This review contains spoilers
So...Sonic Frontiers was quite the interesting experience. I'm someone that has always had a passing interest in Sonic, but haven't really took the time to sit down and play through the games to completion. Nonetheless, I do know a lot about this series through the fact that I used to be obsessed with it as a kid (can't count how many wiki articles I've read through and fan discussion I've seen of stuff like the IDW comics which I've been meaning to read through). I've always loved the Adventure games and I have at least tried many Sonic games. The Genesis era games, Heroes, Sonic 06, Shadow the Hedgehog, Generations, even Sonic Chronicles...these are all games I've played over the years from my childhood love of the blue blur, but none have interested me enough to go through the effort of beating them. That wasn't the case with Frontiers, which interested me enough to take the time to fully complete. From what I can tell, this game is supposed to be a "return to form" from the strangely comedy focused and watered down direction that Colors and Boom took the series in. Personally, I think this one tries a little too hard and overcorrects at times, but that's a complaint I'll detail later in this review.
When I played through Sonic Frontiers, I sought to do everything I could. There's no shortage of activities to do in this game, so I figured: "Why not do it all?" Thankfully the Platinum trophy was pretty easy to get, it will be yours so long as you do most of the stuff the game throws your way (aside from one specific trophy that's annoying to get unless you exploit an enemy's design). I wanted to fully complete everything I possibly could in the game, so I went through the trouble of doing a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually count towards the Platinum. Needless to say, I saw everything the game has to offer...except for the secret final boss only accessible through playing Hard difficulty, but honestly its just one extra boss fight and doesn't change the ending at all so I'm still counting my playthrough as 100%. I found that Sonic Frontiers is a game with some great stuff I love and some weird stuff that made me scratch my head at best or actively annoyed me at worst. I will detail all my thoughts in the later paragraphs of this review; you know, organization and all that jazz. I'm fairly confident in saying that I did overall enjoy my time with the game, though.
The story...eh, it has it's ups and downs. I didn't find it all that remarkable in total, but I appreciated the more serious tone it has in comparison to other more recent Sonic games and it does have interesting additions to the lore for the whole series assuming this game is canon. Essentially, the story's premise is that Sonic's friends get trapped in the same dimension Cyber Space is in and Sonic is sent to a strange new world. Sonic has to explore through the four islands of this world to find his friends and help them. Whenever he finds them, they're trapped in cages that he must get rid of, but this causes corruption to his body every time he does it. This becomes important later as Sonic gets more and more corrupted, but strangely this doesn't impact gameplay at all which I feel was a bit of a missed opportunity. He also must find the Chaos Emeralds in each island so he can turn into Super Sonic to defeat the four Titans; one Titan per island. Sonic Frontiers introduces the Ancients, a new species that is very important to the plot. The Ancients are the big new super important historical civilization that built a ton of the stuff Sonic interacts with on the islands. Specifically, they are aliens with highly advanced tech that moved to the world that this game takes place in after their home world was destroyed. The Ancients share some key similarities to the Echidnas: both are closely tied to the Chaos Emeralds and nearly got completely wiped out. Even Knuckles notices the similarities. Also, as a somewhat interesting side detail, the Ancients bare a noticeable resemblance to Chaos from Sonic Adventure, which I doubt was merely coincidental considering that Chaos also has a close connection to the Chaos Emeralds (and the Echidnas). All of these connections admittedly makes me hope and pray they haven't forgotten about the Chao since I love them and I desperately want a new Chao Garden feature in a game, but I digress. As the story progresses, Sonic learns more about who the Ancients are and what the purpose behind their elaborate machinery is. You'll find things like cranes, cannons, towers, large obelisk-like structures, and more, all identified by a distinct style of architecture almost similar to something you'd see in Breath of the Wild. The Challenges, Guardians, Titans, and Cyber Space are also all invented by them...yea, they built both the enemies and things that help you. The lore reason for this is because the Titans were built to take down a big bad that you only see at the very end of the game. So, naturally, the Ancients are a huge deal to Sonic lore; SEGA went as far as to make a canonical origin story to the Chaos Emeralds (as far as I know that hasn't been done before) tied directly to the Ancients. Apparently, their old home world is now where the Chaos Emeralds were originally native to before finding their way in Sonic's world. I'm not sure if I think that was a good addition or not, but it sure is something that happened. You know what was also something that happened? The ending. Everyone talks about how disappointing it was and unfortunately I have to echo that sentiment. Overall, this game definitely focuses on story quite a lot, but things still feel a bit half-baked and that ending just reeks of disappointment.
