Sonic and I go way back as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive was the second video game I ever played. I’ve witnessed his highs and his lows. But just because he’s been around for as long as I can remember, doesn’t mean I’m willing to give benefits of any doubt. When it comes to long-standing franchises, I become harder to impress and more critical when companies or intellectual properties fail to do what is expected of them. For many people, Sonic Frontiers is considered "Sega's last chance". Sega took the development cycle much more seriously—even delaying it a whole year missing out on Sonic's 30th anniversary for quality control.

For as fast as Sonic is, it’s somewhat ironic that he seems to always chase after trends. It’s been like that since the beginning as he was the “edgy” alternative to all those cutesy platformer games coming out in the late 80s and early 90s. This time in Sonic Frontiers, he’s chasing after the open-world gameplay. Frankly, I have my fair share of criticism when it comes to open-world games for many reasons, but after experiencing Frontier’s take on it, I was left pretty impressed. It’s not the best open world I’ve ever played, but it is apparent that Sonic Team did develop it in mind with Sonic’s movement.

Sonic Frontier’s open world is split between five islands, and they feel more like an amusement park. Island progression follows a subsequent format as you unlock islands after completing the first one. While on the islands, you are free to do whatever you want and go wherever you want, but completing challenges is highly encouraged as each one fulfilled reveals a portion of the map. Once you complete all the challenges on an island, fast travel between specific points are unlocked. The large areas complement Sonic’s speed as he’s able to run fast through them all. They all contain the traditional jump springs, boost pads, and grind rails that make up a 3D Sonic game. The design has a nice flow from a gameplay perspective because many of these segments loop back into each other. I do wish there was more effort put into them from a visual design perspective as they feel more like a level editor than something that fits organically with the rustic and ancient sites you’ll come across. The pop-in is also egregious with said assets making them feel more like they don't belong in the world.

In every corner, there is always something to do such as collecting tokens, completing some sort of puzzle, entering Cyber verse levels, or fishing. Open-world games can fall into the pitfall where there are large stretches of nothing between the actual things to do. Combined with Sonic’s speed, the quick pace is always there. Sonic Frontiers falls into a loop in which you collect tokens and vault keys from the world and Cyber verse levels to progress the narrative. You fight the titan boss at the end and repeat the same thing for the four other islands. It can have its bouts of repetition, but the requirements are fairly lenient. Plus if you don’t like doing specific aspects, you can compensate for this with fishing, serving as a leisurely way of accomplishing goals.

Most Sonic games have extremely simple combat. You jump on enemies and use your homing attack. It got straight to the point. With an open-world setting, Sonic Team felt that something had to change. While jumping and homing attacks still exist, combat, in general, got greatly expanded. Sonic now has multi-hitting attacks, combos, can dodge, and even a parry system. If you played Shadow’s story in Sonic ‘06, it feels more like a refined version at that. Sonic’s beginning set of moves does have some awkwardness to it as you have to unlock the majority of his moves through skill points gained from defeating enemies. Once you do unlock most of those moves, combat undoubtedly has a good flow to it, even if it is pretty simplistic overall. You get to see how Sonic’s moves are meant to chain together once you have access to them with Sonic rapidly punching enemies going into an air dive attack going into a spinning loop dealing high amounts of damage. However, there are some issues with the combat, namely with the iconic ring system. While rings have been around since the beginning, combat feels like it was designed without it in mind. With a new skill called Cyloop that grants you rings at will, you effectively have infinite health in 90% of combat scenarios, and the enemies just aren’t aggressive enough to punish this, even in hard mode. The parry system is also so lenient that it may as well not exist. I’m not saying it has to be frame-perfect timing, but it didn’t have to go in the opposite direction either. If this type of combat is ever expanded upon in future games, make it so that Sonic has a hit-point system and use rings for something else entirely.

At the end of each island, Sonic transforms into Super Sonic, which is something typically reserved for the end of the game. Everyone remembers moments such as The Final Hazard with the ever-iconic Live and Learn blasting in the background. Sonic Frontiers manages to take these moments, and make them even better and more memorable. Fighting the first titan not knowing what to expect blew me away in the pure spectacle. The actual gameplay fighting the titans can have some janky moments, but the experience with metal music blasting in the background, Super Sonic having hyper-enhanced versions of all of his abilities, and the titans pulling out everything they can in an attempt to stop Sonic more than make up for it. They are not only peak Super Sonic showcases but some of the best moments in any action title.

