Games I Played in 2025 - Sonic Frontiers
Console: PS4, PS5, Switch, PC, XB1, XSX
Developer: Sonic Team
Release Date: November 8th, 2022
Sonic Frontiers is an open world action platformer centered around exploration, collectibles and combat. As a bold new entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, Frontiers is the first time the series earnestly tries to be an open world game, and according to the director, is meant to be the model for future games, similar to how Sonic Adventure was when the series first transitioned to 3D.
Now, I won't repeat the same tired adage of how the series has had a rough transition to 3D, because I don't think that's true. What is true, however, is that the series has never settled on a style of gameplay. The Adventure era, which is my favorite and what I grew up with, has more freeform gameplay and often includes characters other than Sonic as playable with different gameplay styles. Then, after the disaster that was Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), the series shifted with Sonic Unleashed into what I've seen called the Boost era, due to that game's Day stages. However, the 3D games since then have always had an experimental edge to them, with Unleashed having a lot of God of War-style brawler levels, Colors having the Wisps as power-ups, Generations remixing old levels, Lost World being a completely different game with different controls, level designs and a Super Mario Galaxy-like gravity mechanic, and Forces having a custom character. Frontiers being open world is the latest, perhaps most extreme case of this experimental edge the series has had so far.
I had fairly low expectations from this game, hence why I took so long to play it, yet was optimistic about it. I played all of the base game, completing all the Challenges, Cyberspace Stages, and maxing out Sonic's stats, and did a quick run of the Final Horizon story, which is an alternate ending to the game where you get to play as Tails, Knuckles and Amy.
ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK
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| A typical cutscene in Sonic Frontiers, with a look at the game's bigger interest in the universe's greater lore |
Sonic Frontiers not only experiments with its gameplay, but also with its story. The premise itself is pretty typical of a Sonic game, with Sonic and his friends going to a new place because the Chaos Emeralds seemed drawn there, and also Eggman was there trying to do something nefarious. What happens in the story itself is also nothing special, Sonic has to save his friends and save the day. The character dialogue is where things are different: there's a more grounded tone, there's open references to past games, and the characters don't feel as cartoony as they have in the past (especially in Sonic Lost World). I found it pretty refreshing even if the performances caught me off-guard at first: the voice direction is more casual, leading to the characters speaking in lower voices and a bit faster, almost like a performer that isn't "on."
Frontiers has a restricted cast of main characters, with only Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman and new character Sage, an AI created by Eggman given a physical body. The characterisation of each character is good and refreshing and leads to some genuinely good moments that are pretty heartfelt as far as the series goes. The standout to me, however, is Sage. Maybe I'm just too much of a sucker for robot characters developing feelings, but I found myself instantly drawn to her as a character and enjoying her development, as well as Eggman's feelings about her changing, which is helped by the optional voice logs you can unlock.
All of this is almost certainly due to this game being the first time longtime IDW Sonic Comics writer Ian Flynn got to write for the games. I've seen criticism of his work as well as for the game's different tone, with people finding the latter laughable because "Sonic is taking itself too seriously," but I actually really liked the more serious tone, and I think it's because it's coming from Flynn. Writing comic books is different from writing games, and to my understanding the IDW Sonic Comics are more serious than the games, so it makes sense that the first game written by Flynn would echo that. Plus, I do think there's value in having a series aimed towards kids and young teens age a little with their target audience, and finding the middle ground between its multiple fanbases.
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| The end of a cutscene with Sonic, Tails, and a Koco. |
Without spoiling anything (naturally), the way Frontiers ends is flat-out one of the worst and most unsatisfying ending sequences I've ever played. Not only is the main antagonist of the game underdeveloped and uninteresting, the entire ending is narratively really unfulfilling and the aftermath is quick with no real closure or reflection on the game's events, which feels like it clashes with the tone established throughout the game and instead comes across more like what previous Sonic games would've done.
This is "fixed" in the free DLC that came out about a year after launch, named "The Final Horizon," which has an alternate ending sequence that's more fun and satisfying, alongside more screentime for Tails, Knuckles and Amy. This is unfortunately where even more of the exposition dumps come into play. The aftermath is also basically the same, which is kind of disappointing, but the game itself feels like it leaves less on the table after finishing it, which is a positive in spite of the clumsy storytelling.