Alright, let's talk characters and writing. The main new character introduced in this game is Sage, some kind of cyber girl that was created to serve Eggman. She is a case of being intentionally meant to leave a bad first impression since she starts out pretty unlikeable and strange, being antagonistic to Sonic and utterly refusing to explain anything about where he is. She slowly opens up to him more and her reasons are revealed later (her data says Sonic will die and she's already programmed by Eggman so she's naturally antagonistic to him at first). I think she blossomed into a neat character and I can see why the fandom seems to like her so much. Not a fan of the fake out death they did with her, felt it was just done for a cheap attempt at emotional manipulation especially since we learn in this game that Eggman is going to bring her back anyway. Nonetheless, I would like to see her show up again sometime, maybe even become a staple character as one of Eggman's assistants alongside Cubot and Orbot. As far as the characters in general are, I think they were all handled pretty decently. With the way the story is put together, each major character essentially has their own island to themselves with a bunch of conversations to unlock. I liked most of the characterization and moments of interaction, like how Sonic helps Tails through his insecurities and that moment when Sage starts to cry after she realizes just how strong Tails and Sonic's bond is. However, I do have some gripes with the writing itself. There's two major things this game's writing does that I don't like: parts that feel like very on the nose responses to criticism - like the infamous scene where Tails calls himself inconsistent (which seems to be a direct nod from the writers on how much fans hate that one scene of Tails cowering in Forces) - and parts that reference facets of Sonic lore or obscure Sonic facts seemingly just to flex the fact that the writers do indeed know that. I know the latter point is criticized a lot, which I think has become way overblown since its not like it ruins the game's storytelling, but nonetheless I did find it odd when the characters randomly bring up something from the past that hasn't been relevant in several years. At one point, Tails says that the big bad must be way stronger than Dark Gaia. You know, the main boss from Sonic Unleashed, a game that came out 14 years ago and has never been directly ported to modern consoles (aside from Xbox backwards compatibility)? I don't think Dark Gaia has even shown up in anything since Unleashed. In one part of the story, Sonic tells Amy he'll be back "before she can even do a Tarot card reading"...for those who were understandably confused by that line, Amy is sometimes associated with tarot cards and I'm pretty sure it's not something she has done in the actual games in decades (and it's not like she does anything with it in Frontiers either so it's just here for a giga brain reference). Don't get me wrong, I like me some deep cut references every now and then, but these feel like such random inclusions whenever they show up and they're shoved in a little too much for my liking. Also, the game has two instances of random flashbacks to previous games through a screenshot ripped from the games and slapped on the screen for a few seconds. One of these moments didn't even really make sense in the context of what was happening and I just thought this was weird and unnecessary. At the very least, they clearly had fun here with the tons of references and I can see the merit in it. I just think it's too prevalent in this game.
Okay, with all that story stuff out of the way, time to finally actually talk about the gameplay. I felt it was pretty fun and satisfying overall, but it has some weird jankiness at times that makes precision difficult. In the open world, the game has segments of 2D platforming indicated by a spring, boost pad, or something of the like just sitting out there for you to interact with. I've seen a lot of people complain about it and I can definitely see why, its the jankiest part of the game in my opinion. Most of the time, it works fine, but the 2D perspective will shift back to a 3D one whenever you fall or when you accidentally leave the scripted 2D area. If you're just running through the world and accidentally touch a spring or something, the game is going to instantly snap into 2D mode and make you go through the area. These segments also have dedicated walls for you to climb, and I swear these are absolutely the jankiest part of the game bar none. You'd think the slow climb would give you more precision, but Sonic would move straight down or up when I was clearly holding a different direction. The wall-run sometimes just refuses to work and has you zoom away from the wall. This was very annoying and made the 2D parts of the game's open world irritating. On the plus side, things feel pretty solid overall in the open world. Once you get the massive speed boost from filling up your ring counter to 400 (or increasing your speed stat to Level 99), it feels exhilarating just darting through the world. Open world games are so much more fun when you have a crazy method of travel, like how Spider-Man has his web-swinging, and Sonic's high speed works great with that, although you'll need to max out your Speed stat if you want to stay super quick indefinitely. Speaking of which, not really a fan of this game's stat system. I think it was done to try and inspire a curve of progression, but it doesn't really feel all that natural. There are so many levels for your Attack, Defense, Speed, and Ring stats that it just feels excessive.
