Even after over thirty years in existence, Sonic can still
manage to surprise. Taking bold cues from modern open world games and
incorporating them firmly with boost-style 3D Sonic gameplay, Sonic Frontiers
is a game that, despite numerous cut corners and odd storytelling, is a real
crowd-pleaser of an action-adventure game. After the almost shockingly
underwhelming Sonic Forces, it’s a pleasant surprise to see that Sonic Team is,
thankfully, still capable of developing not just a competent entry in the
long-running series, but a nearly great one.
The game begins with Sonic and his friends becoming
separated, with the blue mascot finding himself alone on a deserted island, and
it’s easy at first to spot Frontiers’ obvious Breath of the Wild influences,
from the somber piano music to the atmospheric flourishes that hit you almost
from minute one. While I feel it would have been better and helped Frontiers
feel more original to have had a graphics style and art direction more in the
style of the Sonic Universe than the Legend of Zelda, the game still finds a
way to differentiate itself in a pretty major way from other open world titles,
and a couple hours in, I was fully able to understand what Sonic Team was
attempting with their “open zone” concept, and it’s one that, for the most
part, completely won me over.
There’s something so addictive about the flow of gameplay
with your arrival on each of Sonic Frontiers’ five islands, four of which are
fully-realized massive open world playgrounds. (One of them is a bit of a cop
out, but is at least pretty fun as far as cop outs go.) A mission marker guides you to where the game
suggests you go next to progress the story, but you can explore the islands and
accomplish your goals however you see fit. Similarly to the likes of Breath of
the Wild and Immortals: Fenyx Rising, there’s a lot of inherent fun in the idea
of completing an objective to fill in a portion of your map, allowing you to
see what each area has to offer and exploring it. In the case of Sonic
Frontiers, you complete bite-sized puzzles, most of which are simple but fun
exercises, and the feeling of satisfaction upon then seeing your visible map
expand is hard to put into words but it’s one thing that makes this formula so
compelling. Frontiers goes a step further by then changing the world itself,
adding a series of roller coaster-like grind rails to the areas that you
Reveal, making traversing the island as you fill in your map even faster.
The controls feel great and very fluid, and while Frontiers
still uses the boost mechanics that have become fairly tiresome in other recent
modern Sonic entries, somehow the open zone setting suits them very well, and
getting around, solving puzzles, zipping across the islands on speed boosts and
grind rails, along with fighting the various enemies, all feels, for the most
part, nearly perfect. Though the
traditional Sonic “levels” exist in the form of the Cyber Space segments (more
on those a little later) they’re a fairly small portion of what Sonic Frontiers
has to offer, but I was surprised to find that I didn’t miss them as much as I
thought I would. In a sense, the world you explore feels almost like a giant
Level, and though you follow the same formula upon arriving on almost every
island, the feeling of progression, from defeating mini-bosses, to completing the
Cyber Space levels, to filling in your map, to leveling up your character, to
talking to your friends to progress the story, it all flows very well and feels
not only addictive but truly fun.
Cyber Space levels are the closest Sonic Frontiers comes to
featuring your typical end-to-end Sonic stages, and though many of them are
fairly short, and they all use the same (re-used) visual templates, their platforming
is surprisingly fun and very well-paced, with your goal not only to just reach
the end of the stage but to complete various objectives, none of which feel
like a chore and the short length of the stages works very well in this sense.
The music, too, during many of these stages, is almost unspeakably awesome.
Upon collecting all the chaos emeralds, you fight a massive
boss encounter before clearing the island and getting to move to the next one.
These bosses are huge and are generally fairly fun to play, though there are
some frustrations associated with them that I wish had been addressed. You
fight each boss as Super Sonic, which means you have a time limit, as the amount
of rings you have depletes second-by-second. It’s important therefore to go
into each boss battle with a full collection of rings, and dying on a boss and
having to retry it doesn’t save this progress, forcing you to collect the rings
(and then having to journey back to the boss encounter) all over again. The
bosses also include something that I really wish video games would abandon by
now, which is the Sudden Death QTE. Yes, failing those dumb QTEs will cause you
to lose the boss fight and have to start it all over again, which is as
frustrating as it sounds.
