Sonic Frontiers [Review]

Sonic Frontiers is one of the boldest and most well realized Sonic game, even with its issues. Finally, I've felt that they're trying a new thing, searching for new inspiration and adding a Sonic twist to it and almost everything works, even if rough around the edges.

It has probably the best overworld in any 3D sonic game. Everything is varied, big and full of activities that progress the story and the map. They're big, and filled with stuff to do, but sometimes repetitive – mostly the battle content – but even those are fun, since Sonic is constantly getting new combat skills and inputs.

A surprising highlight was the story and interaction between characters. Nothing is overly dramatic or super serious, things are fun and joyful, and it is nice to see everyone commenting on previous games. Frontiers cares about the franchise and that's why it is a special game.

The roughness is, indeed, rough. The movement is sometimes clunky, the stages are mostly mediocre to bad, the 2.5D Sections, both in the overworld and in the stages, have weird physics and are also not that fun. Actually, the physics sometimes range from the best in 3D Sonic to as bad as Generations, it is odd and not balanced at all, and those are issues that could have been solved if the game had more time in the oven or more budget.

For what it is, Frontiers is, in some ways, everything that Sonic needed, cool story and characters, amazing boss battles, good power progression, great game length and some decent platforming; but the magic is constantly interrupted by technical stuff, like the odd physics, bad pop in and draw distance, paired with a so-so stage design.

My dream game would be something like the stages from Shadow Generations + the overworld and overall systems from Frontiers. And, to be honest, I see the next games trying to be just like this. Until there, I may return to Frontiers DLC. Who knows?

7/10