This review contains spoilers
An obviously divisive game where if you ask someone their opinion I wouldn’t be surprised to hear anything from 1-10.
I personally found it a mostly enjoyable experience, but a very flat one. The loop of exploring islands never gets any different from the very first one, and even that one isn’t too exciting. Like the mini-games you play to unlock the map fragments range from appropriately enjoyable bite-sized chunks of entertainment, to weirdly easy like “walk through these rings with a time limit so high you could run around the map before doing it, to downright pointless challenges like “parry the bullets 3 times”. If you didn’t know, parrying has no timing to it in this game. You just hold shoulder buttons, wait to be attacked and get the parry. It’s overpowered in combat, so as a “challenge” it’s hilariously bad, like, it’s literally the game asking you “can you press L1 and R1?”.
The other main challenges you’ll find in the world are the cyberspace levels. These generally (or all?) take the layout of past Sonic games. Sounds like an ok idea, if a huge derivative of Sonic Generations, but Frontiers has a unique physics in these stages that just feels horrible. It’s so slow and heavy. And for some reason despite taking levels from the series history, there are a total of 4 level themes used for every cyberspace level. So I guess if you wanted to play a really bad version of Sonic Generations, this game is for you!
Movement in the actual open world areas is pretty fun, especially as you upgrade your speed - which tbh is kinda pointless since getting max rings will automatically put you at top speed. Losing rings outside of big fights is hard, and even if you do? Well just use the loop thingy and run in tiny circles for 30 seconds and you’ll get infinite rings to get back up to top speed. But anyway, even though the movement is fun, there’s little substance to it all. Most of the time in these islands you’ll just be going through auto-play segments where you bounce on springs and grind on rails. Very occasionally you’ll find a structure that will require you to perform actual platforming, those are neat.
Some islands though has this horrible gimmick where they have 2D sections just forced in to them when you hit a specific point in the map. You can only exit them by leaving one of the invisible walls that mark the start and end point of this section. So often you’ll be moving forward, accidently enter a section, killing your momentum and throw you off the track you were going.
Enemies are a pretty strong point of the game for the most part. Even basic enemies have some thought put in to them and require different uses of Sonic’s moveset to beat – though it feels like they’re too scared to assume players have unlocked any of Sonic’s extra moves, even late game enemies only require a starting moveset of basic attacks, cyclone, stomp or parry.
Guardians are my favourite though. They’re mini bosses that all have their own mechanics. Could involve an on-rails running section where you dodge projectiles until you catch up to the enemy, or a literal rails section where you have to colour the rail by grinding on it, and once it’s fully lit up you can attack, and many more.
Bosses are basically just big gurdians, but now you play as Super Sonic. I feel like they generally work worse than guardians since a lot of them have an overreliance on the overpowered parry move, or quick time events.
The funniest thing has got to be how the true final boss takes the form of a mini-game you’ve played about 3 times to that point. It’s not a particularly bad mini-game (it’s a bullet hell shooter), but it’s funny that the very final challenge of the game forgoes the main mechanics to focus on something you’ve barely done which is completely different to the main gameplay.
The thing I love most about this game overall is Sage. As a design, as a character and as a way to develop Eggman. If there was ever a time to let Eggman stop being a series wide villain and become a more neutral character, if not side with Sonic, it’d be…well Sonic Adventure 2, but now’s a good time too.
The story in general is serviceable, but not too interesting. I’m not a fan of how it’s all laid out though. Collect some of this islands tokens (which are scattered literally everywhere), run to the next story point, listen to 2 minutes of dialogue and then repeat. Maaaaybe play a mini-game if you’re lucky. The game has “side stories” which take the form of this exact method, the only difference being they don’t advance the plot, they’re just optional bits of dialogue Sonic can have with his friends/Sage. I mean they’re fine enough if you want to see the characters interact, it’s just weird to me that the main story is progressed in the exact same way you get some minor conversations.
The game does have a reputation of being a more mature Sonic game, where cheesy lines are forgone. It’s kind of true, but you’ll still hear such phrases as “Well, that just happened” or “Those were definitely words you just said”.
In general I found the story to be mostly fluff. There’s some nice bits of dialogue between Sonic and his friends here and there, and one good cutscene, but I found Sage and Eggman’s relationship to be the best part. And THAT was largely reduced to voice memos found in a freaking fishing mini-game.
Is it the best 3D Sonic game in the last 10 years? Maybe actually, I haven't played a single one since Generations lol. But I definitely don't think it comes anywhere close to that game.
