Sonic Frontiers Review: Maybe it’s time to slow down

Sonic Frontiers

MSRP $59.99

“Sonic Frontiers is loaded with downright puzzling design decisions, making for 2022’s most bizarre game.”

Pros

• Amazing scale
• Combat is fine

Cons

• Poor game feel
• A funny story
• Busted collectible economy
• Frustrating boss fights
• Graphics that are ugly

If I could describe Sonic Frontiers in one word, that word would be “Huh?”.

Although not quite as severe as the above, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)Oder Sonic Boom, Sonic FrontiersIt is a badly-guided game that muffles great ideas with questionable narrative and technical design decisions. Sonic Team continues to demonstrate that it’s not quite sure what to do with the blue blur, taking a wild swing with a game that tries to rival open-world games rather than double down on the strengths of newer titles like Sonic GenerationsSonic ManiaYou can also look at older successes, such as Sonic Adventure.

I’ve reviewed some terrible games this year, but none have left me as confused as Sonic Frontiers. Its jerky gameplay makes for a lackluster Sonic entry, design problems lead to a mediocre open-world game, and weak visuals don’t even position it as a great current-gen showpiece. I was completely baffled throughout the entire game. Sonic Frontiers‘ 20-hour runtime, and you probably will too. It’s not unplayable; it’s just unpleasant to play.

Story stumbles

Sonic Frontiers‘ long list of problems begins with its narrative. Sonic, Amy and Tails are all drawn to the Starfall Islands’ Chaos Emeralds by their Sonics. Sonic and Amy arrive at the Starfall Islands, where a mysterious force knocks Sonic unconscious and sends them to their friends.& Knuckles) into a digital dimension. Sonic explores Cyberspace from there and discovers that his friends have been trapped in Cyberspace. It is possible that the unstoppable force which destroyed an alien civilization could soon return. Sonic is taunted by a mysterious digital girl called Sage as he explores the globe.

That is what I feel. Sonic FrontiersThe game aims to be mature and somber (Roger Craig Smith portrays Sonic here with a deeper voice).  It becomes evident that the story is not long. Sonic FrontiersThis game is about moving on and death. Characters constantly muse about love, death, and if they’ve done enough with their life. Sad music plays over flashbacks to cutscenes you watched just hours earlier, and the game’s final shot wants to make you cry. Like Sonic Forces, it’s hard to take any of it seriously unless you’re fully bought in on the franchise’s extensive lore.

Each new scene of dialogue left me either baffled or laughing out loud at how serious the game took itself. The story becomes increasingly nonsensical as it goes on, and it will likely only live on due to viral YouTube compilations of its oddest moments (it’s like someone built a game just for Dunkey). Once again, we’re stuck with a Sonic game narrative aiming to turn the cartoon series into something much more serious and not doing it well. That approach has never worked for Sonic Team, so it’s no surprise that it struggles here.

You then start to play the game.

You’re too slow

To give Sonic FrontiersCredit over games 06 or 2014’s Sonic BoomIt isn’t riddled by glitches (at most on PS5, which was the only platform on which we were able play it before embargo). My worst experience was with a water texture that lightly glitched from certain angles. No, the issues here are much harder to resolve than a bug; they’re fundamental design issues. Sonic works at the most fundamental level. doesn’t feel good to control. He begins to move very slowly. Players can upgrade his speed stat using a collectible. Sonic Lost World’s sprint. I was able to tweak Sonic’s speed in the game’s settings, but doing so negated one of the game’s key progression hooks. It was an early moment which highlighted how Sonic Frontiers’It is broken by default

Jumping and homing feel slow and stilted. This makes seemingly easy jumps harder than they should be. Sonic doesn’t keep momentum well either, exacerbating all these issues. Even if you’re running fast or using a boost pad, Sonic will abruptly stop the moment your finger leaves the control stick. Short cinematics often butts in to interrupt Sonic while he’s running around (any time he reaches max rings, the game abruptly cuts to a video of him sparking up to indicate that his top speed has raised), and odd camera angle shifts can send Sonic flying off in an unintended direction.

Sonic either moves at full speed or not at all, and when your main character does not control well in a platformer, it’s fundamentally going to hurt the entire game. These are fundamental things that anyone can understand.Sonic Adventure 22001 was a success that I feel could have been improved upon.

