I've heard this described as the fidget cube of videogames, and I think that's the undeniable summary of this experience - right down to all those times you accidentally drop the cube and curse in anger as you lean down to pick it up.
If I were rate this one on enjoyment alone, I'd probably be more inclined to give this one a 4/5. Critically, though...despite the risks taken, and the effort to differentiate itself from every prior Sonic title, it does just end up falling back into the middle of the road (a notoriously bad place for a hedgehog to be).
GAMEPLAY
The big selling point of Frontiers is the "Open-Zone" setup. Not an outright open world, but a set of 5 (well, 4 and a half) islands that Sonic can explore at will. Freedom of movement is the main appeal, and finally being able to do this in a Sonic game for what feels like the first time since Sonic Adventure really took me back. Picking a direction, blasting away at top speed and seeing where I end up, blissful. It's the baseline of what I want to feel from a Sonic game, and one that I rarely get to actually experience.
Of course, the manner of Sonic's controls have always been hotly debated by the ever-warring fandom. Sonic Team had the perfect solution: do it yourself! Sonic has a number of sliders to tune his handling to virtually whatever you'd like; regardless of whether it's actually remotely controllable or not. People who set his default running speed to maximum were gonna be in a rude awakening when they get to the parkour challenges, but they're completely free to do so. I had the luxury of playing close to a year post-launch, though; Sonic had harsh jump deceleration to start with, losing all momentum when jumping. Fortunately, Sonic Team listened to fans and let you turn that shit off - and it really, really helps.
So, you've got a Sonic you can tune to your liking, and huge areas to let him lose in. And yet, the game begins by almost immediately dumping you into a short, linear level with a completely different, fixed control scheme. Cyberspace levels are thrown into the experience to provide more traditional Sonic levels, and I appreciate and understand why; it's far easier to break them off into separate instances than build the levels naturally into the open world (which there is usually at least one instance of per island, so I'm glad they actually gave that a go). I also understand why the control scheme is different; the levels themselves rely a lot on scripted sequences that could potentially break if the player has set their acceleration outside of the accepted parameters. Unfortunately, while I understand the choices made, it doesn't stop Cyberspace from being a source of frustation, bordering on total misery. Sonic's turning circle becomes immense, and the levels themselves are automated to the point of failure, with the homing attack frequently failing to lock on when it needs to, and just generally being clumsy. One level even adds a drift mechanic that is completely embarassing in how much worse it is compared to previous games.
Moving away from Cyberspace, one other massive shakeup to the formula is the addition of a real, proper combat system. We haven't had such a thing since the dreadful Unleashed Werehog stages, and fortunately it's not nearly as limited. That said, it's no Devil May Cry either. Sonic can still homing attack to kill or notably injure the small fry, but larger enemies and minibosses will require much mashing of the X button. As you gain skill points, you can expand Sonic's reportoire to include dodge attacks, Rider Kicks, and just straight up shooting lasers from his shoes or something. There's enough variety in there to make it so that the varying enemy types may only be susceptible to specific moves, but admittedly there's also little stopping you from just persistently mashing X against at least half of the encounters.
Further adding to Sonic's moveset is the Cyloop. Holding Y will leave a trail behind Sonic, and allow you to draw circles, Pokémon Ranger-style, around enemies. This is often best suited to breaking an enemy's guard, but can also be used in the open world to activate events, solve puzzles, and (if you're persistent) gather a limitless supply of rings and other important resources. It's a neat trick, although I find it cuts out far too easily whenever you hit the slightest imperfection in the floor. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing such a move become a more permanent part of Sonic's skillset - where applicable.
