This is a bit complicated, so I’ll start with the positives.
The story and character writing is… wow. Just wow. Ian Flynn clearly understands these characters on a deeper level than any writer before him, and their arcs (even Sonic and Eggman!!) are pulled off exceedingly well. The reveal of the Big Bad at the end (hehe) and their subsequent monologue and boss battle are intense and nightmarish— which is fitting for what the thing is. Doctor Eggman hasn’t been this complex since SA2, which was also nice to see, as we get a peak into where his narcissism comes from and how he thinks of his family.
The gameplay is pretty fun for the most part. It’s Sonic in an open world: rail grinding, boosting, hills, slopes, it’s all there. When it works, it works well. The problem is that the developers seemed to have realized how well it worked, because they repeat the same concepts over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER. Yeah, it gets repetitive. Not enough to get me to stop playing, but the wonder of Sonic grinding across a vast landscape begins to diminish after the second island.
You can level up Sonic’s stats as you go along turning him into a fucking unstoppable bullet train that shoots across the islands and tears through all enemies in his path. The way you upgrade him is tedious (visit the elder and watch him upgrade your stats one by one for minutes on end), but it’s still a fun to for progression that reminded me of Unleashed. You also have to search for some adorable Korok-like creatures in order to upgrade him, and hey, I love exploring!
Big the Cat is back, and he might as well be the most powerful character in the Sonic universe, because you can fish with him in an minigame and buy nearly everything required for progression (apparently Big the Cat keeps a stockpile of Chaos Emerald keys for some reason). It completely breaks the game in half, is fun, has relaxing music, and I LOVE IT.
Now for the fatal flaw: the fucking physics. Sonic comes to a dead stop when he jumps, killing all of your momentum, and it’s a pain in the ass to regain that momentum without just spamming the boost button. Also, the frame rate and some graphics in my version weren’t great; before y’all say “Oh, that’s cuz you’re using the Switch version, just play it on better hardware lol”, don’t. If they couldn’t optimize the game for Switch, THEN THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE RELEASED IT ON THE SWITCH. Still, as someone who still plays on his Xbox 360, those technical issues don’t really bother me too much.
What does bother me is those DAMN fourth Chaos Em— I mean, those DAMN 2D sections, where the game locks you in a 2D plane and holds you hostage until you complete them. It’s stupid, and the fact that you can just run into them by accident and be trapped until you complete the challenges (even if you’ve already beaten them before) is annoying as all hell. To make matters worse, sometimes Sonic will continue to move OUTSIDE OF THE 2D PLANE, resulting in him falling to his death. Chaos Island is an entire zone themed around 2D segments, and naturally, it’s easily the worst level in the game by miles.
Then there’s Cyberspace. Some of them are fun (especially the Sky Sanctuary ones) due to the level design, but the physics are… ew. Nothing WORKS properly in Cyberspace. Sometimes you can use that to your advantage to cheese the levels, other times it makes them slow, tedious, unwieldy, and borderline-impossible to S-rank.
The open zones aren’t utilized to their fullest extents. There’s a lot of empty space without secrets, Sonic inexplicably can’t run up certain slopes because the game just doesn’t want you to explore there, and there’s a bizarre level of linearity to the game’s progression structure.
As a whole, Sonic Frontiers is absolutely a step in the right direction, albeit a VERY unpolished one. I feel that if Sonic Team gives this format another shot, they’ll find their footing and make something truly special, like Adventure 2. Until then, this was a fun experiment that kept me playing until the very end.
The story and character writing is… wow. Just wow. Ian Flynn clearly understands these characters on a deeper level than any writer before him, and their arcs (even Sonic and Eggman!!) are pulled off exceedingly well. The reveal of the Big Bad at the end (hehe) and their subsequent monologue and boss battle are intense and nightmarish— which is fitting for what the thing is. Doctor Eggman hasn’t been this complex since SA2, which was also nice to see, as we get a peak into where his narcissism comes from and how he thinks of his family.
The gameplay is pretty fun for the most part. It’s Sonic in an open world: rail grinding, boosting, hills, slopes, it’s all there. When it works, it works well. The problem is that the developers seemed to have realized how well it worked, because they repeat the same concepts over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER. Yeah, it gets repetitive. Not enough to get me to stop playing, but the wonder of Sonic grinding across a vast landscape begins to diminish after the second island.
You can level up Sonic’s stats as you go along turning him into a fucking unstoppable bullet train that shoots across the islands and tears through all enemies in his path. The way you upgrade him is tedious (visit the elder and watch him upgrade your stats one by one for minutes on end), but it’s still a fun to for progression that reminded me of Unleashed. You also have to search for some adorable Korok-like creatures in order to upgrade him, and hey, I love exploring!
Big the Cat is back, and he might as well be the most powerful character in the Sonic universe, because you can fish with him in an minigame and buy nearly everything required for progression (apparently Big the Cat keeps a stockpile of Chaos Emerald keys for some reason). It completely breaks the game in half, is fun, has relaxing music, and I LOVE IT.
Now for the fatal flaw: the fucking physics. Sonic comes to a dead stop when he jumps, killing all of your momentum, and it’s a pain in the ass to regain that momentum without just spamming the boost button. Also, the frame rate and some graphics in my version weren’t great; before y’all say “Oh, that’s cuz you’re using the Switch version, just play it on better hardware lol”, don’t. If they couldn’t optimize the game for Switch, THEN THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE RELEASED IT ON THE SWITCH. Still, as someone who still plays on his Xbox 360, those technical issues don’t really bother me too much.
What does bother me is those DAMN fourth Chaos Em— I mean, those DAMN 2D sections, where the game locks you in a 2D plane and holds you hostage until you complete them. It’s stupid, and the fact that you can just run into them by accident and be trapped until you complete the challenges (even if you’ve already beaten them before) is annoying as all hell. To make matters worse, sometimes Sonic will continue to move OUTSIDE OF THE 2D PLANE, resulting in him falling to his death. Chaos Island is an entire zone themed around 2D segments, and naturally, it’s easily the worst level in the game by miles.
Then there’s Cyberspace. Some of them are fun (especially the Sky Sanctuary ones) due to the level design, but the physics are… ew. Nothing WORKS properly in Cyberspace. Sometimes you can use that to your advantage to cheese the levels, other times it makes them slow, tedious, unwieldy, and borderline-impossible to S-rank.
The open zones aren’t utilized to their fullest extents. There’s a lot of empty space without secrets, Sonic inexplicably can’t run up certain slopes because the game just doesn’t want you to explore there, and there’s a bizarre level of linearity to the game’s progression structure.
As a whole, Sonic Frontiers is absolutely a step in the right direction, albeit a VERY unpolished one. I feel that if Sonic Team gives this format another shot, they’ll find their footing and make something truly special, like Adventure 2. Until then, this was a fun experiment that kept me playing until the very end.