Sonic Frontiers Review

Sonic Frontiers...this was a game I was intially negative on and I ranted on it many times but truth be told I do enjoy the game, maybe not a whole lot but just enough to make me see it through to the end and yes, this includes me getting the true ending where you have to raise the difficulty up to hard mode to get which the game does not tell you btw and can catch first time players playing on easy or normal off guard.

But on to the game itself, I'll start with the good, the open world and sense of discovery to the game has a relaxing atmosphere to it. It feels like a very chill experience with the soft orchestral music playing in the background all the way to how you move at fast speeds discovering new areas on the map to unlock. I made the mistake of initally starting the game doing Cyberspace levels first and then unlocking the map but instead I realized I should be unlocking the map first and then maybe doing the Cyberspace missions after. The fishing mini game with Big the Cat is well done too, I normally do not give two shits for fishing mini games but this was relaxing and simple enough and it was easy to get so many rewards that I couldn't help but find it oddly addicting. I did this towards the end of the game when the Vault Key and Memory Token requirements started to get too steep for my liking but the Big the Cat mini game made that an enjoyable experience. I wished I discovered this before but I am glad I got to to this at all. The challenges for unlocking the map are generally simple but engaging enough to make getting the full map not feel like a chore. Just finding random areas on the map to unlock was a blast. The true ending shump section was good, and it feels challenging without getting furstrating, I wanted to get better each time I died.

I also want to briefly talk about the story, I don't care for the story in Sonic games and I am too much of a casual fan to know about the lore and history of the series, and the most interesting thing I find about the Sonic mythos is how much it has weird parallels to Dragon Ball but at the same time, the story here was captured my interest. Sage and her interactions with with entire cast is surprisingly endearing and it wasn't filled with cringe at all. Her character development also felt natural and her interactions with Sonic do a good job at selling you on Sonic and the bond he shares with his friends.

Now, on to the bad. Pop in shockingingly bad for a game in 2022, I get Sonic is super fast but seeing this much pop in for a 2022 game is rather appalling considering this a AAA game. The Super Sonic bosses can be rather obtuse at first since it forces you to use the parry which I barely used as regular Sonic except for the few map challenges, as a result sections that are supposed to feel empowering can feel cumbersome due to the camera and the game not telling you to actively parry titan attacks. The platforming can still feel awkward, unpolished, and too automated, I hear this has been an issue with 3D Sonic for a while especially for certain games. There is some weird difficulty spikes like the Shield Escape. The makes wants you to have unlimited boost for this sections as well as max ring power but it never tells you, so you will die a lot to sections you think you should be able to win but it turns out to be a red herring. It never tells you at least need unlimited boost in order to not die, and it's the hardest part of the whole game. The hard mode shump section was easy by comparison to this. Pinball was also super easy by comparison to this section and I can understand someone dropping the game at around this part. The Cyberspace levels aren't that great and are mostly pretty boring since it's just old Sonic levels, I am glad 100%ing these parts isn't nesscary to beat the game.

Overall, as a casual Sonic fan, I had a good time with this game with some occasional rage quits along the way. I am not a big fan of the series or open world games in general and this turned out to be a solid time, I get why this game gets it's praise and hasn't gotten any kind of hype backlash even though I have my issues with it.