#king koco trials

[robotgloveart]

[sonknuxadow]

just remembered i never beat sonic superstars. the final boss in trips story made me so mad that i just gave up . sad !

[neometalsilver]

master king koco fucking hilarious for thinking sonic was going to be given a massive fuck-ton of power and NOT "go all out". i guarantee he was never going to not use the cyber form bro had it planned the minute he finished the trial

[auroblaze]

I ffinished sonic frontiers dlc at LAST and I have so mnany thoughts I NEED TO SHARE,

[taffydragonblog]

Master King trial final notes now that I've got all the way through the damn thing

First thing: TURN OFF YOUR AUTO COMBO!

GIGANTO:

Jump on its leg and make it up to the head without hitting any of the red laser rings. Use the blue circles to boost. (This part seems pretty obvious but I had to include it for sequence.) Grab the Chaos Emerald and start the battle.

Immediately boost in and use a homing attack on its face. Once you start a combo, immediately stomp. Attack, stomp, repeat.

It will try to do a big spinning swipe at you at least once; parry once it has its back to you, then boost in and start attacking and stomping some more. Grand Slam will do a chunk of damage, but it will break out of its stun and will be able to swipe at you again, do it's probably best to keep wailing on it instead.

As soon as your Cyloop gauge fills up and turns blue, while you're executing a combo, use Quick Cyloop to throw it into the air. Once this happens, it will try to swipe you when you follow it up. Parry, then attack and stomp.

Watch its health bar! Once it stops taking damage, stop attacking and let it move on to the second phase (shoulder lasers).

Now, when you boost in to home in on its face again, watch out if it pulls its arm back to swipe you, and parry accordingly. You'll want to keep doing the same as before, start an attack combo and then stomp over and over.

It may fire a beam from its mouth at least once or twice. Tap the parry buttons to dodge this so that you don't get stuck having to block it, which takes more time and uses up some rings.

It may try to grab hold of you with a double-handed swipe at least once or twice, which results in you having to force its jaws open, which also takes time and uses up rings. Parry its swipe to stun it before it can grab you.

Remember to Quick Cyloop it while your gauge is blue/once it turns blue again, and watch out for its starting swipe.

If you can manage to get through this without allowing Giganto to strike you, you're good to go. Try to end up with around 320-350 rings. Honestly, the more times you fight this titan, the faster you'll get, so don't feel discouraged at having to do it over and over again!

WYVERN:

Climb up the tower and walk out onto the ledge. If you feel comfortable with dodging obstacles at high speed, do a figure-eight Cyloop to unlock Infinite Boost. If not, that's okay too. Jump and home in on the titan as it circles around the tower and passes in front of you.

Before the battle, you have to run along the giant energy ribbon. Use homing attacks on the spinning bars and dodge the balls of light as they come at you down the road. Keep following the ribbon until it dumps you out on top of the titan's head. Then, walk over and grab the Chaos Emerald, and start the battle.

Immediately boost to reach its head. It will fly past you and start launching rockets. You want to parry one from the first volley you see; once you see the tips of the rockets start blinking black and white, be ready to parry them.

Once you've accomplished that, boost forward, and you'll end up in front of it. Parry its single swipe, then home in and start an attack + stomp combo. Continue wailing on it with attack + stomp. Fill your Cyloop gauge, then immediately Quick Cyloop it and wail on it some more. If you pull it off right, you'll be able to send it straight into the second damage phase.

While a Grand Slam does a good bit of damage, it will also break it out of its stun, and you'll have to chase it down and parry another rocket at it again. Try to avoid Grand Slamming it and just wail on it with attack + stomp instead.

Once the second phase starts, boost forward, watching out for its tail and the red laser rings. Be on the lookout for rockets with flashing tips, because with everything going on they may be hard to spot. Parry one of the rockets, then boost forward so you end up in front of the titan again.

This time it will swipe at you twice in a row. Parry both attacks, then home in and attack + stomp, as well as Quick Cyloop. It may or may not break free before you get it to the first QTE phase; if this happens, it will try to swipe you outright, so be ready to parry that.

At the first QTE phase, hit the button to block the rockets and send them all back. This will stun the titan, so continue with homing attack + stomp, but don't Cyloop it this time; you'll need a full gauge when you face Knight after this. It may or may not break free and swipe you again, but just parry when it does, and keep attacking.

Once you reach the second QTE phase, you just have to block its dive, hold it in place, then dodge its rockets, and force its jaw open.

