Let me open by saying that this is THE most subjective rating that I've ever given, as I don't think that this game will work for most people. In many cases, it won't even work for the most ardent Sonic the Hedgehog fan. Above all else, Sonic Frontiers is somewhat of a freak experiment - an amalgamation of different influences carried out with a vague level of uncertainty, but paired with a nearly apologetic degree of optimism.

As a former Sega Genesis kid, I've always found myself with this strange, inexplicable affinity for Sonic. I don't know why that is. I haven't enjoyed a Sonic game since Sonic Adventure 2, I don't care for a single one of Sonic's Genesis era titles, I detest both of the recent Sonic the Hedgehog movies, and I've never even dreamed of watching one of Sonic's numerous television adaptations. Still, I'm always rooting for Sonic, and I've long wished for an unmissable game that mirrors Sonic's legacy. Well, you've seen my relatively high rating for this. Is Sonic Frontiers that game? Well, no, but Sonic's future has never been brighter.

Let me get the obvious stuff out of the way: Sonic Frontiers is quite ugly, although it is far from visually uninspired. Sonic Frontiers is far too long, and its open world is couched much more in semi-meditative emptiness and infuriating navigation than in opportunity. Sonic Frontiers has about 10 different types of interlocking currency, and its map system and optional fast travel system will drive the average player insane. Sonic Frontiers has not one, not two, not three, but FOUR original boss themes by Kellin Quinn of Sleeping with Sirens. Sonic Frontiers has a maddeningly slow stat upgrade system that ultimately relies on fishing with Big the Cat to reasonably max out. Sonic Frontiers has unlockable side stories that tend to be much more trouble than they're worth. Sonic Frontiers has a barely functioning lock-on system and a skill tree that falls far below the expectations of a 2022 release. Sonic Frontiers is far. Too. Fucking. Long.

But you know what else? Through it all, Sonic Frontiers is FUN. Even with all of my criticisms in mind, I was still compelled to 100% this game. For the first time, Sonic Team has paid almost no mind to designing a satisfactory physics engine, electing instead to place that responsibility in the hands of the player. The wide, empty landscapes lend the player immense freedom to run unimpeded, and you're given the option to go under the hood and adjust Sonic's top speed, acceleration, brakes, steering, and camera distance. The level of trust placed in the player to create their ideal Sonic experience is like nothing I've ever seen from a game of this stature. When everything fits together—the dazzling spectacle tuned to Sonic's breakneck speed—the result is often nothing short of awe-inspiring. Not only that, but it remains abundantly clear that Sonic Team genuinely cared about the surprisingly dark narrative that they were trying to weave, even if I had some trouble following its implications.

Is this the Sonic game to end all Sonic games and silence Sonic's legions of naysayers? No, but I doubt that any game can wear that crown. However, Sonic Frontiers evinces something that has grown exceedingly rare in the AAA game space: the courage to upend one of gaming's most recognizable franchises. Here's your Sonic Adventure 3, with (almost) everything that that entails.

first, I think we should be making new games instead of remaking so much stuff.
second, if you're gonna remake something, remake something that could actually stand to be refreshed rather than a pristine action classic from a vaunted survival horror series.
third, if you're gonna remake a pristine action classic from a vaunted survival horror series, maybe try taking it in a different direction, emphasize the horror more for example, there's just no way you can compete with the OG.
wait this game is really good? what the fuck.

I have a funny history with the God of War series. The PS2/PS3 trilogy was the first Playstation series I ever played through, as a newbie to the whole thing when I got my own PS3 in like 2010. In replaying those games before the 2018 game, I discovered that I liked them a great deal less, found them just totally tiresome and annoying. The 2018 game shocked me completely by being a lot more considered and digging into Kratos as a character and his new surroundings, giving him friends and family to protect. To some people this was also tiresome in a new way, but I found it well-meaning and genuine and so it worked on me. Idk, sue me.

