Sonic Frontiers (PC/PS4/PS5/XbOne/XbSeries/Switch, 2022) is Actually Really Damn Good.

 NOTE: This review is part of a retrospective of the Sonic franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective

In addition, this review also contains spoilers for a recently released game

Looks like my retrospective hasn’t quite ended yet.

PART 1: Development, Background, Pre-Launch

It’s safe to say that when Sonic Forces released in 2017, it… didn’t exactly have the brightest reception. While it didn’t get as scathing of a reception as Sonic 06 or Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, especially as I have seen some people come out and talk about enjoying it recently (including myself who did an 18 page review of it just a few months ago), it wasn’t exactly the success the franchise needed. Even while the game has its fans, it definitely has its share of vocal detractors as well, especially among the part of the fanbase who grew up with the darker, more serious storytelling of the 2000’s games who became disillusioned by the direction of the series since Colors released in 2010.

I bring this up because, with Forces’ middling reception in mind, it seems that Sonic Team as a whole wanted to shoot for a new direction for the series to go in, especially as Kishimoto in particular noted that the ‘Unleashed’ style of gameplay wasn’t exactly going to satisfy fans on it’s own without room to build upon it.

A common criticism with Forces in particular was the short length and shallow level design, which Sonic Team noted and approached from the opposite direction - moving away from the more linear gameplay commonly used in previous 3D Sonic games and building a large, open space built with Sonic’s core gameplay and movement in mind. The open zones would be built with a lot of stuff to do, including entry points to more traditional ‘Boost’ stages, incorporation of platforming into the open zones, and major use of combat with Sonic having a new kit of abilities to take down enemies and bosses in these zones.

Supposedly the game was meant for a 2021 release to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Sonic franchise, but ended up being pushed back to 2022 because some dumbass ate a bat and caused a global pandemic (okay i know that rumor isn’t true but i wanted to attempt being funny), leading to many companies, including Sega and Sonic Team, to shift to remote work.

The game was teased in Sonic Central in May 2021, in the same show where Sonic Colors Ultimate was officially announced and Sonic Origins was discussed for the first time. But even before then, there were rumors and ‘leaks’ about what the next Sonic would be like. Supposedly, Sega/Sonic Team were inviting individuals to playtest early builds of the game and provide them with feedback, and I believe this is where some of these stemmed from.

While I usually take leaks and rumors with a grain of salt, especially ones that come from 4chan, there was one post about a new Sonic game coming out titled ‘Sonic Rangers’ that ended up getting a lot of information correct - that this next new Sonic game would be an open world game similar to Breath of the Wild with Unleashed/Generations-style boost levels and a combat system and skill tree. It’s very likely that Sonic Rangers was an early name chosen though, and at The Game Awards 2021, the new Sonic game was revealed to be called ‘Sonic Frontiers’.

Just the idea of a new Sonic title was enough to get me excited, although I will say that was a bit weary. From all the gameplay information that was received up to that point, it really seemed like this was going to be an open world Sonic game, and this concept left me sort of mixed. 

Truth be told, I’ve never really been a fan of open world games - and that includes titles like Breath of the Wild and The Witcher 3. Especially as someone who likes a degree of linearity in games just to know where I’m supposed to go, I feel like my problem with a lot of open world games is that they sort of often fall into the trap of feeling like giant spaces with a little going on in the spaces where you’re supposed to go, on top of many open world games not really giving you many movement options to traverse said worlds. Is it a skill issue? Probably, but the point is I’ve always had trouble getting into these kinds of games, and it doesn’t help that they’ve become extremely commonplace in the AAA industry and that many major game companies seem to think that having a ‘bigger’ world inherently means a ‘better’ world.

That being said, from the sounds of it Sonic Frontiers didn’t really come off to me necessarily as a Breath of the Wild sort of game. If anything, when looking at the general gameplay information from both leaks and official sources, my first thought was actually more akin to Bowser’s Fury - which at the time had recently come out bundled with the Switch port of Super Mario 3D World, consisting of a bunch of platforming challenges and short Mario levels encompassed inside a more open environment. That game I actually did enjoy, and my expectation was that Sonic Frontiers was going to be of a similar formula to that, just with more Sonic-oriented design.

Regardless, however, I kept my expectations of Sonic Frontiers at a more moderate level, especially compared to Forces in the lead up to its release. That being said, when the first set of gameplay footage from the game came out from IGN, I was left feeling… concerned. The game seemed really unpolished, and to some extent it did seem like it was going to fall more in line with the former expectation of being an open world game feeling like a giant hub of ‘nothing’. It really didn’t seem like what the Sonic series needed after the mixed reception of Forces.

