Awesome / Sonic Frontiers

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♫ It's time to face your FEAR!
'Cause when your time has come and gone,
I'll be the one to carry on
And you can throw me to the wolves
'Cause I am UNDEFEATABLE! ♫

I'm hanging on to the other side
I won't give up 'til the end of me

— "Undefeatable"

Sonic faces his biggest challenges yet on the Starfall Islands... but it should be expected at this point that the Blue Blur is willing to step up to the plate and handle them in his usual spectacular style.

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Trailers

• The Story Trailer has quite a few:
  • The beginning has Sonic save a Koco from a Titan with his Super-Speed.
    • Sonic is just about to enter Cyber Space, when Sage appears and tells him to stop, because "[his] actions endanger the world". Sonic simply glares at her and defiantly enters Cyber Space anyway.
• The TGS trailer shows just how much the stakes have been raised:
  • In a villainous example, the Titan shrugs off Sonic's attacks, grabs him, and throws him across the island, through multiple stone structures and into the side of a cliff. Talk about a Curb-Stomp Battle.
  • Near the end of the trailer, Sonic climbs to the top of the Titan, obtains the final Chaos Emerald in the vault that is part of the Titan's body, turns into Super Sonic, and charges at the Titan with full force. All while Vandalize plays in the background. Even better, this is only the boss of the first island, and already Sonic's having to rely on his Golden Super Mode to fare a chance!
• The Combat and Upgrades trailer shows off Sonic's arsenal of new moves, including:
  • Phantom Rush: A Limit Break that occurs when the combo meter is full. Sonic's attacking power is increased, and he's moving at a speed that makes it look like there's several copies of Sonic whaling on the target.
  • Wild Rush: A zigzagging attack where Sonic darts around before slamming into the enemy.
  • The ending to the trailer, where the narrator comments, "Teach your enemies not to mess with Sonic the Hedgehog!" as a robot the size of a small tower explodes into particles around him.
• The Showdown trailer released a week before the game's official launch is chock full of standout moments:
  • The trailer opens up with Sonic facing down a horde of SOLDIERs with little effort, utilizing his speed to take out a good number of them, delivering a good kick straight into one's face.
  • As Sonic is about to be stomped on by the SPIDER, he just disables its leg with a Cyloop and finishes it off with a powerful stomp.
  • The end of the trailer shows Sonic running towards the GIGANTO Titan again, but this time, he busts out the seven Chaos Emeralds. After transforming into Super Sonic, the Titan winds up a punch, with Sonic charging forwards with his own punch as well. The whole trailer being scored to the extended version of "I'm Here" is just the cherry on top too.
• The Launch Trailer has a montage of awesome moments from the game playing to "Don't Stop me Now"; which is not only a good nod to the movie, but you could say a Queen song is one of Sonic's main themes now!
  • A lot of the trailers are epic, dramatic, and gave the sense of this adventure being more intense. This trailer more or less plays into Sonic's carefree nature and perseverance; no matter the situation, even the hopeless ones, he won't stop until he's finished. He's gonna save his friends and have fun doing it!
• The Final Horizon update teaser trailer starts with Sonic, his friends, and even Sage and Eggman running towards a cliff. The camera then shows the SUPREME Titan, now with multiple arms sprouting out of its back. Sonic is undeterred however, summoning the Chaos Emeralds once more to go Super Sonic. He then goes a step further, where he is then surrounded in a reddish lightning infused aura, with his irises taking on a blue hue (akin to when the player hits the game's ring cap) instead of their normal red. It's short but it's really awesome to see.
  • The "Into The Horizon" trailer all but confirms what "The Final Horizon" DLC is - a complete reworking of the final chapter as, for the first time since Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Tails, Knuckles and Amy are playable characters in a mainstream game, joining Sonic as they seek to regather the Chaos Emeralds and turn the Cyber Corruption into a wellspring of power. Could this lead to a new ending? Can we, the players, stop the Bittersweet Ending that the base game brought?
• The launch trailer for The Final Horizon shows everyone working together to collect the Chaos Emeralds. On top of just seeing Tails, Knuckles, and Amy being playable, it shows off their new moves that work within the context of their history and Frontiers.
  • Amy not only uses her signature Piko Piko Hammer, but also can weaponize her Tarot cards as a shield or slow down her descent. Along with becoming a magical girl, she rides her Hammer like a witch's broomstick while her tarot cards become a wheel that can ram into enemies.
  • Tails has a variety of machines at his disposal to fight, including a drill-like gadget and wrench projectiles. The big kicker is how the Cyclone, after nearly 20 years, makes a grand return as part of his moveset.
  • And finally, Knuckles, the big red bruiser, uses his trusty fists to slug his foes. He can coat his fists in flames, along with use moves like his corkscrew punch from Adventure 2.