At the heart of it, Sonic Frontiers is a big ol' collectathon. Each of the hundreds of grind rails and platforms that awkwardly pop into existence as soon as you're 10ft away lead to a small bounty of riches. Rings, obviously, still keep Sonic from dying to damage. However, depending on your ever-increasing stats, Sonic can both hold more maximum rings, as well as lose less of them when taking damage, more akin to a health bar. As well as that, you can find seeds that raise Sonic's attack and defense, skill points to unlock new moves, and memory tokens; needed to advance the plot. That's not forgetting about Emerald Vault keys, for getting the Chaos Emeralds, and Portal Gears from downed minibosses for playing the Cyberspace levels (the main source of the aforementioned Vault keys). That's a lot to collect, and sounds like a challenging, if time consuming gameplay structure. Of course, if you don't actually have any interest in playing the game, Big the Cat has you covered. Yes, if you collect enough purple coins, you can go fishing, and use your gains from that to just buy everything - everything - and theroetically max out Sonic's stats and get every mandatory collectible to beat the story within, say, an hour or so total of fishing. It's such a bizarre way to break the game that they might as well have admitted "Use this if you're a games journalist with a tight deadline!".
The fishing itself, by the way, is mindless - essentially a rhythm game without the rhythm. Cast the rod (doesn't matter where), wait for a bite (won't take more than 10 seconds), tap A, tap A again when the ring is within the red areas. Boom, fish. One part of getting 100% is to catch every fish at every spot, but that won't even be hard because it's as if the game's rigged to not give you any duplicates until you've 100%ed a fishing spot. The key rewards for fishing that you can't get anywhere else are the Egg Memos. They're simply snippets of random trivia, as well as Eggman's perspective on current events. It's mostly a checklist of references and fanservice, but more - much more - on that later.
So, the game plays fine, has a decent smattering of content, but not all of it good. A lot of it is just simple stimulation - pass by a dash pad or spring, get distracted, and get taken on a brief rollercoaster ride with high speed and minimal input. But the freedom of movement is key here, and that freedom to just go anywhere and forcibly glitch yourself up anything is simply liberating, which is very Sonic. Using the grind rails and springs is fun and all, but the real big brain gaming is finding the way to sequence break these pathways and take the collectible by force. It's what made those first two islands, in all their generic appearance, a real good time in my experience.
Sorry, I specified "the first two islands" just then, didn't I? Yeah, that whole "freedom of movement" thing sadly gets shut down by the third island, where the game decides that Cyberspace didn't fill its mandatory 2D quota and forces almost every single one of the hundreds of platforming sections on the island to lock Sonic into a 2D perspective. Doing so shuts down most of the controls, including the combat system, and stops you from leaving without finding some gap in the platforms to break out of it. This horrible downgrade in quality hangs over the third island almost entirely, and a good chunk of the fifth island as well. I really hated my time with these 2D segments, and it made me less inclined to collect every memory token as I had for the first two islands (but it didn't stop me in the end). To make an open world and liberating Sonic, only to shackle him back to these confines so soon after really makes me wonder what the circumstances surrounding this decision was.
This gameplay loop culminates in finding each of the Chaos Emeralds on each island(save one). Once all Chaos Emeralds on an island are obtained, you get to challenge the island's boss. Said boss holds the last Emerald, and when you finally grab it, you get to engage the boss as Super Sonic. On paper, this is a really fun implementation of Super Sonic, as opposed to a reward for clearing (often annoying) special stages, or only showing up in the final battle. It's a shame that Super Sonic remains unusable in the open world, but it's not like you really need it. You sure need it for the boss fights though, because they're proper slugfests. They unfortunately aren't the most inspiring fights, though - despite the soundtrack's best efforts. Mashing X remains the most worthwhile tactic until the boss chooses to throw an attack that you can parry - only then is the major damage dealt. Some bosses unfortunately tend to spam attacks that Sonic needs to do a quick time event to avoid or deflect, and some of the things they throw at you are downright confusing in how to deal with it. The spectacle is appreciated, but I had more fun watching other people do these fights than playing them for myself. The ring limit may seem like a tricky thing to deal with, but seeing as you can gain infinite rings before the right by holding Y and running in circles, it's really no big deal.