If you can get through this without getting knocked back any, you may end up with somewhere close to 200 rings left or more. If you end up with less than 180 rings when facing Knight, start the trial over and try again. You will need as many rings as you can get because Knight's second phase is a real booger.

KNIGHT:

Boost forward to get Knight moving around. Once you see spikes shoot up, jump and air boost. Even if you get hit by the spikes, if you can air boost before you hit the ground, you won't lose any rings.

Once the titan gets still, look up to see where it's hand is. Back up and jump when you see it coming down, air boost if needed, and start climbing up its arm. Make your way up onto its head and grab the Chaos Emerald.

For the first phase, Knight will be swerving around back and forth. You can homing attack its head, but it won't stay still long enough for you to pull off a stomp or cyloop it.

Eventually it will stop moving and get ready to swing its sword at you (it will either come from above or below, so watch out). Parry the sword, and it will raise its shield at you.

Go ahead and wail on the shield. This will drive it to throw the shield, which you'll then hop onto and try to fly it back into the titan's head. This part is a bit difficult since it will be constantly sending rockets at you to knock you back, but once you manage to get it in and strike it, this will stun it.

Attack and stomp a few times, then cyloop it. Attack and stomp it some more, then cyloop it again, and wail on it some more. If you pull this off right, it will carry you straight into the second damage phase.

Now here is the reason why you need so many rings for this last fight. Knight will throw its shield and send it careening off the arena walls while it swerves around. You want to get yourself in a position where you can parry the shield back at it, and hopefully hit it. Most likely you will end up without the titan in front of you, or it will skate out of the way when you send the shield back toward it. Be patient, and keep trying to nail the titan with the shield.

Once you do, zip right in and go to town on its head. If you can still cyloop it, do so. Hold it and keep wailing on it with attack + stomp, and you will push it into the final QTE phase.

Just two things to do here: block the hit, then keep it from smashing you against the rocks. The rest of the battle plays out from there.

Congrats on getting through this absolute bastard of a trial. Everything else from here on out will have you fighting at full stats again, so enjoy the rest of the game!

[starswordneo]

King Koko

I have put in more time, about 4 more hours into King Koco and I've looked as hard as I can into every guide but I just cant. It's too much. I've enjoyed hard things and beat them with absolute satisfaction, but this is bringing me to tears on how difficult it is. I really wanted to beat this but this is just unfair, and unfun, I'm just in complete despair, I was looking so forward to this update and this is just misery inducing.

This is just the most unfun challenge I've ever had and I just can't surmount it. I pray to any god for a patch to actually make this damn trial beatable. I'm doing every combo I can do, Cross Slash, perfect parries, ignoring the counterattacks in order to do more damage and cyloops, and just.. everything. It's just too strict and unforgiving. I really want to beat this game and see all the cool new stuff but I just can't. I haven't cried in years but this is making me tear up in pure frustration.

I won't return to the game unless a patch comes out to nerf this. I've played games and had a death count of a thousand, but at least I was having fun with my numerous attempts. Sonic Frontiers combat was my least favorite part, and now I'm expected to perfect it against overwhelming opponents with no forgiveness at all.

It's just too much. I can't even hack my way through cause I bought the game on my ps4.

I give up....

[cj-can-art]

ugh ugh guhg u g why do i have to fight all the bosses again with only perfect parry. and it. resets all my progress on them if i lose.

[notfebruary]

sonic frontiers dlc has been conquered !

and as is tradition for most(if not all) fully 3D sonic games, the most difficult enemy to conquer on any playable character is the camera angle lmao

[goodbye-susan]

Currently terrible at perfect parry but I feel like wyvern is going to make me a subject matter expert by the time we're through

[wereh0gz]

I'M INSANE I'M INSANE I'M INSANE AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[tailschannel]

Balance and difficulty adjustments featured in latest patch for Sonic Frontiers 3rd post-launch DLC

The third and final post-launch downloadable content update for Sonic Frontiers has received a significant patch late Wednesday.

Released to all major platforms, version 1.41 of Frontiers included several bug fixes, balancing patches, and movement improvements for the last content update of 2023, "The Final Horizon."

Here are the official patch notes, courtesy of SEGA of Japan:

Made Balance Adjustments to Easy Mode

Trial Towers: New level designs have been added.

Towers of the Master: The default difficulty and Sonic's attack level have been adjusted.

Master King Koco's Trial: Your maximum Ring capacity and the health of each Titan have been adjusted.

