Played via Steam on Windows 11 (Gigabyte B560 HD3, i7-11700 @ 2.5GHz, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070).
My second playthrough, this time on hard mode and the honeymoon period is starting to wear off for me. Don't get me wrong, I still believe this is probably Sonic Team's best effort since Unleashed, definitely their best game since the Adventure games (at least from a narrative and design concept standpoint) but the annoyances I was vaguely aware the first time round have only intensified over a "do everything that's on offer in the game + hard mode" run.
First off I still enjoy the story - actually injecting a strong narrative with great sense of character and arcs (plus throwing the occasional lore bone out to long time fans) was an incredibly refreshing experience in a Sonic game. Obvious props to comic writer Ian Flynn for the script but also shout out to Sonic Team for actually going back to this method of story-telling and filling in the timeline gaps of Sonic's world. It got a little muddied towards the end (and The End, it's still really unclear what it actually was outside of ~strange alien being~) as it wasn't clarified how much the characters actually pieced together alongside the implications of past events and the general narrative itself just seemed to be cutting corners.
The art direction and it's sense of realism still seems to be garnering criticism (despite earlier 3D Sonic titles aiming for a similar aesthetic and the highly successful Mario Odyssey doing the same but hey ho) but the open zones themselves look incredibly beautiful accompanied by the lighting system driven by the day/night and weather cycles. The one negative I have to say is about the weird pixelated rain effects on characters - maybe there's an anti-aliasing effect missing in the current build but it currently looks distracting ugly at times. Maybe kicking the game off with a grey, rainy backdrop in a generic grassy/rock setting wasn't the best showcase for Sonic Team's aim in Frontiers but there are some spectacular shots in this game, even during the cutscenes when all the in-game lighting is still in effect. The repetition of Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary and City Escape level assets in the Cyber Space levels are wearing extremely thin at this point though and it's high time Sonic Team moved away from nostalgic call backs for a good long while. Character models look fine - I honestly can't really tell if anyone outside of Sonic has really gotten anything besides a boost in polygon fidelity since Generations but at least Sonic himself has some nice shaders on his fur alongside bloodflow highlights when the sun shines on him. Also shoutout to for my man Big for finally getting the HD treatment after a long absence.
Animation is where things get iffy - the effort for cutscenes still feels stuck in the days of Unleashed. Sonic and pals still emote with their eyelids more than their brows for some godforsaken reason and the scenes where Eggman is walking look comically bad - the man needs some adjusted proportions or proper effort put into him. Basic dialogue interactions between characters can also bug out with no lip syncing and the last cutscene featured some incredibly awkward facial reactions. Sometimes you'll get to a certain point along the journey where the game will cut to other characters for a cutscene, before finishing the cutscene and starting a new on with that exact same character but obviously much later than when we left them. It made for very awkward pacing at times and just felt like the story beats weren't as polished as they could have been. There were a few minor highlights however, with closeup shots on Sonic's reactionary body language and some of Eggman's final moments in the game during key story beats being standouts, but these were really few and far between and nothing done here couldn't have been done several console generations ago.
The gameplay itself feels good and addicting - it's fun to control Sonic in this game, with a suite of tweaks at your disposal to get the feel just right, and blasting off across the environments was always a delight. There were a couple of issues I had though, mainly some inconsistencies with how momentum would be handled. Running around terrain usually keeps you fairly locked to the ground geometry, even when seemingly running off a cliff, but there were always occasional moments where for no real explicable reason you'd get launched into the trick state through the air. If there was some obvious visual indicator to help me recognise where I could do this deliberately it would have lent a fuller sense of control but the lack of it resulted in a Sonic that always felt like a bit of a wild card when running at full pelt. The jump killing all momentum was another issue that sometimes appeared, sometimes didn't, and I found the only real reliable method of travel where I knew I could do exactly what I wanted was when grinding and boost-jumping. Still, it was satisfying to have familiar boost gameplay in "open zones" here.
I don't really have much to say about the combat - it can be as boring or as fast-paced as you want depending on what skills you unlock and how much you choose to memorise. I found it a reasonable attempt at some DMC-style action but it could do with some tweaking if future games continue with this gameplay in mind.
Same lack of real criticism for the audio design and soundtrack. The game sounds amazing at all times and always has a strong handle on what kind of mood it wants to put the player in. Tomoya Ohtani returns once again to lead the music department and the results are a nice change of pace from the previous games, with lulling ambient orchestral tracks for the open zones, EDM-fueled upbeat tunes for the traditional Cyber Space levels, and some surprising screamo metal songs for the bosses. It's a strange mix of genres but it really elevates the experience and makes the game a bit more unique to the "Breath of the Wild clone" a lot of people wrote it off as originally.