And before I wrap this up, there are a few little weird breaks in the formula scattered throughout the main story. These range from herding children, to mowing the lawn(seriously), to playing an actual sh'mup(seriously). They're usually kinda clunky, but at least don't outstay their lack-of-welcome. Except pinball. Oh, I hope you like pinball.
Well, that's more than enough about the gameplay - it's got grand ideas but a confused execution of them in the back half of the game, which is pretty disappointing.
STORY
I won't get too into spoilers, but I can describe how the story made me feel - pretty unimpressed. The premise is as basic as it gets - Sonic and co. get stuck on a strange land, and everyone else gets imprisoned while Sonic alone has to save their asses, while guided by a mysterious voice telling them to kill all the big stompy gits. All while a weird cyber-ghost girl keeps wishing death upon Sonic to his face every 10 minutes. It just sets up the gameplay loop pretty directly, and you probably already guessed where it's going as you get to reading this part. There's nothing new or inventive here, and I can't say I'm even disappointed - the deeper a Sonic story tries to go, the more awful is usually is.
Where the real appeal and attention is directed is the writing itself. Ian Flynn is no new name to Sonic, but for his first game rodeo it's not a bad effort. Not a bad effort, but I have a handful of bones to pick nonetheless. Flynn generally has a good grasp on when to be sincere and when to throw in the goofs - an increasingly difficult challenge for most fiction these days, and there are a few stumbles, but I appreciated that not every serious moment was clobbered by a crowbar layered in irony. If you're particularly jaded on Sonic, it might even seem ridiculous how serious the story takes itself sometimes, but I appreciate that the risk was taken. However, the dialogue - particularly the more optional "side stories" - are also heavily, heavily weighed down with a thick layer of fanservice. You're telling me Sonic and friends touch down on Unreal Engine 4 default landscape, and they all immediately get reminded of virtually every single previous game? I can appreciate an attempt at real continuity, and no hate to anyone out there who ate it all up, but the references were laid on way too thick. I'd settle for maybe a third of the total random call-backs to past games that made their way into the script - and sure, you can also keep the incredibly heavy handed attempts to force Tangle and Sticks into canon - but they really stretch to try to bring up the older games and it really took me out of it after a while.
"Heavy-handed" can also be used to describe Flynn's attempts to wrangle the characterisation of Sonic and co. back in a direction resembling what the fans screaming at the writing since Colors wanted - and it's amusing how visibly hard Flynn is turning the wheel here. Tails in particular gets the blunt end of it, even blurting out "Then I'm wildly inconsistent!" verbatim when he brings up his infamous character regression in Forces, versus his heroism in Adventure. It manages to highlight the problems such moments created for these characters, without resorting to relentless irony and/or outright retconning. Eggman also gets a particularly unique character arc, though it's so disconnected from other media, and most of the game itself, that it's hard to really talk about without going full spoilers. I like where it could be going, I only hope that future games follow up on this change.
PRESENTATION
Of course, a story - and the rest of the game - rely strongly on how its presented. Frontiers, visually, is rather unremarkable. It's not an ugly game (or at least, normally - I may have had to turn all settings to minimum to get it to run) but there's still something almost double-A about this game, in spite of the price, runtime and Sonic's legacy. Lighting isn't optimal, and the environments go for a low-budget realism look that both clashes hard with Sonic as well as all the grind rails and springs thrown into them. The worlds may be fun to run through, but they're sure not pretty to look at. Even looking back at Sonic Unleashed - the last real AAA Sonic game - there's just so much more life in the animations and environments. Even going into Cyberspace, it's almost entirely comprised of regurgitated Generations/Forces assets. As such, every single level is either Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, or assorted stuff from Forces. It's pretty distracting given that every level is also ripped from an older game in terms of layout, so now all your old favourites have been Green-Hillified. It's just not a pretty game. Oh, and of course, how could I forget - the pop-in. It's been discussed to death, I've no idea why it's as bad and egregious as it is, and while it never felt like a game-breaker to me it's really not something you want in a full-price game. I don't know if it's an engine limitation, or if they dialled it back for Switch and didn't let the other platforms cook, but...it's bad. Raw, even.