But as we got closer to Sonic Frontiers’ release, the game was actually looking… better. Apparently IGN was using an earlier build of Sonic Frontiers which really didn’t give a good first impression, but as more gameplay footage came out from other sources, the game was actually looking a lot better than what IGN had initially came out of the gate with. Early demos of the game were being made available at several game shows, and the reception was generally looking pretty positive.

In a way, my opinion of Sonic Frontiers going into its release sort of went the opposite way of my opinion of Sonic Forces - which, sure, I still liked, but I still went into it expecting the next best Sonic game only to be sort of underwhelmed, whereas Sonic Frontiers was a game I went in with more mixed expectations and… well, you’ll see my opinion here.

On November 8, 2022, Sonic Frontiers finally released to generally positive reception especially from the Sonic fanbase. Critics were a little more mixed on it, but it was still a massive step above Sonic Forces’ reception. Regardless, some fans even have taken to calling it one of if not the best Sonic game yet.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to play it right away - I did preorder the game from GameStop so I could get it with the steelbook case but for some reason the game didn’t get delivered until 3 days after it came out and man… that was a stressful few days (though it probably didn’t help that the midterm elections were on the same day Sonic Frontiers released). But I did end up getting the game, and although it took me a little while to beat it due to my work schedule, I’m now here to talk about my thoughts and opinions for the last time in this retrospective. At least until another major Sonic game releases.

PART 2: Story

To give a synopsis like I usually do, Sonic, Tails, and Amy are flying to the Starfall Islands, where Eggman is attempting to steal technological secrets kept by ‘the Ancients’ - a race of aliens who fled to Earth after being destroyed by ‘The End’. In this process, the three of them are sucked into a wormhole that leaves Sonic in ‘Cyber Space’, which he manages to escape but is then tasked with finding the Chaos Emeralds by an unknown entity across all the different islands - where he finds Amy, Knuckles, and Tails across the first three respectively.

Along the way, Sonic comes across a human-like girl named ‘Sage’, who appears to be working with Eggman and trying to get him out of Cyber Space, while cautioning Sonic to leave and to not destroy the titans. As Sonic continues to explore the islands, he comes across more secrets about the Ancients’ history and technology, which is unveiled as he saves his friends enclosed in Sage’s ‘prisons’.

One big thing to note here is that Ian Flynn was brought on to write Sonic Frontiers after Takashi Iizuka read some of his work in the IDW comics and felt that he understood the Sonic cast well. This comes after the past decade with Ken Pontac and Warren Graff writing the Sonic stories since Colors to not very good reception, especially in Lost World and Forces.

Now, I’ve never really read the IDW comics. It’s definitely been something I’ve been meaning to get to, but I just have yet to get around to it. Suffice to say that I’m not too familiar with Ian Flynn’s work and writing so in a way this is my first real exposure to his writing.

Another point to make here is that, if you’ve read many of my previous Sonic retrospective blogs, you may know that Sonic stories have never really been anything I’ve taken too seriously, for lack of a better word. In most cases I can usually just enjoy seeing the characters do cool things and say funny stuff, but while this may be a somewhat controversial statement, I never really felt like storytelling was really any of the games’ particular strong suit. 

Sonic has always been a series I’ve gone to for gameplay, level design and characters more than anything, and while I can appreciate a good Sonic story, I can’t really say I’ve ever really felt strongly about Sonic game stories in particular. 

Obviously the Pontaff era was a massive mixed bag - I think Colors and Generations were… fine for what they were going for although pretty shallow in terms of writing. Forces I felt had a good concept and strong characterization for Sonic and Shadow, but the rest of the cast was underutilized at best and outright bastardized at worst (looking at you, Tails). Lost World though didn’t have anything going for it except for maybe Eggman’s characterization, having some of the worst dialogue in the franchise and an extremely confusing tone, making it one of the weakest Sonic stories period.

But even with those aside, I can’t really say I cared much for the mid-late 2000’s game stories either. Shadow and 06’s stories are both a complete, confusing mess, with weird dialogue and several plot holes. Unleashed’s story does have a strong beginning and end, but kind of goes nowhere in the middle, in some cases introducing good ideas for plot points that never really feel well fleshed out (particularly the scene with Amy thinking she confused Sonic’s Werehog form with someone else).