So when it came to Ragnarok, I honestly just filed it away in my brain as "more good stuff" and proceeded to not think about it, worry about it, or hype about it until it eventually dropped. That's a weirdly super good headspace to be in for a new game! I should try it again sometime lol. Anyways, they got me again! God of War Ragnarok is impressive for all the ways that it seems unconcerned with itself, taking a longer time to just weave a really fucking engaging narrative that brings this whole series to a thrilling and natural climax. It's such a breath of fresh air, to play a modern Playstation game that doesnt feel like it has anything to fucking prove to me. It's focused on being a fun ass video game with competent progression systems, and enough story hooks and surprising twists to keep me engaged the whole way. They made the new God of War the closest thing I've personally seen to a western-developed modern Final Fantasy game lmao, it's so fucking cool. I dunno, there's a lot of meaty stuff here in the narrative about unraveling a dark, abusive, colonial history and succeeding our parents and what that means, but like. All I wanna say is that the game is fucking cool as hell! Great job to everyone involved, excited to see what Santa Monica does next.

A strong beginning and ending unfortunately don't make up for everything in between. When it works, it really works, but there's so much that doesn't that it makes this one hard to love.

This game is far too happy to waste your time at every opportunity. Whether it's a protracted sequence to follow an NPC, or mandatory things to progress only happening on specific days, way too much happens to prolong the experience to its detriment.

It feels like a lot of the writing missed what made the original work and tried to cover with meta nods and it just misses the mark as a result.

It was nice to go on another adventure with York, but I wonder if we really needed it.

Almost twenty years ago, Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne released and the very fabric of the franchise it belonged to seemed to warp around it. Press Turn was brilliant and Atlus was very smart to implement versions of the battle system into SMT's many spinoffs.

As for follow-ups in the mainline series, Strange Journey kinda charted its own course opting to not implement Press Turn and taking a lot from Etrian Odyssey, being a throwback to the old school dungeon crawling of the series' origins. Shin Megami Tensei IV came much later, drawing mechanically from Nocturne but mostly focusing on the first two Super Famicom entries for its reference points. As far as trying to directly follow up Nocturne however, it just seemed like Atlus wasn't interested.

That's probably for good reason. Nocturne is a stone cold masterpiece, and I'd imagine with time it only got harder and harder to try and pull a lot of those creatives together to make another game along the same lines. And even then, there's zero guarantee it'd even turn out well. If Atlus would ever try to follow up their opus, it would have to fall onto the team that formed around IV and seeing them develop, as the older teams at Atlus did decades ago leading into Nocturne. They'd have to imprint their own mark on the series, make their own opus.

Only time will tell if Shin Megami Tensei V will stand the test of time as their opus, but right here right now in 2021 I can tell you that it sure fucking felt like one. This is the best JRPG to come out since Dragon Quest XI five years ago, and honestly might beat even that game out when it comes to sheer gameplay. This is one of the boldest, most confident games of its scale I've seen in an incredibly long time and I think the team should be applauded for the incredible work they did over this game's immense, likely grueling development.

With V, I feel like Atlus has finally hit the sweet spot again in creating a take on the Press Turn system that feels genuinely additive to the base battle system and not something like Smirk, which felt like a distraction based in random chance. The magatsuhi skills are a great addition to combat, meaningfully adding to the rhythm of the game, though I think there's plenty of room to iterate in a sequel, making some skills more attractive so you're more often encouraged to not just rely on the Critical skill. It really feels like Atlus knew exactly how fun this battle system was though, given just how many side quests there are that involve a unique boss fight. I just wanted to challenge everybody, it almost makes me wish there was a PvP mode. Essences take a while to get used to, but I came to really appreciate just how customized I could make my party by the end. That stuff is incredibly versatile.

The real surprise here is the game's world traversal and how that factors into the game's structure. This is no mere open world, in fact, Shin Megami Tensei V features dense playgrounds with verticality and secrets at every corner, reminding me in part of Super Mario Odyssey rather than Breath of the Wild. It's exhilarating in a genre that's historically had pretty stale level design. The zones in SMTV also remind me of another personal favorite from Nintendo, Skyward Sword, in that while there are more traditional SMT dungeons, the levels leading to those are also dungeons in and of themselves with their own challenges in traversal. It's brilliant, really well-realized stuff and I hope this becomes the hallmark that mainline SMT is known for going forward when compared to its sister series.

The most controversial part of the game is probably going to be its story, which I think makes a lot of sense. There's not a whole lot of it! It's definitely similar to Nocturne in that way, but I think it's actively going for something very different and it's very clever in how it manages to pull that off. All at once, it's a game that explores the feeling of isolation as well or better than any other entry in the series, invites the oft-dreaded Persona comparison, proves exactly how this game isn't Persona, and provides easily the most metaphysical, cosmic take on the series to date. It's fascinating stuff and do not mistake a minimal story for having none at all.