As far as puzzles are concerned, most of those featured are
quick and fun, though there’s a very difficult puzzle towards the end of the
first island that needs to be completed before you can fight the boss, and it’s
such a tedious puzzle that I could easily see many, especially younger fans,
quitting the game right there and never going back to it, which would be a real
shame because it’s the only such puzzle in the whole thing and it happens so
early in the story.
As far as the story goes, it’s pretty nonsensical and difficult
to follow, eventually reverting to a strange series of flashbacks in a made-up
language starring characters who you really don’t get to care much about. The
moments with the Sonic characters interacting with each other at least fare a
little better, and the series really has come a long way from the days of amateurish
voice acting and strange dialogue that used to hamper the modern entries. Oddly
though, while the acting’s mostly solid, some of the key roles were recast for
unknown reasons, and even the voice actors who stayed on (such as Roger Craig
Smith as Sonic) seem to have been instructed to give subdued, “more serious”
performances. It all sounds a little weird and had I not known that Roger Craig
Smith reprised his role, I’d have assumed that Sonic was being voiced by
someone else, given how different the character now sounds. That said, the frequency of the cutscenes
and the presence of the overall narrative itself is much greater than I was led to believe
from the trailers, which is a good thing and keeps things interesting and well-paced,
even if the story being told is, frankly, pretty bad. And the lack of a single
boss fight against Eggman is also a little weird, though the character does
play a big role in the storyline.
Really Sonic Frontiers’ only major stumbles (aside from the
somewhat frustrating boss mechanics) are the obvious development short cuts.
Whether budgetary or because Sonic Team didn’t have the time that they needed,
evidence of cut corners rear their heads pretty regularly. One of the chaos
emeralds you have to collect is basically given to you by each boss, while the
enemy types and mini-bosses you face are limited to only a couple per island
that you fight over and over again. You’ll fill in Sonic’s skill tree long
before the game ends, and the Cyber Space zones aren’t given identities of
their own, re-using assets from Sonic Generations and only having a couple
variations (Chemical Plant, Green Hill Zone, etc.) It’s too bad because the
Cyber Space zones are a lot of fun, and it’d have been cool if they were
differentiated from each other by being fully-realized Levels, instead of
re-using tired backdrops. Four of the islands look very similar to each other,
even though they all play quite differently in terms of exploration, with only
the desert really standing out from the pack on a visual level. The fourth island,
as mentioned earlier, is basically filler and not at all like all the other
ones in terms of things to do and exploration. Pop-in and framerate hitches are
pretty rampant (on the PS4 version) and though not as big a deal as I thought
they’d be, they do make the game feel a little rough around the edges. The
ending, too, really disappoints, with a forgettable final boss that’s far
easier than all the others, while the final cutscenes feel incredibly rushed as
well. The ending does save itself in literally its final 10 seconds before the
credits roll, with an emotional moment that comes across as meaningful, even if
everything else feels like it’s on fast-forward.
It should be noted that playing on Hard mode unlocks an additional
little “boss fight” during the final boss, but other than the game bizarrely
cutting away from the fight on Normal and Easy and jumping right into the
ending, I think people who would rather play Sonic Frontiers on Normal or Easy
should rest assured that the Hard Mode-exclusive boss is more of a
mini-game than a boss, doesn’t add much of anything to the game, and can be
played after the fact by switching to Hard Mode after beating the game and
trying the boss again. Still, the whole concept and execution of a “final boss”
fight exclusive to one difficulty setting comes across as lazy and poorly
thought out.
But gripes aside, Sonic Frontiers is a game that’s so much
better than I ever thought it would be. It controls like a dream 90% of the
time, the mechanics of bouncing around the environments and the Cyber Space
levels feel refined and nearly perfect, and the wide array of things to do on
each island and the freedom you’re give to do them, not to mention some incredibly
good music and solid (if repetitive) graphical presentation, make Sonic
Frontiers a near-great game. Had the Cyber Space levels been fully-realized
levels and given their own identities, had the game not cut so many corners in
terms of mini-bosses and visual design, and had the final boss and ending not
been such a (mostly) let down, we’d be looking at a true Sonic classic. But Sonic
Frontiers comes close enough and, I have to say, is such a near-great game in its
own right, that it’s one I’d fully recommend to fans of the series and one that
I’d even encourage non-fans who might be interested to check out. This
iteration might not get the critical recognition that it deserves, but next
time, if Sonic Team continues down this path, we might have something even more
special.
Note; this review is based on the PS4 version.