And yes, I don’t really care for the Storybook games’ writing either - both of which just kind of feel like they play up too much of Sonic’s campy ‘shonen’ hero to the point where he sort of feels one note outside of a few cutscenes with Shahra and Excalibur, and otherwise don’t exactly do much for me below the surface level.

Even the Adventure games, which I consider to be the best stories of the Sonic games, aren’t really anything I would call amazing when it comes to video game stories in general. Both of them offer really good character development, worldbuilding and lore, but do suffer from extremely outdated presentation and some pretty blatant ‘fill in the gaps’ plot points especially in Adventure 2’s case.

So, after going on that whole spiel, you really got to take my word when I say that I really enjoyed Sonic Frontiers’ story, and would go as far as to call it the best Sonic game story period, and frankly have further encouraged me to look into reading the IDW comics. 

All around this was definitely the most I’ve felt invested in a Sonic game story - there’s a lot of really good worldbuilding and lore here with the Koco, Ancients and overall history of the islands with the information that comes out as you further explore the game and its five islands, plus there are ties to Sonic Adventure 1 with the master emerald and Chaos with the race of ‘Ancients’ themselves. This is basically to say that the game does a lot of good worldbuilding and lore that even plays up on some of the series’ established continuity from all the way back to Adventure 1. Plus, the whole ‘mystery’ of the islands and discovering all the information about the Ancients only further encouraged me to keep going through the game.

And that’s really only the cherry on top to me as when it comes to the characters in particular… I really gotta say this game nails it. The cast is still rather limited in terms of who makes an appearance, but it definitely feels like the ones who do appear play a pretty major part in the plot and even have their own story arcs throughout the plot based around their interactions with the Kocos.

Sonic’s characterization in particular nails a balance of his more heroic side with his more snarky side. He’s still the little asshole I’ve known him for, but he also shows concern for his friends and knows to take the situation seriously when he needs to. This has always been along the lines of how I’ve viewed Sonic’s character since I got into the franchise and it really feels like this game pretty much nailed it.

Amy and Knuckles also feel characterized well in this regard. Amy, like Sonic, feels like a good balance of her character historically, similar to that of her Adventure persona with the more ‘mature’ side from Boom and the 2010’s games, and I really like how her character is used to explore the theme and concept of ‘love’ when applied to the Ancients’ history. As for Knuckles I really like how this game’s story sheds some light on his rivalry with Sonic once again which has definitely been pretty downplayed over the years and, again, his personality ties pretty well to the war history of the Ancients.

I really gotta say though that the MVP here, at least in my opinion, is Tails. While Tails has always been one of my favorite Sonic characters (favorite for the longest time though I’ve taken a greater liking to Amy in the past couple years), his characterization since Unleashed has always been sort of all over the place in my eyes - with Forces especially being notable for his ‘Sonic, help me!’ moment against Chaos 0, something that sort of feels like a slap in the face when considering his development in the Adventure titles especially.

Tails’ character arc basically goes over his desire to feel stronger on his own with needing Sonic’s help. Which, again, applies to how the story and lore unfolds, but it actually manages to incorporate the continuity from the entire series, including Forces itself - in a way that manages to explain his actions in Forces better than Forces did. It really feels like they used this to its advantage in order to tell a story about Tails having self-doubt and wanting to grow - something that I actually could relate to myself in a lot of ways. Tails’ conflicts here feel similar to my own issues of self-doubt and feeling like I was just a burden to my friends, and it’s nice to see that reflected, especially with one of my favorite video game characters growing up.

I definitely took a liking to Sage, the game’s new character and antagonist - an AI human created by Eggman with a mysterious aura akin to the islands themselves and was definitely compelling on that front alone, but her relationship with Eggman is definitely an interesting one that actually paints Eggman in a light that we really haven’t seen before, yet still plays well with his established character. Eggman is basically viewed as a father figure to Sage, especially as Eggman continuously refers to Sage as his ‘daughter’ throughout the story as well as the various memos that can be collected by fishing with Big. On that note it does feel somewhat downplayed considering Big is viewed as more of a minigame, but it’s still a good amount of character development for both Eggman and Sage with their father-daughter relationship.

Plus it does continue to relate to established Sonic continuity with how the relationship of Maria, Gerald Robotnik and Shadow and how that applies to Eggman’s own relationship with Sage while exploring Eggman’s own point of view on that situation - which is something that could definitely be more looked into down the road.

