SONIC AND THE COLOSSUS

If you don’t like Sonic this isn’t going to change your mind. There’s nothing for you in Sonic Frontiers because ultimately it is still a Sonic game. It’s a good Sonic game though and if you want to hear a Sonic fan go too in depth about certain aspects that he liked and did not like then read ahead.

I’ve been buying the Sonic the Hedgehog comics since the IDW run started in 2018. I have a few random Sonic comics from when Archie had the comic rights but honestly, and this is sacrilege to some people, I hated the external cast. Sally Acorn and all the other tertiary characters never held the same importance to me and were never as interesting as the main cast of the games. I can’t even blame Ken Penders for my dislike of them (and you can blame Ken Penders for a lot of things as a Sonic fan, look it up) because when Ian Flynn took on the final run of the Archie comic I still had little interest in those characters. When IDW restarted from Issue 1 with a more game canonical story I was gonna pick it up and I haven’t missed an issue yet and buy every cover and honestly… they are genuinely good comics. I read a lot of comics and most comics are not as consistently as good as the IDW Sonic series.

PLATFORMS: XB1, XSX, PC, PS4, PS5, SWITCH
MSRP: $59.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $59.99

So why bring this up? Well, the Sonic games may have some of the worst consistency I have ever seen in a series. Found the story in Sonic Adventure interesting despite horrendous voice direction (the actors are all great, the script and timing of lines is rough) or maybe found the story of Shadow the Hedgehog compelling in Sonic Adventure 2? Well god bless because they will barely acknowledge that stuff happened in later games. Hell, Both Sonic ‘06 and Sonic Unleashed essentially try to repeat the story Sonic Adventure told but don’t do it as well as a game from 1999. What I’m trying to say is Sonic has a lot of lore, but none of it has seemed consistent unless it was to milk nostalgia. Ian Flynn, writer of the final Archie comics and the guy who started the IDW series wrote Sonic Frontiers and it shows that someone who really cares not only about the property he is working on but the fans of that property as well worked on this game. I’m not discrediting former writers of Sonic games, but Ian gracefully references both significant and minor events that have happened in other Sonic games as if Sonic has actually done things before this game like save the world. Most importantly, Ian gives me a reason to be interested in the world Sonic is in: there’s a history to the land that is slowly uncovered throughout the game and I cared about the events of the past that features completely new characters because it broadened the lore of the world Sonic lives in. In juxtaposition to Dark Gaia (Sonic Unleashed) or Solaris and Ibris (Sonic ‘06), the events of Sonic Frontiers feels natural and an extension of everything that has come before and not some weird addition that doesn’t fully work off of previously established lore.

For any Sonic nerd like myself though, it’s likely to be a highlight to see Sonic and his friends discuss their relationship in a more mature way as well. Not to spoil everyone’s arc, Amy, the first of Sonic’s friends encountered, is no longer just boy crazy which has been a part of her character since her first appearance in Sonic CD. She’s caring and sensitive to the Koco who inhabit the islands. She has some agency outside of wanting to kiss Sonic. (By the way, speaking of smooching, I want everyone to remember that Sonic kissed a human in Sonic ‘06 only for the plot to wipe that from the timeline but not from our memories… like I said, the writing in Frontiers is much better.) I can’t just attribute this to the writing however, because the cast is delivering some of the best performances as these characters in years. This is mostly the same group who voiced these characters on the Sonic Boom show which was hilarious but not emotional, so to hear Roger Craig Smith and Cindy Robinson (who have played Sonic and Amy respectively for 12 years now), and Mike Pollock (who has been Eggman since 2005, a whopping 17 years) deliver some of their best performances as these characters and maybe the best showing of these characters of all voice actors who have done the role. They feel real for once and not just cartoon characters living in a video game world. I shouldn’t feel for Eggman, he’s a clown, and yet the script and Pollock’s performance made me question if the villain was actually all that evil. Even nerdier still, I think Roger Craig Smith’s may be the best voice Sonic has ever had and I liked Ryan Drummond and Jason Griffith, but for a long time the voice of Sonic to me was always Martin Burke who voiced Sonic in the OVA because it was my favorite portrayal of Sonic until Frontiers and I have watched that movie more than anyone should ever watch anything.

But what is the plot in service of? Well, Frontiers is the first open world (or as the team calls it “open area” as there are five different maps) Sonic game that has the player moving fast through the world. There’s been attempts at an “open world” Sonic with Adventure and ‘06 but these worlds felt more like hubs that complicated a level select with Adventure at least trying to be more compelling but personally failing to make any of the open world segments fun. The open world sections of Frontiers involve collecting different things to progress the story. The first collectable is a medal that changes on each island to help save friends from cyberspace. These medals can be earned by doing small platforming and rail grinding sections, defeating enemies, and finding small secrets in the open world. The second thing to collect are keys but keys can only be earned by completing cyberspace stages which are entered via portals and play like Generations stages which have various challenges that can be beaten to also earn extra keys. The keys unlock Chaos Emeralds…