The designs of the Cyber Space levels are mixed - there are a few unique standouts but a lot of them take their level layouts from prior Sonic titles. This could have been neat as a 30th Anniversary celebration titles maybe, but combined with the 4 level aesthetics, Generations being 3 games ago and Forces already having gone heavy on the pointless nostalgia, it feels unnecessary. It's obvious the majority of design went into the Starfall Islands themselves with the Cyber Space levels maybe having gotten relegated to the backburner, but they almost feel like Sonic Team treated them like an obligation to meet rather than something to designate proper time and effort into. The designs of the Open Zones feel surprisingly natural - obviously not entirely given the state of grind rails, boost pads and springs being littered all over the grounded environments but it all aids in your traversal and it's enjoyable to see where certain paths will take you. Sonic Team still seems to have an insistence on changing camera angles for 2D styles of platforming however which I was never entirely fond of. Occasionally it tilts the camera towards the direction Sonic is running which I found helped a lot but there were also instances where I was traversing an open zone and would suddenly get locked into a 2D platforming area. Since these areas are designed with only X and Y movement in mind, escape can be impossible at times beyond just completing the puzzle you've stumbled into. Stumbling across enemies can be frustrating too, with certain enemy types locking you into a forced combat scenario, although even more annoying is the complete disabling of the map button whenever an enemy has been approached and their health bar is still on screen. This can lead to instances where you're trying to sprint in a direction away from an enemy so you can check where tokens are but the game just refuses to let you by ensuring more enemies are around.
By far the most inconsistent part of the game was the levelling system. boosting attack values was fine and even fun to mow down tougher enemies from earlier in single hits, but the addition of a defence stat when the ring system is still in place felt unnecessary. Upgrading the speed stat to higher levels was great but having the max ring count start at 400 with a cap of 999 felt excessive. Upgrading attack and defence stats are a breeze however, approaching the appropriate vendor and cycling through the couple stages of dialogue and a small animatic which allows you to upgrade both at the same time. Upgrading speed and ring count is where Sonic Team entirely lost me, featuring a similar vendor but instead forcing you to sit through the same amount of dialogue and short animatic for each stat's individual levels - meaning you have to select if you want to upgrade speed or rings each time for each level, and the lack of any "skip" functionality to make the process faster is non-existent. If anything desperately needs changed in this game it's this by a long country mile and only serves to waste literal minutes at a time whenever you choose to upgrade those stats.
Despite my grievances, Sonic Frontiers is genuinely a good game, but perhaps not a great one. It's a great Sonic game and that in of itself is kind of sad to think about but if Sonic Team keeps on this course of new design ideas, narrative concepts and ambitious approaches again then I have no doubt this will be seen as a curious precursor to some great new Sonic games.
My second playthrough, this time on hard mode and the honeymoon period is starting to wear off for me. Don't get me wrong, I still believe this is probably Sonic Team's best effort since Unleashed, definitely their best game since the Adventure games (at least from a narrative and design concept standpoint) but the annoyances I was vaguely aware the first time round have only intensified over a "do everything that's on offer in the game + hard mode" run.
First off I still enjoy the story - actually injecting a strong narrative with great sense of character and arcs (plus throwing the occasional lore bone out to long time fans) was an incredibly refreshing experience in a Sonic game. Obvious props to comic writer Ian Flynn for the script but also shout out to Sonic Team for actually going back to this method of story-telling and filling in the timeline gaps of Sonic's world. It got a little muddied towards the end (and The End, it's still really unclear what it actually was outside of ~strange alien being~) as it wasn't clarified how much the characters actually pieced together alongside the implications of past events and the general narrative itself just seemed to be cutting corners.
The art direction and it's sense of realism still seems to be garnering criticism (despite earlier 3D Sonic titles aiming for a similar aesthetic and the highly successful Mario Odyssey doing the same but hey ho) but the open zones themselves look incredibly beautiful accompanied by the lighting system driven by the day/night and weather cycles. The one negative I have to say is about the weird pixelated rain effects on characters - maybe there's an anti-aliasing effect missing in the current build but it currently looks distracting ugly at times. Maybe kicking the game off with a grey, rainy backdrop in a generic grassy/rock setting wasn't the best showcase for Sonic Team's aim in Frontiers but there are some spectacular shots in this game, even during the cutscenes when all the in-game lighting is still in effect. The repetition of Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary and City Escape level assets in the Cyber Space levels are wearing extremely thin at this point though and it's high time Sonic Team moved away from nostalgic call backs for a good long while. Character models look fine - I honestly can't really tell if anyone outside of Sonic has really gotten anything besides a boost in polygon fidelity since Generations but at least Sonic himself has some nice shaders on his fur alongside bloodflow highlights when the sun shines on him. Also shoutout to for my man Big for finally getting the HD treatment after a long absence.