So, the combat. Sonic Frontiers definitely puts more of a focus on it here than I think any other mainline Sonic game has done before. I feel that it had a lot of potential, but ended up pretty middling. You get some new moves from the skill tree (since I guess every game needs to have that nowadays) and they are decently fun to use, but realistically you'll only be using a few of them. The Sonic Boom is probably the most fun one to use in my opinion since its a speedy barrage of projectiles that keep shooting out the longer you hold down the button. Combat is unfortunately another area of Sonic Frontiers that is affected by jank. A big example is how the game is supposed to automatically target enemies, but sometimes it just doesn't work as intended. Moves like the Sonic Boom and Cross Slash (no not the FFVII kind) suffer majorly from this issue since a dynamic camera angle happens every time you use those moves, which can really screw up the auto-targeting. Also, sometimes the game just doesn't recognize that you did a combo move. Some combo moves require you to press two buttons together, but those buttons are also tied to other features, so the game may prioritize the regular move over the combo move. The Boost button (R2 on PS4) has a few combo moves, and these were especially janky since the game tends to prioritize Boosting over the combo moves. It is very irritating, but, when the combat isn't refusing to work, its a lot of fun. One thing I will praise about the combat is the awesome Titan fights, those were always a blast even if they weren't all that challenging. The only problem with them is that there's so much happening in them and Sonic moves so fast that its very easy to just break the camera. The Titan fights also tend to suffer from the problems with auto-targeting perhaps the most out of any other fights.
One thing I will say about this game's structure is that I think it feels a little bloated. There are a ton of collectibles, each with their own intended purposes, and it does feel like a bit much. The Seeds of Power and Seeds of Defense raise those stats, the Kocos are collected to be used for increasing your Speed and Ring stats, the Vault Keys open the Chaos Emerald Vaults, the Gears are used to open up Cyber Space levels, purple coins let you go fishing with Big the Cat, fishing tokens are used to buy stuff from Big, gold cards are also used to buy stuff from Big, the Memory Tokens are different for each island and are used to gatekeep story progress (as well as let you talk to the characters for Side Stories)...it's just a whole lot of stuff and I can't help but feel like half of it could've been trimmed out. Also, the game likes to just insert random mini games you have to play through. It's not a bad idea to break things up a little so it doesn't get monotonous, but I really don't think this game needed several Koco herding mini games, three Space Invaders style mini games (four if you count the secret final boss that uses this style of play for some reason), and a single pinball area just shoved in there. As much as I love the fishing, it also felt pretty unnecessary and honestly kind of breaks the progression balance since you can just buy nearly everything you need from Big if you're good at fishing...and the Purple Coins aren't hard to come by at all if you got lucky like I did with the Starfall. Whenever that event happens, it brings back the enemies you took down, but it also activates a limited time slot roulette that can give you a shit ton of purple coins if you know how to play it. I got the Starfall at least once on every island and it made it to where I was at 999 purple coins for a long time, so naturally I had plenty of money to fish with Big and buy just about anything I needed. Once I was on the last island, I was rolling in fishing tokens, so I could just buy all the Koco and Seeds I needed to max out those stats with a ton of tokens still left over. It's kind of busted and makes me feel like all of these collectibles and extra systems weren't needed at the end of the day.
