Sonic is back and this time it's with a brand new style of game that could be the perfect foundation for the future of 3D Sonic games.
Frontier approaches its game design with something they are calling "Open Zone" gameplay. The game is made up of multiple large and open areas, each full of items to collect, enemies to defeat, a fishing spot, story to uncover, and cyber space levels to beat. Everything you do in these open zone areas builds to collecting the 7 Chaos Emeralds to tackle an epic Titan fight before traversing to the next Zone and repeating the process. Watching the pre release trailers, I wasn't too sure about how much this would grip me as the tasks looked kinda boring but playing the game it's fantastic. There's always something grabbing your attention to keep you moving and yeah the tasks for expanding the map aren't the most exciting things ever but they're so quick to do that they're like fun bitsize challenges.
Now having these large areas are fine and all but how does Sonic control in such open environments? Well Sega have taken the opportunity to refine the boost style of Sonic to allow players even greater control. There's now options to adjust Sonic's speed, turning, control, etc to allow the widest range of players possible to find a style of Sonic they can learn how to play. On top of this Sega have finally learned not to shove everything on a single button. Jumping is one button while a separate button is used for homing attacks and even the returning lightspeed ring dash now requires a click on the left stick. What this means is that boost style Sonic has never controlled better and having such large areas to play about in allows you to get used to high speeds he can attain and get used to the way he'll flip of ramps and stuff.
Another big worry I had about this game was the combat slowing things down with enemies taking too long to beat but thankfully my fears were put to rest by the best combat in a Sonic game ever. It starts off a bit slow but with levelling up and learning skills, Sonic is soon dashing all over the place, spinning and kicking like a madman and taking down regular enemies with such fluid ease. Larger enemies act as boss fights and each come with such an epic scale to them and unique ways to defeating them. These fights are incredible as you see Sonic running up these colossal enemies and wailing at their weak points before eventually taking them down. Defeating these enemies gives you the gears required to get into the cyberspace levels.
Cyberspace is probably the weakest point of the game for me. These play like regular boost style 3D Sonic stages and they are a lot of fun but come with a couple of minor issues. They only use 4 level themes: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, and a City style. It's clearly reused assets from Generations which I can forgive due to the amount of work they definitely needed to have put into the rest of the game. The other issue with them is that they are reused level layouts from older games, like Generations Green Hill and Chemical Plant which is a little frustrating after how much those have been used but on the other end of appeasing nostalgia, some of these levels are from Sonic Adventure 2, like Green Forest and Metal Harbor AND THAT IS SO COOL AFTER SO LONG. It's playing these levels that you can see how much progress Sega have made with how Sonic controls. Being able to chain homing attacks and lightspeed dashes with such ease and no risk of Sonic doing the wrong move is so nice. The levels are short and sweet and have 4 goals to achieve in each one so you'll be addicted to trying to get S ranks in every single one. Issues with reused stuff aside, I have not had so much fun in trying to get S rank in a Sonic game since Adventure 2 and I love that. There's a lot of potential here if Sega can get original style level designs and assets in play for the next game.
So yeah, these cyberspace levels grant you the keys required to unlock Chaos Emeralds and the end of each Zone sees Sonic take on a MASSIVE TITAN. The 7th Emerald is held by the Titan and each fight starts with regular Sonic attempting to climb up these massive things in order to grab the last emerald and become Super Sonic so the true fight can begin. AND THIS IS WHEN THE EPICNESS FLIES OFF THE SCALE!!! IN KICKS THE HEAVIEST BUTTROCK SONIC HAS EVER HAD AS SUPER SONIC CLASHES WITH THE TITAN. Super Sonic has to zip around dodging attacks and finding an opening to attack the Titan but my gosh, they have never captured the true flair of Super Sonic until this game. You can see how much fun Sonic is having in this form, the confidence he oozes because he knows he's invincible for a limited time, the strength he has as counters attacks and flings these giant Titans about the place. These are by far the best boss fights Sonic has ever had and I love them.
