With roughly 9 hours logged in Have a Nice Death, I think I'm going to put this down until the 1.0 release.

The game really shines in the first couple hours. The stunning, unique visuals that got me interested on first viewing only got better as I visited different worlds, met characters, and encountered new enemies. Combat feels really good and there seems to be a large variety of weapons (both scythe weapons and spells) to spice things up. The boss fights are awesome and have multiple variations of the same fight which was great.

Sadly, as I played on, it started to get more repetitive and grindy for my taste. While there are a large variety of enemies, they're all pretty much taken out by spamming the same attacks. So getting through floors (levels) are pretty bland and feel like filler between boss fights. Being a rogue-lite, you do slowly get more advantages as you continue to play. Unlocking these were initially super satisfying (elevator to first boss, start with more health drops) but I've gotten to the point where I'm having to do several runs to get to the next unlock and I'm nowhere near progressing. I've made it to the 3rd boss two or three times and died each time and getting back there to try again takes too long (15-20 minutes) for me to enjoy and feels a little to grindy/punishing for me.

This game is full of style and has a great foundation, but faulters in a couple places to where I have a hard time enjoying it a few hours in. Hopefully some of the rough edges get smoothed out and I'll be back for the official release.

TL;DR Review

Positives
+ Sonic's control & moveset
+ Open Zone Design
+ Story (Specifically, Sonic's characterization)
+ Accessibility/Customization Options
+ Music, especially at boss fights

Negatives
- Final act pacing issues
- Unpolished at times
- Scripted moments can interfere with open zone navigation

Neutral Notes
~ Lots of pop-in, but didn't really interfere with gameplay. Got used to it personally.
~ I played on easy/medium. 100% maps, all cyberspace challenges completed. Did not collect all tokens.
~ I did not fish or upgrade my levels via the elder coco or whoever.

In Depth
While I've heard Frontiers get compared to Breath of the Wild regularly, I think Super Mario Odyssey would be a much more apt comparison. Sonic's moveset has been expanded significantly to traverse several worlds where he completes puzzles and platforming challenges to collect keys and advance beyond the next progress gate. Sounds familiar.
The zones were fun to explore and traversing the area via platforming/grinding to collect tokens/keys is a super satisfying gameplay loop. And while the open zones have a good combination of both open world exploration and platforming sequencing, I did quite often get force from one to the other unwillingly. For example, when trying to reach a ledge I'd see a spring that I'd think I could use only to find when I jump on it I get locked to a 2D view where I can no longer move toward the ledge. I'd just have to complete the 2D sequence and then find a new way. This happened too often for my taste.

What Frontiers throws into the mix is several "Cyberspace" levels that feel like a more tradition Sonic level from a Generations or Colors. As well as combat which I honestly enjoyed more than expected. The abilities gradually unlocked via the skill tree provided a lot of variety that felt great to use once I got used to how the combat functioned.

The visuals are a mixed bag. While the environments and textures of the open zones aren't outright offensive, they're unremarkable. Definitely could have used some more variety in the later zones. With 2-3 of the 5 zones having a very similar look "forest" theme, I understand why general audience jump to Frontiers looking like it's copying the BotW asthetic. The prerendered cutscenes that take place to progress the story are terrific and have some of the best moments for these characters in the series. However, the in game cutscenes where Sonic has brief moments of diaglouge with an NPC are super stiff and take me out of the story.

The story, overall, I really enjoyed. Like I said, some of these characters have their best moments here. And it was really cool to see a different side of Eggman. The final act did drudge on for me a bit. There was a great moment in the story at the end of the 4th zone that left me amped and motivated. I was ready to rip through whatever the final zone through at me. I was very surprised that the final zone was the same as the first 3 zones. Not only that, it was bigger and longer and I had another 5 hours before the real ending. I think if that final zone had been the smallest and been an accelerated/denser version of the first 3 zones, I would have loved it.

Couple smaller notes - Boss fights were pretty good. I found a couple of them to be particularly annoying, but the killer music during these encounters more than compensated for that. And then the customization in Frontiers is great. From the ability to turn on/off specific components of the HUD (personally I turned off the level display and speedometer), to straight up changing Sonic's starting speed and acceleration. Great options to have to allow newer players and/or veterans to tune the game to whatever feels best.

All in all, what an outing for the Blue Blur. I think if Sonic Team continues to iterate on this gameplay formula/design, they've create a really strong foundation with Frontiers. Hopefully nowhere to go but up!

Crypt of the Necromancer meets Doom. Clever and, in theory, sounds like a recipe for chaotic fun. And while there are some high highs, the lows drag the entire experience down significantly.

Let's start right off with the positives. First off, the soundtrack! Let's face it - if the soundtrack to this music-shooter sucked, the game would be DOA. Fortunately, it doesn't. The soundtrack is pretty decent and even has a couple standouts that have led to me looking up some of these artists other work on Spotify (the Alissa White-Gluz track being my personal favorite). But there are a couple too many songs that I forget entirely after finishing the level.

That cover the music component of this music-shooter, so how's the shooter? Eh, it's pretty alright. For a game that feels like it draws some aesthetic inspiration from Doom (I could be entirely wrong there), I wish it had taken some of the weapon variety as well. The weapons are pretty generic and I just flat out disliked 1 or 2 (demon boomerang things? Not for me), which is significant when there's only 4 real weapon options. All that said, when the game hits a groove and you hit a flow-state of killing demons all around you to the rhythm of the song, it feels amazing. If I felt that way through the entire game, easy 5 star game right there.

So where does Metal Hellsinger fall short? I weirdly didn't care for the level structure. Spawn, walk to an arena of enemies, kill a ton of enemies, walk to the next arena of enemies, repeat. Makes every level feel the same without a lot of variety. And these levels are long! Levels lasted anywhere from 15 minutes (pretty okay) to 30 minutes (not ideal) with no points where you can save you progress in the level. The fact that you're hearing the same 5 minute song repeat over and over doesn't help either. And then every level ends with the same boss battle with a bit of variation for each level. It was a fun fight the first encounter but by rematch 3 or 4 I was pretty done.

In addition to the structure issues, I had a fair amount of bugs/glitches. Mostly relating to the multiplier - either it would totally freeze and wouldn't increase or decrease as I killed enemies or it would continue to drop as I killed enemies. Maybe I misunderstood a mechanic but from what I can tell neither of these things are meant to happen.

Finally, the issue that led to me deciding to leave the game unfinished - The boss will sometimes dematerialize, leave you to kill standard enemies, and then rematerialize in a different location. In my playthrough of the 6th level, the boss dematerialized, I killed all the enemies, the boss came back to the arena... and then didn't rematerialize. It just floated there remaining as the glimmering energy thing. It even said the dialogue that it says when it comes back to fight. So 20 minutes into this level, I was stuck at an unbeatable boss that I couldn't interact with. So I think I'm done, not super interested in having to replay something I just played.

Oh man, and those shield demons suck. Like they can go to hell... again. (So sorry, thanks for reading)