Sonic Frontiers is great. That alone is a relief to say, but I didn’t expect to think it was quite this great. There are still things that could use some major tightening up, but Frontiers was predominantly an absolute joy. My cautious optimism has turned to genuine excitement, both for the game itself and the future of the series.
The story starts with Sonic and crew flying to the mysterious Starfall Islands, a mysterious set of landmasses that the Chaos Emeralds were suddenly drawn to. Just as they begin to approach the islands, a portal opens up and sucks the crew into a realm called Cyberspace. Sonic quickly escapes, finding himself alone on Kronos Island, unsure of the whereabouts of his friends.
I won’t go too far into the weeds here, but I will say that the story is indeed a step in the right direction. It has a pretty good balance of serious moments and lightheartedness, and most surprisingly it not only makes an effort to link a lot of the canon, but it actually has wider lore implications for the series as a whole. The characters are great here and their arcs are by far the most captivating part of the story, finally being handled with some semblance of consistency, and there are a lot of really nice moments. Tails specifically has had a rough go of it over the years so it’s good to see him characterized well again. I also found Sage to be a pretty great villain who works pretty well in the plot.
The wider mystery of the islands takes center stage most of the time, and I found it a bit weak in the end, especially as a heavy point of advertisement. And while I appreciate that the game acknowledges the series’ past, at times it is a bit heavy handed with characters remarking quite a bit about their memory of some past event or character who will not be appearing. And across the board the presentation hurts it a lot; while some cutscenes show Sonic more fun, expressive, and cartoony than he has been in a hot minute, others have his head slowly swiveling like a Chuck-E-Cheese animatronic and standing in a static position for the duration of the scene.
The gameplay is the real star of the show here though. It comes in 3 flavors, the “open zone” as they call it (it’s just an open world with stages in it shut up Iizuka), 3D cyberspace levels (think like a normal 3D boost era stage), and 2D cyberspace levels (the same but in 2D). The open zone in particular is the standout here as it is easily the most polished, controls near-perfectly to my taste, and is genuinely always a joy to explore. I was worried about this more than anything pre-release, but I think having small level segments as open world activities as well as a large variety of puzzles makes it actually engaging and fun to run around in.
There are small combat challenges scattered throughout the open zone, and to my surprise they are really well-designed as encounters. They are mostly pretty brief, have a clear gimmick to them that keeps them mostly fresh, and they are quite punchy and fun. The bosses are also a highlight, truly tapping into modern Sonic’s shonen roots with crazy over the top bouts, some of the best cutscenes in the game (perhaps even the series), and awesome vocal themes. Visually they don’t quite fit with the rest of Sonic if I had one complaint, I know they’re supposed to be strange-looking abstract creatures, but they maybe went a bit too far in that respect.
I guess it would be appropriate to mention the game’s RPG elements here. All I can say is that they’re inoffensive, they serve the purpose of providing some form of progression and that’s it. It could have been worse. The skill tree is simultaneously the most traditional progression and provides the bare minimum, and the preorder item pack unlocks like ⅓ of the entire thing, which is… strange, although the upgrades themselves are pretty fun. Your other upgrades are stat based, with collectible seeds and creatures that bolster your attack, defense (how many rings you lose from a hit), speed, and ring count. These are “fine”, though I think ring count could have easily been replaced with boost gauge expansion; why would you upgrade your ring count if you have an ability that gives an enhanced boost for topping off your rings?
3D cyberspace levels are a little less fun, the cracks start to show as you do more of them in how they throttle your control/speed and change your physics. I did enjoy the “tribute” levels and there were some genuine surprises in there, but I can’t help but feel some of them ruin the luster on remakes of past games just by being here made with reused assets. Even still, they’re all brief, decent fun, and either more complex than most of the boost game levels or rely upon a one-off gimmick that I can’t be too mad at.
The weakest part of the gameplay is unfortunately when you hit 2D segments, as I found them all quite mediocre. The 3D elements of the gameplay clearly got a lot of polish and customization, but I guess they thought the 2D was perfect as it was so they have essentially done next to nothing to it aside from (THANKFULLY) fixing Forces’ horrid physics and control issues. I also experienced by far the most jank in these segments; a good 80% of my deaths in this game were caused by the 2D physics not interacting properly with the environment (most notably boosting off ramps consistently gave me problems for some strange reason) or the transitions from 3D to 2D in the open world not properly functioning. But to give them some credit I did not find any of the levels outright awful, and despite there being an island focused around 2D segments, they become quite easy to avoid entirely.
Finally, I should briefly mention a bit of an elephant in the room: Hard Mode. The game tells you that you get “something extra” (I believe this is the wording) for playing through it, and that something is the true final boss. There is functionally no difference in story content aside from simply including that fight, just that and a new credits theme (given, said credits theme is one of my new favorite songs in the series so hey, worth it for that at least?). You can also simply switch to Hard right before the final stretch of the game, but I didn’t find Hard Mode particularly difficult otherwise so I wouldn’t hesitate to just go through the whole thing that way. Still, it was quite a strange choice to do this, it’s likely because the sequence itself is decently long and by far the most difficult part of the game. Be warned, I suppose!