If I've learned anything in my time with Shin Megami Tensei it's that for as powerful as you become in the gameplay sense, you are often relegated to a passerby in the story. You will never get the complete story on why anyone does anything. You're just left to pick up the pieces and shape the world according to your flawed, limited perspective. You're grasping at straws in an attempt to understand. I've really come to appreciate that about Shin Megami Tensei's brand of melancholy, and particularly V's take on it. The explanations, the character moments are few and they're all the closure you're ever going to get. In these games even when you make your ascension to godhood, you're still a person. You can only know and experience so much.

I only have a little bit of experience with Kirby but I can confidently say this thing mother fucking rocks, and it inches Kirby ever closer to the genre of Character Action in a way that had me cackling with joy towards the end. Scaling back on the number of power-ups while letting you upgrade those power-ups was such a good decision. This game had me sniffing around every corner trying to find every last blueprint because I wanted to know about as many ideas as these developers had for Cool Ass Shit they could make you do with Kirby. Tons of fun, can absolutely see myself doing multiple playthroughs in the next few years.

Ori and the Blind Forest has lovely visuals, a simple and heartwarming story, and some really inspired ideas for platformer exploration, but artificial difficulty and hiccups in the interactions between movement options and the environment can make it more of a chore to play through than it should be.

There are a few ingredients for a guaranteed indie smash these days: Metroidvania layout, difficult platforming sections, and a somber and largely wordless story. I don’t mean to be too cynical here, but it’s the combination of these elements that brought smash success, in particular, to Hollow Knight and Ori and the Blind Forest. Eventually, I’ll try to unpack what disappoints me with the former game, but having just finished a playthrough of the latter and having recently played a fantastic Castlevania game not too long ago (Circle of the Moon), I have some fresh thoughts on why these trendier indies have a hard time appealing to me.

Let’s start with the basics: there is some inherent tension in the different design elements at play here. Metroidvanias reward, at their best, expansive exploration. Getting lost in a world isn’t necessarily the point, as many of the best in the genre guide you along almost invisibly, but coming up to doors you can’t open or ledges you can’t reach and circling back later is part and parcel of the experience.

This can be strongly at odds with incorporating difficult platforming into the formula, as it becomes unclear at times when you’re failing to execute a complex task vs. when you’re just not supposed to go somewhere right at the moment. Ori falls into this trap most often in the opening sections of the game, where you have limited movement options. Sometimes, a wrong turn will land you in a bed of spikes, and you’re given very little time to react and reflect on what just happened before you’re respawned. It can be extremely confusing when you’re just missing where they want you to land from a long drop or when you’re being told to back off. Ori’s solution to this problem is inelegant: the map (along the main story path, which is mostly what I stuck to in my own playthrough) has very few turns to it, so you basically go and check off everywhere else and then heave a sigh and get ready to die a few times to map out where you’re supposed to go.

And you might as well get used to that feeling of hitting spikes and not understanding why, as the game will mercilessly throw them in your path as often as possible. Following the critical pathway down after a difficult section? You better fucking have resources on hand to pop a save because there’s no telling what’s down that pit. The camera moves somewhat cinematically to follow you, and it can have a hard time catching up with the floor before you do. Later on, are you trying to see what you can reach with a charged jump? You’re almost definitely going to smash your head on spikes. I became so conditioned to this that in the second dungeon, I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out a puzzle (a puzzle that’s basically supposed to introduce you to the gimmick of the dungeon) because the blades of grass sitting on a random platform looked too much like spikes to me to trust that I could land on it and use it as a sounding area for what I was supposed to do.

This gets even worse when you’re not solving a puzzle and in fact know what you’re supposed to do. Later on, you’ll have to boost jump off of wall surfaces, and this sometimes requires you to go at an upward diagonal angle. Because you know being off by a centimeter will smash you into spikes, you try some precision aiming and… Ori has slid himself up the wall and into some spikes that are just there for the fuck of it. Like the Metroidvania elements, the spikes that litter this game feel like window dressing, adding an artificial challenge where decent game design would have worked just as well. I get it, the forest is hostile, but there really has to be some other way to separate out narrow landing areas that resets your position with the platforming challenge that doesn’t kill you for being slightly off.