One criticism I’ve heard regarding this story is that it has too much of a reliance on flashbacks and cutaways and truth is… I didn’t really have much of a problem with that. There were only a couple times where I really noticed cutaway flashbacks to previous Sonic titles and that was with Tails’ cutscenes where, if anything, it really felt appropriate with his story arc that I didn’t really feel like it was much of a problem. And for the general references to the past… well, I think they do serve as a decent way to bring up previous continuity in a way that, after that aspect sort of got side-stepped for the longest time, does at least help tie multiple previous events together as they play a part in Sonic Frontiers’ plot.

Overall though, this is to ultimately say that Sonic Frontiers has hands down my favorite story of any Sonic game thus far. The characterization, worldbuilding, continuity and lore all feel really good here, and feels like something that could appeal to every sort of Sonic fan out there. Ian Flynn, you are an odd fellow, but I must say… you steam a good Sonic story. Can’t wait to see what you have in store for the future.

One more thing to add though is that, while I don’t have too much to say about the voice acting, I have mentioned in the past that Roger Craig Smith is my favorite voice actor for Sonic and frankly this game only further confirmed that, merely on the basis that he has an actually good script to work off of, and it really feels like an interesting new direction for his voice acting in comparison to the previous games which were all over the place in terms of dialogue especially (looking at you, Lost World).

PART 3: Presentation

When the first gameplay previews of this game came out, it was pretty much inevitably subject to ‘Sega, hire this man’ jokes, merely as a result of the art direction and style, but with that said, I actually did like how this game looks. I mean, yeah, the environments of the open zones aren’t the most in line with the series’ core art style, but I do feel like it works with the whole concept of Sonic being in an unfamiliar place unlike his home world, and even then the game does a surprisingly decent job of meshing the character models in with the rest of the environments.

The environments also just look really good. There’s a decent amount of detail with the grass, landscapes and textures, and combined with the lighting (which in of itself is further aided by the variety from the Day to Night and Weather cycles), all I can really say is that the environments just look beautiful visually. The best is when the sun is setting and you have the sunlight reflecting off of the ground and Sonic’s model while the background has a nice use of color. Plus you occasionally see creatures, including enemies and minibosses, fly around in the background which further helps make everything feel interconnected.

That being said the game does suffer from a few technical problems that I can only assume were a result of the game being somewhat rushed. In particular, there’s a lot of pop-in and it’s really noticeable. Usually pop-in isn’t a huge deal for me, and to be fair this game isn’t much different in that regard, but I feel like the least they could have done is was to downplay it with, say, fog or something, but they didn’t even do that, so the result is a lot of models and level geometry will just pop into existence.

Plus the game’s optimization is kind of a mixed bag depending on the platform. This is of course the first full new Sonic game released in the ninth gen of consoles (The Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5), and on those consoles, as well as on PC, the game runs at a consistent and smooth 60FPS. At least, on the Performance Mode. On the aforementioned consoles at least this game does give you the option to play at 4K at the expense of 30FPS, which that framerate itself isn’t a huge dealbreaker for me on it’s own but… well, this game’s use of it does lead to a few issues.

On eighth gen consoles, the game is capped at 30FPS without the option for a performance mode. I chose to play this game on Xbox One X myself - obviously the most powerful eighth gen console - but like the others it is capped at 30FPS (though does run at a dynamic 1800p which is fine). But throughout my playthrough, the framerate felt a bit inconsistent to me despite, according to DigitalFoundry, the game technically maintaining a consistent 30FPS for the most part.

So… what exactly is the issue? Well, it’s simple - frame *pacing*. It’s not the framerate is necessarily inconsistent, but the frame time can be all over the place enough to make the frame rate *feel* inconsistent from time to time. And the odd thing is, this is a problem on all platforms that run the game on 30FPS - including the Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5 with the ‘Resolution’ mode. And this also applies to the base Xbox One and S, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro (though running at a lower resolution than the One X).

Somehow, they managed to reach a consistent, smooth 60FPS on a decently high resolution on the platforms that support it, yet even on those same platforms, dropped the ball when it came to frame pacing at 30FPS. It wasn’t a huge dealbreaker for me, but at the same time, it did further make me look into buying a Series X at least when I can actually find one in stores.

There’s also of course the Switch version of the game which, being less powerful than the PS4 and Xbox One (let alone the PS5, Series S/X and PC), you’d expect some visual downgrades. Course, I don’t have the Switch version, so let’s take a look at some footage and-

Oh.

