Sonic Frontiers is the first new entry in the mainline Sonic series since 2017’s Sonic Forces and has envisioned itself as a new way to enjoy the face-paced movement of everyone’s favorite blue hedgehog.
SEGA planned to take everything fans knew and loved about Sonic and dump it in a new open-world adventure setting, giving players the chance to freely explore a lush new setting. Considering Sonic games are usually tied to linear levels, the introduction of Sonic to this new game mechanic was a welcome change to see just how the blue blur could handle the genre.
Unfortunately, however, the new game doesn’t hit all the right notes.
First and foremost
Warning: The following paragraphs include spoilers regarding new gameplay features and storylines in Sonic Frontiers.
Sonic Frontiers is set in the Starfall Islands, a new area that is being taken over by rampant AI programs and a twisted new villain. Sonic and his friends, including Tails, Amy, and Knuckles, make their way to the islands after finding Chaos Emerald energy and begin to investigate.
Things don’t go well from the get-go, and the team are sucked into a giant portal, trapping Sonic and his friends in a world unlike their own called Cyber Space. Only Sonic finds a way to escape from this new dimension, and it’s up to him to rescue his friends and uncover secrets of the isles along the way.
Apart from his speed, Sonic has a handful of new combat options and abilities at his disposal to traverse around the world. He will also unlock more abilities throughout the length of the game to access new areas. As the player explores the world, they will be able to find a bunch of collectible items, powerups, and secrets that will help them to put together clues on what is really happening in the game’s story.
Messy, clunky, and in need of repairs
Despite Sonic Frontiers being an open-world game, the open-world aspect sometimes feels a bit barren and lackluster. While it seemed like there is a lot to do in each area at first, with various little puzzles to get items needed to progress, we found ourselves running past most of these things due to their repetitive nature.
The core gameplay mechanic of Sonic Frontiers is simple: find an item to regain your friend’s memories and collect Gears from the various mini-bosses each world has. You then go into areas akin to classic Sonic games using these gears to collect red coins or complete a level as quickly as possible and unlock keys. These keys are then used to open up Chaos Emerald containers across each world so you can fight the final boss when getting all seven.
With more items needed each time, this gameplay loop stretches on and on, and we found ourselves often just fishing or buying items because progression was simpler and faster this way. But ultimately, the repetitive nature of this gameplay loop isn’t very fun. And if the core gameplay mechanic isn’t fun, and there’s no sense of enjoying the progression, then at what point do players say enough is enough?
Controls are also a problem. In free roam they are pretty fun and intuitive, but when the camera pans to a 2D plain or if Sonic tries to be precise with his movements, it feels like all manner of control the game has breaks down and Sonic goes flying in a direction you didn’t intend, or the game just unfairly kills you or knocks you off a platform so you have to start a climb or grind all over again. It’s frustrating and just keeps getting worse the more it happens.
Sonic Frontiers incorporates an RPG-like system where you need to find items or collectibles in the world to level up your speed and ring count among other things. While getting the items isn’t challenging, what really grinds our gears is the method you have to level up these stats. You have to level up each of them through an NPC in the world one at a time, meaning you need to constantly talk to an NPC, select the speed stats if you have more resources than needed, level it up once, and then talk to the NPC again to start the process from scratch to add another level to your speed. This is tedious, and SEGA really needs to patch it in a way to bulk level up in the future.
For a game and a character that’s all about speed, the grind of the game and the way you maneuver Sonic around simply feels too clunky.
Combat and boss fights shine
There are other things we could nitpick, like how Sonic Frontiers fails to use the open world as well as it could for the vast majority of the game. But that isn’t to say the whole experience is bad.
The boss fights in each world are fantastic and require strategy to beat them, even if there are only four of them to look forward to. The music is gorgeous with a good mix of ambient tones akin to Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s score in the overworld, with some usual Sonic metal beats when fighting bosses that’ll have you wanting to buy the soundtrack.
Combat is also well thought-out, with a decent level progression from just playing the game that unlocks more and more moves. Enemies that took ages to beat at the start of the game suddenly become easier to fight and mow through as you unlock better moves, which gives you a solid sense of progression. The world is also beautiful and arguably one of the best-looking SEGA games to date, let alone one of the best Sonic games ever.
Promise, but too little execution
Despite its flaws, the game feels like something Sonic fans will still enjoy. The story hearkens back to many of Sonic’s past adventures and really gives the characters more depth in their respective relationships with Sonic than ever before. The game does a good job of fleshing out its existing cast, even if newer characters feel more like pieces that are just present to act as a way to move the plot forward.
Even with these positives, however, it doesn’t feel like enough to really save the game and turn it into something special. While many gameplay issues could be changed in the future via patches, currently, the core gameplay experience just isn’t fun. All the ideas are there, but they aren’t executed to their fullest potential.
Score: 6/10
Disclosure: A copy of the game was provided to us by SEGA for review.