Cutscene-wise, well, we've yet to surpass the Unleashed intro, unsurprisingly. The in-game cutscenes are rarely anything more than sub-standard animation and lip-flapping, though it looks passable whenever they need a serious action sequence. The pre-rendered stuff obviously looks better, but still uses the in-game assets for everything, so it's not a marked improvement. Enemy design is pretty original for the series, but almost all of them are the same shades of dark grey, so they're not especially striking.
It's really not the best the series has looked, at all, and either Sega need to give them more budget, they need a better art director, or they need to ditch the Hedgehog Engine and find a better solution.
MUSIC
I'm no music expert, I don't normally have much to add. That being said, I've seen complaints levelled at the more atmospheric soundtrack of the game. Honestly, I didn't have a problem with it at all - I found it just about suited the mood for almost every kind of scenario. I did, eventually, have to switch on the jukebox when I started grinding everything out - a post launch feature allowing you to collect legacy songs from the franchise and listen to them throughout regular exploration. The highlight are the vocal themes that play during bosses - much different than what I'm really used to from Sonic games lately, but most of which really stuck with me. Real good tunes.
CONCLUSION
I'm writing this about the main game, and I've not played The Final Horizon as of yet because I want to review that addendum separately. Ultimately, I think my perception of this game is coloured more positively than many due to a.) parts of this game appealing to my own desires from a Sonic title, and b.) playing it after every major update was out allowed me to experience a more complete and fixed-up product than what people who played at launch did. As it is, I think Sonic Frontiers is a perfectly OK and functional game - but with many caveats that stop me short of recommending it wholeheartedly. If you tried it, and didn't vibe with it, it ain't for you. And judging from this page, it definitely isn't for a lot of people. I'm fortunately to be able to appreciate this for what it is...but it doesn't stop me from being disappointed at what it isn't.
If I were rate this one on enjoyment alone, I'd probably be more inclined to give this one a 4/5. Critically, though...despite the risks taken, and the effort to differentiate itself from every prior Sonic title, it does just end up falling back into the middle of the road (a notoriously bad place for a hedgehog to be).
GAMEPLAY
The big selling point of Frontiers is the "Open-Zone" setup. Not an outright open world, but a set of 5 (well, 4 and a half) islands that Sonic can explore at will. Freedom of movement is the main appeal, and finally being able to do this in a Sonic game for what feels like the first time since Sonic Adventure really took me back. Picking a direction, blasting away at top speed and seeing where I end up, blissful. It's the baseline of what I want to feel from a Sonic game, and one that I rarely get to actually experience.
Of course, the manner of Sonic's controls have always been hotly debated by the ever-warring fandom. Sonic Team had the perfect solution: do it yourself! Sonic has a number of sliders to tune his handling to virtually whatever you'd like; regardless of whether it's actually remotely controllable or not. People who set his default running speed to maximum were gonna be in a rude awakening when they get to the parkour challenges, but they're completely free to do so. I had the luxury of playing close to a year post-launch, though; Sonic had harsh jump deceleration to start with, losing all momentum when jumping. Fortunately, Sonic Team listened to fans and let you turn that shit off - and it really, really helps.
So, you've got a Sonic you can tune to your liking, and huge areas to let him lose in. And yet, the game begins by almost immediately dumping you into a short, linear level with a completely different, fixed control scheme. Cyberspace levels are thrown into the experience to provide more traditional Sonic levels, and I appreciate and understand why; it's far easier to break them off into separate instances than build the levels naturally into the open world (which there is usually at least one instance of per island, so I'm glad they actually gave that a go). I also understand why the control scheme is different; the levels themselves rely a lot on scripted sequences that could potentially break if the player has set their acceleration outside of the accepted parameters. Unfortunately, while I understand the choices made, it doesn't stop Cyberspace from being a source of frustation, bordering on total misery. Sonic's turning circle becomes immense, and the levels themselves are automated to the point of failure, with the homing attack frequently failing to lock on when it needs to, and just generally being clumsy. One level even adds a drift mechanic that is completely embarassing in how much worse it is compared to previous games.
