Sonic Frontiers Review

Wow, just wow, this opened my eyes to what Sonic could be moving forward, and it would not be a disappointment!

Yes, we all love Sonic with the arcade feeling, but Frontiers gave the game an open-world RPG feeling to it with various arcade-like games interpreted to progress in the story line, it is truly a genius idea that none of us has thought about!

But before I get ahead of myself, Sonic Frontiers revolves around our favorite blue hedgehog called Sonic, you explore the mysterious Starfall Islands, each with its titan that will need to be defeated to free your friends from the wormhole you fell through to reach the islands in the 1st place.

As usual, Sonic believes that he can take on any foe, but after his 1st encounter with a Titan, it went south even faster than Sonic’s speed! We then learn with the help of Amy that we need to retrieve the Chaos Emeralds to power up Sonic (and get a great soundtrack) to fight and defeat these titans.

You will obtain gears that are needed to activate the portals into the more arcade element of Sonic, where time, red stars, and rings are the name of the game, the more objectives you complete the more keys you will get from the mini-game. These keys are essential to unlocking the towers where the Chaos Emeralds are held.

Other than the story you will have various RPG elements such as exploring the island and fighting mini-bosses to obtain various “currencies” to upgrade your speed, ring capacity, health, and shield. And of course, where you find the gears in the 1st place for the Portals are by fighting and defeating the Mini bosses which some players might find a bit repetitive.

The game still has a natural sonic feeling with the classic music playing and having epic music for boss fights. Visually the cutscenes show you the attention to detail Sega decided to go towards for Sonic Frontiers by seeing the individual fibers and the bottom of Sonic’s shoes looking a bit worn out.

When you reach the maximum amount of rings in the open world element and you speed through the island, you might encounter a bit of rendering of the open world as you travel through it.

Another element added to enhance the RPG feeling is that as you level up and will be able to unlock abilities to use with Sonic which tends to be addictive and you will find yourself in no time using them on any foe you encounter, the story would also end up with an unexpecting twist along with the classic side quests/storylines RPG games tend to have in store such as assisting the Koco find their true love.

Some players might find it a bit tedious when you approach an objective and you only get a voice saying that you should return when the time is right but without a clear indication of what is needed to start this scenario/quest.

Final Thoughts: A step in a great direction for Sega to challenge themselves by stepping out of the “comfort zone” they have created for the Sonic franchise by introducing an open-world element to the game having that RPG feeling, Audio and Music are enjoyable and the attention to detail is impressive, although some players might be annoyed with the rendering they might experience