This is annoying in regular play, but the game’s obsession with cinematic platforming sections means you’ll be going up against this as the game expects you to basically learn flawless execution for some really difficult platforming sections. This kind of thing is fun in Rayman’s racing levels, partially because those are optional and partially because you’re well aware before you jump in what’s going to be in store. You also know that Ubisoft has honed those levels to mechanical perfection, so once you learn a piece, you’ve learned it forever. The weird physics of Ori are far from perfect, despite what you’ll bafflingly see on this page and other reviews. I did the second and third “escape the area” sections over and over, and I can tell you that exact, identical execution sometimes randomly landed Ori just a hair short of where he was supposed to be or ran him out of rhythm with the elements around him, resulting in damage or death. The very final gameplay section has an all new visual element that you have to compute perfectly the second you hit it or else repeat about two minutes of technical gameplay all at once. And, I can confirm, that element is not mechanically wound. There’s RNG involved in the spacing of the stuff, which means you can kill yourself through no fault of your own besides keeping pace.

It’s worth going into that element a bit more. I’m surprised I don’t see more complaints about the Bash mechanic. Jesus Christ, Bash. Okay, so when you first get Bash, it’s the coolest fucking thing ever. It feels really fresh to me. Maybe I’m missing what game they stole it from. You basically can grab a projectile or (some) enemies in a sort of stasis field and redirect their momentum around Ori. This has two uses. The first is movement, where you’ll utilize an enemy or their projectile to shoot yourself, say, upward, to reach heights you couldn’t normally. The second is for breaking stuff, where you’ll either redirect projectiles or enemies into vulnerable surfaces or other enemies to progress. It’s a really, really fun mechanic. On paper.

The trouble sets in when you reach some of the more technical situations later on. Some pathways require chaining of multiple enemies’ projectiles to reach where you need to go, and these enemies’ lock-on is really unpredictable. So you’ll be in the air with minimal room or time to adjust, and if a projectile shoots too low for you to catch it, say hello to your old friends the spikes. At least that can feel like your fault. Try enemies that just randomly stop deciding to shoot at you, leaving you to slowly fall to a lower level or (let’s be real here, it’s Ori’s favorite thing to do to you) your death on fucking spikes. These sections are miserable and take one of the best mechanics in the game and ruin them. I went from extremely excited to Bash everything in sight to feeling extreme relief when the mechanic was set aside.

And a lot of that relief came from the fact that when you’re not being put in scripted chases or set up for platforming failure for the fuck of it, moving Ori around feels really nice. The lack of precision allows you to focus instead on momentum, and chaining together movement techniques to just get around is really fun. It feels like blasphemy to compare these two, but it really does feel like the movement in a Mario game when it works. The issue is that Mario is in some of the best games ever and gets to utilize that movement in enjoyable levels, and Ori is usually stuck coming to a complete stop or an early demise before a flow state can be reached.

It feels almost like bullying to add this in, but the combat in this game is just wretched. There’s five enemies: jumpers, splitters, moving projectile spitters, stationary projectile spitters, dive bombers, and chargers. The same boss is used in all three dungeons with a palette swap and does not even vary tactics in each one. Please do yourself a favor and upgrade your attack, as without the upgrades, the combat will take even longer, and no one deserves to deal with this combat longer than absolutely necessary. Enemies are haphazardly placed to basically cut your momentum, forcing you to stand in one place and spam the attack button until they’re done wigging out and you can go back to playing the game. At worst, they will keep themselves on a ledge or narrow platform you have to land on and basically force you to tank damage to proceed. Not fun.

This obsession with artificial difficulty and sloppiness in level and combat design is a real shame, because there is a lot to love about Ori. The visuals are very pleasant, and I didn’t have an issue with saminess of environments, as I think they played around within the forest theme pretty wonderfully. The story is genuinely very touching for as simple as it is. And it’s fun to have a narrowly honed, somewhat linear game beneath the Metroidvania pretense. I wonder if there were just built-in checkpoints and the team got to just make a platformer if the strengths around movement and abilities could have been honed a bit better to less maddening effect.

Unfortunately, this was one of those games I left more relieved it was over than glad I had engaged it. I had plans to go on to Will of the Wisps, but I think I’m going to pass for now and revisit the series at some point if I get word that they’ve improved on my complaints, which seems unlikely given that everyone seems to have nothing but effusive praise for the games. Oh well.