Made changes to some of the controls for Amy, Knuckles and Tails

The parry window for perfect parries was adjusted to be more forgiving. (The window will be extended even further when playing on Easy.)

Knuckles' maneuverability during gliding has significantly increased.

Adjusted the stats of some special moves for Amy, Knuckles, and Tails after leveling them up

The attack and defense of certain special moves for Amy, Knuckles, and Tails after they level up have been increased.

Made it Easier to Retry After a Game Over

The pink panels in the Trial Towers will respawn after a certain amount of time has passed and you are a certain distance away.

If you make a mistake before a Cyber Space checkpoint and you have to restart from the beginning, the timer will now reset so you don't need to manually restart. (Excluding Cyber Space Challenge)

Various bug fixes, including the issue where audio would not play during sub-events, have also been addressed.

[calista-222]

I'm playing the Sonic Frontiers final chapter and is it me or is the King Koco boss rush trial insanely difficult even in easy mode?? I've noticed this update is much harder than the main story but this trial?? Why did they make it like this???

The game gives you 400 rings (about 7 minutes worth of time) to defeat 3 bosses, but realistically, it takes over 15 minutes per attempt (with the cutscenes you can't skip, how long it takes to climb the titans, especially that extremely long first part with Wyvern, the long quick time events animations etc)!! This is not the kind of challenge that should take over 30 attempts to complete!!! My best run was when I had 130 left to defeat Knight and almost got to the second phase before running out of time...

[larabar]

ok wait with the final horizon now. how many times did sonic go super in the span of the game. first three titans....first three titans again (master king koco trial).....supreme...supreme Again (emeralds got knocked out of him).. that makes about 8 times💥💥💥

[semi-sketchy]

For an update (mostly) meant to flesh out the Ancients/The End, they still seem not all that memorable or compelling from what little I've seen. They're just as much as plot devices masquerading as (bland) characters as Sage still is. The plot EXPECTS me to care, but I just cannot because the lore/exposition in this game is soooo dull when it's not wholly confusing. And I gotta ask, is any of it gonna matter in future games? Does anyone really approve of this shite whilst still bemoaning how unnecessarily convoluted Shadow's backstory was? That for a supposed big threat, it all still took place on some small-scale remote islands? This stuff should begging for a retcon. Guess that'll be up to me. Hint: Fairy dust made it all seem real to both the heroes and Eggman. And the Kocos are Accidental Antagonists to have put them through all of it because they don't remember their true history on the islands...

The question of which ending is canon is up for debate, but personally I think this one is going to cause more problems long-term. I literally started yelling at the side story when Sage said the Ancients had satellites that are still functional.

Tens of thousands of years old, still orbiting, functional, and NO ONE HAS NOTICED THEM? This is the world that had a SPACE COLONY 50 YEARS AGO and they NEVER asked what these old satellites were?? Like man, if we discovered ancient satellites circling our planet, there would be some paranormal podcasts talking about this "unknown" and obscure fact, but here no one has noticed?

Also extremely disappointed they did nothing to expand on The End. If anything, this is regression from base game because it's missing that pretentious speech. I wanted to know WHY this consumer of worlds was specifically chasing the Ancients. If it's just supposed to be symbolic, then that was completely lost on me.

I'm with you on the not being able to care part. I'm not bonded to these characters and the short cutscenes around the trials doesn't change anything about the pilots. It's just "WE DIED TO CONTAIN THIS THING AND YOU SET IT FREE-- oh you passed my brute strength trial. K guess you're a good guy." Sonic gets some sass with the King Koco, but it also feels...off. It's not his normal disrespect towards authority.

To go on another tangent, the opening cutscene bothers me.

Sonic isn't the person to give a "rally the troops" speech. Although, how this scene was written made that direction the ONLY way it could've gone.

I think of the Last Story cutscene from Heroes. Sonic just listens.

When he says he'll fight Metal Overlord, it's Tails and Knuckles that pop up to say "we're going to help you!" and Shadow that says they'll buy them time.

Sonic doesn't ask anything from anybody, he just graciously accepts their help. Compare how this was written to sticking Sonic in a place where he's the one who has to explain what's going on and tell others what he needs.

It's a case where the plot moves the characters and not the characters moving the plot, which is the perfect storm for OOC moments. That is exactly what happened with Eggman when they decided Sage was a good idea.