Oh dear.

DITHERS EVERYWHERRRRRRRREEEEEE

THERE ARE-

…wait ExoParadigmGamer already did this joke?

Shit cut the camer-

Yeah, as you would expect the Switch version is definitely pretty downgraded visually. When it comes to the most recent Sonic releases - particularly Team Sonic Racing, Sonic Colors Ultimate and Sonic Origins - I have talked about that I’ve usually gone for the Switch versions first. Being a certified zoomer, Nintendo’s platforms where generally where I grew up playing most Sonic games first, and on top of that, the Switch also has portability going for it so I can take it wherever I go. 

But, like I said, the Nintendo Switch isn’t a powerful system, even compared to the base Xbox One and PS4, and while 2D games like Sonic Mania and Sonic Origins work perfectly fine, 3D entries like Sonic Forces, Sonic Colors Ultimate and Team Sonic Racing end up with some visual downgrades (especially in the case of Colors Ultimate which not only runs at 30FPS capped and has longer load times, but also had memory leak issues at launch that made the game an LSD trip).

Usually, these problems weren’t necessarily dealbreakers for me, and to be fair, the Switch version of Sonic Frontiers isn’t much different if you don’t have any other way of playing it. But Sonic Frontiers definitely seemed like a game that would benefit from having more powerful hardware which is what led me to play it on the Xbox One X rather than the Switch (granted I could’ve also bought it on PC but that didn’t have a cool steelbook pre-order available).

The Switch version runs at 720p docked, 480p (happy 2006 baybee) handheld - already a lower resolution compared to the other platforms - but on top of this problems like pop-in and 30FPS frame pacing that are common across all platforms are even worse and more noticeable here, the lighting is weaker, textures look worse and the game in general looks blurry, muddy and dither-y. It’s not quite as bad in the Cyberspace stages, but in the ‘open zones’, it’s definitely a blatant visual downgrade.

I’m sure it’s still playable enough if either the Switch is all you have or you *really* want to play this game on the go, but if you do have any other platforms available, I would definitely go for those over the Switch version. As I thought, this is a game that definitely benefits from having powerful hardware, and in general, I would definitely recommend playing this on a Series X, PS5 or a gaming PC if those options are available to you over anything else.

As for the soundtrack, I gotta say… it’s pretty good! It’s one I do have to give a few more listens to before I say it’s one of my favorites from the series or something along those lines, but there’s a good amount of variety here with different types of tracks that suit the context of the gameplay. The Crush 40-like rock and metal for bosses, the more ambient tracks for the open zones, and the more EDM style for the Cyberspace stages similar to Forces’ Avatar gameplay in that regard - all of which are really good and fit with their respective environments. I really like the new vocal track of “I’m Here” as well which sort of serves as the game’s ‘main’ theme akin to Live and Learn or Open Your Heart, and as someone who really liked Forces’ soundtrack, the Cyberspace stages generally had the themes I liked most.

PART 4: Gameplay

So now we finally get to the main attraction - the gameplay of Sonic Frontiers. As I discussed in the ‘Background’ portion of this review, Sonic Frontiers offers a new formula for the Sonic franchise albeit does take cues from previous entries. The formula being described as an ‘open zone’ game, offering five open-ended islands where Sonic can run around completing various types of challenges and puzzles while looking for collectibles.

Like I mentioned, the concept of an open-world Sonic game left me sort of cautious, but going into it, it sort of helped to look at Sonic Frontiers as more akin to Bowser’s Fury rather than Breath of the Wild. Now that I’ve really thought about, I can really describe Sonic Frontiers as being something along the lines of Bowser’s Fury, but more on the *scale* of Breath of the Wild, if that makes sense. 

This really isn’t a traditional open world game like Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 or any of Ubisoft’s copy and paste titles. The islands are full of platforming and puzzles that integrate a lot of Sonic’s core game design into the worlds themselves while also being designed in a way that really benefits from Sonic’s movement and control. 

On that note alone, it definitely appealed to me a lot more than pretty much any open world game I’ve played. I think part of the issue with the open world games I keep mentioning that is a lot of them take the ‘action/adventure RPG’ route which are generally designed in a way that feels slower paced. There are definitely people who enjoy this type of gameplay, and that’s fine, but I do feel like in general, trying to get from place to place in these giant open worlds just kind of felt like somewhat of a slog to me.

