Sonic Frontiers is a game that manages to snatch mediocrity from the jaws of greatness, and it's so upsetting, because it comes so damn close to it.

The first two islands are simply great, but then you get hit with the dreaded Chaos Island, and it's like the level designers forgot how to design levels for a 3D open world. It's filled with random booster pads that lock you into a 2D section you can't escape, and they're scattered everywhere so you're guaranteed to hit one by accident, and get slightly annoyed. Times that by 100 and you start to understand why it's so horrible. By the last island it gets back to it's footing, but it's kinda too little too late by that point to counteract the horrible experience of the Chaos Island.

Not to mention, the simply horrible pop-in issues, platforms will only appear once you're standing relatively close to them, so you can never see them from far away. This is simply unacceptable in the modern day, especially on maxed out graphics settings and makes traversal a chore sometimes, because you have no idea where the platforms you need will be.

But, and this is a big but, i can't understate how fun Sonic is just to run around with, especially on the first two islands. The levels are fun, and the bosses too in their own ways, even though they are total pushovers. It's enough to make me positive on the game overall, and hopeful for a sequel some day, but not enough for me to recommend this wholeheartedly to everyone. Recommend picking up on sale, and just trying to speedrun the 3rd island as fast as possible.

TLDR: A good game, brought down by a horrible 3rd island. Mild recommend.

I’m very torn on this game. On one hand, it’s an interesting idea to have an open world Sonic game where you perform platforming puzzles; on the other hand, it legitimately looks like those Unreal Engine fan demos made specifically for YouTube. Because of that, the settings feel extremely uninspired, especially after the first island. They almost all look the same and have very similar puzzles.

I feel like this concept could have worked if they had better integrated the world with the puzzles, but instead, it’s just a bunch of floating platforms that all behave the exact same way. The jankiness creates A LOT of frustration, and to top it off, it’s a collect-a-thon in the worst way possible. There are about six different items to collect in each area, with hundreds of each scattered around and sometimes theres no descript way that you earn those items. For instance you get a gear for big challenges like beating a boss, but sometimes there also just in one of the 1000 crates lying around??? There is no way you'd want to try to get everything unless you are a completionist with way too much time on your hands.

Simply put: it isn't fun. It wasn't even fun on the first island. I was determined to beat it, but it felt like a total chore, and nothing made the payoff feel worth it. The only dopamine rushes I got were from the traditional Cyberspace levels and the Big the Cat fishing minigame (which is so hilariously out of place by the way). The moments where you turn Super Sonic are kind of fun, but they are way too easy.

The story is incredibly melodramatic. I don’t usually mind that, but here it’s almost laughable. I also found the difficulty scaling weird. While the Titans are the main bosses, the mini-bosses scattered around the map are usually more difficult and annoying to beat. I think I only finished about seven of the 100+ mini-bosses because they're so frustrating. They require you to use your skills, but you often have to wait around for an opening, which makes the combat feel incredibly slow and tedious. I had to force myself to finish this game. I even tried to play the DLC where they tried to mix up the gameplay by making you play as Amy but I was having legitimately no fun and I just uninstalled it. Whats funny is, most my hours on this game were me falling asleep playing it.

"Tedious" is really the best word to describe the game as a whole.

Score: 6/10

The fact that anyone recommends this game is shameful.

This game has a parry mechanic that is mentionned nowhere in the controls and that you'll only know about if you find the tutorial for it. Said mechanic is required for the final boss of the first area (I never encountered this tutorial so I had to look it up online to find out).

Another issue the game has is that it will CONSTANTLY take controls away from the player, making you move in directions you don't want to because the game feels like it. Moving the camera at an angle away from the boss you're fighting, often giving them a free hit because you literally couldn't see that they were going to attack.
Hell often times you'll find yourself launched in the air and unable to actually do anything but watch Sonic go up... while he might be under fire...
This issue is also agravated in the MENUS, this is the first game I've played where when you press pause, you can only navigate the submenus by CONFIRMING it's the menu you want to navigate. And what about when I want to confirm something? Don't worry, often there's a delay before you can do anything. Wanna quit the game? Here are your choices "Cancel" (selected by default) or "Confirm"... we'll let you actually select one or the other after 2 seconds (No, I'm not joking)

Some levels are literal jokes where you'll collect all the red rings, rings required and finish in S rank time on your first try without even trying while others will require you to finish them perfectly in order to just make it a nanosecond before you're too late for an S rank time, there's literally no in-between.

Graphically it looks terrible with a lot of pop ins and the world is in itself a mess, sure there was apparently a civilization there at some point... do we wanna explain why there's so much FLOATING ♥♥♥♥ EVERYWHERE?! Seriously the game looks like someone had a big sandbox and just made whatever wherever, there's 0 visual coherence to anything, it's just there to be there.

All in all, this is a game that feels like it was made by people who not only never made games before but also never played games before (not even their own game).