Prologues

Convergence prologue

• The comic starts with Sonic and Tails flying over to meet with Amy, only for Eggman to try to pre-emptively crash the party. While the Blue Blur wants to lend a hand for obvious reasons, footage from the ground shows Amy is already swinging, and by the time Sonic joins in, all the smaller Badniks are already in pieces. To say nothing of her smashing away a giant mechanical crab claw before Sonic can do anything about it.
• And then there's Tails disconnecting the large pincer that Amy just swatted aside and smashing one of its legs with his tails while Amy breaks the other, all before Sonic himself even has a chance to hit the mech a second time. Given how the last major entry in the series was infamous for taking him out of the action, it's nice to see Tails be willing to do battle once again.

Divergence prologue

• Ever since the mid-2000s, Knuckles' status as the guardian of the Master Emerald has been acknowledged less frequently by the series, despite his strong dedication to it as shown in the Adventure games. Divergence opens up with him standing watch on Angel Island, and the short in general focuses on the responsibility Knuckles holds towards it. Also present is a brief montage of the Echidna backstory from Sonic Adventure, ending ominously on the roar of Perfect Chaos.
• Knuckles ends up finding a portal gear in the Sky Sanctuary, which immediately takes the Echidna to the Starfall Islands. There, several SOLDIERs show up, sparking a brief fight in which Knuckles easily comes out on top— and even uses his raw strength to break off the cliff they're on and send them collapsing into the ocean. It's a very satisfying moment, and it's made clear that the only thing that ends up beating him is the full might of Sage after she makes her presence known. The quip Knuckles throws out before the fight is a delight to hear, too.
  Knuckles: Oh, an ambush, huh? Heh. Your funeral.
• For a villainous example, while Sage doesn't have any lines, she certainly makes an impression showing up with the gigantic ASURA, and manages to capture Knuckles right on the spot with him completely unable to stop her.