Sage just regurgitates random info about rocks and other stuff no one asked about, like there was ONE LINE where she sounded kinda different which made me think it would've been so good if Sage was more like GLaDOS. I want her to have more sick burns. But no, innocent child because Eggman "needs" a daughter and Sonic has to have a reason to help the girl that's been trying to kill him the whole game.

I don't understand how anyone can call this "peak" because it's just so self-important and straight-faced serious, it's at the point of monotony. It breaks what I like about these characters to wrap them up in a "serious story" blanket whilst failing to properly build up the threat.

I hope they reevaluate their choices and this isn't really the standard moving forward because it's so stupid it hurts. And that's just the story/lore.

[skyonfilm]

i can beat the final trial on hard!! 🦔💛

yes, you read the title right... we are replaying that one trial from sonic fronters on hard!! i wanted to play the final trial and the final boss from the final horizons (lots of finals lol) since the patch update to see if i was able to do it!! in today's video, i will attempt the master king koco trial and hopefully i won't lose my sanity!! had a lot of fun replaying this trial and making this video so i really hope you enjoy the video!!

youtube - instagram - tiktok - twitter

[atwas-gaming]

Thoughts on the Final Horizon

I've been trying to put my thoughts on Final Horizon into a cohesive analysis, and... it hasn't happened yet. So just have some terribly disjointed thoughts.

Gameplay

First off, I want to say that I only filled in about a third of the map, so I probably didn't get the full story on anything. But I did beat The End, so I have seen how the story actually ends. And personally, I'm calling this the true ending. For one thing, the boss feels like a proper boss- it's very difficult to figure out on your own, it's easy to mess up, it's not just an out-of-place mini-game that felt like it was shoved in at the last second, and we're not left scratching our heads and wondering why literal Death wasn't so much harder.

Easy and medium modes in the base game left me with the same reaction as Sonic: "Is that it???" Hard mode left me feeling like nothing made sense. Seriously, a destroyer of worlds can't do better than a few dark and light particles and an occasional death laser? I spend most of hard mode in the base game going, "Ugh, I suck at bullet hells, what does this have to do with Sonic, anyway?!?"

The required mini-games were annoying enough, but to make it into a boss fight? Never made sense, and it never felt like a real Sonic boss.

But The End in Final Horizon does. First we fight Supreme. Same old Supreme fight as ever. And he whips out his gun and you're going, "gee, I wish they'd done more with that." But then you get into the final boss, and they did. The gun is how The End is filling Supreme with its power, connecting its siphon to it to fill Supreme with its power. We have to remove the siphon, and then the gun, to be able to destroy Supreme, and that gives us the opportunity to go after the moon.

I am not convinced that the hands that sprout from Supreme's back weren't inspired by TOTK's gloom spawn XP. Especially in the second phase of the fight, when they start glowing and spitting at us.

The perfect parry we learned to use in Master King Koco's trial (along with the punch-stomp technique, amirite?) suddenly becomes important instead of just a nuisance.

If you're like me and you were a little disappointed that Sonic automatically cylooped Knight's sword instead of us getting the chance to cyloop it, we now get the chance to cyloop Supreme's gun.

I have a few nitpicks on the design, largely the fact that those dang trees were in the way most of the time, and also that it was so hard to figure out how to manage the fight (I totally forgot that dodge changes the target, so I spent an hour or two trying to figure out why I couldn't just kill Supreme and then go after the moon). Otherwise, I think it was fairly well-designed, considering that it was a DLC addition.

Story

As for the story aspect, I loved it. It was honestly about time Sonic got a new form, and Cyber Sonic fits him so well. It's clearly more than he can handle, but he "goes all out," because if he doesn't, it's over. He's not just saving his friends, anymore- he has to destroy literal Death, or the universe itself will be destroyed. (Just the universe? From the way this thing is capable of destroying the walls between dimensions, I think Sonic just saved the whole freaking space-time continuum.)

And it becomes a team effort. First Sage steps up to throw up a shield similar to the dimensional shield that kept The End trapped for milleni- albeit a much smaller one that begins breaking almost immediately; however, the fact that she could do it at all speaks volumes about not only her strength, but her ability to tap into Cyberspace. Then Team Sonic joins in, each of them equal in strength to Sage because of not only their connections to Cyberspace, but also the cyber corruption they've suffered as a result of retrieving the Emeralds.

Sonic develops new attacks and abilities, apparently having gained even greater speed and agility than ever before because of the Cyber Corruption. I don't know if this happens all the time or if I just screwed up somewhere, but it seemed like The End shot out some kind of huge energy ball that ripped both the Emeralds and the rings right out of Sonic- but then he just pulled them all back in, somehow?