I'll dedicate this paragraph to some nitpicks I have with Sonic Frontiers. I previously discussed my major grievances with the game, so I will just talk about minor problems here. Biggest one of these nitpicks for me is that it's VERY tedious to level up your Speed and Ring stats; for whatever reason, you have to manually level it up one by one until you run out of Kocos or you reach Level 99. They literally already have leveling in bulk with Hermit Koco, since he just takes every seed you have on your person to instantly increase your Power and Defense to the appropriate levels, why is there no option to buy Speed and Ring upgrades in bulk? If they're worried about players regretting the choice of one over the other, there already is a way to swap Speed stat gains with Ring stat and vice versa (which you also can't do in bulk for some reason). The game just expects you to patiently spam to get through Elder Koco's dialogue each time as you sluggishly level up and it makes no sense to me. Another notable nitpick of mine is that there's no way to change the in-game time of day...which is a problem when every island has some Challenges that can only be attempted when it's night time. You either have to go do something else while you wait on it to be night time or do some other activity in the game and remember to come back once the moon comes up. I'm no developer, but I don't see any reason why there is no option to immediately skip time unless it's meant to be some kind of immersion thing (which would be silly imo considering this world has random springs, speed bumps, rails, walls, and loop-de-loops that just unnaturally lead to each other when Sonic does platforming there). Probably my least significant nitpick is that I don't like how you can continue to get collectibles even if you've long since used them for what they're meant to be used for. It's just a personal gripe that bothers me, I don't like to keep getting useless things and have it tally up in the map. For example, I finished the skill tree pretty early in the game and it drove me mad that my skill points just kept building up to nearly 200 by the end of the game when I had no use for it anymore.
The last topic I'll talk about here is the visual design. I think everything looks pretty good graphically aside from the distractingly common pop-in and the fact that the fishing area's water is buggy as all hell for some reason. However, my big problem is that the islands themselves aren't that interesting. Kronos Island is pretty much just a big grassland, same with Rhea Island and Ouranos Island (those areas also noticeably reuse a lot of stuff from Kronos Island). Ares Island is the most generic desert area you'll ever see. Chaos Island is a big volcanic wasteland. The Cyber Space levels are somehow even more generic since all of them just repackage the same aesthetics of previous stages in the Sonic series. I got tired of seeing the same Chemical Plant Zone, Green Hill Zone, and City Escape aesthetic that a ton of the Cyber Space levels share. I know this is done for a lore reason - they're built on Sonic's memories - but I really feel these could have been so much more creative than they actually were.
Phew, that review was ludicrously long, wouldn't you say? I have a bad tendency of rambling. I'll just end this with a short conclusion. Sonic Frontiers gets a decent 3.5 stars from me; it had potential to be truly amazing, but all the little problems really add up. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed my time with it, and I look forward to seeing what SEGA does with the extended campaign coming out as free DLC later.
When I played through Sonic Frontiers, I sought to do everything I could. There's no shortage of activities to do in this game, so I figured: "Why not do it all?" Thankfully the Platinum trophy was pretty easy to get, it will be yours so long as you do most of the stuff the game throws your way (aside from one specific trophy that's annoying to get unless you exploit an enemy's design). I wanted to fully complete everything I possibly could in the game, so I went through the trouble of doing a bunch of stuff that doesn't actually count towards the Platinum. Needless to say, I saw everything the game has to offer...except for the secret final boss only accessible through playing Hard difficulty, but honestly its just one extra boss fight and doesn't change the ending at all so I'm still counting my playthrough as 100%. I found that Sonic Frontiers is a game with some great stuff I love and some weird stuff that made me scratch my head at best or actively annoyed me at worst. I will detail all my thoughts in the later paragraphs of this review; you know, organization and all that jazz. I'm fairly confident in saying that I did overall enjoy my time with the game, though.