The Game Itself

Main Game

• The Titan boss fights had no right going this hard. Normally Sonic's attacks are limited to just simple spin attacks or just ramming things as Super Sonic, but with the upgraded combat system, Sonic gets much more physical here than in any platforming game prior. The music only enhances the fight, making the boss fights almost something out of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Devil May Cry 5, really selling just how powerful and awesome Super Sonic is.
  • After Sonic's first encounter with GIGANTO earlier, he repays in kind. After obtaining the Chaos Emerald from the Colossus Climb, Sonic (as Super Sonic) completely decimates the beast. Parrying his attacks allows Sonic to do a follow up attack where he grinds GIGANTO's face, before pummeling it with a Doppelgänger Attack. One Quick Time Event has Sonic completely deflect a Breath Weapon. Sonic finishes it off with a full powered charge through the beast's torso. The kicker, though? This is only the FIRST boss in the game! Talk about leaving an awesome first impression!
    • If you can get the above-mentioned QTE to sync up with the second half of the chorus, you're hit with a rush of pure adrenaline:
      I'm hanging on to the other side
      I won't give up 'till the end of me
      I'm what you get when the stars collide
      Now face it, you're just an enemy
  • The second fight against WYVERN is a High-Altitude Battle above Ares Island where Sonic has to deflect the beast's missiles back to it to make it vulnerable. Parrying its attacks will have Sonic grab it by its tail, spin it around as if he were Mario throwing Bowser, and fling it into a mountain. Near the end of the fight, WYVERN will launch a barrage of missiles towards Sonic and if the player succeeds in the Quick-Time event, Sonic will dodge every one, form them into a ball and kick it back towards WYVERN. It then proceeds to rocket up into the atmosphere fast enough that it can’t be seen anymore, before coming back down while spinning, attempting to turn the gold blur into a crater. Sonic meets it in kind, not just stopping it in place, but even halting its death roll. Sonic finishes it off by forcing its mouth open and sending another barrage of missiles into it, destroying it for good.
  • The third fight against KNIGHT takes place in a volcano in Chaos Island, where Super Sonic is able to ride on its chainsaw shield like a surfboard. When you parry its sword attack, Super Sonic will attack it in an insanely fast barrage of attacks, launch it into the air with a Super Cyloop, and kick it back down to earth. But the most impressive part is the finisher, where Sonic slices KNIGHT in half with its own sword.
    • Now with “Fight the Knight” from Sonic and the Black Knight.
  • The final fight against SUPREME takes place in a forest clearing, wherein it uses an array of beam weapons and its claws to keep Super Sonic back while it attempts to utilize its gigantic rail cannon to blow him away. Unlike most of the bosses, however, it's barely even phased even when Sonic closes the gap, able to swat him away very easily the moment he gets in. It's only after sneaking in after it fires off its Breath Weapon that he can do substantial harm. Its response? Rather than just emitting projectiles, it activate what looks to be its own super mode to match him, creating wings of light worthy of the Third Impact and using its new mobility and a hectic barrage of bullet attacks to keep Sonic pinned. Even when he manages to Super Cyloop the beast, it still has the tenacity to take a pot shot at him. It comes down to a sheer war of attrition as Super Sonic manages to run down SUPREME through a steady barrage of damage.
  • As it turns out SUPREME was supposed to be even more awesome with several cut Quick Time Events with the crowning achievement going to it shooting several close-range volleys at Sonic with its rifle, then flash stepping behind him to shoot with its rifle one-handed, and finally somehow flash stepping into the air to shoot even more volleys before landing gracefully in the arena. There's being an Impossibly Graceful Giant and then there's being SUPREME.
  • Special mention goes to the True Final Boss accessed on Hard mode, where the game turns into a faithful recreation of Ikaruga, of all things, as Sonic and Sage work together to destroy the literally moon-sized THE END. This boss can kill Super Sonic or SUPREME in one hit if it strikes them with a projectile that isn't what they are defending against.