Collectathon chaos

To give Sonic FrontiersIt is impressive, and it deserves credit. The five Starfall Islands are the largest Sonic levels we’ve ever gotten, and the game took me about 20 hours to beat with a healthy amount of exploration. But bigger doesn’t always mean better, as each island is bizarrely constructed. People have been calling it this for centuries. Sonic’s version of The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the Wild, it’s more comparable to a Ubisoft open-world game.

This is a game with objectives and collectibles. To collect many currencies, players must traverse large environments. These islands feature platform and rail obstacles resembling playgrounds. Sonic is often rewarded with Memory Tokens, which are used to talk to characters and advance the story. Guardians, minibosses that grant Gears allow players to access linear Cyberspace level. To progress the story, players must also beat Cyberspace levels and complete bonus objectives to earn Keys. These Keys can be redeemed to get Chaos Emeralds.

On top of that, players can also find collectibles that raise Sonic’s attack power, defense, speed, and ring count, find purple coins for use in a fishing minigame, and acquire Skill Pieces that will eventually accrue into Skill Points. While there’s always something to collect, all these collectibles are poorly distributed. Obstacles are laid around the open world in a haphazard manner, so it’s easy to enter one halfway through its setup (imagine stepping onto a rollercoaster backward).

The map isn’t helpful either because of how it’s unveiled to players. Sonic can find and complete various mini-challenges to reveal some of the map, but that’ll only reveal scattered squares of the grid-like map rather than everything in the surrounding area, bungling something that most basic open-world games get right. You can’t get the map to reveal Cyberspace levels or miniboss locations, but those areas of the game have their own limitations.

Cyberspace levels are linear stages structured in a way that will be familiar to those who’ve played recent Sonic games. These areas, which call back to classic Sonic areas such Green Hill Zone, appear like they could be the highest point in the game. Unfortunately, those too are marred by Sonic’s poor momentum, which feels even worse in smaller spaces where players are supposed to constantly boost and go as fast as possible. While some miniboss battles are quick, others can take up to five minutes. Coupled with the lackluster physics, it’s rare to ever get into Sonic Frontiers’ open-world flow.

That doesn’t matter, though, as the entire collectible economy is broken for two reasons. The first is that players can get important items by killing random enemies. Second, Cyloop (a new ability that allows Sonic to create an energy streak while running) can be used to obtain these items. Sonic can also buy these collectibles from Big the Cat using tickets earned through a button-timing minigame. I had plenty of Purple Coins so that I could access them all. You can get what would take over an hour in the open-world by fishing.

Do you prefer to wrestle with complex physics, frustrating boss fights, and frustrating Cyberspace level levels for hours, as I did in the beginning, or fish for only 15 minutes and buy everything needed to move the plot forward? The game was over and I wanted to do the second. The developers removed certain parts of the game to make it easier for players to choose their preferred method.

Titanic troubles

One aspect of Sonic FrontiersThat isn’t immediately weak is combat, which this game emphasizes with its miniboss Guardian fights, enemies scattered throughout the islands, and colossal boss fights at the end of each island’s story. From the beginning, Sonic can use a few basic moves and has the ability to parry or evade. Players can also unlock the Cyloop and other skills by accumulating points. Combat is simple, and many of the animations just don’t look good, but this part of the experience is at least comprehensible and works as intended when Sonic engages in a fight.

While combat’s enjoyable with basic enemies and miniboss Guardians, it does not fair as well during Super Sonic fights with the Titan bosses of each world. Super Sonic must defeat these Titans, massive mechanical creatures. Their intimidating size at first is quite impressive. These battles quickly turn into a nightmare. Instead of being determined by skill, fights are decided by how many rings Sonic possesses at the time of entering the battle. Throughout these fights, Sonic’s coins will drain, and you’ll automatically lose if they all run out, even if you’re in the middle of an animation, a quick time event, or one hit away from a final blow. If you don’t upgrade Sonic’s coin-carrying capacity and grind coins with Cyloops before you fight bosses, you’ll likely struggle to beat them.

To add to all those complaints, presentation is also a problem. The camera often can’t handle the scale of these fights and will lose track of Super Sonic or aim in an unhelpful direction. Some boss animations seem a little too rushed. The third boss is particularly annoying because he spins in fast circles and looks like a character model being pulled around by an invisible hand. Both of these signs indicate another problem. Sonic Frontiers: it’s just not a good-looking game.