THE DULLNESS OF STARFALL ISLANDS
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| A look at Chaos Island, one of the Starfall Islands where the majority of the gameplay occurs. Many rails, ramps and platforms are haphazardly scattered about, and the game's dull visuals are fully on display. |
Sonic Frontiers takes place on the Starfall Islands, an apparent small archipelago of islands where an ancient civilization, only known as the Ancients, lived long ago. The open world gameplay is split between five islands (Kronos, Ares, Chaos, Rhea, and Ouranos), though Rhea Island is only used for a single story sequence and is only explored optionally afterwards. None of the islands feel particularly unique, with Kronos, Rhea and Ouranos being very similar visually while Ares is mostly desert and Chaos is mountainous with a volcano.
Visually, especially when compared to what you'd expect from the Sonic universe, these islands are incredibly dull, bordering on generic Unreal Engine 4 assets, and they lack key things an open world map needs, like landmarks. Well, recognisable landmarks, at least. Some of them have one or two, but that's it. There's simply no soul in the game's locales, and it pretending that the scattered ruins are noteworthy or interesting highlights that even further. The game's not much of a looker on the islands, and it gets pretty rough-looking even on PS5.
Instead, the islands are littered with ramps, rails, springs and other typical Sonic level design elements in a way that feels completely detached from the environment they're in. Not only that, it leads to the occasional confusing segment where you wonder how to get to a specific point and need to find the random spring (maybe hidden under wooden crates that have little to no reason to be there) that gets you there, or the roundabout way there through a sequence of rails, loops and pulleys. To make things worse, the game suffers from pretty horrendous pop-in that even I, as someone that rarely cares about or notices pop-in, can't help but find basically inexcusable in places, both in terms of being aesthetically pleasing and of being conducive to good gameplay and exploration.
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| The start of a Mission where you're tasked with parrying 3 attacks in 70 seconds. This is an extremely easy task that can be done in less than 10 seconds. |
Nevertheless, it's not like there's nothing to do. The islands may be ugly and haphazardly designed, but there's still a fair amount of collectibles and things to do. Almost all of the major collectibles are linked to the game's leveling system, leaning a little into the RPG side of things. You get to level up Sonic's Attack, Defense, Speed and Ring Capacity; Attack Seeds and Defense Seeds level up their namesake stats, while Kocos, little wooden(?) critters hidden around the world, let you choose whether to level up Speed or Ring Capacity. The Seeds feed squarely into the game's combat system, while the Kocos are about exploration. They're not exactly interesting stats to level up or anything, but I understand why they're there. Having to level up Sonic's speed, of all characters, is also a bit strange.
Seeds are mainly obtained through Missions, little environmental challenges indicated with a red question mark on the map. However, the main point of Missions feels more like it's about unlocking the game's map with the Seeds being a bonus. These Missions are, quite frankly, barely puzzles or challenges for a vast majority of the game, ranging from incredibly simple tasks like sidestepping onto the glowing tile ten times in a minute, parrying one attack in 30 seconds, or running in a hamster wheel for 5 seconds straight, to somewhat interesting tasks like platforming challenges.
The big issue is that these are too easy for too long and that the time given to do them is often inordinately long. The best example is in the parrying challenges: parrying in Sonic Frontiers requires zero timing and will happen as long as you hold L1 and R1. So why are these Missions? And why are you given so much time to do them? Even more than halfway through the game, Missions like these with this level of difficulty still pop up and it is baffling to me.
There's also the Memory Tokens, earned through exploration, combat and more, which allow you to get access to side stories and also the story proper. These are unique in appearance for each island, but serve the same purpose. Not to mention there's the Chaos Emeralds to collect to progress the story. Other collectibles aren't as important since they're so easy to obtain (Gears and Vault Keys), but they necessitate engaging with the game's combat system.