One aspect that I didn’t enjoy from the start is the Cyber verse stages. It’s not the fact that most, if not all the stages are reused from past games such as Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces—it’s that the new physics in Sonic Frontiers clearly weren’t designed with these stages in mind. It has this quasi-on-rails effect always trying to make you move forward, and the moment you don’t is when it all starts to crumble. Everything in Cyber verse controls terribly because you’re trying to fit something into a hole that is too small for it. Yeah, with enough force you can get it through, but it wasn’t meant to be. I went from disliking, yet tolerating the stages from the beginning, to actively seeking ways to avoid them as much as possible toward the end.

Sonic Frontiers focuses on a much smaller cast with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Dr. Eggman, and newcomer Sage making up the entire main cast. The overall story and narrative take a more serious approach like how Sonic Forces and both Sonic Adventure games are, but the writing is more similar to the Adventure titles than Forces so it isn’t a laughing stock. The whole narrative even gives some insight into the origins of the Chaos Emeralds and expands on the lore surrounding them. The difference in tone is reflected in the voice direction as while the mainstay characters are still voiced by the same people who have been doing it for over a decade at this point, a lot of their delivery surprised me. The writing for the characters also takes a much-needed improvement in direction as it incorporates aspects from past entries and uses them to push them into a new direction. Amy isn’t some obsessed stalker anymore, Knuckles isn’t a blockhead, and Tails isn’t some coward whining for Sonic to save him. Sonic himself is the same as ever, but he gets great interactions with his friends. The most surprising characterization is arguably Dr. Eggman. Even though he takes a backseat from the main antagonist role, he still influences many events, and his interactions with Sage seem to be pushing Eggman in an interesting direction. Sage herself is adorable with how she treats Eggman as a father figure, and her opinions of Sonic going from actively hostile to a sense of respect as time goes on. I hope she comes back for future entries.

The PC port runs very well, at a stable 60 FPS with my 3060ti and 1440p, while the cutscenes run at a “cinematic” 30FPS. The options aren’t all that intensive with some basic adjustments here and there. I didn’t run into a single major glitch or crash during my playthrough so it manages to be very stable. I also played parts of the Switch version and while the Switch can run it at a stable 30FPS, it clearly struggles and pushes the hardware extensively. While buying Frontiers for the Switch is perfectly acceptable, unless you need portability, you’re better off buying the PC or PS4/PS5 versions.

While Sonic Frontiers starts strong after some time, it starts to fizzle out immediately after the third island. Those five islands are more like 3 and ¾ islands as one of them is just a remix of the first island but more of an obstacle course and the last island is fully functional but reuses many assets as it doesn’t introduce any new ideas and is shorter than islands two and three. Even the final confrontations can feel somewhat underwhelming as if you don’t play on hard mode, the final boss is relegated to a quick-time event. Even if you do, it changes to a shoot ‘em up segment. Despite the long development cycle, Sonic games will be rushed in some capacity—the woes of reaching the holiday release schedule.

As with most Sonic entries, moral concerns are very few as the franchise almost always targets a young audience. The only thing worth noting is that the violence contained is less cartoonish and more fantasy-like. A bit more destructive in the end, but all of your enemies are mechanical or technical in nature.

Sonic Frontiers has its flaws, namely everything with Cyber verse stages and with the later portions suffering from a lack of development time. Yet, it managed to end up alright all things considered. I’d be lying if I said the build-up to each titan fight and said fights didn’t have me grinning the whole way through, seeing Super Sonic lay the smackdown on colossal foes that were giving him such a hard time prior. The story is one of the better Sonic stories out there too. It manages to be one of the longer Sonic entries out there, with me taking just slightly over 12 hours to see the credits and get at least 60% completion on each island. Up to 25 hours of content might look short compared to other open-world games, but it still is longer than most Sonic games. While Sonic Team didn’t knock it out of the park, if you can find it for at least 30% off, Sonic’s foray into the open world shows you can't count Sonic Team out just yet.