The story...eh, it has it's ups and downs. I didn't find it all that remarkable in total, but I appreciated the more serious tone it has in comparison to other more recent Sonic games and it does have interesting additions to the lore for the whole series assuming this game is canon. Essentially, the story's premise is that Sonic's friends get trapped in the same dimension Cyber Space is in and Sonic is sent to a strange new world. Sonic has to explore through the four islands of this world to find his friends and help them. Whenever he finds them, they're trapped in cages that he must get rid of, but this causes corruption to his body every time he does it. This becomes important later as Sonic gets more and more corrupted, but strangely this doesn't impact gameplay at all which I feel was a bit of a missed opportunity. He also must find the Chaos Emeralds in each island so he can turn into Super Sonic to defeat the four Titans; one Titan per island. Sonic Frontiers introduces the Ancients, a new species that is very important to the plot. The Ancients are the big new super important historical civilization that built a ton of the stuff Sonic interacts with on the islands. Specifically, they are aliens with highly advanced tech that moved to the world that this game takes place in after their home world was destroyed. The Ancients share some key similarities to the Echidnas: both are closely tied to the Chaos Emeralds and nearly got completely wiped out. Even Knuckles notices the similarities. Also, as a somewhat interesting side detail, the Ancients bare a noticeable resemblance to Chaos from Sonic Adventure, which I doubt was merely coincidental considering that Chaos also has a close connection to the Chaos Emeralds (and the Echidnas). All of these connections admittedly makes me hope and pray they haven't forgotten about the Chao since I love them and I desperately want a new Chao Garden feature in a game, but I digress. As the story progresses, Sonic learns more about who the Ancients are and what the purpose behind their elaborate machinery is. You'll find things like cranes, cannons, towers, large obelisk-like structures, and more, all identified by a distinct style of architecture almost similar to something you'd see in Breath of the Wild. The Challenges, Guardians, Titans, and Cyber Space are also all invented by them...yea, they built both the enemies and things that help you. The lore reason for this is because the Titans were built to take down a big bad that you only see at the very end of the game. So, naturally, the Ancients are a huge deal to Sonic lore; SEGA went as far as to make a canonical origin story to the Chaos Emeralds (as far as I know that hasn't been done before) tied directly to the Ancients. Apparently, their old home world is now where the Chaos Emeralds were originally native to before finding their way in Sonic's world. I'm not sure if I think that was a good addition or not, but it sure is something that happened. You know what was also something that happened? The ending. Everyone talks about how disappointing it was and unfortunately I have to echo that sentiment. Overall, this game definitely focuses on story quite a lot, but things still feel a bit half-baked and that ending just reeks of disappointment.
Alright, let's talk characters and writing. The main new character introduced in this game is Sage, some kind of cyber girl that was created to serve Eggman. She is a case of being intentionally meant to leave a bad first impression since she starts out pretty unlikeable and strange, being antagonistic to Sonic and utterly refusing to explain anything about where he is. She slowly opens up to him more and her reasons are revealed later (her data says Sonic will die and she's already programmed by Eggman so she's naturally antagonistic to him at first). I think she blossomed into a neat character and I can see why the fandom seems to like her so much. Not a fan of the fake out death they did with her, felt it was just done for a cheap attempt at emotional manipulation especially since we learn in this game that Eggman is going to bring her back anyway. Nonetheless, I would like to see her show up again sometime, maybe even become a staple character as one of Eggman's assistants alongside Cubot and Orbot. As far as the characters in general are, I think they were all handled pretty decently. With the way the story is put together, each major character essentially has their own island to themselves with a bunch of conversations to unlock. I liked most of the characterization and moments of interaction, like how Sonic helps Tails through his insecurities and that moment when Sage starts to cry after she realizes just how strong Tails and Sonic's bond is. However, I do have some gripes with the writing itself. There's two major things this game's writing does that I don't like: parts that feel like very on the nose responses to criticism - like the infamous scene where Tails calls himself inconsistent (which seems to be a direct nod from the writers on how much fans hate that one scene of Tails cowering in Forces) - and parts that reference facets of Sonic lore or obscure Sonic facts seemingly just to flex the fact that the writers do indeed know that. I know the latter point is criticized a lot, which I think has become way overblown since its not like it ruins the game's storytelling, but nonetheless I did find it odd when the characters randomly bring up something from the past that hasn't been relevant in several years. At one point, Tails says that the big bad must be way stronger than Dark Gaia. You know, the main boss from Sonic Unleashed, a game that came out 14 years ago and has never been directly ported to modern consoles (aside from Xbox backwards compatibility)? I don't think Dark Gaia has even shown up in anything since Unleashed. In one part of the story, Sonic tells Amy he'll be back "before she can even do a Tarot card reading"...for those who were understandably confused by that line, Amy is sometimes associated with tarot cards and I'm pretty sure it's not something she has done in the actual games in decades (and it's not like she does anything with it in Frontiers either so it's just here for a giga brain reference). Don't get me wrong, I like me some deep cut references every now and then, but these feel like such random inclusions whenever they show up and they're shoved in a little too much for my liking. Also, the game has two instances of random flashbacks to previous games through a screenshot ripped from the games and slapped on the screen for a few seconds. One of these moments didn't even really make sense in the context of what was happening and I just thought this was weird and unnecessary. At the very least, they clearly had fun here with the tons of references and I can see the merit in it. I just think it's too prevalent in this game.