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| A look at Ares Island. A Guardian is visible nearby, as well as some scattered rails. |
Sonic has three key moves for exploration: Cyloop, boosting and double jumping. The latter is self-explanatory, and boosting is pretty similar to games like Sonic Generations with a boost meter (which can be expanded with certain Kocos), giving Sonic a huge burst of speed and also propel him forward if done in midair like an airdash, which is key for a lot of platforming. When at 400 rings (and not the max rings like the game says), your boost is also massively upgraded. There's also the classic homing attack which can be done when the reticle appears over a target, but it doesn't feel great, having a lot of hitstop in an odd way. Sonic also gets the Light Speed Dash, allowing him to run through a line of rings automatically, which feels pretty nice.
Cyloop is a new addition in the game and it's simple in execution: you hold Triangle and Sonic will leave a trail behind him. If you close the loop and release the button, it'll do an attack to everything within the loop and also spawn rings. It's also the main way you interact with a few things scattered across the islands, and it can be used in combat as well. Cyloop is a neat idea, but it feels weirdly finicky with what it considers a loop; too often I'd run in a circle and the game wouldn't register it as a closed loop, seemingly because there was a pixel-wide gap. It's like the actual line it's drawing and the visuals of Cyloop aren't the same size, which leads to a lot of little issues like that.
The biggest issue with the exploration, though, isn't how lifeless or disconnected everything feels, but how janky everything is. When running around, you're more likely than not going to be boosting, which does feel pretty good (especially at higher Speed levels), and Sonic handles pretty well all things considered. However, the terrain's collision is uneven. Not in the sense that there's bumps in the terrain (which there are), but the way Sonic interacts with these is inconsistent. Boosting off a cliffside more often than not will cause Sonic to stick to the ground like it's magnetic and run straight down instead of flying off, while catching the equivalent of a pebble in the middle of the field can send Sonic rocketing off sideways or into the sky at odd angles. I've even used the latter to complete a few Missions since it happened by accident. It makes the whole game feel like a mess.
Plus, when the game asks you to do some platforming, you're left at the whims of this sort of omnipresent jank. More than once I found myself on a climbable wall unable to stop sliding down until I jumped off and boosted into it again, or flinging myself off of said climbable wall at odd angles even though I'm holding up. There was even one 2D segment where I had to counterintuitively hold left instead of right until halfway up a wall, at which point the directions flipped. There's two big issues with platforming outside of the jank: even with a double jump, Sonic controls very stiffly in the air and turns very slowly, and there's no drop shadow which can make depth perception very tough depending on the lighting. Sonic's momentum dies a quick death when in midair outside of doing an air boost. It just doesn't feel great overall.
There's also some minigames thrown into the mix, weirdly being tied to story sequences. You'll hoard Kocos like sheep (while avoiding bombs), carry Kocos past enemies, and solve puzzles. It all feels arbitrary, especially since they tend to disable some of Sonic's abilities to artificially increase the difficulty. There's also some blatantly unfitting minigames, with a hacking minigame that plays like a bullet hell and, most notoriously, a pinball machine that forces you to get 5 million points to continue the story. It's not even a good pinball machine. It all feels forced, like they wanted to switch up the game's pace a little but didn't really know what to do.
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| An example of 2D platforming during open world exploration. |
But where it feels even worse is on Chaos Island. Chaos Island, for some reason, has a lot of 2D sections that are extremely jarring. They're entered through zippers on the ground or springs, and every time it made me feel like I was stuck, especially when I ran over these things by accident. In fact, that's an issue with the game in general: too many things lock you into a sequence of events you can't bail out from. This works in stage-based levels like the previous games in the franchise, but not in open world levels and especially not as a transition to 2D gameplay within the open world.
To be clear, I'm not a fan of 2D Sonic games in the least, but my gripes have to do with how these 2D sections are implemented in the open world segments. I've long since accepted that it's just a gameplay style I'll never like, so I don't get (that) mad when a 3D Sonic game has 2D sections, but having 2D sections in a 3D open world is a laughable choice. More than once I'd find myself stuck in a 2D section and seeing collectibles in the background I was unable to get unless I got to the end of it. They'd be marginally more tolerable if they were self-contained inside buildings or something, but since they're out in the open with no indication it's super weird.