Animation is where things get iffy - the effort for cutscenes still feels stuck in the days of Unleashed. Sonic and pals still emote with their eyelids more than their brows for some godforsaken reason and the scenes where Eggman is walking look comically bad - the man needs some adjusted proportions or proper effort put into him. Basic dialogue interactions between characters can also bug out with no lip syncing and the last cutscene featured some incredibly awkward facial reactions. Sometimes you'll get to a certain point along the journey where the game will cut to other characters for a cutscene, before finishing the cutscene and starting a new on with that exact same character but obviously much later than when we left them. It made for very awkward pacing at times and just felt like the story beats weren't as polished as they could have been. There were a few minor highlights however, with closeup shots on Sonic's reactionary body language and some of Eggman's final moments in the game during key story beats being standouts, but these were really few and far between and nothing done here couldn't have been done several console generations ago.
The gameplay itself feels good and addicting - it's fun to control Sonic in this game, with a suite of tweaks at your disposal to get the feel just right, and blasting off across the environments was always a delight. There were a couple of issues I had though, mainly some inconsistencies with how momentum would be handled. Running around terrain usually keeps you fairly locked to the ground geometry, even when seemingly running off a cliff, but there were always occasional moments where for no real explicable reason you'd get launched into the trick state through the air. If there was some obvious visual indicator to help me recognise where I could do this deliberately it would have lent a fuller sense of control but the lack of it resulted in a Sonic that always felt like a bit of a wild card when running at full pelt. The jump killing all momentum was another issue that sometimes appeared, sometimes didn't, and I found the only real reliable method of travel where I knew I could do exactly what I wanted was when grinding and boost-jumping. Still, it was satisfying to have familiar boost gameplay in "open zones" here.
I don't really have much to say about the combat - it can be as boring or as fast-paced as you want depending on what skills you unlock and how much you choose to memorise. I found it a reasonable attempt at some DMC-style action but it could do with some tweaking if future games continue with this gameplay in mind.
Same lack of real criticism for the audio design and soundtrack. The game sounds amazing at all times and always has a strong handle on what kind of mood it wants to put the player in. Tomoya Ohtani returns once again to lead the music department and the results are a nice change of pace from the previous games, with lulling ambient orchestral tracks for the open zones, EDM-fueled upbeat tunes for the traditional Cyber Space levels, and some surprising screamo metal songs for the bosses. It's a strange mix of genres but it really elevates the experience and makes the game a bit more unique to the "Breath of the Wild clone" a lot of people wrote it off as originally.
The designs of the Cyber Space levels are mixed - there are a few unique standouts but a lot of them take their level layouts from prior Sonic titles. This could have been neat as a 30th Anniversary celebration titles maybe, but combined with the 4 level aesthetics, Generations being 3 games ago and Forces already having gone heavy on the pointless nostalgia, it feels unnecessary. It's obvious the majority of design went into the Starfall Islands themselves with the Cyber Space levels maybe having gotten relegated to the backburner, but they almost feel like Sonic Team treated them like an obligation to meet rather than something to designate proper time and effort into. The designs of the Open Zones feel surprisingly natural - obviously not entirely given the state of grind rails, boost pads and springs being littered all over the grounded environments but it all aids in your traversal and it's enjoyable to see where certain paths will take you. Sonic Team still seems to have an insistence on changing camera angles for 2D styles of platforming however which I was never entirely fond of. Occasionally it tilts the camera towards the direction Sonic is running which I found helped a lot but there were also instances where I was traversing an open zone and would suddenly get locked into a 2D platforming area. Since these areas are designed with only X and Y movement in mind, escape can be impossible at times beyond just completing the puzzle you've stumbled into. Stumbling across enemies can be frustrating too, with certain enemy types locking you into a forced combat scenario, although even more annoying is the complete disabling of the map button whenever an enemy has been approached and their health bar is still on screen. This can lead to instances where you're trying to sprint in a direction away from an enemy so you can check where tokens are but the game just refuses to let you by ensuring more enemies are around.
By far the most inconsistent part of the game was the levelling system. boosting attack values was fine and even fun to mow down tougher enemies from earlier in single hits, but the addition of a defence stat when the ring system is still in place felt unnecessary. Upgrading the speed stat to higher levels was great but having the max ring count start at 400 with a cap of 999 felt excessive. Upgrading attack and defence stats are a breeze however, approaching the appropriate vendor and cycling through the couple stages of dialogue and a small animatic which allows you to upgrade both at the same time. Upgrading speed and ring count is where Sonic Team entirely lost me, featuring a similar vendor but instead forcing you to sit through the same amount of dialogue and short animatic for each stat's individual levels - meaning you have to select if you want to upgrade speed or rings each time for each level, and the lack of any "skip" functionality to make the process faster is non-existent. If anything desperately needs changed in this game it's this by a long country mile and only serves to waste literal minutes at a time whenever you choose to upgrade those stats.
Despite my grievances, Sonic Frontiers is genuinely a good game, but perhaps not a great one. It's a great Sonic game and that in of itself is kind of sad to think about but if Sonic Team keeps on this course of new design ideas, narrative concepts and ambitious approaches again then I have no doubt this will be seen as a curious precursor to some great new Sonic games.