The presentation is mostly functional and that’s all I can really say about it. The game looks fine and I feel they did about the best they could with what they must have been given, but it’s clear that despite this being their biggest most ambitious Sonic project in ages, their biggest obstacle was still some sort of production issue or lack of budget. The level themes are fairly dire, cyberspace alternates like 4 level themes, the palette is a bit drab… Given I don’t think it looks bad, there just isn’t a whole lot of variety nor memorable theming here, and none of it really screams “Sonic”.
As for sound, I think the music is intentionally a scattershot of different stylings from throughout the series, so you’re bound to find one or two tracks to like at minimum. There are adventure-style tunes, Sonic R-esque jams, even some of Ohtani’s coveted lofi made it in. I enjoyed most of it, but I’m not sure if I’ll remember most of it a year from now. Also specific shout-outs to the aforementioned hard mode exclusive credits theme, it’s legitimately the best Sonic song in ages and was a perfect cap-off to the experience.
Voice acting is pretty good here too, making good on the great script and character interactions, but interestingly they have significantly changed the direction for both Sonic and Eggman. Perhaps this was to match the more somber tone of the story, to delineate a new era for the franchise, to match closer to the movies and other media…. Who knows. Either way, Mike Pollock’s Eggman works quite well being slightly less hammy than he has been, but I feel early-game Sonic goes a little too far into voice actor Roger Craig Smith’s natural speaking voice at times and generally makes the performance feel weird. Luckily he settles into it as the game goes on, and eventually I enjoyed the take as something very different. Knuckles’ new voice also fluctuates, but more in such a way that it feels the actor isn’t accustomed to the role yet. Some of his delivery feels like it really gets the character, others ring very flat, but it’s not too bad overall. The rest of the cast is about as good as you would expect, and again, overall I felt positive on the voiceover in the end.
I wasn’t sure what to expect upon putting in my copy of Sonic Frontiers, but I certainly didn’t think it would end up on the shortlist of my favorite 3D Sonic games. While some aspects could still use some work, it does a lot of things really well and has enough polish that I came away genuinely impressed with the game. If I had to choose a way for the series to go next, I would go for a straight-up open world without having to go into stages with new physics and junk. But considering they seem set on the open zone that’s fine too. In the end, I just hope they can match, polish, and exceed the magic that they managed to find here.
The story starts with Sonic and crew flying to the mysterious Starfall Islands, a mysterious set of landmasses that the Chaos Emeralds were suddenly drawn to. Just as they begin to approach the islands, a portal opens up and sucks the crew into a realm called Cyberspace. Sonic quickly escapes, finding himself alone on Kronos Island, unsure of the whereabouts of his friends.
I won’t go too far into the weeds here, but I will say that the story is indeed a step in the right direction. It has a pretty good balance of serious moments and lightheartedness, and most surprisingly it not only makes an effort to link a lot of the canon, but it actually has wider lore implications for the series as a whole. The characters are great here and their arcs are by far the most captivating part of the story, finally being handled with some semblance of consistency, and there are a lot of really nice moments. Tails specifically has had a rough go of it over the years so it’s good to see him characterized well again. I also found Sage to be a pretty great villain who works pretty well in the plot.
The wider mystery of the islands takes center stage most of the time, and I found it a bit weak in the end, especially as a heavy point of advertisement. And while I appreciate that the game acknowledges the series’ past, at times it is a bit heavy handed with characters remarking quite a bit about their memory of some past event or character who will not be appearing. And across the board the presentation hurts it a lot; while some cutscenes show Sonic more fun, expressive, and cartoony than he has been in a hot minute, others have his head slowly swiveling like a Chuck-E-Cheese animatronic and standing in a static position for the duration of the scene.
The gameplay is the real star of the show here though. It comes in 3 flavors, the “open zone” as they call it (it’s just an open world with stages in it shut up Iizuka), 3D cyberspace levels (think like a normal 3D boost era stage), and 2D cyberspace levels (the same but in 2D). The open zone in particular is the standout here as it is easily the most polished, controls near-perfectly to my taste, and is genuinely always a joy to explore. I was worried about this more than anything pre-release, but I think having small level segments as open world activities as well as a large variety of puzzles makes it actually engaging and fun to run around in.
There are small combat challenges scattered throughout the open zone, and to my surprise they are really well-designed as encounters. They are mostly pretty brief, have a clear gimmick to them that keeps them mostly fresh, and they are quite punchy and fun. The bosses are also a highlight, truly tapping into modern Sonic’s shonen roots with crazy over the top bouts, some of the best cutscenes in the game (perhaps even the series), and awesome vocal themes. Visually they don’t quite fit with the rest of Sonic if I had one complaint, I know they’re supposed to be strange-looking abstract creatures, but they maybe went a bit too far in that respect.
