I went into Sonic Frontiers cautiously optimistic, not sure what to expect after its rollercoaster of a marketing campaign. A large part of me began to believe the game would be nothing but a complete mess of unfinished ideas. Random puzzles, platforming challenges and enemy encounters scattered across a series of generic-looking islands, with the occasional portal to a traditional Sonic stage. After playing through the main story three times, as well as completing every challenge across all five islands, I can say that that is essentially what this game is. There is so much untapped potential in every element of it, and yet, somehow, Sonic Frontiers manages to be a game I can truly say is worth your time playing.

I’ve always been an advocate for the open world formula to be explored by the Sonic series, allowing the player to traverse a vast, open environment at high speeds and use their momentum to traverse the landscape in creative ways. A series of fangames have made attempts at this and, while I haven’t been a fan of their execution, I hoped that one day Sonic Team would give this a go. Sonic Frontiers, however, goes in quite the opposite direction with Sonic’s movement, as well as the designs of the islands themselves. Sonic lacks any realistic sort of momentum on the ground, and is magnetised to it in such a way that makes it incredibly hard to get any air time by launching off the terrain. The rare instances in which you do manage to go airborne are quite fun, allowing you to spam a series of tricks, or transition into a drop dash for a boost of speed while landing, but the circumstances under which this happens are so inconsistent. Even if Sonic didn’t feel so grounded and weightless, the landscape rarely accommodates for this wild sort of experimentation. Yet again, there are areas that do allow for this, but they are spread few and far between in these islands that don’t quite feel “built” for Sonic. Despite all of this, traversing the islands can be a lot of fun at times, which I think can be owed partially to Sonic’s controls and movement.

The majority of Sonic’s moves from the most recent “boost” games are featured in Frontiers, including the homing attack, stomp, quickstep, and of course the boost itself. However, despite so much of this moveset being carried over, Sonic controls far better here than any previous attempts at this formula, with his turning feeling smoother than ever. Even when boosting at top speeds, Sonic can swerve left or right in an instant, making traversing the landscape a breeze; not to mention that Sonic’s most notable new move – the cyloop – requires you to draw circles around objects and enemies, so tight turning is a must. The cyloop plays a huge part in all elements of the open world; from completing puzzles to fighting your foes, drawing circles is frequently the answer to all of your problems. While Sonic’s ground controls are great, his movement in the air is vastly inferior. Jumping kills all of your forward momentum; Sonic can only change direction in an awkward turning arc; the air boost gives little horizontal distance and drops far too quickly. Other than using the games inconsistent collision to fly off of the terrain, the only way to get some decent air time in this game is by launching off of rails which, while admittedly fun, only draws further attention to how much the jump slows you down.

I’ll briefly talk about the story and say I enjoyed it for the most part, finding it to be a massive step up from the last, well, 2 decades of stories in Sonic games. The plot itself is fairly simple, but the moments and conversations we get between characters are the best they’ve ever been. Not much happens in a lot of these cutscenes due to the nature of the game’s story, but the moments we get of Sonic interacting with Tails, Knuckles and Amy feel more human than almost anything the series has to offer. Sonic feels a lot more mature here, providing advice and support to his friends accompanied by some new voice direction that I think fits Roger Craig Smith better than any other game he’s been in thus far. I also really enjoyed Sonic’s interactions with Sage, Eggman’s AI invention and tool to accessing the Starfall Islands. Sage starts off cold and distant but, through Sonic, she learns humanity by witnessing his acts of love, courage and determination. It’s a sweet story that plays out nicely, and provides an interesting kind of villain the series has never seen the likes of before.

