Sonic Frontiers Review (Steam)
For our Sonic Frontiers Review, we go into a universe where worlds are colliding, In search of the missing Chaos emeralds, Sonic becomes stranded on an ancient island teeming with unusual creatures. Battle hordes of powerful enemies as you explore a breathtaking world of action, adventure, and mystery. Accelerate to new heights and experience the thrill of high-velocity, open-zone platforming freedom as you race across the five massive Starfall Islands. Jump into adventure, wield the power of the Ancients, and fight to stop these new mysterious foes.
Sonic Frontiers Review Pros:
- Beautiful graphics.
- 28.98GB download size.
- Steam achievements.
- 3 save slots and an autosave slot.
- Steam trading cards.
- Three difficulties – Easy, normal, and hard.
- Invert axis and sensitivity sliders for everything from turn speed to boost, top speed, and acceleration.
- Graphics settings – resolution, v-sync, rendering scale, screen mode, monitor, volumetric lighting, bloom, reflections, ambient occlusion, frame rate limit, anti-aliasing, shadow quality, blur effect, and graphics quality preset.
- Can rebind controls for both keyboard and controller buttons.
- Game speed seeings – action or high-speed style.
- Fantastic cutscenes.
- Excellent voice work.
- Can skip the cutscenes.
- Open-world Sonic game.
- 3D levels.
- Enemies can drop seeds and skill pieces.
- Skill pieces turn into skill pints.
- Tutorial sections and pop-ups.
- Guardians are stronger enemies and rip portal gear.
- The map fills in as you complete the markers which are usually switches or basic puzzles.
- Cyloop is where you can run in a circle and shut the circle to have a do an effect. The effect cm varies on what you have encased.
- Free roam world.
- Coins to collect everywhere.
- A lot of Sonics trademark air flamboyance with rails and jumps everywhere.
- Max out your coin count and you become power-boosted for faster movement.
- Save/load menu.
- Portal gears are used to open new levels.
- Cyloop can be done anywhere and will uncover anything underground like rings or skill pieces.
- Lock on to enemies to make dodging easier and homing attacks.
- A lot of secrets and optional routes can be found in the world.
- Levels give a rank and have a couple of tasks with a vault key reward attached to them. Think of things like a time limit, collecting all red rings, etc.
- Combo counter for hits in combat.
- When hit you drop rings and have a short time to recollect them before they disappear.
- Training sections can be redone in loading screens. This is an optional choice.
- The Koco are hidden away and need to be returned to the Eldar. Rewards include sonics speed and ring capacity.
- Purple coins are unique and redeemed in hidden portals.
- You are free to explore and play how you want.
- Combat is fast but does require learning patterns.
- Full 3D camera control except in particular sequences like speed rings and boosts.
- Puzzle elements throughout.
- The excellent soundtrack in the levels themselves with a more upbeat approach.
- It can replay levels.
- Vault keys are gained in levels and used to unlock the Chaos Emerald.
- Character memory tokens can be found and are used to free the character of that island.
- Mini-games are scattered throughout.
- The very relaxing pace in the open world.
- The levels themselves are not too long and feel bitesize in comparison.
- Many different types of map marker activities.
- You can mark the map.
- The fishing mini-game allows you to get treasure tokens and Gold cards to exchange.
- Fast travel scrolls can be found in fishing and are of infinite use on the island you find them on.
- The fishing is simple and fun, using the animations I first saw in Yakuza.
- Massive boss fights.
- Super Sonic is in the game.
- Five areas to unlock, each with a completion percentage.
- Day and night cycle.
- Night time can change what you can do and see.
- Takes a few game mechanics and mini-games from franchises like Shadow of the colossus and Pilot wings.
- Fill the map in and you unlock fast travel to all portals and Elders.
- Coins and enemies will respawn over time.
- You can jump between maps through the menu.
Sonic Frontiers Review Cons:
- The mouse cursor stays on the screen even when using the controller.
- No benchmark test.
- Had to adjust to Sonic voice! Not what I’m used to from the cartoons.
- The combat takes some getting used to.
- The somber music in the open world just makes the exploration part feel a bit flat.
- Bit of confusion as to what you lose when you die, I had it where collected items came back and guardians I beat came back. On other occasions, nothing changed.
- Had the game thinking I was in combat when I wasn’t and because of that I couldn’t save or interact with characters.
- Reflex heavy platform/grind sections.
- Bizarre mini-games.
- Islands all have the same flow and gameplay loop.
- The cyloop is all random so it doesn’t matter where you do it.
- Possible to just grind and overpower yourself.
- Fighting multiple enemies can get clunky when the lock on or camera doesn’t keep up.
- The cutscene of going power boost electric (maxing coins) is always shown and is unskippable.
- Opening levels is a tedious cutscene that agon gets repeated.
- The levels are a bit part, I finished the first island only doing like four or five levels and the rest was just exploring and fishing.
- Everything is tied to each island with no crossover except obviously your abilities and coins.
- The camera seriously messes up when doing tight turns, fighting bosses, and anything that isn’t just moving forward.
- Hard to judge platforming.
- A lot of pop-up issues.
- The World is very empty and barren.
Related Post: Smurfs Kart Review (Nintendo Switch OLED)
Sonic Frontiers:
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: SEGA
Store Links –
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8/10
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7/10
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7/10
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8/10
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7/10
Summary
Look, Sonic has tried his hand at many genres from platforming to racing and it’s been a mixed bag many will argue the best game in years was Sonic Mania which funnily enough was made by fans! Sonic Frontiers hopes to introduce another new genre with an open-world approach. The initial reveal didn’t go down well but they stuck to their guns and here we are. This is the right way forward for Sonic, being in an open world means you can use all of Sonics abilities and it does question why this hasn’t happened before. The levels are in portals and you need to get vault keys for Chaos Emeralds this then culminates in a Super Sonic vs the area boss showdown. On the way, you can freely roam the world and collect tokens to unlock your friends who as stuck in a ghost-like appearance. The World is a good-looking place and luckily for Sonic, it is full of bars and rails to grind, catapults, and cannons which all help Sonic get to the tokens. I lost many hours just zooming around the world collecting tokens and taking on the many huge bosses that roam the world. I did, however, get bummed out by the third world as it all just felt the same, the worlds are very barren, and you can get to the main boss fight without doing hardly any levels. That’s handy as the levels themselves are not that good and even take previous levels and mix them up a bit but needless to say they are just not fun and it’s almost like an auto-playing level in some cases. Overall Sonic Frontiers is the way forward for the franchise but this isn’t the game to push it, Sonic Frontiers 2 will be awesome if they just build this idea out.