• In case you thought the battles with the Titans couldn't get any more insanely awesome, try using the Cyloop/Quick Cyloop on them and a second one on top of that. Against GIGANTO, Super Sonic propels the Titan into the air, and can use a second Cyloop to promptly send it crashing back down. If used on WYVERN, Super Sonic creates a huge set of chains to trap its hands, before restraining it completely by chaining its neck with the second loop. And when used on KNIGHT, Super Sonic summons numerous MASSIVE Chaos Spears, a move only Shadow has used up to this point and not even to this extent, from the ground to impale KNIGHT and suspend them into the air, and upon using a second Cyloop, he summons an even bigger one to impale KNIGHT back into the ground.
• Taken altogether, this is easily Super Sonic's greatest showing yet. Individually, the Titans aren't on a level with beings like Dark Gaia or Solaris or the Time Eater, but this is the first time in a long time in a mainline Sonic game where Sonic gets to go up against foes mano-a-mano in his Super form; no Burning Blaze, no Super Silver and/or Super Shadow, no Super Classic Sonic, no Excalibur, no Light Gaia. Just Super Sonic. All his time spent growing as a person in various other games allows Sonic to blend tactics into his super form he's learned elsewhere - he's able to copy Shadow's Chaos Spears and refine them, he brings his training as a knight from the Storybook series to bear against KNIGHT and proves himself the better blademaster with a single blow, and the moves he learns over the course of this particular adventure also get incorporated into Super Sonic's arsenal. For a form that's allowed Sonic to largely get away with just ramming things, Sonic takes it to new heights his contemporaries Shadow, Blaze, and Silver could only dream of.
  • On the villains' side of things, all the Titans force him to use this form, not just the Final Boss; GIGANTO made that point loud and clear when, after several ineffectual homing attacks to the chin, it grabs Sonic and yeets him through three spires into the cliffside behind them. And even when thrown into the air by a Cyloop, Giganto still proves capable of uppercutting the shit out of Super Sonic while stuck in mid air if you don't parry and dodge correctly!
• Think about what it means for Sonic to get shot down by one of the Starfall Island chain's anti-air laser arrays. As Tails mentions, a single cannon has a power output only slightly weaker than the Eclipse Cannon, a weapon specifically built by Gerald Robotnik to use the power of the seven Chaos Emeralds so it could fire a beam capable of destroying a planet. When it actually got to fire on its intended target, the Black Comet, at the end of Shadow the Hedgehog, it reduced the massive celestial body to space dust in a single blast. And Sonic can survive a direct shot from a weapon only slightly weaker than that, losing his Super form but otherwise being no worse for wear beyond an annoyed ego. Sonic's certainly come a long way from being knocked out of his Super state by a sneak attack and losing his Super state holding back an exploding capsule while going through atmospheric re-entry.
• The plan of the True Final Boss THE END is this both due to its cunning and simplicity. Exploiting the personal flaws and characteristics of the enemy and using that to its advantage, all the while never exposing its true nature until it was free makes THE END one of the more intelligent villains in the franchise:
  • 1) THE END takes Eggman captive to neutralize him as a threat due to his past exploits regarding eldritch beings like itself.
  • 2) It then takes Sonic and his friends (and Knuckles), using the latter as hostages to exploit the hedgehog's good nature and protectiveness, all the while Sonic's natural impulsiveness and Sage's inability to tell the full truth due to Eggman's stubbornness about not helping Sonic again ensures the two would not be able to do anything about the actual threat until it was too late.
  • 3) With the corruption Sonic is suffering from due to absorbing so much cyber space energy eventually removing him as a danger, it would be able continue its destructive aims unchallenged. And it nearly worked too, with its victory barely averted by Sage's personal growth.