Moving onto the islands themselves, each of them features a series of platforming challenges scattered about the world, with platforms, rails, springs and rings floating above the landscape. While these were an odd sight at first, I don’t actually have much of a problem with these visually. These obstacle courses in the sky would frequently catch my attention, and finding my way up there was oftentimes half the fun. What I do have a problem with, however, is the atrocious amount of pop in these objects have. While I understand there will always be this to some degree – especially with a character who moves as fast as Sonic – objects in this game will sometimes pop in that you aren’t exactly far away from. Not only does this incredibly distracting limitation make it harder to decide where you want to go from a distance, it also detracts from an otherwise stunning game. Frontiers is easily the best looking Sonic game to date, with vast, grassy fields; sizzling deserts and volcanic islands in the sky. All of these environments look stunning at times, and are topped off with a day/night cycle than can provide some beautiful lighting. It’s such a shame that the pop in is such a glaring issue, as it can sometimes break my immersion of what is otherwise the prettiest Sonic game ever.

Getting back to the open-world platforming, these mainly consist of platforms, rails and other objects that are constructed into obstacle courses akin to some of the level design featured in previous Sonic games. Completing these provides you with a memory token: the collectible that Sonic uses to save each of his friends from Cyberspace. While these challenges often require no more than a few button presses to complete, they are for the most part short and snappy, rarely overstaying their welcome or trapping you on a challenge for too long. They even take notes from Sonic Lost World, introducing wall-running as a move to the boost controls for the first time. The ability is a lot more forgiving and easier to use than the iteration featured in Lost World, as well as usually being automated to some degree, but is a welcome addition nonetheless. It can be quite fun completing multiple of these platforming challenges at once and trying to maintain the flow: soaring through a dash ring at the end and landing on a nearby rail to complete another challenge, or locking onto a spring and seeing where it takes you. There is a lot of fun to be had in stringing together these inputs so seamlessly, and can turn collecting the resources to save your friends a much easier task. Platforming only comprises a fourth of the activities you’ll be getting up to on the island, though, as there is a lot more at stake than just saving your friends.

To make traversal easier, Sonic Frontiers provides you with a map that can be expanded and filled in by completing a series of puzzles and challenges scattered about the world, which also create rails for fast travel and grant you seeds to upgrade your stats. In a similar vain to the platforming challenges, most of these are quick to complete and never go on for too long, despite what the overly generous timers would have you believe. The difference in quality, however, is vast, with challenges ranging from genuinely fun to insultingly simple. Many are as basic as drawing a cyloop to put out a torch or a pillar of light, or turning on a series of switches with a homing attack. I struggle to decide which is the worst: the hamster wheel that takes nothing but running to complete, or the parrying challenge which presents no real threat considering the parry in Sonic Frontiers has no timing to it at all. Despite there being some seriously weak challenges in the mix, there were a significant number I enjoyed. The panel puzzles are incredibly simple at first and, while they don’t exactly reach enigmatic levels of complexity, I found it quite fun figuring out a route to clear all the blue squares. The basketball minigame is decent, requiring you position yourself correctly to line up your shots. There are quite a few challenges that involve traversing the world in a given amount of time, whether that be making it to a specific point of the map or passing through a series of checkpoints. There were about as many puzzles that I liked as those I disliked, but their pure variety and brief nature meant I rarely ever got sick of them.

The best challenges are easily the ones that are mandatory to the story, as it is clear these had the most effort placed into them. The Ikaruga-inspired hacking minigame is a great deal of fun, along with the bolt-collecting challenge, which takes place over a pit of lava which stops you from staying in one place and forces you to keep moving before the platforms collapse. There are a series of challenges involving the Kocos, like herding them all into one place, or saving them from enemies to bring them back to Knuckles. The skydiving mission on Chaos Island sprung a surprising challenge on me, with a much less forgiving timer that requires quick reactions to floating obstacles to reach the ground in time. These challenges are overall much higher in quality than the optional ones, with a clear amount of extra love being placed into them. They also feature Sonic’s Chaos Emerald dance animation which I loved, taking me back to the days of Sonic’s breakdancing in Generations.