In comparison, Sonic Frontiers carries over a lot of the movement and control style of the Sonic franchise, and as such, taking advantage of Sonic’s movement abilities actually made me feel more encouraged to not just keep going, but even to explore everything that the islands had to offer. It kind of feels like a giant playground where I can just experiment with the control in order to get from place to place, and it also really helps that Sonic’s control is some of if not the best in a 3D Sonic game period. There’s a good mix of Adventure 1’s fluidity and flow combined with Generations’ polish along with elements of Lost World’s parkour mechanics that all come together to make controlling Sonic feel really good and making traversing the different islands just overall satisfying.

On top of this there’s still the puzzles and platforming challenges that help give a good amount of substance to the island in addition to the collectibles. The platforming challenges serve as bite-sized ‘samples’ of Sonic’s core gameplay so to speak that usually reward the player with Memory Tokens for completing them. They aren’t too deep or anything but they can definitely be pretty satisfying to pull off and work rather well with Sonic’s movement, control and overall core game design. It’s especially satisfying when you get a better understanding of Sonic’s control throughout the game and are able to pull off multiple platforming challenges sequentially. I gotta say for being small, bite-sized challenges they feel surprisingly replayable along with the rest of the game.

The worst I can say is that they could have been implemented a bit better with the rest of the open zone gameplay, especially in the case of the 2.5D sections, which don’t really play well with the rest of the gameplay in this context. Pretty often, especially on Chaos Island, there were moments where I would be trying to traverse the environment only to be suddenly sucked into a 2.5D platform section that I couldn’t get out of, and it definitely got pretty annoying and pace breaking from time to time.

The puzzles are also pretty simplistic overall but they don’t generally feel pacebreaking or get in the way of my enjoyment. They can actually be pretty well designed, well integrated with the game’s control and platforming, and at worst, still more intuitive than many previous games being just ‘bring key to keyhole’ and still offer some decent, simple fun that did actually make me want to go out and seek more puzzles to complete. Plus, by completing them you also unlock a grind rail that goes throughout the island which also helps traversal feel faster. Though I usually didn’t really use it just because the actual movement and feeling of going through the open zones was just too fun for me on its own.

In general, each island feels rather well designed and substantial with their own set of platforming challenges, puzzles and general means of traversal, and the translation to open zone… to my surprise, actually works rather well with the core game design of the series. Sonic has always been a series that, from a gameplay and replayability note, appealed to me for how the series often utilized fast-paced platforming alongside means of traversal to incentivize replaying and getting a better understanding of each level.

This style of gameplay feels like a natural evolution of those core gameplay concepts and it does so by basically just giving Sonic a big landscape to roam around in with platforming challenges and puzzles, all utilizing Sonic’s fluid movement and control, but still giving a goal to work towards. And while I’d still say I prefer Generations due to the more direct, traditional Boost levels and greater moveset, Frontiers may very well be my second favorite 3D Sonic gameplay in the series with only Adventure 1 coming close in that regard. Throughout my first playthrough of this game, I spent a lot of time just traversing each island just to explore and see everything each of them had to offer on top of just having fun with Sonic’s control and movement.

But in addition to all of this, there’s also combat mechanics in here as well as a skill tree that allows Sonic to unlock new abilities either through story progression or just grinding through each of the islands. Combat is something that Sonic games have explored previously albeit never exactly excelling at. I wouldn’t consider Frontiers to be exceptionally deep at this either, but it did feel more engaging than pretty much all of Sonic’s previous titles that incorporated combat to some extent or another. There’s a good amount of abilities here from the Cyloop which stuns enemies you cycle around, a Parry ability to block enemy attacks and the Phantom Rush increasing your damage output when the Combo meter reaches it’s max, among others that you unlock throughout the game (no I’m not going to go through each one this review’s already over 10 pages long at this point). 

It makes the combat feel actually engaging as you can pull off and chain different abilities to increase your damage output on top of having a decent variety of enemies which require the player to use different attacks and ways to take them down, on top of allowing the player to optimize their attacks and find the fastest ways to take down enemies. It doesn’t have the depth of beat-em-up/hack-and-slash titles like Bayonetta or something, but I don’t really feel like it *needs* to, and it still does enough to give the player the ability to, again, experiment with different attacks and skills. You’re also able to ‘train’ during Loading sequences which is pretty nice.