The DLC Updates

• With Sonic's 32nd Birthday as a franchise came the Birthday Bash update, which contained not only new challenges (some of the most difficult in the entire game), but also the return of the iconic Spin Dash. And with it, Sonic's classic spinning roll technique outclasses every other movement tech in the game. It can move faster than the Boost or even the Power Boost. It can run undaunted by terrain. It can launch Sonic through the skies with power and precision. And it effectively shows why the Drop Dash isn't as powerful as a true Spin Dash. Use of it snaps much of the game's traversal in half, and easily breaks the prior time records of Cyber Space; this is what Sonic can do when he goes all out in speed by game terms.
• Master King's Trial Tower is a hell of a Boss Rush. All three titans encountered thus far on one non-replenishable supply of rings, with their pre-fight phases included. All done with Level 1 in all stats, including Rings, meaning you need to finish each Titan's Super Sonic segment in a little over two minutes each without taking damage in their pre-fight phases. And this is applied on top of the difficulty slider. You will feel like a master of the game afterwards.
• Throughout "The Final Horizon", Amy, Tails and Knuckles all begin suffering from cyber corruption due to THE END's influence. However, all three refuse to give into it, in spite of all the pain it's causing them. After all, Sonic didn't give up on helping them, so they won't give up on him. Doubles as Heartwarming.
• Come the release of "The Final Horizon", the question of averting the main game's Bittersweet Ending is answered for real — and that answer is a resounding "Yes!". After fight against SUPREME, unlike in the main story, THE END opts to use SUPREME as a host to herald its return. Another fight begins, with Sonic facing down THE END, now possessing the Titan (with its moon form in the background, no less). When his regular attacks prove to not be enough, he utilizes the gift he obtained from the Koco after overcoming their trials, turning his Cyber Corruption into power and transforming into Super Sonic 2, the blue-eyed state seen in the trailers, which enhances his attacks to such a degree that they would not seem out of place in a battle anime such as the one it clearly references.
  • Sage still nearly loses her life, though this time protecting Eggman from SUPREME/THE END's attacks. As Sage's barrier is about to break, Amy, Knuckles and Tails get their own moments of awesome, flying on over and assisting Sage in holding the barrier up.
  • Special mention goes to the music during SUPREME/THE END’s boss fight. Following up after Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors before it, we’re treated to a intense, symphonic version of "I’m Here" as Super Sonic powers himself up with the Cyber Corruption and thrashes THE END around. After Sonic disarms the Titan, Kellin Quinn makes his return with an absolutely chilling, yet positively triumphant rendition of "I’m Here", especially reaching its crescendo as Eggman blasts the amped-up Super Sonic out of SUPREME’s rifle to finish off THE END. To say this one-upped the base game’s final act would be one hell of an understatement!
  • During the entirety of the fight, Super Sonic is completely silent and focused, with an air of smug confidence here and there. Coupled with the Perfect Parry ability allowing him to swat away and effortlessly No-Sell THE END's attacks, people's admissions of his empowered form being akin to Super Saiyan 2 start to become a lot more incorrect. No - this is Sonic's Ultra Instinct -Sign-.
  • If Sonic is hit with the orbs of THE END's final phase, a cutscene will play where Super Sonic is overwhelmed by a much larger version of the attack, first losing his power-up, then his Super form outright and having the Rings knocked out of him before the orb explodes. This attack actually reduces Sonic's ring, and if he has less than 100, it will kill him outright... but if he has enough Rings, Sonic emerges unscathed, gives a cocky smile, and powers right back up for round 2.
  • If you performed the Grand Slam on THE END, Sonic pulls out the finishing move he used on Giant Zavok during the IDW Comics' Metal Virus Saga; he effortlessly blitzes the hell out of the Titan while smugly crossing his arms, the attack being akin to Akuma's Raging Demon.
  • If you Cyloop THE END, then the titan is crushed by two discs of light made by Super Sonic. Cyloop it again and it can barely stop itself from being crushed under their immense weight. When the sequence runs out, Sonic pulls off a Badass Fingersnap to absolutely crush THE END, coupled with a Sickening "Crunch!", blood spewing everywhere, and the titan being horribly contorted. A real showcase of Super Sonic's power.
  • Once THE END's life bar is depleted, there's two Coup de Grâce cutscenes. The first of which has two QTEs, where Sonic first kicks the Titan into the sky, followed by Sonic flying after it. He then proceeds to punch and kick so fast that it leaves a single streak of delayed attacks, carrying THE END higher and higher, until it falls back down. With one final punch, Sonic sends the Titan hurtling and helpless in the air.
  • The second cutscene has Eggman yelling at Sonic to get ready, as this final attack is "now or never." Sonic then decides to hold nothing back, despite the Master King's warnings that his newfound power would fade quickly if overused (meaning Sonic was holding back to prevent that outcome for most of the fight), and prepares himself to use all of his energy to become the bullet for Eggman to fire.
  • The transformation sequence itself is a sight to behold. Sonic unleashes all of the Cyber Corruption's power, harnessing the energy to transform into a black-and-blue variant of Super Sonic, screaming as the power overtakes his body and when he's fired towards THE END. By the end of it, he's sporting monochromatic ringed eyes and sharp fangs not all that unlike Fleetway's version of Super Sonic. Where his previous empowered form was giving THE END and SUPREME a run for their money, how does "Super Sonic Cyber" match up? He outright vaporizes SUPREME on contact. THE END doesn't fare any better against it, either.
  • It's worth noting that while Sonic loads himself inside the enormous rifle for the above; the one with the honor of firing it is Dr. Eggman. In this final cutscene, he aims the rifle carefully before launching it to destroy THE END, once and for all saving the world, and perhaps the universe...so he can become the only villain worthy of conquering it. THAT is Robotnik right there. Furthermore, this is not only after THE END tried to kill him, but nearly killed Sage. He won't admit it to Sonic and his friends, but this is a Papa Wolf awakening and he just told this beast "Not. My. Daughter."

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