For most the first island I was pretty harsh on the game, but ultimately I guess all you've gotta do is give me one of them sweet Super Sonic vocal tracks and I'll change sides. I had to pretty much immediately go and slap on a physics mod since by this point I've no patience left for how Sonic Team somehow makes each game control worse than the last one, but with that one fix in place Frontiers became fantastic. It continually climbed in quality, and the longer I spent playing the higher my enjoyment began to cascade. The engine kinda sucks since this is by far the worst pop-in I've ever seen in a video game (in previous Modern Sonic games the challenge was spotting obstacles at blistering speeds - this time the challenge is that they only load once you've run past them lol), but I have warmed up to the game's more open-ended gameplay direction. Open world Sonic fangames always look kinda boring in Let's Play clips, but are a totally different story when being the one in control, and that observation applies to Frontiers too. For the most part I've always believed 3D Sonic can only work in tightly-constructed corridors, but the open world is far more fluent than I'd anticipated. Despite seeming barren in the trailers, it was super fun to roam through. Although there's still an overuse of automation in the level design, it's also pretty flexible with some genuine speed traps/challenges involved. I resisted the idea of combat in a Sonic game at first but that does integrate pretty well too. Everything in the overworld is designed to be some kind of minigame so it's pretty fun just running around and doing things as Sonic the Hedgehog.

And the story presentation - fantastic! The past decade has seen the Sonic games sorta giving into peer-pressure and no longer taking themselves seriously, but Frontiers is a great return to form with a sombre narrative detailing some shocking lore snippets. A 'Coming of the Chaos Emeralds' style event established in the main canon and Eggman getting sentimental over an AI daughter? That's Archie Sonic as heck and I loved it. Never thought I'd see the day a mainline game would tackle such concepts. We've been wanting Flynn to have a hand in the game writing for so long and you could definitely feel his effect in Frontiers, which was great. The dialogue was at times a bit too obvious in its meta-interactions, but it was nonetheless appreciated how the game capitalised on every chance it had to respond to long-standing 2010s Sonic criticism. Such as Knux reaffirming that "Super Knuckles" is still a thing, Tails totally rejecting his Forces' characterisation, and newly confirming characters like Tangle and Sticks for the main canon. The Divergence prologue seemingly hints that Tikal and Chaos are still present to guard the Master Emerald whenever Knuckles has to leave the altar, which has always been one of the coolest minor setting elements and/or vague headcanons.