So yeah the bulk of the gameplay is excellent but how about that story? It's something that has taken a nosedive in quality since around Colours where everything was a little too lighthearted and juvenile while Forces went in the complete opposite direction and took things so far into edgy territory that it was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Well Frontiers brings in Ian Flynn from the Archie Comics and my gosh IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE ANYONE HAS UNDERSTOOD THESE CHARACTERS TO THIS LEVEL. There is a perfect balance struck between seriousness and lightheartedness. Characters feel like they have their growth back, seeing the Sonic and Knuckles dynamic back to how it should be of friendly rivalry instead of Knuckles being an airhead. The attempt to tie together lore from the whole series, including the Mega Drive and Dreamcast era along with the recent games is incredible. Seeing references to stuff from Sonic 1/2/3, Adventure 1 and 2, Forces, Lost World and so much more, it's just like wow, they finally have someone who understands the series, who understands the characters, and who is capable of bringing everything together. And yeah, the new story stuff is cool too as we go on a journey to discover more about the Chaos Emeralds themselves as well as see some great emotional developments occur with characters like Eggman and his new AI character Sage. I won't spoil any specifics but if you're a long time fan of the series then you will love what they did with the story here.
There's one other neat thing to discuss about the game. They found a great way to bring Big back with a fishing minigame that is a fun way to break up the exploration gameplay.
As for technical performance, I chose to play this on Switch and yeah, it has its issues with pop in, very rough textures and areas that clearly scaled back a lot but I think they still managed to pull off a largely enjoyable experience if Switch is your only console. The framerate sticks around 30fps and there's definitely a lot worse I have played on the Switch in a technical sense. I would highly recommend getting the game on PS5 or Series X as it looks so much better there, has 60fps as an option and yeah while there is still some pop in issues, I think that was always gonna be an issue with how fast Sonic moves in these kinds of environments. I appreciate the ambition even if the technology couldn't quite keep up.
So yeah, that's Sonic Frontiers. An excellent first step into a new direction for the blue hedgehog and one I hope Sega takes the time to build off because there is a fantastic foundation there for the future of 3D Sonic games. It's so nice seeing Sega's ambition with the series return and it actually nailing most aspects on the first attempt. The future is bright Sonic fans!
Frontier approaches its game design with something they are calling "Open Zone" gameplay. The game is made up of multiple large and open areas, each full of items to collect, enemies to defeat, a fishing spot, story to uncover, and cyber space levels to beat. Everything you do in these open zone areas builds to collecting the 7 Chaos Emeralds to tackle an epic Titan fight before traversing to the next Zone and repeating the process. Watching the pre release trailers, I wasn't too sure about how much this would grip me as the tasks looked kinda boring but playing the game it's fantastic. There's always something grabbing your attention to keep you moving and yeah the tasks for expanding the map aren't the most exciting things ever but they're so quick to do that they're like fun bitsize challenges.
Now having these large areas are fine and all but how does Sonic control in such open environments? Well Sega have taken the opportunity to refine the boost style of Sonic to allow players even greater control. There's now options to adjust Sonic's speed, turning, control, etc to allow the widest range of players possible to find a style of Sonic they can learn how to play. On top of this Sega have finally learned not to shove everything on a single button. Jumping is one button while a separate button is used for homing attacks and even the returning lightspeed ring dash now requires a click on the left stick. What this means is that boost style Sonic has never controlled better and having such large areas to play about in allows you to get used to high speeds he can attain and get used to the way he'll flip of ramps and stuff.
Another big worry I had about this game was the combat slowing things down with enemies taking too long to beat but thankfully my fears were put to rest by the best combat in a Sonic game ever. It starts off a bit slow but with levelling up and learning skills, Sonic is soon dashing all over the place, spinning and kicking like a madman and taking down regular enemies with such fluid ease. Larger enemies act as boss fights and each come with such an epic scale to them and unique ways to defeating them. These fights are incredible as you see Sonic running up these colossal enemies and wailing at their weak points before eventually taking them down. Defeating these enemies gives you the gears required to get into the cyberspace levels.