Okay, with all that story stuff out of the way, time to finally actually talk about the gameplay. I felt it was pretty fun and satisfying overall, but it has some weird jankiness at times that makes precision difficult. In the open world, the game has segments of 2D platforming indicated by a spring, boost pad, or something of the like just sitting out there for you to interact with. I've seen a lot of people complain about it and I can definitely see why, its the jankiest part of the game in my opinion. Most of the time, it works fine, but the 2D perspective will shift back to a 3D one whenever you fall or when you accidentally leave the scripted 2D area. If you're just running through the world and accidentally touch a spring or something, the game is going to instantly snap into 2D mode and make you go through the area. These segments also have dedicated walls for you to climb, and I swear these are absolutely the jankiest part of the game bar none. You'd think the slow climb would give you more precision, but Sonic would move straight down or up when I was clearly holding a different direction. The wall-run sometimes just refuses to work and has you zoom away from the wall. This was very annoying and made the 2D parts of the game's open world irritating. On the plus side, things feel pretty solid overall in the open world. Once you get the massive speed boost from filling up your ring counter to 400 (or increasing your speed stat to Level 99), it feels exhilarating just darting through the world. Open world games are so much more fun when you have a crazy method of travel, like how Spider-Man has his web-swinging, and Sonic's high speed works great with that, although you'll need to max out your Speed stat if you want to stay super quick indefinitely. Speaking of which, not really a fan of this game's stat system. I think it was done to try and inspire a curve of progression, but it doesn't really feel all that natural. There are so many levels for your Attack, Defense, Speed, and Ring stats that it just feels excessive.
So, the combat. Sonic Frontiers definitely puts more of a focus on it here than I think any other mainline Sonic game has done before. I feel that it had a lot of potential, but ended up pretty middling. You get some new moves from the skill tree (since I guess every game needs to have that nowadays) and they are decently fun to use, but realistically you'll only be using a few of them. The Sonic Boom is probably the most fun one to use in my opinion since its a speedy barrage of projectiles that keep shooting out the longer you hold down the button. Combat is unfortunately another area of Sonic Frontiers that is affected by jank. A big example is how the game is supposed to automatically target enemies, but sometimes it just doesn't work as intended. Moves like the Sonic Boom and Cross Slash (no not the FFVII kind) suffer majorly from this issue since a dynamic camera angle happens every time you use those moves, which can really screw up the auto-targeting. Also, sometimes the game just doesn't recognize that you did a combo move. Some combo moves require you to press two buttons together, but those buttons are also tied to other features, so the game may prioritize the regular move over the combo move. The Boost button (R2 on PS4) has a few combo moves, and these were especially janky since the game tends to prioritize Boosting over the combo moves. It is very irritating, but, when the combat isn't refusing to work, its a lot of fun. One thing I will praise about the combat is the awesome Titan fights, those were always a blast even if they weren't all that challenging. The only problem with them is that there's so much happening in them and Sonic moves so fast that its very easy to just break the camera. The Titan fights also tend to suffer from the problems with auto-targeting perhaps the most out of any other fights.