I personally found it a mostly enjoyable experience, but a very flat one. The loop of exploring islands never gets any different from the very first one, and even that one isn’t too exciting. Like the mini-games you play to unlock the map fragments range from appropriately enjoyable bite-sized chunks of entertainment, to weirdly easy like “walk through these rings with a time limit so high you could run around the map before doing it, to downright pointless challenges like “parry the bullets 3 times”. If you didn’t know, parrying has no timing to it in this game. You just hold shoulder buttons, wait to be attacked and get the parry. It’s overpowered in combat, so as a “challenge” it’s hilariously bad, like, it’s literally the game asking you “can you press L1 and R1?”.
The other main challenges you’ll find in the world are the cyberspace levels. These generally (or all?) take the layout of past Sonic games. Sounds like an ok idea, if a huge derivative of Sonic Generations, but Frontiers has a unique physics in these stages that just feels horrible. It’s so slow and heavy. And for some reason despite taking levels from the series history, there are a total of 4 level themes used for every cyberspace level. So I guess if you wanted to play a really bad version of Sonic Generations, this game is for you!
Movement in the actual open world areas is pretty fun, especially as you upgrade your speed - which tbh is kinda pointless since getting max rings will automatically put you at top speed. Losing rings outside of big fights is hard, and even if you do? Well just use the loop thingy and run in tiny circles for 30 seconds and you’ll get infinite rings to get back up to top speed. But anyway, even though the movement is fun, there’s little substance to it all. Most of the time in these islands you’ll just be going through auto-play segments where you bounce on springs and grind on rails. Very occasionally you’ll find a structure that will require you to perform actual platforming, those are neat.
Some islands though has this horrible gimmick where they have 2D sections just forced in to them when you hit a specific point in the map. You can only exit them by leaving one of the invisible walls that mark the start and end point of this section. So often you’ll be moving forward, accidently enter a section, killing your momentum and throw you off the track you were going.
Enemies are a pretty strong point of the game for the most part. Even basic enemies have some thought put in to them and require different uses of Sonic’s moveset to beat – though it feels like they’re too scared to assume players have unlocked any of Sonic’s extra moves, even late game enemies only require a starting moveset of basic attacks, cyclone, stomp or parry.
Guardians are my favourite though. They’re mini bosses that all have their own mechanics. Could involve an on-rails running section where you dodge projectiles until you catch up to the enemy, or a literal rails section where you have to colour the rail by grinding on it, and once it’s fully lit up you can attack, and many more.
Bosses are basically just big gurdians, but now you play as Super Sonic. I feel like they generally work worse than guardians since a lot of them have an overreliance on the overpowered parry move, or quick time events.
The funniest thing has got to be how the true final boss takes the form of a mini-game you’ve played about 3 times to that point. It’s not a particularly bad mini-game (it’s a bullet hell shooter), but it’s funny that the very final challenge of the game forgoes the main mechanics to focus on something you’ve barely done which is completely different to the main gameplay.
The thing I love most about this game overall is Sage. As a design, as a character and as a way to develop Eggman. If there was ever a time to let Eggman stop being a series wide villain and become a more neutral character, if not side with Sonic, it’d be…well Sonic Adventure 2, but now’s a good time too.
The story in general is serviceable, but not too interesting. I’m not a fan of how it’s all laid out though. Collect some of this islands tokens (which are scattered literally everywhere), run to the next story point, listen to 2 minutes of dialogue and then repeat. Maaaaybe play a mini-game if you’re lucky. The game has “side stories” which take the form of this exact method, the only difference being they don’t advance the plot, they’re just optional bits of dialogue Sonic can have with his friends/Sage. I mean they’re fine enough if you want to see the characters interact, it’s just weird to me that the main story is progressed in the exact same way you get some minor conversations.
The game does have a reputation of being a more mature Sonic game, where cheesy lines are forgone. It’s kind of true, but you’ll still hear such phrases as “Well, that just happened” or “Those were definitely words you just said”.
In general I found the story to be mostly fluff. There’s some nice bits of dialogue between Sonic and his friends here and there, and one good cutscene, but I found Sage and Eggman’s relationship to be the best part. And THAT was largely reduced to voice memos found in a freaking fishing mini-game.
Is it the best 3D Sonic game in the last 10 years? Maybe actually, I haven't played a single one since Generations lol. But I definitely don't think it comes anywhere close to that game.