To make matters worse, the main addition that Final Horizon brings is more platforming challenges. Five really long, rather tricky ones with no checkpoints, as well as other smaller ones for Knuckles, Amy and Tails. The long tricky platforming sequences are done with Sonic, thankfully, but the three additional playable characters in Final Horizon are both refreshing and puzzling. Namely, Final Horizon also brings an alternate version of Ouranos Island, complete with new Missions for the three new characters, but the story sections are so brief that their inclusion almost feels superfluous, especially the fact that they start with all stats at level 1 and needing to unlock basic moves. It made me wish that the game was structured completely differently and included the four characters from the start, but at that point it'd just be an entirely different game. Maybe next time if Frontiers really is the new style Sonic will stick with for the foreseeable future.
A STEP INTO CYBERSPACE
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| One of the Cyberspace levels, this one with an Sky Sanctuary theme |
Scattered throughout the islands are Cyberspace Portals, which take you to the appropriately named Cyberspace stages. There's about 8 per island, and these mostly serve to get Vault Keys to collect Chaos Emeralds. This is the "real" Sonic gameplay people know and love from Sonic Unleashed forward, mixing 3D and 2D gameplay as you'd expect it to. But these Cyberspace stages have a lot of issues that, to me, made them completely unenjoyable and a chore.
First, these stages are really short, barely ever going over 2 minutes and often being around 1 minute long (a handful even are in the 30-45 second range). Each stage has four missions: clearing the stage, getting the S-Rank time, getting the five Red Rings, and finishing with X amount of rings. They don't all need to be cleared in the same playthrough of the level, so you often will be replaying these stages a few times if aiming to complete all of them.
The thing is that those missions partly help expose a big problem with the stages: not only are they really short, the difficulty of the S-Rank times and finishing with X rings missions is often far too easy, to the point that I could mess up a few times while actively looking for Red Rings and end the stage 30 seconds faster than the S-Rank time and with 50 more rings than I needed. A handful of them, on the other hand, feel strangely strict and require actual strategy, which I don't really mind outside of the fact that speedrunning these levels often means dodging all the fun parts like springs, avoiding enemies and just boosting in a straight line.
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| The very first Cyberspace Stage, with the Green Hill theme. The homing attack reticle is visible on the nearest enemy, which caused me some slight confusion on PS5 at first since the Square button is used for attacks, not Triangle. |
Not only is this a major disappointment, it's also very puzzling since the Sonic series already has a game all about nostalgic levels: Sonic Generations. And it does it far better than this game by not lifting the level layouts almost 1:1. While there's a story reason for this, it feels like a cop-out rather than something organic. I feel like doing something where the existing levels from previous games are mixed together would've been a more effective way to portray what they wanted, such as going from Sonic Unleashed's Dragon Road to Sonic Adventure 2's Radical Highway, or something like that. Instead, what you get is reheated leftovers.
The gameplay in Cyberspace is also somewhat compromised since Sonic handles differently than on Starfall Islands despite having the same abilities in theory (except the combat stuff). Unlike in the open world segments, Sonic can't turn sharply while boosting, which was very jarring at first. Also unlike these segments, the Light Speed Dash completely kills your momentum at the end of the line of rings instead of carrying it, which feels absolutely terrible. And beyond this and whatever design woes were in the original stages the Cyberspace stage are lifted from, it's also painfully clear that these stages don't work as well outside of their intended engine. The Sonic Adventure 2 stages won't feel as good if Sonic can't control like he did in that game, and the same goes for the Unleashed and Generations stages. All it did for me was highlight that Frontiers doesn't feel that good to play, instead of working to its strengths.
FIGHTING THE JANK AND TEDIUM
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| The Squid, one of the many types of Guardians scattered about the islands. |
In almost every past Sonic game, there's not much combat to be had outside of homing attacks and sometimes slides. Here in Frontiers, Sonic gets a full combat moveset, and it's... middling. It's really just doing a homing attack and then mashing the attack button, or else doing something after an airborne boost. It doesn't feel terrible to do in most cases, though I did find it a bit unresponsive at times, but it feels like a lot of the moves are there to justify the presence of a skill tree and a combat system at all rather than adding interesting wrinkles to the combat. It kind of reminds me of how Shadow fights in Shadow the Hedgehog when not using guns.