One thing I will say about this game's structure is that I think it feels a little bloated. There are a ton of collectibles, each with their own intended purposes, and it does feel like a bit much. The Seeds of Power and Seeds of Defense raise those stats, the Kocos are collected to be used for increasing your Speed and Ring stats, the Vault Keys open the Chaos Emerald Vaults, the Gears are used to open up Cyber Space levels, purple coins let you go fishing with Big the Cat, fishing tokens are used to buy stuff from Big, gold cards are also used to buy stuff from Big, the Memory Tokens are different for each island and are used to gatekeep story progress (as well as let you talk to the characters for Side Stories)...it's just a whole lot of stuff and I can't help but feel like half of it could've been trimmed out. Also, the game likes to just insert random mini games you have to play through. It's not a bad idea to break things up a little so it doesn't get monotonous, but I really don't think this game needed several Koco herding mini games, three Space Invaders style mini games (four if you count the secret final boss that uses this style of play for some reason), and a single pinball area just shoved in there. As much as I love the fishing, it also felt pretty unnecessary and honestly kind of breaks the progression balance since you can just buy nearly everything you need from Big if you're good at fishing...and the Purple Coins aren't hard to come by at all if you got lucky like I did with the Starfall. Whenever that event happens, it brings back the enemies you took down, but it also activates a limited time slot roulette that can give you a shit ton of purple coins if you know how to play it. I got the Starfall at least once on every island and it made it to where I was at 999 purple coins for a long time, so naturally I had plenty of money to fish with Big and buy just about anything I needed. Once I was on the last island, I was rolling in fishing tokens, so I could just buy all the Koco and Seeds I needed to max out those stats with a ton of tokens still left over. It's kind of busted and makes me feel like all of these collectibles and extra systems weren't needed at the end of the day.
I'll dedicate this paragraph to some nitpicks I have with Sonic Frontiers. I previously discussed my major grievances with the game, so I will just talk about minor problems here. Biggest one of these nitpicks for me is that it's VERY tedious to level up your Speed and Ring stats; for whatever reason, you have to manually level it up one by one until you run out of Kocos or you reach Level 99. They literally already have leveling in bulk with Hermit Koco, since he just takes every seed you have on your person to instantly increase your Power and Defense to the appropriate levels, why is there no option to buy Speed and Ring upgrades in bulk? If they're worried about players regretting the choice of one over the other, there already is a way to swap Speed stat gains with Ring stat and vice versa (which you also can't do in bulk for some reason). The game just expects you to patiently spam to get through Elder Koco's dialogue each time as you sluggishly level up and it makes no sense to me. Another notable nitpick of mine is that there's no way to change the in-game time of day...which is a problem when every island has some Challenges that can only be attempted when it's night time. You either have to go do something else while you wait on it to be night time or do some other activity in the game and remember to come back once the moon comes up. I'm no developer, but I don't see any reason why there is no option to immediately skip time unless it's meant to be some kind of immersion thing (which would be silly imo considering this world has random springs, speed bumps, rails, walls, and loop-de-loops that just unnaturally lead to each other when Sonic does platforming there). Probably my least significant nitpick is that I don't like how you can continue to get collectibles even if you've long since used them for what they're meant to be used for. It's just a personal gripe that bothers me, I don't like to keep getting useless things and have it tally up in the map. For example, I finished the skill tree pretty early in the game and it drove me mad that my skill points just kept building up to nearly 200 by the end of the game when I had no use for it anymore.
The last topic I'll talk about here is the visual design. I think everything looks pretty good graphically aside from the distractingly common pop-in and the fact that the fishing area's water is buggy as all hell for some reason. However, my big problem is that the islands themselves aren't that interesting. Kronos Island is pretty much just a big grassland, same with Rhea Island and Ouranos Island (those areas also noticeably reuse a lot of stuff from Kronos Island). Ares Island is the most generic desert area you'll ever see. Chaos Island is a big volcanic wasteland. The Cyber Space levels are somehow even more generic since all of them just repackage the same aesthetics of previous stages in the Sonic series. I got tired of seeing the same Chemical Plant Zone, Green Hill Zone, and City Escape aesthetic that a ton of the Cyber Space levels share. I know this is done for a lore reason - they're built on Sonic's memories - but I really feel these could have been so much more creative than they actually were.
Phew, that review was ludicrously long, wouldn't you say? I have a bad tendency of rambling. I'll just end this with a short conclusion. Sonic Frontiers gets a decent 3.5 stars from me; it had potential to be truly amazing, but all the little problems really add up. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed my time with it, and I look forward to seeing what SEGA does with the extended campaign coming out as free DLC later.