Staring at this new frontier, it’s clear this isn’t Voice of the Wild or Elden Hedgehog. Still, like these two hints fans have been making since the announcement, Sonic Frontiers is a necessary new direction for Blue Blur to modernize alongside his contemporaries – an attempt to finally pull his fast form into Directions for a real 3D game.
Compared to Dr. Eggman’s evil plans, 3D has been Sonic’s longtime nemesis since its debut over 20 years ago (though it arguably started with the cancelled Saturn game Sonic X-treme). Too fast for his own good or the camera, Sonic Team opted to keep its mascot firmly within a linear roller coaster-like route, hoping the dizzying visuals would distract you Realize that all you’re doing is raising your hand.
Frontiers is the team that finally has the confidence to let Sonic roam freely in a vast open environment at the speed you’d expect him to achieve. This seems easy because for me, traversal has always been one of the greatest joys in any open world game – my fondest memory of the grossly underrated Xenoblade Chronicles X is having a player that can traverse the world at superhuman defaults Avatar running speed. For those concerned about whether they’ll be able to keep up, you can also customize the Sonic’s speed settings, from acceleration to cornering, although I actually cranked it up to max.
Of course, Sega has worked hard to separate these open areas from traditional open worlds, which essentially means that the different areas that make up Starfall Islands are built with objects from past games, designed to push you in a given direction. spring! Booster! Grind the rails! So while in theory you have free 3D walkthroughs, Sonic Frontiers is actually full of offshoots of linear routes. What’s more confusing, however, is that when the camera is taken away from you, all of a sudden, you’re in the 2D platform section. Putting these elements in the open area was a special decision, as if Sonic Team were afraid to commit to a proper 3D world. The main effect is that when reverting to 3D, you end up losing bearing – which doesn’t help when the compass doesn’t tell you which direction is north.
While the latest version of the Hedgehog engine may incorporate Quixel Megascans to render photorealistic environments, there’s something pretty unremarkable about the aesthetics of these barren islands of ordinary deserts, volcanoes, and forests, where ruins suggest an ancient races have existed before. It makes the placement of the springs and orbital grinds as incongruous as the sad ambient score, which is at odds with the high-energy vibe you’d expect from a Sonic game.
Games of the past also had level designs that would be just as absurd if you stepped back and scrutinized them, but when you’re at the height of the action, you rarely do that, pulling from place to place. . Unfortunately, in an open area where you can see these points, there is more time to think about how everything seems to exist without rhythm or reason. Even the station square has better world buildings.
What’s even more dizzying is the sheer number of popups throughout – even on PS5! I don’t know how often platforms or other ambient objects appear from where, sometimes within a few yards of where Sonic is. Luckily, these didn’t happen ahead of your path, making it a gaming issue, but it didn’t make me cringe every time it happened.
Few of the new features are set in place, except for learning that Sonic’s friends Amy, Knuckles, and Tars are trapped in cyberspace and essentially turned into digital ghosts that need to be revived, which makes all the difference Gotta be more aggressive in hardcore videos. Collect memory tokens to unlock new conversations! Upgrade Sonic’s speed and other attributes! Unlock new skills! Oh, and Big the Cat’s fishing mini-game! It’s all pieced together and explained with a quick tutorial, and you’re ready to go. “That’s what modern games do,” the explanation seems to be, rather than justify why they’re in Sonic games. Even the stone-like Cocos you collect to upgrade Sonic’s attacks and defenses are nothing compared to their apparently torn Koroks; in Breath of the Wild, discovering a hidden one is a A joy, they simply stand around, sometimes blending in with the environment, so you’re more likely to pick them up or miss them unknowingly.
Sadly, the presentation and design issues make Frontiers an easy target for naysayers, because when you get down to the basics, here’s a fun game with new ideas. An unexpected highlight comes from combat, which has never been a priority in a Sonic game, where the homing spin attack is more of a traversal tool. The Hedgehog now has more varied moves than those spinning attacks, starting with the new Cyloop ability, where drawing a loop with a light trail behind him can have effects on enemies and puzzles. More moves are unlocked over time, including the projectile attack of the same name as Street Fighter’s Trick. This is usually a case of mashing or holding down a button but looking gorgeous, and to illustrate the low skill cap, you can parry by simply holding down both bumper buttons simultaneously to predict an attack rather than a split second.
What really makes combat satisfying are the small bosses, ancient machines that are more menacing than the cartoon baddies in the series. There’s a lot of variety to keep you on your toes, even if you feel like you know the structure of the game by the time you finish your first island. What’s more, the small bosses are designed differently, whether it’s a fast-paced ninja or a seemingly impenetrable sumo, trapping you in a circle of electrified fences, making each battle feel like a unique one. of puzzles that need to be solved in order to expose their weaknesses before mashing them with the attack of your choice. These feel even grander when you face larger colossus-type enemies or the main boss titans. The latter has more of a cinematic approach, but still provides the Frontiers with a visual setup – and a thumping rock metal soundtrack that feels more in line with the old Sonic.
Defeating mini-bosses is also the main way to get Portal gear, which is one of the game’s many collectibles and is required to enter Cyberspace levels, which in turn rewards you with the Vault Key needed to collect the Chaos Emerald. These are essentially “classic” linear action levels played from a 3D or 2D perspective, which feels like a concession to fans who are skeptical of open area gameplay. I’d almost liken them to Elden Ring’s mini-dungeons, though: more self-contained and digestible fragments of the past.
These take a nice break from the open area and are a purer Sonic experience than the one-off mini-games that also appeared (though the hacking mini-game that inspired Ikaruga’s riffs). But again these fall short of the imaginative levels of earlier 3D Sonic games. How many times can you recycle a green mountain or a chemical plant? “Not enough”, the answer seems to be.
They’re at least shorter and tighter than recent games, so rebooting is relatively painless, and you can quickly see the frustrating behind. Replays also have incentives for things like S-rank time, all red rings, or a set of rings, each of which gives you another vault key. However, goals often feel inconsistent. At one stage I tried every quick hack to save my time and still didn’t get to the S rank, but at another stage I died halfway through and still somehow did it all on the first try challenge.
But whether it’s open area or cyberspace, there’s still no solution to the age-old conundrum that plagues every 3D Sonic game: inconsistent physics, where you might suddenly stop on an accelerating path, or jump out of a spring-jump animation and veer off its trajectory. There may be no more life systems, and the huge land in the open areas means at least you won’t fall into a bottomless pit, but that doesn’t make reworking the platforming part any less annoying.
Sonic Team’s Takashi Iizuka talks about how Frontiers will pave the way for the series. So, as a first attempt, maybe it’s better not to compare it to Breath of the Wild, but to compare Pokemon Saga: Arceus to Pokemon Saga: Arceus, It’s a scrappy experiment, but one that still shows the future potential of the series, which will hopefully be perfected in upcoming games in Scarlet and Violet.
However, Frontiers is often plagued by very glaring flaws that I’ve seen that could send the game into an early grave. It would be a shame because when you’re in a moment of momentum, there’s still a fun and fun time, certainly compared to the streak of disappointments that fans have endured over the past few decades. However, for die-hard traditionalists who just want to see their blue hedgehog in 2D, this isn’t a 3D outing to change their minds.
