Sonic Frontiers Windows game

Overview - Story


The Experience

Sonic Frontiers was created on an all new Open Zone Platforming that allows for Sonic to race acrosss five massive overworld islands that are brimming with dense forests, waterfalls, and desert landscapes while you perform challenges and hidden secrets to uncover.

High Speed Freedom

Going at the speed of Sonic across the Starfall Islands, you can blaze trails while discovering secret quests and solving puzzles while scaling huge structures. You can go fishing and while fishing you can meet with familiar faces.



Cyber Space Challenges

You can go out and discover portals in various different places on the Island while venturing into Cyber Space through the islands featuring signature 3D platforming at super Sonic speeds. The Starfall Islands are home to strange creatures that Sonic has never encountered before. You can now use the new battle systems where you can build your skill tree up that combines moves like dodges, parriers, counters, combos, and the new move Cyloop giving the ability to take down mysterious foes and titans.

Mysterious and Intriguing New Adventures

You can become Sonic and journey through mysterious ancient civilizations that are plagued by robotic hordes. And with nothing but a handful of questions and disembodied voices that guides Sonic through inhabitable Starfall Islands where there is a huge, machine-like threat!



Available on these Platforms

You can enjoy Sonic Frontiers on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One, Steam and coming soon to Epic platforms. You can purchase a digital or physical version of Sonic Frontiers. The digital versions have there options:

• Base game
• Available for download on all platforms offering downloads

These options are for the Digital Deluxe Edition:

• Base game

• Explorer's Treaure Box (Amy's Memory Tokens, A portal gear, chaos emerald vault keys, and additional glove & shoes for sonic
• Digital art book with a 25-track digital mini soundtrack

Gameplay - Overview
Introduction

So I am going to start out by telling you that I have never played a Sonic quite like this one. I haven't play very many Sonic games that are recent (within the last 7-8 years) but I found this one, based on background stories and well its an open zone platforming, intriguing so I decided I would try it out. To be honest, this game really is good and so are the top Mods that I tried out, but that's for another review.

The Beginning

Sonic Frontiers start off with Sonic, Tails and Amy and they were sucked in another dimension through a vortex while on the prowl for Chaos Emeralds through the direction of Dr. Eggman even though he is stuck in the other dimension as well.

Sonic and friends are working hard to get home. Sonic really seems to be the only person actually imbodied into him self while the 'Friends" are flickering in and out like holograms. While on this journey Sonic (and Sega) decided to insert a mini dose of perturbation in the mix. Moving forward you'll be informed on the grief and loss discussions about friendships and loyalty and much more bsides, all delivered almost entirely straight-forward by all the hedgehogs.



If you're deeply into your Sonic lore, this won't be too much of a surprise, but it's still tonally very weird for most players, and Frontiers' predilection for cut-scenes means that some players may find themselves leaning on the skip button.

There are some familiar things embedded in the game but I think we can live with that. The reuse of the Breathe of Wild's ideas that are pretty obvious, I think anyway. Within these worlds and ruins of a technologically advanced civilization there is also a natural world that has a clean and sparse locations on the map.

Sonic Wants to go Fast!

So, the storyline within the game is a little... different. So it breaks out Sonic's momentum and railed-based mechanics into a realistically the largest spaces ever for Sonic, allowing you to explore the areas Open Zone Platforming stacked with areas full of small puzzles and scattered enemies, adding various rails and other worldly like objects.

As you explore you'll see and find alters that let you into cyberspace that are effectively dropping Sonic at the start of a classic 3D Sonic stage that will not run much longer than a couple of minutes provided your character is not crashing or failing.

Within the game there are some side-jobs and really fun concise overworld that is easier to start again if you mess some things up. Much like Mario, when you complete levels you get keys to advance into new worlds and open vaults to Chaos Emeralds. A Titan technologically advanced unit of Emerald's areas boss is who Sonic has to defeat. These fights (area bosses) involving some Super Sonic fun your uber-powered version, but their scale isn't really matched by innovative ideas.



The frequent cut-scenes are also pretty unreliable in quality, with some creditable voice acting being translated to dead poor lip-syncing and sometimes rushed-looking animations. Again, this applies to major moments like boss fights, not just small asides.

Playing on PS5 we had a much better time once we swapped from the default 4K mode, which runs at 30FPS, to a 60FPS performance mode that still looks sharp but is significantly better to play given the reactions you need to leverage.

Pop-ins Overview

Overview

So the Frontiers game is oddly bad with their communications with the player. Your health and how many more hits you could take is an obscure idea while there are frequent tutorial pop-ins initially but you can keep finding yourself ahead of where the game thinks where you should be, and collecting items ony needed to backtrack to link through some cut scenes in a row.

I will say this, if you were looking for a better and more advanced visual presentation (and many people think this) is rather disappointing. Most aspects of the game, Frontiers is mixed on the graphics side of things (where the game depends on visual effects). There are certain things in the game that are impressive like the lighting, landscapes, and tech. On the flip side of things there are constant issues with visual pop-ins like your surroundings, the grass, buildings, objects, mapping and things like enemies as well.

So, with cut-scenes, voice-overs, and other things are being that are huge parts of the games has a low quality like lip-syncing, rushed-looking animations and just overall bad quality. This applies to major fight scenes and big event moments.

Though there are many issues, in my opinion, doing modifications and development can really help with the issues a 2022 game release. And, I am not saying that Sonic: Frontiers is a bad game at all, there are just some thing that you would imagine would be a focal point but it's not.

The game is a good game and I would recommend playing if you are a Sonic the Hedgehog fan! It's still that "endorphin-triggering" as ever.

The Conclusion and RatingConclusion

As far the overall game goes, I give it a 6.5/10 mainly because Sonic Frontiers is a complete mess. The story telling is all over the place and while going through the game while on missions it is somewhat unclear on what you are supposed to next. It's kinda story-less where you don't know exactly what, how, or why you doing things as if there are holes in the story where you have to reach ahead and pull back the blanket of story-telling.





Yay or Nay

Here is the thing, if you absolutely LOVE Sonic, then you should try Sonic Frontiers. If you are not a Sonic lover then I wouldn't waste my money on it. (Although there are some pretty cool things that Sonic Frontiers developers and modders have done)