Sonic Frontiers
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
I've been aware of Sonic Frontiers since it came out back in 2022. However, coming into this playthrough, my knowledge of the game was very limited. I knew it was an open world Sonic game, and I knew that the reviews of the game were very mixed. Sonic has lost a bit of its luster for me over the years, so I was never in any great hurry to play it. However, when I found out that my local library had a copy I could play through for free, I decided to jump on it and give it a chance.
Would Sonic return to its glory days, or would this be another disappointment in a long, frustrating line of disappointments? Let's hop in and find out.
Story:
This is a game that desperately tries to make you care about its story. Whether or not the game was successful is up to you and your attention span, plus - what you are expecting from a Sonic game. It didn't work for me. I quickly got wrapped up in solving puzzles, collecting items, and zipping around and exploring the big world of the game. In fact, whenever a story sequence would start up, I would get annoyed that they were interrupting the flow of the game. I did not skip any cutscenes, but I easily could have done so, and I would not have missed anything. I would have gotten pretty much the same experience out of this game that I would have otherwise.
In case you are someone who cares about the storyline, let me give you a brief synopsis of what is going on. Sonic, Robotnik, and all of Sonic's pals have landed in some kind of world that was once inhabited by an ancient group of beings. These beings have created a cyberspace area that they can explore the same as they would the outside world. Robotnik and Sonic's friends are stuck in this cyberspace area. Sonic is the only one walking around in the "real world", and he has to solve puzzles, explore, collect memory fragments, and find a way to save his pals and bring them back to the real world.
Robotnik, of course, is looking for a way to use this all to his advantage and take over cyberspace and use the technology to take over the universe.
This is an extremely basic synopsis, and most of it might not even be accurate. Like I said, the storyline was secondary to me and I was not really paying attention to it. It is hard for me to recap it, because I just simply did not care enough to pay close attention. I'll say what I've said in past game reviews whenever I am kind of half-assing it: "some reviewer I am."
Gameplay:
I was a little worried about how Sonic would translate to the open world format. Turns out, I had nothing to be apprehensive about. The game is split up into four major islands. Each island is essentially a "level", so this is not truly an open world. However, you can backtrack and return to any island at any time to grab anything you may have missed, so in a way it is.
The game starts on Kronos Island. Amy is trapped in cyberspace and you have to find memory pieces, which are little pink hearts located on the map, and bring them back to her. Each time you do this, it unlocks a little bit of the game's story. Be prepared to collect a lot of these things, as this is a major gameplay device on each of the four islands. These little collectibles can be found all over the place. Each island is littered with literally hundreds of little platforming challenge areas. They mainly consist of ramps, grind rails, floating platforms, and springs that launch you all over the place. Completing of these usually gives you a memory piece or two. As I said, these little areas are littered all over every single island in the game, so you should never have any trouble scrounging for memory pieces. You can collect them in other ways too, like by defeating enemies or by using your cycloop attack to dig up buried pieces.
Each island contains a set number of transporters, which take you to a traditional behind the back Sonic level, similar to something you'd see in Sonic Colors or a Sonic Adventure game. To open these up, however, you have to earn Gears to unlock the level. These gears can be found by defeating the mini bosses found on the open world map. Beat one of these levels and you earn a key, which you can use to unlock a Chaos Emerald from its podium (also hidden on the world map). These levels contain special challenges to complete, like earning an S-Rank or collecting all special red star icons in a stage. The more challenges you complete, the more keys you earn. Your ultimate goal is to earn enough keys to unlock each island's set of Chaos Emeralds. Once you collect them all, you can fight the island's boss character. Defeat the boss, and you move onto the next island. I found that each island took me several hours to complete.
So, to wrap it up, on each island you need to:
1. Collect memory icons to bring to the trapped character in order to advance the story
2. Fight mini bosses on the game map to unlock gear collectibles
3. Use the gears to open up challenge stages
4. Complete the challenge stages to earn keys
5. Use the keys to unlock all of the stage's Chaos Emeralds
6. Fight the boss character once you have all the Chaos Emeralds
You need to have all the Emeralds and advance the story far enough on each island in order to move onto the next island.
Each island is also filled with optional challenges. These challenges are varied, and include things like jumping on a puzzle grid and moving around on it in order to turn off all its lights, running through a series of blue rings before the timer runs out, parrying a set number of enemy attacks in a row, and side stepping a certain number of enemy projectiles in a row. Completing these tasks earns you items like memory tokens, gears, as well as fruits you can use to upgrade your ring and speed capacity. They also reveal hidden sections of the map, one area at a time.