I was sitting there through the whole fight going, "Come on, come on, we gotta take out that moon!" And the way they did it was, I think, even better than the normal ending (base game). In the normal ending, Sage throws Sonic into The End, and while it's enough to do some damage, Sonic is just too small. Sage, in Supreme, is large enough and has enough power to completely obliterate The End- something Sonic couldn't have done even if he'd released all the Emeralds' power while he was passing through the moon's center. He would have died for nothing. But Sage dies, instead. And we get a post-credits cutscene of Eggman rebooting Sage from backup copies. This is the normal ending.

That's why I think of Final Horizon as the True Ending- it's the one where no one dies except the bad guy. And its so perfect. Eggman and Sonic just... they just work together like they each know what the other one's going to do (one of the benefits of having been enemies for so long, I guess). There's almost no conversation between them, Eggman's already got the gun attached to the Eggmobile, he doesn't have to tell Sonic that Sonic is going to be the bullet, he just knows to do it.

Once Sonic is safely enclosed deep within the barrel of the gun, he releases the barriers that he himself put up to protect himself from the corruption, becoming a little ball of pure cyber energy. The last time the corruption took him over, he turned into a statue, like stone. This time, he holds onto his mind long enough to remain conscious while he does what he has to do. Nothing is said about his mental condition, he just roars like an animal as he rushes at the shell of Supreme's casing and the moon. I imagine he let his amnesia take over, let his mind be taken over by pure rage and one thought: DESTROY THAT THING.

(Also, I recommend watching Sonic strike the final blow in Japanese. Junichi's screams are just so perfect. Roger's voice acting in Frontiers is amazing, but I'm sorry, Roger is still the worst screamer. Junichi is amazing here.)

And then... maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen Super Sonic look beat up, or unconscious. Perhaps it was the Emeralds that gave Sonic the ability to hold onto himself long enough to fight? At any rate, he unleashed his Cyber power while inside The End, destroying it, and neutralizing the corruption so it didn't affect him anymore.

And then Sage finally gets to hear Eggman call her his daughter. And... the final boss music from the base game finally makes sense. I never understood why it was so tender and lovely, or why it was called "I'm With You." I figured it had something to do with Sage, but I couldn't figure out what. Now that we have lyrics, it makes sense. All she was ever thinking about was her father. Even in the base game, before she realized that she would have to die, she was just looking forward to the day that she would have a family.

BTW, I'm still not a fan of the whole "daddy Eggman" thing, I see his fondness for Sage as purely narcissistic- he built her, and she protects him, and he's proud of her for exceeding his expectations. I don't think he cares about her, he just cares about what she does for him. But even so... it's still touching. And Sonic does have a monologue on Ouranos where he says something like, "Eggman, maybe you'll finally get your act together this time." Perhaps they are leaning in that direction. Hmm... tbh, I wouldn't mind seeing him get a redemption arc, eventually. Doubt it will ever really happen, but I'm a sucker for a redemption story, so I can hope.

Final Thoughts (and some hopes for Frontiers 2)

Anyway, despite some of the shortcomings and a lack of properly setting us up and preparing us for it, I think Final Horizon was good. I can't say that it leaves me feeling like they gave us the ending they had originally intended. For instance, I've heard that Ouranos was originally intended to be set in space or something (just a rumor I heard in one video- apparently there's a lost voice clip of Sage saying something about a mothership). So, I don't feel like we got the full story as it was originally intended.

But, like... this was the biggest and most well-received Sonic game to come out in generations (see what I did there?). And I believe Sega has already said they plan on using a similar format for the next game.

Now, I'm not trying to make a prediction or get anyone's hopes up, but... well...

I mean, Team Sonic's gonna go do their own things, right? Amy and Tails are going off to explore on their own, Knuckles says he wants to go somewhere and not be tied down to Angel Island so much anymore. So, who's gonna go with Sonic on his next adventure?

May I suggest making Team Dark relevant again?

And then, since we've already involved aliens and Ancient alien technology and the Emeralds apparently came from space... and Shadow is part alien... You see where I'm going with this?

It's just my own idea, but hey, I can dream, can't I? They could make a whole 'nother huge game if they went such a route.

Anyway, whatever they decide to do, I'm looking forward to it. Frontiers was a heck of a ride- lol, I've been on this ride almost non-stop for a year now. If Sega does as good with the next game, I definitely want to see it!