It’s not a 3D Blast

PS5 is even more powerful than the PS4. Sonic FrontiersIt is a horrible game. The animations are poor across the board. Sonic and his enemies snap into certain positions, rather than appearing dynamically animated. Even when moving, Sonic’s enemies also snap into certain positions. Sonic Team also decided that the Starfall Islands should look “realistic” (in quotes because these environments do not look like they’re from a AAA game in 2022) rather than the stylistically cartoony like most Sonic games, and that choice does not work well on multiple levels.

The textures are blurry and the lighting is poor. While this may be true, the objects from Cyberspace also appear to have been thrown together without any rhyme or reason. They end up feeling unnatural rather than foreign, which isn’t the intended effect. It looks like an amateur Unreal Engine 4 or Unity Sonic tech demo, but it’s not. This AAA mainline Sonic Sonic video was made using a proprietary engine from Sonic Team (Some 3D Sonic games made by fans even look more impressive).

Sonic Frontiers also suffers from terrible pop-in, even on a current-gen console (I can’t imagine how it performs on a Nintendo Switch). Running around the five Starfall Islands, you’ll constantly see lighting, enemies, and objects that are mere feet away pop in right in front of your eyes. Not only does this make the game look low quality, but it also stunts open-world exploration, as it’s often difficult to see an entire platforming gauntlet. Games like these are the best. Breath of Wild Elden RingOr even The Elder Scrolls V – Skyrim is seeing something in the distance, thinking “I want to go there,” and doing it. Sonic’s visual shortcomings make this an impossibility.

The camera doesn’t help in that sense. Not only is it a pain in boss fights, but it isn’t good when exploring the world as well. Sonic is often caught in small, crowded spaces and the camera has difficulty focusing on him. That’s a common issue in platformers, but what’s less forgivable are camera issues while exploring the open world. The camera can sometimes pick up random enemies and minibosses while you run around. This is because it expects that you will fight them.

Sonic Team decided that some obstacles work better when viewed from a 2D perspective. The camera will adjust to this and lock in place even if you are not near them. This makes it very easy to get disoriented during both fights and exploration, as you won’t be able to exit a platforming section that you’ve accidentally stumbled into. 3D Sonic games can be prone to poor cameras. Sonic Frontiers doesn’t have the pretty world design, memorable set pieces, or fun gameplay to make up for it.

The worst game in 2022

Even with all of those complaints, I still don’t feel like I’m covering the full breadth of disappointment here. Here’s a bulleted list of some of the game’s weirder moments, so you can get an even better sense of how perplexing this game is (Light Spoilers for this game follow):

• Sonic can earn purple coins every night by playing a poorly-explained slot machine minigame. Sonic is able to see it as he runs around the world, and it makes a constant, cloying sound that obscures key UI.
• You can find key story points punctuated by bizarre minigames, some of which are like frustrating herding mission from The Legend of Zelda – Twilight Princess.
• At the end of a third world, there’s a rage-inducing pinball minigame that forces players to score a whopping 5,000,000 points to progress. You have only three balls.
• I soft-locked myself into Cyberspace levels by losing my momentum while on a loop de-loop. However, I was able to walk up 90 degree slopes if the pace was slow enough.
• Sonic scales massive towers in a late-game world that abandons the open-zone concept. One, in particular, is incredibly difficult to navigate due to the game’s poor momentum.
• In conversations that sound like, characters bring up Sonic final bosses from previous games. Family GuyCharacters set up cutaway gags.

It is at its best Sonic Frontiers is middling … and it’s not often at its best. In 2022, there’s no reason to pick up Sonic Frontiers unless you’re a lifelong fan already sold on the game (those players have been through worse). I recommend this game if you are looking for a fast-paced, exciting game with great momentum. OlliOlli World. If you want a story that’s all over the place and incoherent but eventually comes together in a satisfying way, play Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise. Do you want to be lost in an open universe? Play Elden Ring. Sonic FrontiersEven within 2022, it is not the most skilled in any field.

It might not be as much of a technical mess as some other Sonic games, but that’s not a very high compliment. Sonic Team wanted to do something radically differentWith Sonic Frontiers, which is a respectable direction for a creative team to go in, but the basic design decisions here just don’t feel well thought out. Even if Sonic felt good to control, a plethora of other poorly executed issues would’ve held the game back. The best thing I can say about this game is that it’s playable on PS5 — not exactly a glowing point of praise.

Digital Trends reviewed Sonic FrontiersPS5.

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