By Nathaniel Dennis ’23

Sonic Frontiers is the newest main series 3D Sonic game, available on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and S, and PC. But it’s also the first open world (or open zone) Sonic game.  After the last mainline Sonic game, 2017’s Sonic Forces, disappointed many people (especially Sonic fans), including myself, I and many others were skeptical but cautiously optimistic about this game when it first got announced last year.  And when it was announced to be the first open world/open zone Sonic, I was a little more interested in how Sega and Sonic Team would handle the formula with Sonic in a sandbox-like game.  When the gameplay was first revealed earlier this year, we were all disappointed with the first impressions.  But after more gameplay and story information was revealed for the game, we were more optimistic about it and looking forward to it.  And now that it’s released, I can safely say that the game really delivers at being a good Sonic game, and a good game in general.  

Open Zone/ Open World: 

The controls in the open zone feel smooth and are very responsive.  You’re free to move whatever you want, and do various sidequests, like helping little cute creatures called Kocos, helping free Sonic’s friends, fishing for items, and collecting “memory tokens” to help your friends.  You can also collect Vault Keys in levels called Cyberspace,  and by doing other objectives.  To unlock cyberspace, you can collect portal gears by defeating mini bosses, regular enemies, or just exploring the open zone.  There’s also the combat, which feels repetitive at first, but when you master it and learn more moves, you can do cool combos on standard enemies and bosses alike.  You can level up Sonic’s strength, speed, defense, and ring capacity by obtaining seeds by unlocking hidden parts of the map from doing side quests.  There’s even a new mechanic called the Cyloop, which lets you create circles that can unlock rings, secrets, complete puzzles, and help defeat enemies.  At the end of almost every island, after obtaining all the chaos emeralds, you can transform into Super Sonic to defeat the main bosses.  These bosses easily feel like they can be the final boss fights of any other Sonic game.   Each boss fight feels creatively designed, with intuitive ways to take them down. The combat as Super Sonic makes you feel really powerful, and the music playing throughout the bosses are absolute bangers.  A lot of the instrumental, vocal tracks, and background music are really great and definitely top tier for fans and even non-fans of the series. The puzzles and enemy variety seem lackluster at first, but definitely improve over time.  While there’s pop in at times that can be very distracting, and Sonic can feel a bit janky at times, overall, the open zone is definitely the best part of the game and you can explore it however you like.

Cyberspace: 

Cyberspace levels are traditional 2D/3D Sonic levels.  While some people don’t like them, I personally didn’t mind them.  While it can sometimes be hard to control Sonic, most of the time, the controls felt really good.  And sometimes, the levels can be really short.  But a thing that I like about it is that it kind of forces you to replay the levels.  If you want to obtain the chaos emeralds, you have to get an S rank in all levels by completing them within a certain time limit (instead of overall performance like past Sonic games), get all the red rings, collect a certain amount of rings, and of course reach the goal.  And a lot of the levels have different layout themes.  Such as all 3D, all 2D, a hybrid of both 2D and 3D, all rails, skateboards, jumping through hoops, just straight up platforming, speeding through levels, exploring levels, etc.  The Cyberspace levels aren’t for everyone, but you can skip them if you want to by doing other missions in the open zone to obtain items.  However, if you like traditional, fast paced Sonic levels, then I recommend them. 

Story (Spoiler-free): 

To sum up the story quickly without spoiling it, Sonic and his friends are traveling to the new mysterious Starfall Islands to find the Chaos Emeralds.  However, their plans are interrupted when a weird vortex sucks them up into a cyberspace portal, with Sonic being the only one to escape.  And after hearing a mysterious voice telling him to retrieve the emeralds and destroy the titans, Sonic agrees so that he can save his friends.  And after a while, he meets a new character named Sage, who wants Sonic to leave the islands and warns him throughout the game that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  But Sonic, being the hero he is, still carries on to save his friends and discover the secrets of the islands.  The story gets really deep as you go on, and the Sonic lore becomes more layered as well.  While newcomers might be a little lost, they can still enjoy the story.   Sonic fans will definitely like it, and think it’s a huge improvement from the stories we’ve gotten since the 2010s. 

Fishing with Big the Cat: 

If you don’t want to explore the islands or play through cyberspace, you can go fishing with our lord and savior, Big the Cat.  While it sounds ridiculous at first, it’s actually quite enjoyable and relaxing.  And even though catching the fish is pretty easy, the more rare fish, items, and other things you find, the more unlockables collect.  If you trade the purple coins you find in the open zone,  you can trade them to Big to fish, or unlock various items, including vault keys, portal gears, orbs, etc.  There’s even a new update where you can grill meat until it’s just the right level of tenderness, which can give you even more purple coins.  While this is completely optional, I recommend it if you want to relieve stress and just relax for a bit.   

Replayability: 

If you want to 100% all of the 5 islands even after beating the game, you’re more than welcome to by going into your save file, going into your map, and switching to the islands that you want to 100%.  If you want to replay cyberspace levels, or if you haven’t played some of them, you can go to the arcade mode after beating the main game, where you can play through all of the levels whenever you want.  There’s even customization when you can change Sonic’s look, such as his shoes or his costume.  But if you want to play through the whole game again, you can create another data load different from your first one if you want to play through the game without losing any of your original progress.  So in my opinion, I’d say the replayability is really high if you wanna keep exploring the game. 

Conclusion: 

Overall, while Sonic Frontiers isn’t a perfect game, I don’t think it has to be.  Since this is still a really fun game whether a Sonic fan or not, I really recommend it if you wanna get into the series.  If you don’t know much about Sonic, I’d say this game is 7 to maybe a 7.5/10, but for Sonic fans who’ve been waiting for a good 3D Sonic since Generations, then this is an 8 to maybe an 8.5/10.  I love this game and had so much fun playing it, and hopefully you will too if you decide to play it.  And thank God we have another good mainline Sonic game, and this gives me hope that Sega and Sonic Team can learn and improve from this so we can have more good to even great Sonic games in the future.