But a pretty basic combat system would be fine if the majority of enemies weren't a chore to fight. There's standard enemies scattered here and there on the islands in small groups, as well as in platforming challenges, but the majority of battles are against Guardians, the game's minibosses. There's a handful of different types per island, but they're almost all gimmick fights, more or less. Whether it's having to do a prolonged auto-running section while avoiding projectiles, lighting up rails to expose a weakpoint or even having to skydive through rings, it feels like Sonic Team didn't really know how to design fights to take advantage of the (admittedly simplistic) combat system they designed and instead fell back on tired boss battle tropes where you have to wait for the weak point to make itself visible. Not to mention that the game's parry mechanic is braindead easy, only requiring you to hold L1+R1 to parry anything that hits you, regardless of timing. It even stops you in midair and lets you float, which can help save you during platforming segments because you can cancel most actions into parry.
The further in the game I got, the more tiresome I found these fights, especially since some of those in the later parts of the game lock you into their battles rather than letting you just run off like most open world games would. The rewards they give also very quickly lose their value on each island. Plus, their designs really don't inspire any emotions out of me, and I couldn't pick them out of a group of generic robotic enemies. Running near them also always starts a small intro cutscene where they notice you as their name is shown, which really interrupts the flow of gameplay sometimes. In Final Horizon, there's new Guardians that are really just harder versions of the base game Guardians with extremely bloated life pools, which makes them completely unfun to fight for the same reward they usually give.
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| The first time the first major boss in the game, Giganto, is encountered leads to Sonic being overpowered. Here, Sonic is jumping from rock to rock to try and attack Giganto. |
For as much as I grew bored of the Guardian fights, the actual boss fights in the game, the Titans, are one of the worst parts of the game for me. The Titans punctuate the story of each island, first being introduced as a dangerous threat that Sonic tries and fails to deal with, then vanishing until their eventual fight. The fights always have two parts: having to get onto the Titan's back or head to get access to the 7th Chaos Emerald, and then transforming into Super Sonic to fight it properly. Their designs are also nothing special or memorable, and two of them even look similar.
The Titans don't feel particularly threatening outside of being really big, or like Super Sonic should really be needed to beat them, especially since they just weirdly vanish after their introduction until their fight. The fights themselves are also kind of laughable; instead of being a spectacle, they usually just play out like super-sized Guardian fights: either get in and mash your best attack, or wait for the weak point to be accessible and then hit it. However, Super Sonic doesn't have the ability to float up or down (or if he does, I didn't figure out how to), so he's stuck on the X axis unless he jumps. It's like controlling Sonic but he's floating at the right height to hit the boss; it feels very strange. There's also a lot of camera jank: getting hit makes Super Sonic fly backwards, which jerks the camera 180° to face him and leaves you having to either rotate the camera back or to go back into the fight blindly as it readjusts itself, most likely to immediately get hit again.
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| Every few in-game days, a Starfall Night occurs, reviving all the enemies and Guardians on the island. |
The true worst part of the game, though, is how the game ends. After fighting the last Titan, the game transitions to the final boss fight... in Hard mode. In Easy and Normal mode, the game flat out skips the final boss fight and instead behaves as if the QTEs at the end of the fight are the entire fight, which is absolutely baffling to me and ends the game on a really sour note. In Hard mode, the fight actually happens... and it's not even as Sonic or Super Sonic, but instead plays like the bullet hell hacking mini-game. It's a bewildering choice that I absolutely don't agree with, to the point that I almost found it insulting.
Thankfully, Final Horizon does have a true final boss sequence that would be fairly exciting were the boss battles not janky and easy. In this specific case, though, the final boss, though far better than whatever the hell the base game cooked up, is defeated in a pretty arbitrary way that I actually had to look up after trying and failing to figure things out since the fight loops until you do it. It felt strange that there's no voice line to hint at what needs to be done when you fail it multiple times. It's even the first time a Super Sonic fight can become slightly difficult, as the game introduces a Perfect Parry that does need to be timed and makes it so that the attacks you need to Perfect Parry reduce your max ring count. It's the best boss fight in the game, and that's not saying much.