I feel like there is so much content crammed into this game. I haven't even mentioned how you collect EXP and can level up, the fishing minigame featuring Big the Cat (really), or the high score challenges - which I could never really figure out. The point is, there is a lot of stuff to do in this game. Even if I were to come back to the game after beating it, I could probably roam these islands for several more hours unlocking and finding things I missed the first time around.
Basic gameplay should be familiar to 3D Sonic fans. You can run in each direction. You jump. You hit the jump button in mid-air to launch yourself at enemies and springs. There's a wall jump move. Oddly, there seems to be no spin dash in this game, at least that I could discover. Occasionally when you are riding a grind rail or doing one of the memory challenges, the game will shift to a side scrolling perspective. This can be annoying because sometimes I will wander into these areas accidentally and then I struggle to break out of them. It is also very hard to land on grind rails sometimes. The game could have benefited from a Sly Cooper style lock on where you can land on things with precision. It is very hard to be precise in this game, given that you are traveling at high speed most of the time.
Minor control gripes aside, I had fun with this game. My only major qualm is how easy it can be to get lost at times. For example, let's say a marker on the map will show you that you need to get to an island in the distance in order to advance the story... but there is no way to get there. There is one specific level where I must have wandered around for about two hours before I finally figured it out. There was a grind rail in an area that made NO sense, that I needed to ride in order to make my way over a large chasm. Then I needed to jump on some more grind rails, and some more, and some more. Super irritating, and this happens quite often in this game. The game overall is pretty easy, and I don't need my hand to be held or anything, but I have to admit that this was quite frustrating.
Graphics:
The game looks pretty great... for the most part. I only throw in that last bit, because there are some open valleys that look quite plain and bland. You'd expect a Sonic game to be constantly full of color and energy, and that does not always come across here.
But I would just be nitpicking if I harped on that too much. The game looks good. Sonic is the perfect Sonic you'd envision in this kind of game, to his design, his colors, his moves, and his attitude. The supporting characters look great, too. The worlds are beautiful and full of moving things. I imagine this game must have been very difficult to design.
This is easily one of the better looking Sonic games out there. It moves along at lightning speed and never loses a beat. I approve.
Sound:
The music of this game is absolutely one of its highlights. Not only is the original music great, but you can collect musical notes on the map that unlock classic Sonic songs, like the Sonic 3 intro music and the beach in Sonic Adventure. As you play, you unlock more and more. It was truly a treat to be able to play this game and rock along to some of my favorite Sonic songs of all time.
On the sound effect side of things, the classic Sonic ring collecting and jumping noises are back, and so is the iconic noise it makes when you take damage and lose all your rings. The voice acting was kind of a non factor for me, since I did not really care about the game's storyline. But I suppose it was okay.
Anyway, to hear some of my favorite songs, click the link to a small YouTube playlist I made. Maybe I'll start doing this for some of my reviews going forward.
Overall:
I really enjoyed this game. It's very satisfying to finally have a fully realized 3D Sonic game that is not set on rails or linear in fashion. I've been wanting a free roaming Sonic game like this since Sonic Xtreme was teased for the Sega Saturn, and then canceled. What about Sonic Adventure, you may ask? To be honest, I was never really a huge fan of the series. In fact, I gave Sonic Adventure the low score of a D+ when I last played it. Honestly, that seems a bit low, but it kind of tracks with my memories of being unimpressed when I was a kid.
So what I'm saying is that this is the best Sonic game to come out in a while. Sure, Sonic Mania, Sonic Generations, and Sonic Colors were decent games. But not like this. Those other games did not leave much of an impression on me. I played through them. I forgot them. But this one is special.
I recommend this game, easily. There are a few things holding it back from getting a truly elite score. The controls can be janky. It's easy to get lost on the map. The camera is uncooperative at times. It also begins to feel repetitive once you figure out the formula of the game. I also couldn't help but compare it mentally to Super Mario Galaxy, which I recently played. That game was a lot more fun. But that doesn't mean I didn't like this, because I did.
Don't sleep on this game like I almost did. This is a surprisingly good title. Maybe not a truly elite Sonic game, but one of the best offerings we've seen in a long time. I hope to see Sega experiment more with open world Sonic games in the future.
THE GRADE:
B+
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