Cyberspace is probably the weakest point of the game for me. These play like regular boost style 3D Sonic stages and they are a lot of fun but come with a couple of minor issues. They only use 4 level themes: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, and a City style. It's clearly reused assets from Generations which I can forgive due to the amount of work they definitely needed to have put into the rest of the game. The other issue with them is that they are reused level layouts from older games, like Generations Green Hill and Chemical Plant which is a little frustrating after how much those have been used but on the other end of appeasing nostalgia, some of these levels are from Sonic Adventure 2, like Green Forest and Metal Harbor AND THAT IS SO COOL AFTER SO LONG. It's playing these levels that you can see how much progress Sega have made with how Sonic controls. Being able to chain homing attacks and lightspeed dashes with such ease and no risk of Sonic doing the wrong move is so nice. The levels are short and sweet and have 4 goals to achieve in each one so you'll be addicted to trying to get S ranks in every single one. Issues with reused stuff aside, I have not had so much fun in trying to get S rank in a Sonic game since Adventure 2 and I love that. There's a lot of potential here if Sega can get original style level designs and assets in play for the next game.
So yeah, these cyberspace levels grant you the keys required to unlock Chaos Emeralds and the end of each Zone sees Sonic take on a MASSIVE TITAN. The 7th Emerald is held by the Titan and each fight starts with regular Sonic attempting to climb up these massive things in order to grab the last emerald and become Super Sonic so the true fight can begin. AND THIS IS WHEN THE EPICNESS FLIES OFF THE SCALE!!! IN KICKS THE HEAVIEST BUTTROCK SONIC HAS EVER HAD AS SUPER SONIC CLASHES WITH THE TITAN. Super Sonic has to zip around dodging attacks and finding an opening to attack the Titan but my gosh, they have never captured the true flair of Super Sonic until this game. You can see how much fun Sonic is having in this form, the confidence he oozes because he knows he's invincible for a limited time, the strength he has as counters attacks and flings these giant Titans about the place. These are by far the best boss fights Sonic has ever had and I love them.
So yeah the bulk of the gameplay is excellent but how about that story? It's something that has taken a nosedive in quality since around Colours where everything was a little too lighthearted and juvenile while Forces went in the complete opposite direction and took things so far into edgy territory that it was hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Well Frontiers brings in Ian Flynn from the Archie Comics and my gosh IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE ANYONE HAS UNDERSTOOD THESE CHARACTERS TO THIS LEVEL. There is a perfect balance struck between seriousness and lightheartedness. Characters feel like they have their growth back, seeing the Sonic and Knuckles dynamic back to how it should be of friendly rivalry instead of Knuckles being an airhead. The attempt to tie together lore from the whole series, including the Mega Drive and Dreamcast era along with the recent games is incredible. Seeing references to stuff from Sonic 1/2/3, Adventure 1 and 2, Forces, Lost World and so much more, it's just like wow, they finally have someone who understands the series, who understands the characters, and who is capable of bringing everything together. And yeah, the new story stuff is cool too as we go on a journey to discover more about the Chaos Emeralds themselves as well as see some great emotional developments occur with characters like Eggman and his new AI character Sage. I won't spoil any specifics but if you're a long time fan of the series then you will love what they did with the story here.
There's one other neat thing to discuss about the game. They found a great way to bring Big back with a fishing minigame that is a fun way to break up the exploration gameplay.
As for technical performance, I chose to play this on Switch and yeah, it has its issues with pop in, very rough textures and areas that clearly scaled back a lot but I think they still managed to pull off a largely enjoyable experience if Switch is your only console. The framerate sticks around 30fps and there's definitely a lot worse I have played on the Switch in a technical sense. I would highly recommend getting the game on PS5 or Series X as it looks so much better there, has 60fps as an option and yeah while there is still some pop in issues, I think that was always gonna be an issue with how fast Sonic moves in these kinds of environments. I appreciate the ambition even if the technology couldn't quite keep up.
So yeah, that's Sonic Frontiers. An excellent first step into a new direction for the blue hedgehog and one I hope Sega takes the time to build off because there is a fantastic foundation there for the future of 3D Sonic games. It's so nice seeing Sega's ambition with the series return and it actually nailing most aspects on the first attempt. The future is bright Sonic fans!
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brockreiher
1 year ago