The major bosses are also really solid, arguably among the best in the series. The main ones that are fought at the end of each island do a good job of experimenting with the combat system and requiring the player to think of the best way to take them down by using different types of attacks, increasing damage output and taking them down as fast as possible, especially while you’re playing as Super Sonic and have to make sure your ring count stays above 0. The parry ability really comes into play here especially as by utilizing it, you can increase your damage output pretty substantially in a way that makes optimizing your strategy even more satisfying.

It’s just too bad that the ‘final’ boss, appropriately called ‘The End’ is a bit… underwhelming.

I don’t think ‘The End’ is the worst final boss in the series, but for some reason it decides to throw out all the gameplay elements the game had up to this point in exchange for what is essentially a watered down Touhou boss that feels like it goes on for longer than necessary and ends with a few QTEs. It’s a weird gameplay shift that seemed to have thrown a lot of people off from the discussion I had seen about the game on social media.

And on top of that, for some reason you have to be playing in ‘Hard’ mode before you reach it, otherwise the game just outright skips over the actual boss and goes straight to the last cutscene, which makes the ending feel pretty sudden and hollow when you’re playing on Normal - which I had been doing but didn’t know about this requirement (because the game for some reason doesn’t tell you this as far as I can tell) and so when I got to the end, which I had heard people talking about, I was left confused as to why there wasn’t a boss. Luckily, I had a separate, manual save from not long before the final boss, so I basically just went into that, set the difficulty to ‘Hard’, then proceeded to play the actual final boss.

In addition to the skill tree you can also upgrade Sonic’s attack, defense, movement speed and maximum ring amount. Sonic’s Attack and Defense are upgraded by finding and bringing Red and Blue seeds respectively to ‘Hermit Koco’ and movement speed and max ring amount are handled by bringing Kocos to ‘Elder Koco’. While I don’t have a lot to say about either of them, I do have to add that when it came to Elder Koco, I always found myself more inclined to upgrade my movement speed over maximum ring amount. I don’t really feel like the game really does a good job incentivizing upgrading ring amount and, if anything, the fact that by reaching your maximum ring amount you get a Power Boost, sort of feels like a disincentive to upgrading the max ring amount. I guess it does allow you to take a greater amount of hits and gives you more time at the main bosses, but at same time, even with just 400 rings I never really felt like that was a huge problem for me throughout the game.

Moving on from that, there’s another portion of the gameplay that I have yet to talk about. Throughout the open zones, you’ll often come across gears that allow you to unlock portals. What are the portals for, exactly? Well, that’s the other part of the game - the Cyberspace stages. For the most part, anyway.

The Cyberspace stages take upon the more traditional ‘Boost’ gameplay seen in the past few major Sonic games, and are used to gather keys to unlock 6 of the 7 Chaos Emeralds (the seventh of which always being found on top of the ‘Titan’ bosses you fight on the islands after gathering the rest). The amount of keys you get are based off of how many missions you complete - you get one if you just complete the level, but you can also obtain more by getting all the Red Rings, getting and holding onto a certain amount of rings at the end of the stage, and by clearing the stage by a certain time.

When the first batches of information were coming out about this game, the Cyberspace stages were definitely the part of the game I was most interested in, being generally a fan of the ‘Boost’ formula. If there was anything about Sonic Frontiers that seemed like it was going to build upon that gameplay style, it was definitely these. Unfortunately, I was left a bit… disappointed.

I don’t really think the Cyberspace stages are necessarily as bad as I’ve seen others say, but I can’t deny that I didn’t find them to be that good either. For one thing, despite the amount of them in this game (7 of them in each of the first three islands, 9 of them in the final), they all conform to one of four total gameplay themes. One of them is new, being a City theme, but the rest of the themes are just Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Sky Sanctuary again.

But it’s not even just the level themes themselves that are reused, but most of the level designs are literally ripped from Unleashed, Generations and Adventure 2, in some cases chopping them up in the case of the Generations stages especially. From a story perspective, this can be explained that the Cyberspace is based on different points of Sonic’s memory, which… is fine I guess but it still does come off that either the developers were being rushed with these or they were just being lazy.

It’s odd because there are actually some completely original Cyberspace stage designs, especially later on in the game, and these are genuinely rather well designed for the most part, and that only further baffles me as to why the rest had to just reuse previously designed stages. It’s even further baffling as to why exactly these stages are being used with the already established themes. Obviously the Generations Green Hill, Chemical Plant and Sky Sanctuary make sense, but why are stage designs from Adventure 2 and Unleashed especially using classic/Generations level aesthetics? For example, why is Sky Rail using Green Hill Zone as a theme-

Actually, wait, why is Sky Rail even here? If the Cyberspace stages are meant to be collections of Sonic’s memories, this doesn’t make sense as Sky Rail was originally a Shadow stage, not a Sonic stage, at least outside of the multiplayer mode.

