Pokémon goes open-world! You can travel through most of the world seamlessly, and the creatures are visible everywhere. This is the actualization of my childhood dream! But after playing Violet, I had a realization: open-world Pokémon doesn’t work. At least, it won’t work with series gameplay as-is unless the franchise goes through major overhauls.

The incompatibility arises from the menu-based combat. Beyond the rock-paper-scissors of types, fighting is entirely stats-based. Unlike other open RPGs, you can’t brute-force much higher-leveled enemies with execution skill, making open-world freedom an illusion. Twenty level jumps from stepping in the “wrong” direction and level caps deciding which Pokémon are usable don’t help, making the experience feel more railroaded. Deviations from the implied path resulting in temporary satisfaction from increased difficulty lead to the tediousness of steamrolling skipped areas. In other open RPGs this is mitigated with gameplay more involved than using a menu to spam your most effective attack.

Battling is ultimately the vehicle for the real goals: completing the story and/or the Pokédex collect-a-thon, both of which see improvements in Gen 9. The story is composed of three separate plots that eventually converge into one, and it’s generally solid. It has some good characters and emotional beats, and even characters with only five minutes of screen time feel distinct. Starfall Street is bizarre in how woefully inept it makes the school staff look, though. Pokédex hunting feels better than ever without random encounters, but some species placements feel off. Version exclusives will never not feel like a cash grab to convince players to buy both games.

Systems are a mixed bag. Terastallization is a cool new gimmick affecting Pokémon typing that can be used offensively to boost attack damage or defensively to change resistances or gain specific passives (such as Grass to resist Spore). While it’s a cool mechanic competitively (VGC), the long, unskippable animation makes it tedious and unusable for the quick battles in solo play. TMs were hit with a huge downgrade, abandoning infinite use in favor of a shoehorned crafting system in yet another series that didn’t need one. Raids are 90% waiting for text and animations, and rewarded Pokémon rarely have useful tera types.

The presentation is beyond awful. If you’ve heard anything about the game, it’s how plagued with technical issues it is, and none of it is exaggeration. Environments are so bland they’re almost painful to look at. The music feels really underbaked with bland area themes and battle themes that sound poorly mixed, grating, or unfinished. Good tracks are saved for the endgame, but they only encompass a small part of the total runtime. Overall, Gen 9 is unfinished in many areas which is disappointing because the main draws of Pokémon (story and collecting) saw huge upgrades. Its success despite glaring issues doesn’t inspire much confidence in the future of the series.

If you’ve played the first two hours, you’ve played the whole game. It consists of repetition upon repetition of the same copy-pasted on-rails mechanics in slightly different arrangements broken up by running straight lines through uninspired overworlds, and there’s a refusal to develop mechanics beyond their barest essentials. Terminals give access to short traditional-style levels varying wildly in quality with some being direct copies from previous games.

Progression systems feel poorly thought-out. There's a pointless and quickly completed skill tree lacking any meaningful decision-making. Reaching max ring capacity gives Sonic a speed boost so raising the cap feels counterintuitive. Fishing for twenty minutes increases your stats faster than any number of items you gather from the overworld throughout the whole game. Ultimately, these systems feel tacked on to spread items around the world and justify the open-zone format.

Combat isn't great either. Cycloop (drawing circles around enemies) is a cool interpretation of Sonic's running for combat, but fighting enemies is essentially watching cutscenes of long special attack animations. The best encounters are more puzzle-oriented ones that barely involve combat. Bosses often focus too much on spectacle with too little interaction. For one, you just hold the parry button (there's no timing element) until the boss lets you damage it.

The soundtrack is great and the story is good, though. From the orchestral melodies developing with story progression, the drum and bass jams of the cyberspace levels, and the screaming vocals in boss fights, there's tons of variety. The story takes an introspective approach in which characters examine their pasts and presents and look to the future. It’s simple and heartfelt with payoff for longtime fans, but those new to the series may feel alienated. I do think the ending could’ve used just a little more work, however.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed in Sonic Frontiers. It was my first Sonic game in many years, and there was a novelty in playing again at first. The most fun I had was using momentum to scale up some cliffsides. I think a shift away from the boring cookie-cutter on-rails sequences and towards more organic interactions with unique and varied terrain would be a big step in the right direction for the next iteration of open world Sonic.

The level design is varied and creative at times, there's plenty of different optional objectives to round out each level, and there's voluntary difficulty in meeting target times for the bite-sized challenges scattered around. Mouthful mode makes up for the limited number of copy abilities by being an extension of the power-up system with some objects giving Kirby atypical actions.

Not everything made a smooth transition to 3D, though. Some copy abilities felt too oversimplified, and some just do not feel as good as others in a 3D environment. The simplicity of Kirby's shape makes his direction hard to gauge, making quick aiming of abilities difficult. This mostly shows in the time attack challenges where one miss can mean not meeting the time.

Overall, I was impressed by the game after the demo left a bad taste. For better and for worse, it's a direct translation of Kirby into 3D. It's a little derivative, but after how uninspired Star Allies was this game restored my faith in the series and builds a promising foundation for Kirby's future.