Final Horizon also adds a handful of combat challenges that need to be done to progress the story, and they range from insultingly easy to poorly made. The main thing is that, to make them difficult after players have likely maxed out Sonic's stats and skill tree, they arbitrarily force Sonic back to level 1 and/or restrict the moves he can do. The final challenge, a boss rush of the first three Titans, forces you to use Perfect Parries before the mechanic is formally introduced during the final boss and doesn't allow Super Sonic to replenish his rings between fights. This actually makes it fairly challenging since the Titans have bloated life pools like the rest of the Final Horizon bosses, but in a really unfun way due to Ring Capacity being set back to level 1. It's just a terrible way to make things harder.
THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
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| Fishing with Big the Cat, an optional "level" on each island where you can use Purple Coins gathered on Starfall Islands to fish and trade them for various collectibles. |
The Guardian battle themes are split between Ohtani and other series veteran Kenichi Tokoi, and these are also quite good, being dramatic sci-fi pieces that feel alien and threatening, but they stand out more to me outside of the game than while playing. The cutscene music is exclusively handled by another series veteran, Takahito Eguchi, and they're all orchestral pieces that are reminiscent of film scores. While good, I can't say these elicit much emotion out of me or stand out in any way.
Then there's the two big stand-outs of the soundtrack. First, the Cyberspace stage themes are all excellent, with Ohtani and Tokoi being joined by Kenji Mizuno, Kanon Ogumi, Hiro, and Rintaro Soma to provide with EDM bangers across the board, with each Cyberspace stage getting its own theme. It's only a shame that they're so short, so the tracks themselves are fairly short loops usually. Nevertheless, they're great listens in and out of the game.
I've always enjoyed the series' EDM stylings after the Adventure era, but in my heart and soul, the Sonic series suits rock and metal far more, and I was delighted to hear these genres in key moments. The main theme, I'm Here, is sung by Merry Kirk-Holmes and it's one of the best main themes in the franchise, dipping into metalcore at times. Each Titan fight, for as underwhelming and easy as it is, has its own lyrical theme sung by Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens and these themes are all heavy metalcore with clean and screamed lyrics. Needless to say, these bring the adrenaline boost needed for a big fight and they're excellent overall. One of them, Find Your Flame, even has a nu-metal twist with the addition of rapper Tyler Smyth, who also performed Infinite's Theme in Sonic Forces. Selfishly, I want more of this kind of music in Sonic games. All of them were composed by Ohtani.
Even the four credits themes are fantastic. The base game's first credit theme, Dear Father, is a genuinely emotional pop ballad sung by Quinn Barnitt that would've landed even stronger had the story been properly told and not a disjointed mess. For Final Horizon, Dear Father is replaced by the vocal version of I'm With You, the final boss "battle" theme from the base game which is quite great. This version is performed by Gaby Borro, whose contributions to Final Horizon's music are really great. Finally, the two other credits themes depend on the difficulty the game was finished on: Easy and Normal gets an original song by One OK Rock, Vandalize, which just suits the franchise perfectly, while Hard and the unlockable Extreme get One Way Dream, an Ohtani track performed by Nathan Sharp, also known as NateWantsToBattle. One Way Dream is more of a pop punk track, fitting Sharp's style perfectly, and it's also very fitting for the series.
PROS AND CONS
PROS
• Excellent soundtrack; one of the best in the franchise.
• Some genuinely pretty good character writing and some good performances that makes it work. I appreciated the more grounded and serious tone too.
• Sage is a great addition to the Sonic cast, and also gives Eggman some depth.
• On a base level, exploring and getting collectibles is fun.
• Lots of accessibility options, including fine-tuning Sonic's speed and controls, as well as disabling annoying cutscenes or gameplay elements. Highly recommend looking through the options if something feels off.
• Getting to play as Amy, Tails and Knuckles in Final Horizon is genuinely pretty neat.
CONS
• Tons of physics jank that make the game constantly, but slightly, frustrating to play.
• Genuinely terrible ending sequence outside of Final Horizon.• Poorly thought out platforming mechanics.
• Ugly and bland visuals on Starfall Islands while Cyberspace stages are derivative and samey.
