Sonic Frontiers takes our favorite blue hedgehog into a new direction which can best be described as classic 3D Sonic meeting Breath of the Wild. Is this something that works for the high-paced Sonic gameplay? Time to find out!
A strange mix
After spending a couple of hours with Sonic Frontiers, I’m still very confused about what the game was trying to achieve here. In short, I got a lot of mixed feelings about the game itself as it tries to combine a lot of things into a new experience. There’s a storyline but the tone of it shifts between moral questions and classic Sonic animated scenes, it feels like there are two entirely different scripts edited together last minute to still offer that traditional Sonic feeling. A bit strange if you ask me since I did find the more serious notes in the story very intriguing, a shame it’s not worked out as well as it could have been. This resulted in me quickly losing interest in the story, there’s simply too much going on all at once and it really doesn’t make sense at all. It also doesn’t help that due to the convoluted story, it’s not always clear where you need to go next so prepare to be lost in the open world for quite some time. That being said, the moment you find the Cyberspace levels, you’ll be teleported to classic high-paced 3D Sonic gameplay which can easily be considered as some of the best that ever appeared in the franchise. The Cyberspace and puzzles levels are what saves Frontiers from being a total disaster. There are a lot of moments when you want to put away the game and start playing a different one instead but it’s those levels that will have you coming back for more.
Sonic of the Wild
If you’ve seen the trailers and screenshots of Sonic Frontiers, it won’t come as a surprise that it takes a lot of inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Sonic and his friends are sucked into this new dimension where a mysterious high-tech civilization has all the power. This results in a mysterious world filled with high-tech ruins, which of course resembles Breath of the Wild a lot. It even goes further than this. Just like in Breath of the Wild, the world of Sonic Frontier consists of a lot of open environments filled with smaller enemies, ruins, and yes, even a type of creature that can best be compared to the Koroks of Breath of the Wild. If you’re a fan of the Breath of the Wild gameplay, you’ll enjoy playing Frontiers since it clearly takes a bit more than just mere inspiration from Nintendo’s big hit. In my opinion, this goes beyond homage as it clearly just uses the same ideas, a bit more originality would have been welcome.
That being said, combining those typical Sonic rails in an open-world setting certainly is refreshing for the franchise and does offer some fun for the fans. In between unlocking new rails to venture into new parts of the map, you’ll fight several enemies and venture into Cyberspace after entering one of the high-tech altars. The Cyberspace levels are the best part of the game since they come closest to modern 3D Sonic gameplay. These levels are more compact compared to the vast open world and offer some traditional Sonic challenges. These levels really gotta go fast and are over in just a couple of minutes but the variation and challenges in these levels are exactly what you would expect from a modern Sonic game. Finding the right momentum of your speed to solve some puzzles is often key in Cyberspace and I’m sure these levels will please a lot of hardcore Sonic fans. Playing these levels almost made me wish Frontiers just offered a collection of these levels instead of the open-world segments, the Cyberspace levels are exactly what I hoped for, I just wished there were more of them.
Attack of the Titans
If you collect enough emeralds in a certain segment of the map by defeating enemies and clearing Cyberspace levels, you’ll have to fight the Titan of that level. If you manage to defeat it, you’ll be able to advance to a new segment of the map and keep the story going. In order to defeat the Titan, you’ll transform into Super Sonic, giving you an incredible amount of power. It all looks pretty epic and the first time I had to fight one of these giants, I did get excited, a shame the gameplay of the actual fight isn’t on par with the epicness of its presentation. The combat system really feels flawed with stiff controls and questionable hit boxes. When you’re in the flow of combat, those types of hiccups will immediately take you out of the immersion, which is a shame.
You’ll also find these technical hiccups during the open-world segments, with pop-ups being the main issue here. It feels like the game could have used some extra development time in order to become a true masterpiece in the Sonic franchise. The new direction certainly has a lot of potential but the developers still have a lot of work to do to find the right balance between the story, the Titan fights, and the Cyberspace levels.
Conclusion:
Sonic Frontiers can be fun if you’re a hardcore Sonic fan but I’m afraid it won’t convince the mainstream audience. From a technical point of view, there are simply too many things going wrong and from a gameplay point of view, the game never truly finds its voice. It takes too much inspiration from Breath of the Wild and fails to come up with good original ideas. Sure, the Cyberspace levels are awesome but this alone can’t save the game from being extremely mediocre.