That brings us on to the third element of Sonic Frontiers’ open world. When you’re not completing platforming challenges or completing a variety of puzzles and missions, there’s a good chance you’re engaging with the game’s combat. For the first time in a mainline 3D Sonic game, Sonic himself has his own dedicated combat system – disregarding the Werehog of course. This comes complete with a skill tree, which can be filled in using experience points found as collectibles, obtained by defeating enemies, and built up through completing air tricks. Despite my initial excitement of having such a varied arsenal of combat options for Sonic, I quickly realised how little variety there is to this skill tree. I found moves like the Phantom Rush and Quick Cyloop to be welcome additions to the moveset, but a lot of these attacks feel redundant considering how similar they can be. The Sonic Boom and Cross Slash both fire a series of shockwaves; the Spin Slash and Cyclone Kick spin Sonic in a circle to deal multiple hits of damage to an enemy; the Wild Rush and Loop Kick pull Sonic away from an enemy only to come back in and deal a blow from the side. It feels like the developers focused on flashiness first, rather than creating a combat system with depth to it. The moves themselves also take way too long to connect, with some of them playing out for a couple of seconds at a time while you sit there and watch Sonic attack. As I mentioned when discussing the puzzles, the parry has no timing to it, so most enemies don’t pose much of a threat as Sonic can just hold his glorified guard attack and wait for his high-damage counter prompt to appear.

I’m probably making it sound like I hate the combat in Frontiers, but it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, I think there is a lot of fun to be had at times with it. I wasn’t so interested in the basic enemy interactions, but I think the game’s combat can begin to shine when fighting the Guardians of the islands. These are larger enemies that grant Sonic portal gears, and each one has its own unique abilities and attacks. Some of these are frankly awful, especially considering you may have to fight Guardians more than once to collect the necessary portal gears for each island. Battles like Tank and Shark force you to wait for extended periods of time before you reach their damage phase, where the boss sits there defenceless as you spam a series of random attacks in the hope that you kill them before the waiting game begins again. Strider and Caterpillar play a similar game, but at least with these you have an objective in these phases that can allow you to reach the damage phase quicker. Squid and Fortress, too, play out a similar cycle, but force you to chase them rather than staying in close proximity.

Those are the worst of the Guardians, leaving a fair few that I actually quite enjoyed. Asura – despite its janky collision – was a great deal of fun, adding more obstacles for each of its arms that you run up and destroy, Metal Gear: Rising style. Spider provides a similar spectacle as Sonic skydives towards the enemy in the second phase. It’s quite the set-piece, but can make the fight drag a bit when replayed multiple times. I loved bouncing off the walls of Sumo’s arena to send him flying around the ring, although I wish it put up a bit more of a fight. Ghost might just be my favourite, having you complete platforming challenges to destroy a series of statues while the enemy drains your rings and drops obstacles to impede your progress.

I think the bosses that mesh best with Frontiers combat, however, are the introductory Guardians Ninja and Tower, which appear in multiple different incarnations across the Starfall Islands, each time with more tricks up their sleeve. Ninja starts off simple, using its blade-like arms to swing at Sonic and shield itself, but later on begins to fly, teleport, clone itself and fire laser beams from its eye. It’s a battle that, while very well designed, would be so much better if the parry was punishing with its timing. Tower gets similarly upgraded with each new appearance it takes on. It starts off with a defensive ring and a projectile attack as it hops and hovers around, slamming into the ground to deal damage. It increases its arsenal of attacks and enhances its current ones like Ninja, but what intrigues me with Tower is all the different ways it can be dealt with. It only loses health when you attack its top layer, which can be brought down to Sonic’s level by destroying each of the lower levels. There are many ways in which you can skip this process however, letting you get creative with the ways you defeat the boss. You can get Sonic high up using the environment around you to go straight for the head; you can run up its body when it slams down into the ground; you can quick cyloop its head to destroy all the lower layers at once and not have to climb up again. There are so many ways to tackle it, and this sort of creative freedom is what I wish this game’s encounters had more of.