In addition to that, Sonic’s control in Cyberspace, especially compared to the more fluid open zone movement, is not very good. Sonic’s movement feels pretty sluggish and platforming feels pretty imprecise. I will say I didn’t mind it as much as I got further into the game but at the same time the Cyberspace controls in my opinion pale in comparison to the other Boost titles, especially Colors and Generations. I guess part of it might be that I was expecting them to be a more major part of the game when they’re basically the equivalent of this game’s special stages, and while I didn’t think they were particularly bad, I can’t deny that I was expecting more from them going into the game and was ultimately left disappointed.

There is at least alternative ways to gather keys even if they aren’t quite as fast. You can occasionally come across them in the open zones, but there’s also a different type of portal that can be found in each of the islands that are… well, purple, leading to a minigame where you fish with Big the Cat. The minigame itself isn’t too deep, but at the same time considering my PTSD from Sonic Adventure 1, that’s… probably a good thing. 

You exchange Fishing Tokens that you can find throughout the open zones in order to take turns fishing, which you basically just wait for a catch and try to time a white circle to overlap with a bigger red circle. Depending on what you retrieve, you can amass ‘Treasure Tokens’ that you can exchange with Big for a variety of different collectibles including Portal Gears, Keys, Memory Tokens, Seeds and Egg Memos. And since you can gather lots of Fishing Tokens pretty easily, especially in the occasional Starfall Events, you can acquire a lot of collectibles, particularly keys, and as such unlock the Chaos Emeralds without even touching the Cyberspace stages (aside for the first one anyway that you need to beat in order to progress). 

On its own, it’s a nice simple minigame that provides a relaxing break from the main course, but the fact that you can make progress just by playing it makes it even better. For the first time I actually enjoy fishing in a Sonic game. Also in these same areas, Sonic can finally grill for god’s sake. Yeah okay this is the best video game ever made.

In addition to that, there’s also other minigames based around the Koco that you can play by interacting with Sonic’s friends and side stories. Generally these were my least favorite part of the game - at best, they don’t really add anything to the core gameplay, and at worst can feel kinda frustrating. The round-up missions were especially my least favorite merely because it always felt like a pain to get the Koco to actually move in the right direction in the rather small amount of time allotted to get from point A to point B. These were at least relatively short so it wasn’t a huge dealbreaker, but I definitely don’t see myself returning back to these unless I’m going back to Sonic Frontiers as a whole package.

Overall though, the gameplay of Sonic Frontiers is really good. I definitely have a few criticisms, but Sonic’s movement and control feel nice and fluid, the islands are well-designed, fun to traverse and explore, and the platforming challenges, puzzles and combat are all pretty fun, all making a Sonic game that really had me invested when progressing through the game, leaving me wanting to keep going and to further revisit and explore each island. 

As I was writing this too, it was announced that the game would have free DLC added throughout the next year, including new modes and playable characters, which alone makes me excited to see what this game offers down the line.

Conclusion

I mean, really, the title of this review says it all.

While I still gotta give the title of my *favorite* Sonic game to Sonic Generations and Mania, this game is easily among my Top 5 for the series. It does have it’s issues, but for being basically a foundation for later Sonic games to build off of, it feels like it pretty much knocked it out of the park. The gameplay is fun, the environments are well-designed, the story is in my opinion the best in any Sonic game so far, and the soundtrack and visuals are a nice bonus on top of that (even with the technical problems in the case of the latter). It’s overall a really good game, and that’s all I really have to say, and I would definitely recommend it if you haven’t played it yet.

But, I guess that leaves my Sonic retrospective at an end until the next Sonic game releases. Maybe when the free DLC comes out I’ll look at that, but on the bright side this does give me more of a chance to look at other games or even other subjects entirely that I may write about and look into.

It’s 2023 now, and there’s a lot of project ideas I want to tackle this year - largely pertaining to my webcomic and art, but there are a few blog ideas I have in mind. I recently did a Twitter poll on games that I was thinking of reviewing - and which one my followers were most interested in me doing out of them - and the most voted one, the one I’m most likely going to write about next…

Well, I won’t spoil it, but don’t forget, I’m with you in the dark.