Moving away from Cyberspace, one other massive shakeup to the formula is the addition of a real, proper combat system. We haven't had such a thing since the dreadful Unleashed Werehog stages, and fortunately it's not nearly as limited. That said, it's no Devil May Cry either. Sonic can still homing attack to kill or notably injure the small fry, but larger enemies and minibosses will require much mashing of the X button. As you gain skill points, you can expand Sonic's reportoire to include dodge attacks, Rider Kicks, and just straight up shooting lasers from his shoes or something. There's enough variety in there to make it so that the varying enemy types may only be susceptible to specific moves, but admittedly there's also little stopping you from just persistently mashing X against at least half of the encounters.
Further adding to Sonic's moveset is the Cyloop. Holding Y will leave a trail behind Sonic, and allow you to draw circles, Pokémon Ranger-style, around enemies. This is often best suited to breaking an enemy's guard, but can also be used in the open world to activate events, solve puzzles, and (if you're persistent) gather a limitless supply of rings and other important resources. It's a neat trick, although I find it cuts out far too easily whenever you hit the slightest imperfection in the floor. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing such a move become a more permanent part of Sonic's skillset - where applicable.
At the heart of it, Sonic Frontiers is a big ol' collectathon. Each of the hundreds of grind rails and platforms that awkwardly pop into existence as soon as you're 10ft away lead to a small bounty of riches. Rings, obviously, still keep Sonic from dying to damage. However, depending on your ever-increasing stats, Sonic can both hold more maximum rings, as well as lose less of them when taking damage, more akin to a health bar. As well as that, you can find seeds that raise Sonic's attack and defense, skill points to unlock new moves, and memory tokens; needed to advance the plot. That's not forgetting about Emerald Vault keys, for getting the Chaos Emeralds, and Portal Gears from downed minibosses for playing the Cyberspace levels (the main source of the aforementioned Vault keys). That's a lot to collect, and sounds like a challenging, if time consuming gameplay structure. Of course, if you don't actually have any interest in playing the game, Big the Cat has you covered. Yes, if you collect enough purple coins, you can go fishing, and use your gains from that to just buy everything - everything - and theroetically max out Sonic's stats and get every mandatory collectible to beat the story within, say, an hour or so total of fishing. It's such a bizarre way to break the game that they might as well have admitted "Use this if you're a games journalist with a tight deadline!".
The fishing itself, by the way, is mindless - essentially a rhythm game without the rhythm. Cast the rod (doesn't matter where), wait for a bite (won't take more than 10 seconds), tap A, tap A again when the ring is within the red areas. Boom, fish. One part of getting 100% is to catch every fish at every spot, but that won't even be hard because it's as if the game's rigged to not give you any duplicates until you've 100%ed a fishing spot. The key rewards for fishing that you can't get anywhere else are the Egg Memos. They're simply snippets of random trivia, as well as Eggman's perspective on current events. It's mostly a checklist of references and fanservice, but more - much more - on that later.
So, the game plays fine, has a decent smattering of content, but not all of it good. A lot of it is just simple stimulation - pass by a dash pad or spring, get distracted, and get taken on a brief rollercoaster ride with high speed and minimal input. But the freedom of movement is key here, and that freedom to just go anywhere and forcibly glitch yourself up anything is simply liberating, which is very Sonic. Using the grind rails and springs is fun and all, but the real big brain gaming is finding the way to sequence break these pathways and take the collectible by force. It's what made those first two islands, in all their generic appearance, a real good time in my experience.