That brings us onto the fourth and final element of Frontiers’ gameplay loop: Cyberspace. Those gears I mentioned earlier are used to access these portals that transport you to one of thirty traditional Sonic levels, consisting of one of four themes: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary or the new digital city theme. If the re-use of level themes yet again hadn’t already annoyed me, the fact that the majority of these stages borrow level design from Sonic Unleashed, Generations and Adventure 2 really disappointed me. I’m getting tired of the reliance on nostalgia, and would have liked to see some original stages in the game that is supposedly taking the series in a brand new direction. These stages are only dragged down even further by the controls being significantly worse than in the open-world, with Sonic feeling much stiffer than usual. I entered this game prepared to treat Cyberspace as nothing more than a task that would be quick to get through and wouldn’t bog down my enjoyment of the game too much. But in all honesty, I actually found myself looking forward to each of these portals.

When it comes to the level design, the majority of them are pulled straight from good games so are fun to play inherently. I will say that this game’s controls work much better with the Adventure layouts, as this slower Sonic doesn’t lend himself as well to traditional boost levels, but even the Unleashed and Generations rehashes can be fun at times. Later Cyberspace stages begin to provide some entirely new levels, and these are some of the best. Alternate pathways; platforming sections; and overall better utilisation of Frontiers’ moveset. I’ve lost many hours running through these stages again and again, trimming down my time as much as I can with fun exploits like the homing dash. The music in these stages is great, too, as expected for Sonic games at this point. It’s so hard to pick out only a few standouts, but 1-2, 2-7, 3-6 and 4-4 are just a few great examples. The electronic dance music perfectly fits the cybernetic aesthetic of this world, while also being similar enough to each other to give cyberspace its own distinctive sound.

On the topic of music, Frontiers’ features a phenomenal soundtrack. Beyond these EDM-style tracks used in Cyberspace, other areas of the OST impressed me in their own ways, the island themes in particular. Kronos, Ares and Chaos are all made up of seven movements each, moving from one to the next with each Chaos Emerald you collect. These tracks have a beautiful progression, and begin to show more and more of their personality as you discover more of each island. The first movement of Kronos for example sounds incomplete, with chord progressions that wander, directionless, like Sonic in this unfamiliar location. The second and third movements begin to find their footing with piano melodies and chord progressions that, while more complete, still feel isolated and alone without many other instruments surrounding them. The tracks continue to grow and develop as Sonic explores more and more of this mysterious landscape, searching for answers and uncovering the secrets of the ancients. Returning melodies from previous movements are now mixed and paired with new ones, while also being recontextualised by the introduction of some more sinister electronic instruments that lie underneath, removing some of the island’s initial friendliness given its dark backstory. Ares and Chaos follow similar progressions to this, showing personality through their progression that were a joy to experience on my journey through the game.

Of course, I can’t talk about music without talking about the Titan fights. After collecting all seven Chaos Emeralds on an island Sonic must take down the Titan of that island: one of the things keeping his friends trapped in Cyberspace. With each seventh emerald being stored on the head of these Titans, you have to scale these giant beasts in order to transform into Super Sonic, kicking off some of the most phenomenal boss battles in the entire franchise. Is the combat any more engaging than it is in the open world? Not really. Are the bosses heavily reliant on QTE’s? Absolutely. But despite this, fighting these Titans was some of the most fun I’ve ever had on my first time playing a Sonic game. The spectacle is at an all-time high, and does an incredible job of making you feel powerful as you crush these robots a thousand times your size. Blocking Giganto’s lasers with your bear hands and forcing your way out of its jaws; throwing Wyvern into the side of a cliff and guiding its homing missiles back at it; riding atop Knight’s shield and slicing it in half with its own sword. Moments like these truly make you feel like a god, and all of this is enhanced by the incredible songs that play over them. Kellin Quinn, lead singer of Sleeping with Sirens teams up with Tomoya Ohtani to make some of the heaviest, hypest tracks to ever grace the series, amping up the energy to heights never reached before. Hopefully these become a mainstay in the franchise, as I feel these moments that completely blow you away with their quality and presentation are something Sonic could use more of.

