Adventure on my mind, I started thinking of how I would want Sonic games to be in the future. In this section I'll go over some of my wants and why I feel that would be the best course of action. This is all in the case Frontiers doesn't turn out as one would hope, still leaving Adventure as my favorite 3D Sonic.
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Sonic Adventure 3 - To start, I believe a Sonic Adventure 3 would be the best direction for the series to go. It has the perfect format, with linear levels as expected where you can test your mettle against the clock or other objectives, while also having a hub world for downtime, exploration, and side missions. Chao Garden must return as well. While I don't care for the Chao Garden as is, I don't mind the type of gameplay it offers and it has room for improvements that could make me like it.
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Characters - Being an Adventure game means having multiple characters, and that would be the case here as well. I'm thinking Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are a must. Sonic's stages can be the ones you typically expect, being maybe 2D or Boost gameplay. Tails with his flying ability could have vertical stages as his gimmick. Give him a stamina bar like 1, slow him down somewhat and nerf how high he flies. Make platformer stages. Knuckles can keep exploration stages, but make them less of a hassle. Either make the tracker track all items at once, or alter how the item exploration works, but have climbing and gliding as integral parts.
Trying to reimagine some other characters' stage types: Let's say Amy is playable. Amy's stages in Adventure were a bit of a letdown. She was constantly chased by a robot, and her gameplay was too slow for the stage style. For this new one, keep her hammer and make her stages brawlers. I haven't played much of Unleashed so I'm not sure exactly how the Werehog stages work, but maybe something along those lines. Let's also say Big is playable. He's a more relaxed character, so instead of fishing as his main gameplay, have him solve puzzles. Puzzles are laid back, and with that as his main gimmick he could be made into a slower, heavier character as his design suggests. Have him keep his fishing rod, which could be used as a grappling hook of sorts. I recently played through Adam's Venture: Origins, a puzzle platformer where the main character has a grappling hook, which is used for some puzzles, which is where the idea came from. Have Big use the fishing rod to grab items from afar, maybe hoist an item from below, and maybe add a fishing segment or two. Finally, let's say we want Shadow playable. I'm not sure how his stages work in his self-titled game, but maybe use that? A shooter character can work in any case, just don't have them be clunky like they were in Adventure 2.
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Hub worlds - The hub worlds in Sonic Adventure gives some breathing room in between stages. They allow you to play as the characters in a more relaxed environment, so you can learn their controls or simply play with no stress. A Mission Mode gives you stuff to do, and with how games have evolved they could host quests or minigames. To give an example, think Yakuza. Instead of having fishing as part of a character's gameplay style, maybe have a location in the hub where you can go to fish. Maybe an arcade where you can play the Game Gear games included with Sonic Adventure DX on the Gamecube.
Conclusion
Sonic is a series I like very much. I enjoy the characters and related media a lot, but I've not played many games beyond the classics and Adventure as the newer games rarely appeal to me. I'm more fond of open world games, so I hope Frontiers will be good. Other than that, I hope my wishes for a potential Adventure 3 come true. Sonic is good, just wish it could be better.
