After months of hype surrounding the latest entry in the Sonic franchise, the highly anticipated Sonic Frontiers is finally out, and players can not seem to stop talking about it. Sonic Frontiers is the most ambitious game in the series yet, diverging from the traditional linear pattern of Sonic games and instead letting players dive into an unknown open world to explore. The Developers at Sonic Team have gone all out with game, making it a truly unique and engaging experience.
With open world zones, new abilities, and a mysterious new threat Sonic Frontiers has brought forth many new exciting ideas. However, while the players are happy to see the many new aspects and mechanics introduced in the game, not all ideas have been executed well, leaving behind room for much improvement in the future. Here are three things we loved about Sonic Frontiers and three that we did not.
6 Things We Loved - Cyber Space Levels
To balance out the open world zones of the game, Sonic Frontiers has blended in some linear stages in its midst, known as the Cyber Space levels. These levels are a throwback to some old classic stages that fans of the series will be familiar with, like the Green Hill Zone.
These stages only last for a couple of minutes but are a thrilling ride indeed. It will take more than a single run to fully master these stages and complete them as fast as one possibly can. Cyber Space stages only make a fraction of the game's experience but are still a joy to burst through.
5 Things We Didn't Like - Performance
For a game that is all about going as fast as possible, it is a shame to see that Sonic's surroundings cannot seem to keep up with him. While it feels great to roam around the Starfall Islands at blurring speeds, the immersion is soon broken by continuous background pop-ins.
Sometimes it's just small pieces of a track, and other times it is a whole chunk of the map just popping right in as you get close to it. Moreover, it does not matter if the game is played at 30fps or 60fps, the pop-in issue still persists, and the systems just do not keep up with Sonic's speed. Yes, this might get fixed with a few patches, but the developers should not get a pass for releasing the game in this state.
4 Things We Loved - Sonic's New Abilities
The blue hedgehog is known mostly for his incredible speed, which makes for some engaging gameplay, but the developers at Team Sonic have gone far and beyond this time when it comes to showcasing Sonic's abilities.
There are a variety of moves that Sonic can perform in Sonic Frontiers, making the game even more fun than fans were initially expecting. From the circular Cyloop to flying kicks and Ariel blasts to spinning slashes, all of Sonic's new abilities are a welcome treat indeed.
3 Things We Didn't Like - Repetitive Combat
When you consider the game as a whole, then the combat does not feel so out of place. But sooner or later, players will realize that the combat, aside from the big bosses, is quite tedious and repetitive. The faceless enemy types that keep stopping a player on his speedy adventure end up feeling quite lackluster. It does not help that the combat combinations are also relatively quite easy to pull off, making the fight sequences less engaging as a whole.
In fact, with the auto-combo option, players can just end every battle by mashing a single button. It seems as though the enemies could have been made more interactive if a little more depth and character was added to them. Otherwise, it just feels off to halt Sonic from continuing his super speedy runs just to defeat tedious enemies.
2 Things We Loved - Titans
The open world of zones, the Starfall Islands, are filled with many enemies; however, most of them require the same hack-and-slash grinding to defeat. The Titans guardians of the Starfall islands, however, are a different case altogether. These are the true bosses of the story and each island and are widely engaging to face off against.
Granted, the level design for facing each boss is not equally fun, as some prove to be quite exhilarating to fight, while others just feel bland. With that being said, however, the Titans nonetheless make for some good enemy types. Who knew a Sonic game would be able to take inspiration from a game like Shadow of the Colossus and execute it well?
1 Things We Didn't Like - Quantity over Quality
The game is fun, no doubt; however, it does fall short of expectations when it comes to its story. Overall the narrative uses many cliched tropes with a fairly predictable backstory that surrounds the mystery of the Starfall Islands and its inhabitants. It does not help that the story unfolds in an unnecessarily slow manner, with the dialogue between Sonic and his new antagonist always being vague and cryptic.
This isn't the only aspect of the game that feels unpolished, though; it seems as if the developers mixed in all the ideas they possibly could in this game, not knowing if they would work. While some implementations are spot on, others feel undercooked, to say the least. For example, the skill tree system has a good variety of moves, but there is no solid logical reason for Sonic not to be able to use all the moves from the start.
Sonic Frontiers is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.