Sorry, I specified "the first two islands" just then, didn't I? Yeah, that whole "freedom of movement" thing sadly gets shut down by the third island, where the game decides that Cyberspace didn't fill its mandatory 2D quota and forces almost every single one of the hundreds of platforming sections on the island to lock Sonic into a 2D perspective. Doing so shuts down most of the controls, including the combat system, and stops you from leaving without finding some gap in the platforms to break out of it. This horrible downgrade in quality hangs over the third island almost entirely, and a good chunk of the fifth island as well. I really hated my time with these 2D segments, and it made me less inclined to collect every memory token as I had for the first two islands (but it didn't stop me in the end). To make an open world and liberating Sonic, only to shackle him back to these confines so soon after really makes me wonder what the circumstances surrounding this decision was.
This gameplay loop culminates in finding each of the Chaos Emeralds on each island(save one). Once all Chaos Emeralds on an island are obtained, you get to challenge the island's boss. Said boss holds the last Emerald, and when you finally grab it, you get to engage the boss as Super Sonic. On paper, this is a really fun implementation of Super Sonic, as opposed to a reward for clearing (often annoying) special stages, or only showing up in the final battle. It's a shame that Super Sonic remains unusable in the open world, but it's not like you really need it. You sure need it for the boss fights though, because they're proper slugfests. They unfortunately aren't the most inspiring fights, though - despite the soundtrack's best efforts. Mashing X remains the most worthwhile tactic until the boss chooses to throw an attack that you can parry - only then is the major damage dealt. Some bosses unfortunately tend to spam attacks that Sonic needs to do a quick time event to avoid or deflect, and some of the things they throw at you are downright confusing in how to deal with it. The spectacle is appreciated, but I had more fun watching other people do these fights than playing them for myself. The ring limit may seem like a tricky thing to deal with, but seeing as you can gain infinite rings before the right by holding Y and running in circles, it's really no big deal.
And before I wrap this up, there are a few little weird breaks in the formula scattered throughout the main story. These range from herding children, to mowing the lawn(seriously), to playing an actual sh'mup(seriously). They're usually kinda clunky, but at least don't outstay their lack-of-welcome. Except pinball. Oh, I hope you like pinball.
Well, that's more than enough about the gameplay - it's got grand ideas but a confused execution of them in the back half of the game, which is pretty disappointing.
STORY
I won't get too into spoilers, but I can describe how the story made me feel - pretty unimpressed. The premise is as basic as it gets - Sonic and co. get stuck on a strange land, and everyone else gets imprisoned while Sonic alone has to save their asses, while guided by a mysterious voice telling them to kill all the big stompy gits. All while a weird cyber-ghost girl keeps wishing death upon Sonic to his face every 10 minutes. It just sets up the gameplay loop pretty directly, and you probably already guessed where it's going as you get to reading this part. There's nothing new or inventive here, and I can't say I'm even disappointed - the deeper a Sonic story tries to go, the more awful is usually is.
Where the real appeal and attention is directed is the writing itself. Ian Flynn is no new name to Sonic, but for his first game rodeo it's not a bad effort. Not a bad effort, but I have a handful of bones to pick nonetheless. Flynn generally has a good grasp on when to be sincere and when to throw in the goofs - an increasingly difficult challenge for most fiction these days, and there are a few stumbles, but I appreciated that not every serious moment was clobbered by a crowbar layered in irony. If you're particularly jaded on Sonic, it might even seem ridiculous how serious the story takes itself sometimes, but I appreciate that the risk was taken. However, the dialogue - particularly the more optional "side stories" - are also heavily, heavily weighed down with a thick layer of fanservice. You're telling me Sonic and friends touch down on Unreal Engine 4 default landscape, and they all immediately get reminded of virtually every single previous game? I can appreciate an attempt at real continuity, and no hate to anyone out there who ate it all up, but the references were laid on way too thick. I'd settle for maybe a third of the total random call-backs to past games that made their way into the script - and sure, you can also keep the incredibly heavy handed attempts to force Tangle and Sticks into canon - but they really stretch to try to bring up the older games and it really took me out of it after a while.
