While Sonic Frontiers is an attempt to try a lot of new things with the Blue Blur, there are more traditional 3D Sonic the Hedgehog elements included. A little something for everybody, you know? Outside of the “open-zone” areas are portals leading to Cyber Space, a collection of speed-slash-challenge levels based on chunks of previous zones from throughout the Sonic series. Each portal includes a list of goals you can tackle, and hitting each one gives you a key for unlocking vaults. A specific stage has gained some notoriety due to its strict demands for an S-Rank despite being super early in the game. I managed to meet said demand, so here’s a quick guide on how to S-Rank 1-2 in Sonic Frontiers.
Related: Sonic Frontiers Review | The Gap Between Ambition and Execution
There is an incredibly low margin of error to meet that 55-second goal in 1-2. You pretty much have to take a specific route, and even then you really can’t mess up. If you’re tearing your hair out but don’t want to just watch a video showing you exactly how to do it, I’ll break it down into some written tips. Then I’ll write out the exact steps. And finally, there’s a video you can check out as a last resort. Or, you know, just skip to the video if you don’t care. Gotta make everyone happy.
Sonic Frontiers Portal 1-2 Tips & Tricks
- Stay out of the air as much as possible unless you’re able to boost to the next part
- Springs are not your friends
- ABB: Always Be Boosting; no fighting, running, double-jumping, or having fun
- Choose your ring boosts carefully; some of them help, others hurt
- No jumping on grind rails; only the bumper hop gimmick
- Don’t forget you can press B/Circle/etc to drop
Step-by-Step Solution
- From the jump, take the low route via the zipper pads, jumping right after the red ring on the hill to catch the boost rings to the upper platforms
- Skip across the platforms, immediately boost past the enemies and hit the pulley thing
- From the pulley, boost over the steps and tap the homing attack as fast as you can (it’ll take a few times to feel out the timing) then drop as soon as you reach the platform
- Boost to the rail, boost and immediately hop left, then right back to the middle to avoid the spring
- If it’s after :35 when you hit the loop, restart lol
- Boost jump off the hill for the ring boost, on the rail hop left onto the second rail then immediately hop right to use the ring boost
- Boost through the straightaway and jump for the ring boost
- Stay on the next rail all the way! No jumping yet!
- Okay now you can jump. Do a boost jump to clear the hazard then homing attack the last spring
- You should have just enough time to fumble to the finish however you like
Okay, now here’s a video of the whole plan in action. You can see a mistake or two, which results in a whole half of a second to spare at the end. Whew! I got a better time the first time I cleared it, but of course I wasn’t recording then. It wasn’t that much better though, to be fair.