So far I’ve only mentioned the first three titan fights, and that’s because those were the ones that impressed me. The final Titan however left me incredibly underwhelmed, boiling down to nothing more than a lackluster reskin of the Giganto fight, with the few new mechanics it adds being either unclear or just plain frustrating. What follows this is a final boss built off the Ikaruga minigame from Chaos Island. When I first played Frontiers I was disappointed by this. It ends the game on a less exciting note, which is made even more underwhelming considering the game had finally landed on a winning formula for Super Sonic bosses. For an enemy they hyped up for so much of the game, it feels as though this wasn’t what was originally planned, and that the team had to add this in late to finish the game in time. Kishimoto has even said on Twitter that he hopes to improve the game’s finale in a future update for Frontiers, but it’s anyone’s guess whether or not this will come to be.

At the time of writing this Frontiers has already dropped two of its three updates and, while they have definitely improved my opinion of the game, I decided to keep this review to the base game instead. Maybe I’ll do another review in the future once all three updates have been released but for now, I think I’ve talked far too much about Sonic Frontiers. It’s a funny game, one that doesn’t quite execute anything it does perfectly. The story contains great moments between characters, but the plot itself feels thin. The controls are a huge upgrade on previous games, but are bogged down by the game’s physics. Combat feels and looks spectacular, but is incredibly simple in reality. The islands themselves are pretty to look at, but those visuals are ruined by the constant pop in. It’s so frustrating, as the game gets so close with so many of its ideas. Some of these only need a few small tweaks to experience vast improvements, which is why I’m so excited for this game’s sequel. Frontiers has the potential to be a blueprint for the future of 3D Sonic, and I can only hope that the team over at Sega realise this and give the developers the time and budget to give this character the love he deserves.

Frontiers is far from perfect, but I would be lying if I said my first playthrough of it wasn’t one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve ever had with a videogame. The game is lacking in most areas, yes, but I feel these incomplete ideas all come together to make a product worth more than the sum of its parts. Sonic Team love to abandon ideas instead of improving on them for following games, but I have a feeling they know what they’ve got here. If I managed to have this much fun despite all of this game’s glaring issues, then I can only imagine how bright the future is for this franchise.

Burning Brightly as the Eikon of Fire Ifrit!

So much to say about this wonderful game while listening to the beautiful credits song by Kenshi Yonezu. I decided to push through and complete every hunt and side quest in the game and this game is certainly not without its fair share of faults such as many Final Fantasy XIV-style side quests and the issues with the pacing at certain impactful points in the story where it nearly hits a wall a bit. Even so, a handful of diamonds in the rough for the sidequests which caught me off guard, and was glad I stuck through them, they have some pretty good character building and backstory which deepens bonds and the character's relationship to Clive.

Speaking of which, I am very impressed with how realistic the made Clive and his relationship with Jill (Who truly is the sweetest treasure in this game). The slow buildup and powerful love that blossoms and the way it's portrayed through the story and cutscene dialogue is some of the best romance I have seen in a video game and I'm absolutely here for that! Of course, I can say the same thing about Clive's relationship with Torgal. Man's best friend indeed!! I am an absolute sucker for companions like that and they portray it so well and give this fuzzy little lad such a major part in this story.

Truly the truly delicious core of this game is its electrifying spectacles of boss battles, I would constantly lose my shit while playing these, and all I could say is "HOLYY SHEEP SHIIIT, GAME OF THE YEAR MATERIAL BABYYYYY!!!" We have reached a new high with these climactic fight scenes with so much crazy shit going on.

I have been a huge final fantasy fan since my late uncle let me play Final fantasy 4/Chrono Trigger on his PS1 so I am sure this may be a bit biased, but I truly loved this game despite its flaws and that's okay if others disagree! I can 100% guarantee with everything the game holds it is just as much a Final Fantasy game as all the others! I know I am the type of guy that is somewhat easy to please compared to others who do deeper dives in the critiquing department! Play this game!!! DO ITTT!! DO ITTT NOOWWW!!! The future is looking bright for JRPGS and narrative driven games my friends!