Sonic Frontiers review (PS5)
Sonic Frontiers may not be the most mindblowingly amazing game this year, but it is still, surprisingly, quite good. The environments are vast and beautiful, the combat is fun and can mostly be avoided if you're not feeling up to it, the story is a great mystery you're piecing together with every tidbit you're given. The voice cast is expressive, and these characters are the best they've been in years. Knuckles is no longer an idiot but instead someone who trusts Sonic as a rival and friend, and someone who is also knowledgeable about ruins and such. Tails is no longer useless unless Sonic's around but someone who is working through his self-doubt to become a better more independent person. Amy's about the same, but she hasn't had as much issue with writing in past games as the others.
There are issues, sure. Pop-in is definitely quite prevalent, and some encounters are a pain to deal with, especially on the last island where I've actively avoided several particularly annoying foes. Another issue, though it's more of a nitpick, is leveling via the Elder Koco. You have to manually pick an option one by one, and the menu here on my PS5 was also laggy, requiring around a second after it showed up to move down and select the option once more to keep leveling my Rings or Speed. The Hermit Koco just levels both Attack and Defense as much as he can at once depending on how many of those you have on you, but the Elder Koco is a menuing nightmare, especially due to the minor lag on his menu.
Aside from those issues, the music is pretty good. Exploration themes are toned down but still pretty good while basic battle themes are energetic. The Titan battle themes are all amazing, standing toe to toe with past greats such as Live & Learn quite easily.
And then there's the Cyber Space stages. I'm mentioning these separately because the game treats them separately. Your upgrades in the rest of the game don't transfer over and the physics even feel different here. The majority of them are based on layouts from past 3D Sonic titles, which is a nice homage. There's only 4 stage themes though, and 3 are ones Sonic Team has been using as a crutch for a decade now (being Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Sky Sanctuary). These aren't that bad to go through but they even feel different to control. A fun distraction that you need to go through a few of for progression purposes, but they still feel disconnected from the design philosophies of the main game.
There's also fishing. Big's here for the first time in a long time, and he's happy to just let Sonic vibe and fish. The music here is relaxing, the gameplay for fishing is simple (select where to throw, hit the button when there's a bite, then time another press or two when the small ring is inside the larger ring). You can get a lot of items here, and it's far more connected to the main game than Cyber Space is. Each catch nets your tokens. You can get the Kocos you'd turn into the Elder Koco, seeds for Power and Defense, Memory Tokens for that Island's trapped character, and even Skill Points and Rings. There's also 24 Egg Memos to collect, which are voiced bits of lore by Eggman that give fun lore insights or tidbits about how he feels about other characters.
Speaking of story, this isn't quite a dark one but it is, as they've been saying, quite melancholy. Ian Flynn, known for his work on the comics, brings a masterful touch to this one. The characters are as well-written here as they are in the comics, and I already touched on how Knuckles and Tails really benefitted from it. Eggman feels a lot less one-dimensional villain, and Sage is a great addition. I quite enjoyed hunting down the side stories to get more tidbits about how the characters feel or things about the ruins, and even information on a greater backstory that forms the backbone of the entire plotline. There's also a lot of references to past games, which creates a great continuity that wasn't quite there before and is quite welcome. The only place the plot suffers is in the ending, which feels quite sudden and a bit rushed honestly, though I blame Sonic Team on that far more than Flynn.
I will note that there are three difficulty settings, and none of them affect the storyline. The only notable difference is Hard Mode grants you an extended (and difficult) final boss fight, and an alternate credits theme, but aside from that the ending plays out the same regardless of what difficulty you were on. That being said, Frontiers is certainly a game that lets you play how you want to. From an extensive suite of customization and accessibility options to an abundance of tokens to collect (far more than you need to max out your stats and get everything), Frontiers is a game that really shows a great start to the Open Zone formula Sonic Team wants to focus on. I'm glad they're listening to feedback because if this is the direction Sonic's going, then I'm excited to see how they improve upon this already solid base. With all this in mind, I'm giving it an 8/10.