• Open world is borderline featureless and instead haphazardly crammed with springs, rails and ramps.
• Tedious Guardian fights that interrupt the flow of gameplay and are just generally unfun or too simple.
• Superfluous combat system that isn't designed to take advantage of its own mechanics and is instead a hodge-podge of attacks just because.
• Outright terrible and janky Titan fights that are beaten far too quickly.
• Cyberspace stages are recycled from previous games and don't have consistent gameplay mechanics with the open world segments.
• Missions are braindead easy for most of the game and don't feel satisfying to do, yet feel almost necessary since they unlock the map.
• The leveling system doesn't add much to the game and feels tacked on to justify more collectibles.
• Tails, Amy and Knuckles feel underdeveloped as playable characters and don't take part in any battle.
• Final Horizon adds a bunch of mandatory platforming segments which don't work to the game's strengths at all.
• Artificial difficulty in Final Horizon combat challenges.
• The minigames scattered in the story segments aren't fun at all and artificially disable moves.
• Horrendous pop-in during open world sections.
• 2D sections do not belong in any open world game.
• Sonic controls awkwardly in the air, becoming slow and turning even slower... sometimes.
WORTH PLAYING?
So, as it's likely plainly obvious by this point in the review, I didn't enjoy Sonic Frontiers at all. Not because it's a broken game or it's unplayable, but because it's so poorly thought out, unpolished and simply dull for most of its playtime. I like the idea of the story, but its actual execution in the context of an open world game leaves much to be desired. The combat is simple while pretending not to be. The Guardians are tedious to fight. The Titans are a bore without any spectacle. Not to mention the bewildering final segment of the game. I could go on and on, but I just did during the review.
There's just so much that doesn't land for me with Sonic Frontiers that I think I feel comfortable saying it's my least favorite Sonic game, even below Sonic Forces, because at least Forces has the decency to be done within 3-4 hours. I haven't played the dreaded Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) yet, but I'm almost certain I'll enjoy it at least a smidge more because it's a "so bad it's good" kind of game, and it still does have the Adventure formula I love, even if it's bastardized.
But I won't pretend Sonic Frontiers is a blight upon the series or anything. Tons of people like it, or even love it, and I think most Sonic fans will get something out of it. So I do think it's worth at least trying. I will say, though, that I don't think it's worth its full price in the least. Not for the level of jank, technical issues, and flat-out ugliness on display. It's often heavily discounted anyway.
The appeal of playing as Sonic and running freely in an open world is an attractive thought, so I understand why Sonic Frontiers attempted the open world thing. However, its attempt is devoid of identity, stuck being a derivative mix of whatever the popular open world games were during development, but with Sonic on the cover. I won't get into it, but there's more than a few similarities between Frontiers and Breath of the Wild that I don't think are coincidences, especially when you consider the game started its conception phase half a year after Breath of the Wild released. But even then, the other open world-isms in the game don't feel like they're anything special or like they were modified to fit a Sonic game and instead are there because that's what Ubisoft, Nintendo and any other big developer did when making an open world game.
To speak about Sonic in general, I think that what I want for the franchise is simply to find a formula for its 3D games and stick to it. I'll always yearn for the Adventure games, of course, but I feel more strongly about not having 2D segments in the 3D games. I'd much rather have the 3D games separate from the 2D games, especially since both are being made now, so we don't need to pay homage to the 2D gameplay in the 3D games all the time. Like I've mentioned, I don't like 2D Sonic and I'm kind of sick of having to occasionally play 2D Sonic whenever I buy a 3D Sonic game. The recent 2D games like Sonic Mania and Sonic Superstars are able to stand on their own, so the 3D games should be able to do the same. Sonic didn't have a rough transition to 3D, it never settled on one thing for more than two games. And with most of its 3D games now featuring 2D gameplay sections, it's like Sonic Team lacks the confidence to just make a 3D Sonic game and needs to lean on 2D Sonic nostalgia to make things palatable.
Either way, I look forward to seeing what the next big 3D Sonic game is, seeing if Sonic Team actually does follow-up on Frontiers being the new standard for their 3D games. If so, they have a lot of problems to fix and polish, and I don't know if I trust them to do a good job at it.
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