I guess it would be appropriate to mention the game’s RPG elements here. All I can say is that they’re inoffensive, they serve the purpose of providing some form of progression and that’s it. It could have been worse. The skill tree is simultaneously the most traditional progression and provides the bare minimum, and the preorder item pack unlocks like ⅓ of the entire thing, which is… strange, although the upgrades themselves are pretty fun. Your other upgrades are stat based, with collectible seeds and creatures that bolster your attack, defense (how many rings you lose from a hit), speed, and ring count. These are “fine”, though I think ring count could have easily been replaced with boost gauge expansion; why would you upgrade your ring count if you have an ability that gives an enhanced boost for topping off your rings?
3D cyberspace levels are a little less fun, the cracks start to show as you do more of them in how they throttle your control/speed and change your physics. I did enjoy the “tribute” levels and there were some genuine surprises in there, but I can’t help but feel some of them ruin the luster on remakes of past games just by being here made with reused assets. Even still, they’re all brief, decent fun, and either more complex than most of the boost game levels or rely upon a one-off gimmick that I can’t be too mad at.
The weakest part of the gameplay is unfortunately when you hit 2D segments, as I found them all quite mediocre. The 3D elements of the gameplay clearly got a lot of polish and customization, but I guess they thought the 2D was perfect as it was so they have essentially done next to nothing to it aside from (THANKFULLY) fixing Forces’ horrid physics and control issues. I also experienced by far the most jank in these segments; a good 80% of my deaths in this game were caused by the 2D physics not interacting properly with the environment (most notably boosting off ramps consistently gave me problems for some strange reason) or the transitions from 3D to 2D in the open world not properly functioning. But to give them some credit I did not find any of the levels outright awful, and despite there being an island focused around 2D segments, they become quite easy to avoid entirely.
Finally, I should briefly mention a bit of an elephant in the room: Hard Mode. The game tells you that you get “something extra” (I believe this is the wording) for playing through it, and that something is the true final boss. There is functionally no difference in story content aside from simply including that fight, just that and a new credits theme (given, said credits theme is one of my new favorite songs in the series so hey, worth it for that at least?). You can also simply switch to Hard right before the final stretch of the game, but I didn’t find Hard Mode particularly difficult otherwise so I wouldn’t hesitate to just go through the whole thing that way. Still, it was quite a strange choice to do this, it’s likely because the sequence itself is decently long and by far the most difficult part of the game. Be warned, I suppose!
The presentation is mostly functional and that’s all I can really say about it. The game looks fine and I feel they did about the best they could with what they must have been given, but it’s clear that despite this being their biggest most ambitious Sonic project in ages, their biggest obstacle was still some sort of production issue or lack of budget. The level themes are fairly dire, cyberspace alternates like 4 level themes, the palette is a bit drab… Given I don’t think it looks bad, there just isn’t a whole lot of variety nor memorable theming here, and none of it really screams “Sonic”.
As for sound, I think the music is intentionally a scattershot of different stylings from throughout the series, so you’re bound to find one or two tracks to like at minimum. There are adventure-style tunes, Sonic R-esque jams, even some of Ohtani’s coveted lofi made it in. I enjoyed most of it, but I’m not sure if I’ll remember most of it a year from now. Also specific shout-outs to the aforementioned hard mode exclusive credits theme, it’s legitimately the best Sonic song in ages and was a perfect cap-off to the experience.
Voice acting is pretty good here too, making good on the great script and character interactions, but interestingly they have significantly changed the direction for both Sonic and Eggman. Perhaps this was to match the more somber tone of the story, to delineate a new era for the franchise, to match closer to the movies and other media…. Who knows. Either way, Mike Pollock’s Eggman works quite well being slightly less hammy than he has been, but I feel early-game Sonic goes a little too far into voice actor Roger Craig Smith’s natural speaking voice at times and generally makes the performance feel weird. Luckily he settles into it as the game goes on, and eventually I enjoyed the take as something very different. Knuckles’ new voice also fluctuates, but more in such a way that it feels the actor isn’t accustomed to the role yet. Some of his delivery feels like it really gets the character, others ring very flat, but it’s not too bad overall. The rest of the cast is about as good as you would expect, and again, overall I felt positive on the voiceover in the end.
I wasn’t sure what to expect upon putting in my copy of Sonic Frontiers, but I certainly didn’t think it would end up on the shortlist of my favorite 3D Sonic games. While some aspects could still use some work, it does a lot of things really well and has enough polish that I came away genuinely impressed with the game. If I had to choose a way for the series to go next, I would go for a straight-up open world without having to go into stages with new physics and junk. But considering they seem set on the open zone that’s fine too. In the end, I just hope they can match, polish, and exceed the magic that they managed to find here.