Sonic frontiers breath of the wild7/25/2023 ![]() ![]() There’s a lot I’d like to see improved upon in a Sonic Frontiers sequel (which they should absolutely do), but I had fun playing around with the open world format, and just skipping some of the more boring stuff that I didn’t want to do. It’s unpredictable to the point of being charming, as all of these things take a few minutes to finish at best, then you’re on to the next oddity. You’re also asked to play a crane game, do a light/pillar puzzle, and weed a garden. That’s one of the most insane-sounding sentences I’ve ever typed for a review, but here we are. After collecting them, a slot machine appeared and granting me fishing tokens. At one point I was dashing around like an idiot, and a random event happened that spawned hundreds of glowing meteor pieces on the map. There’s a fair bit of discovery at the core of Sonic Frontiers, and the more organic experiences are the ones that made the game click. That’s a cool feeling, especially when you have so much control over Sonic, and stumble across some secrets along the way (including the soothing and simplistic fishing minigame). The designs got more interesting, the enemies started using different tactics, and I even got lost a few times: in a Sonic game. The amount of control we have over Sonic in Frontiers is wonderful, lending some credence to the age-old marketing adage of “if you can see it, you can go there.” Of course that’s not completely true, as some sections in Frontiers are gated off, but you do have the freedom to devise alternate means of travel, and zoom about to locate random secrets and pickups.Īfter dealing with mixed bouts of quality on the first island, by the time I got to the second, things started to come together. The 60 FPS mode on current-gen consoles/PC (I played on PS5, where it has 4K visual or performance 60 FPS options) does limit the jank where it matters (though bosses are generally janky all the way through). It’s a really smart move that even feels like a pivot mid-development, because requiring players to do only rote puzzles to move on would have been a huge mistake. But by and large, you can roam around, collect pickups through exploration, and still progress through the core game. No, not every puzzle lands, and there should have been more ingenuity and variety on that front. The key thing I need to communicate is that running through the open world sandboxes is fun. Sure there is some gating (especially in regards to the requirement to take down minibosses or find gears to unlock the aforementioned traditional Cyber Space levels, which in turn unlock keys to unlock Chaos Emeralds): and as you can tell, the unlocking/sequential collectible schema is out of control. When exploring, you generally aren’t “locked out” of going places. That’s pretty much all you need, which does work in the game’s favor. Those core abilities include the light speed dash (clicking the analog stick to dash into rings) and the “Cyloop,” which lets Sonic create a ring where he dashes (connecting it will either stun enemies or solve a puzzle). A light ranking system encourages repeat (quick) playthroughs, asking players to find all of the red ring collectibles, get a specific clear/par time, finish the stage with a certain amount of rings, and so on. These are the traditional “few minutes or less” stages that you’ll be doing in tandem with the open world, and while many of them don’t aim super high, they’re consistent in quality and aligned with the layouts of a lot of the more well-liked 3D Sonic games (including the 2D viewpoint, utilized heavily in Sonic Colors). ![]() One of the first things you see is the level-based format, complete with a Green Hill Zone motif. Smartly, Sonic Frontiers also capitalizes on nostalgia. Scenes between Eggman and Sage, occasionally sprinkled into the story, are fun to watch too. While not everyone connects with Roger Craig Smith as Sonic, I’ve been a fan for a while now, especially after his turn in Sonic Boom (which generally has more clever writing than the entire game series). The crew is still super cute, and bringing back most of the current voice cast (as well as providing an option for Japanese audio) helps a lot. ![]()
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