"Heavy-handed" can also be used to describe Flynn's attempts to wrangle the characterisation of Sonic and co. back in a direction resembling what the fans screaming at the writing since Colors wanted - and it's amusing how visibly hard Flynn is turning the wheel here. Tails in particular gets the blunt end of it, even blurting out "Then I'm wildly inconsistent!" verbatim when he brings up his infamous character regression in Forces, versus his heroism in Adventure. It manages to highlight the problems such moments created for these characters, without resorting to relentless irony and/or outright retconning. Eggman also gets a particularly unique character arc, though it's so disconnected from other media, and most of the game itself, that it's hard to really talk about without going full spoilers. I like where it could be going, I only hope that future games follow up on this change.
PRESENTATION
Of course, a story - and the rest of the game - rely strongly on how its presented. Frontiers, visually, is rather unremarkable. It's not an ugly game (or at least, normally - I may have had to turn all settings to minimum to get it to run) but there's still something almost double-A about this game, in spite of the price, runtime and Sonic's legacy. Lighting isn't optimal, and the environments go for a low-budget realism look that both clashes hard with Sonic as well as all the grind rails and springs thrown into them. The worlds may be fun to run through, but they're sure not pretty to look at. Even looking back at Sonic Unleashed - the last real AAA Sonic game - there's just so much more life in the animations and environments. Even going into Cyberspace, it's almost entirely comprised of regurgitated Generations/Forces assets. As such, every single level is either Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, or assorted stuff from Forces. It's pretty distracting given that every level is also ripped from an older game in terms of layout, so now all your old favourites have been Green-Hillified. It's just not a pretty game. Oh, and of course, how could I forget - the pop-in. It's been discussed to death, I've no idea why it's as bad and egregious as it is, and while it never felt like a game-breaker to me it's really not something you want in a full-price game. I don't know if it's an engine limitation, or if they dialled it back for Switch and didn't let the other platforms cook, but...it's bad. Raw, even.
Cutscene-wise, well, we've yet to surpass the Unleashed intro, unsurprisingly. The in-game cutscenes are rarely anything more than sub-standard animation and lip-flapping, though it looks passable whenever they need a serious action sequence. The pre-rendered stuff obviously looks better, but still uses the in-game assets for everything, so it's not a marked improvement. Enemy design is pretty original for the series, but almost all of them are the same shades of dark grey, so they're not especially striking.
It's really not the best the series has looked, at all, and either Sega need to give them more budget, they need a better art director, or they need to ditch the Hedgehog Engine and find a better solution.
MUSIC
I'm no music expert, I don't normally have much to add. That being said, I've seen complaints levelled at the more atmospheric soundtrack of the game. Honestly, I didn't have a problem with it at all - I found it just about suited the mood for almost every kind of scenario. I did, eventually, have to switch on the jukebox when I started grinding everything out - a post launch feature allowing you to collect legacy songs from the franchise and listen to them throughout regular exploration. The highlight are the vocal themes that play during bosses - much different than what I'm really used to from Sonic games lately, but most of which really stuck with me. Real good tunes.
CONCLUSION
I'm writing this about the main game, and I've not played The Final Horizon as of yet because I want to review that addendum separately. Ultimately, I think my perception of this game is coloured more positively than many due to a.) parts of this game appealing to my own desires from a Sonic title, and b.) playing it after every major update was out allowed me to experience a more complete and fixed-up product than what people who played at launch did. As it is, I think Sonic Frontiers is a perfectly OK and functional game - but with many caveats that stop me short of recommending it wholeheartedly. If you tried it, and didn't vibe with it, it ain't for you. And judging from this page, it definitely isn't for a lot of people. I'm fortunately to be able to appreciate this for what it is...but it doesn't stop me from being disappointed at what it isn't.