#unleashed has a funny fairy chihuahua and a pickle professor. frontiers has. a goofy fishing minigame ok yeah

[antirepurp]

actually i feel like frontiers has The Horrors in it in a way no other sonic game really has before it. maybe sa2 and shth come close to it but the vibe in both is very drastically different.

im talking about an ancient civilization that got wiped out by a force so powerful it's difficult to grasp. we get to witness the little that remains and assume that must be it, that all there is anymore are stones piled into towers and architecture ravaged by nature, before discovering it's all still here. and alive. and growing and leaking out of its containment to show everyone The Horrors they lived through. and it's not presented through different POVs like in sa1, and they don't hold back on any of it. four children get to witness the destruction of the people who came here before them right in front of their eyes, with the souls they spend time bonding with and treating like their equals.

and im talking about the destruction of the body and the way everyone but sonic is ripped out of their physical existences and into cyberspace where the relentless corruption of faulty code can begin to consume them alive. they lose their abilities to interact with the world in the ways they were used to and effectively become ghosts, echoes of themselves, and the only way to bring them back requires one kid to destroy his own body in exchange. and he has to slowly experience The Horrors of burning his own self alive, because what else is he supposed to do? he's supposed to be the hero and do the right thing, and this is the only thing he knows to do. and he will throw himself against enemies rivaling the power of the gods he's fought before, and he will take as many hits as it takes, and he will face his own mortality and fragility over and over again while his own self is dying

and even more so im talking about the very concept of death that haunts the islands and that sonic has to fight in the end, because he will not accept the end of the world. because he is not the kind of hero he wants to be, the personification of morals and accepting that things are going to end one day, when it's about whether his friends get to experience another tomorrow or not. whichever ending you play he will face off against a calculating force that has decided that this world needs to be destroyed, that it's about time it did. and sonic fights back because for fucking once he doesn't want to let go. he has let go so many times before, when he first visited ARK and in a timeline that no longer exists and after defeating the very concept of darkness and negativity. and should you go for the original ending, he let go of his friends, here and now. he has been through The Horrors and he's had enough and will not let himself be consumed by them, because he will make sure there is another sunrise and another tomorrow and that his brother and childhood friend and rival can all go and live the lives they want to have, and have been dreaming of this whole time

i know it's a pegi 7 baby game with poor execution and rushed things in many places. but i love the subtle terror under the hood i am obsessed with it