Poll of the Day > I finally played and finished Sonic Frontiers... My review

(+) Yeah! (+)

I waited for the all the DLC to come out, then I got distracted once it was all released. Definitely worth it

Minor Pros:
- Game is very pretty for the most part. Always nice to play a Sonic game at 60fps
- Fishing is simplistic, but entertaining and chill for what it was
- Combat is also simple but fun vs a majority of enemies.
- Probably the best take on Sonic characters since maybe Unleashed? They feel a bit more like characters than a walking stream of one-liners. Sage is pretty cool, too
- Climbing up the Towers in Rhea Island
- The Ninja Series are the most fun to fight
- Drop Dash is crazy fun to use

Major Pros:
- Music is amazing as expected from a Sonic game. Definitely on the higher end of Sonic Music
- Just generally running around collecting story tokens, notes, and not-Koroks is far more fun than I thought it would be. everything is like a short 10 second puzzle so it feels very good to blitz thru and move to the next, or outright find a way to skip some.
- Music Player and song choice is swell
- First Major Boss is cool and fun as fuck. Having a bunch of Neon Genesis Evangelion Angel Tier bosses vs Super Sonic was the way to go
- Personally one of my favorite takes on a open world/ zone game. Helps that the Island feels reasonably sized since Sonic and cross it on foot in under a minute. First game to make me ignore fast travel entirely

Minor Cons:
- The Final Boss could have been better and it lasted a little too long. Also that last QTE was BS. I died to it not knowing what to do since the white line was small. The Ikaruga style gameplay is appreciated though
- The RPG elements and skill tree unlocks are uninteresting for the most part.
- Story is still kinda whatever, but at least the link to Adventure's Chaos is neat. Haven't done the DLC Story yet
- Maybe I missed the tutorial, but filling up the quick cyloop bar is weird or inconsistent
- Animation jank and little janky stuff in generally. Nothing game breaking, but it pops up from time to time.
- Level design needs work. sometimes its fine, other times its 'who came up with this crap'
- DLC Characters need more polish

Major Cons:
- Cyberspace stages are too short. Also the reference used is sometimes broken up into multiple stages. Didn't really need Generations Sky Sanctuary broken up into 3-4 cyberspace stages.
- Only 4 different aesthetic styles for Cyberspace sucks, even if it looks cool.
- Of the 5 Islands, 3 look too similar. Rhea Island also has no Cyberspace stages
- The Penultimate boss kinda sucks and is too similar to the first two Major Bosses

Overall, I greatly enjoyed what I played, despite its many shortcomings. My adventure all the way up to Giganto was simply excellent. I think what they have is decent, but they need a lot more time to master it since they seem hellbent on reusing stuff from Generations/ Forces.

Score: 8/10

Wasnt expecting to enjoy this game as much as I did, issues aside. I haven't played many games this year ( I have Rebirth but I havent played it yet) So Frontiers sits as my Game of the Year. I got Shadow Gens too, but I havent started that yet either.

Favorite Songs from Frontiers:

- Starfall Islands -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrMFuAQgXnI

- Undefeatable -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWmapG_rAQ8

- 'Flowing' / Cyber Space 1-2 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLfwBqdvKY

- 'Arrow of Time' / Cyber Space 4-5 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDycKGUnuO4

- 'Database' / Cyber Space 1-1 -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttPWCG0OqmQ

It was a decently fun game and the bosses and enemies were super fun to fight. Really had Shadow of the Colossus vibes.

The world design was very subpar. It was great to have large open areas to run around and worked very well with how a Sonic game should feel. I really hope this open world or a semi-open world is the direction they choose to evolve into with 3D Sonic. But the things you can do with it are very unimaginative. Random ramps and rails scatter haphazardly as if they're just temporary Unity assets. I would love to see a combination of believable and realistic looking landscapes mixed with surreal level design that compliments the gameplay and Sonic's abilities.

A lot of people say the music was great, but I really felt like it was mostly either forgettable with the overworld themes, or downright unbearably cringy with the boss themes. Subspace level music was often the highlight of the game, though and genuinely good.

The Story really seemed to be trying to do something interesting and tackle some more serious themes, but the execution of it was atrocious, either being laughably awkward (Sage's sad montage left me crying from laughter right when I was about to feel genuinely sad for her) or just didn't end up leading to anywhere at all. It's as if they put serious effort into writing it, but then handed it of to AI to finish the job in the final hour.

Sonic Jank was not the worst I've ever seen from the series, but it was still pretty bad. Especially when forcing you between 3D and 2D perspectives. The third island was filled with these and it was a real struggle to get through.

Overall, it was a very fun game with a lot of issues.

It's good not great

I appreciate how many things they improved after release, both in the free DLC and the gameplay itself

I liked it a lot. Hope they do more out there stuff going forward. Also hope they ditch the boost gameplay, getting bored of that. Great game though

Yeah Boost can go away

Metalsonic66 posted...

It's good not great

I appreciate how many things they improved after release, both in the free DLC and the gameplay itself

Really? I haven't played since release. Didn't even know there was DLC. Did they put QoL changes into the base game or something?

It was alright, a big step forward in the direction of the series

Needed some polish, NPCs/towns, most classic elements and give the skill tree some purpose (you only needed to unlock like 10% of it)

Salrite posted...

Really? I haven't played since release. Didn't even know there was DLC. Did they put QoL changes into the base game or something?

Yeah there were a lot of little options added which made a big difference, like limited momentum physics and full upgrades during Cyberspace levels