So at this point I’m just going to say that the amount of collectibles is the first fault of this game. If anyone has ever engaged with a free to play video game, the amount of different currencies is done to obfuscate how much money is being spent while at the same time both implying progress but also limiting progress behind the necessity of spending real money on the game. Sonic Frontiers has no way to purchase extra currencies with real money so I don’t know why it is so complicated and it is only going to get worse as I explain that…

Before we can enter the cyberspace portals we need gears and the gears are earned by defeating minibosses on the current map. Now the minibosses are actually one of the coolest elements of the game and each one works off of one of Sonic’s various abilities like grinding or doing the three-lane run like seen in Sonic Colors. Luckily these three main currencies are the only ones required to progress in the story, but that still leaves rings (Sonic’s life), experience points (to learn new combat moves), purple coins (to use for the fishing minigame), lost Koco (used to upgrade Sonic’s speed and ring count), and two different fruits (to increase Sonic’s attack and defense). Collecting all of this is on top of solving small puzzles to unlock fast travel rails to speed across the land as quickly as possible, and when all the puzzles are solved fast travel via the map becomes available to all cyberspace portals on the current island.

Okay where to begin after all that. The open world is a lot of fun. Like previously stated Sonic moves fast through the open world and it feels good. The only time there are issues is when the small platforming sections in the open world lock Sonic into a 2D section when that wasn’t where the player necessarily wanted to go after hitting the wrong boost pad or spring and it happens frequently enough where I wish there was a disengage button, but other than that the open world sections are the best parts of this game. The combat and puzzle solving of the open world feels great and is where Sonic should have been back in 2006 honestly, and the world feels less like Adventure and more like Sonic is exploring the ruins of a world long gone. It’s clear that the team took a lot of inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in both layout of the open world and the design of the futuristic ruins, but the loneliness of the world also reminded me a lot more of Shadow of the Colossus especially with the towering minibosses that make combat feel more like a puzzle than just a button mashing brawler which is a long way from just waiting for a moment to smack the enemy with a homing attack like previous Sonic games. Despite some weird issues with draw distance for the world being fine but having pop in exclusively on the platforms and rails in the open world, I would have spent my whole time in the open world areas if I could have.

However, I need to enter the portals to cyberspace, and this is where I start to feel mixed. The cyberspace levels play like the 3D Sonic levels in Sonic Generations, but because they share a slightly different set of physics from the open world segments, they feel a lot worse. The open world sections make Sonic feel very fluid, fast, and easy to control while the cyberspace levels feel stiff, much slower, and the physics feel off. There’s a couple of levels that magnetize Sonic to a moving platform so jumping tries to keep me above the platform rather than letting me jump and have the platform move away so I fall. This causes a fight with the physics that can lead me to firing Sonic off the stage and when I’m going for the S rank time this is not fun. This is also marred by the fact that all these stages have one of a few classic Sonic backdrops (Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Sky Sanctuary Zone, or a generic city area that I think is based on Sonic Adventure 2) with brand new music and the music is good but doesn’t fit with the visuals. The cyberspace levels are fine, but feel like a crutch that the team thought they needed to fall back on and while I know that the Sonic community complains about physics in 2D Sonic games a lot, at least the physics in say Forces are consistent throughout which is not the case in Frontiers and that to me is a bigger problem.

Now one of the portals in each area leads to a fishing minigame that is more of a “lo-fi beats to fish to” area than anything else. The minigame is stupid easy and the only requirement is some purple coins that can be found near most portals as well as other places on the maps. Now I’m going to save anyone interested a bunch of time when the grinding for all this various stuff gets tiring and just say that everything can be bought from Big the Cat with enough tokens earned from fishing. Everything. I maxed out my rings, my speed, my defense, my attack, I stopped fighting minibosses (for time’s sake so I wasn’t putting this review out mid-February), and I stopped running around collecting medals. I just bought it all. And the game I think knows this because the big world reset event (like Breath of the Wild’s Blood Moon) is called Starfall where the world is littered with fallen stars and collecting those (yes, another collectible) activates a slot machine and the slot machine doles out purple coins. I earned A LOT of purple coins this way. It’s actually visually one of the most impressive parts of this game too. I loved it. But yeah, you can really just skip most of the tedium in trade for what is sort of a mind-numbing fishing game which is weird and I think is also the developers being afraid to really stick to their guns just like the cyberspace levels were but I did appreciate it when cleaning up all the loose ends

The only issue with the fishing however is that I had to keep going back to fish even more because it is unclear that the number of medals needed are not above the heads of Sonic’s friends, but rather the number of medals needed on top of the current count of medals obtained. I am still unsure how many lost Koco or fruits are needed to upgrade Sonic while I had the combat abilities all unlocked by the end of the second island and experience points became useless. I spent way too long not knowing that I could just hold the two bumpers to set Sonic up to parry and that I didn’t have to time it at all. Frontiers is bad at making things clear to the player. As I wrote this review I found out I can stop the slot machine during Starfall by pressing up on the directional pad. It’s frustrating because I really like this game and I wouldn’t have been aggravated at certain points if the game was just clearer. There’s a hacking minigame at one point that sort of plays like Ikaruga, but the game didn’t tell me that while firing white or black shots I was impervious to the same type of shot. That’s sort of important. Meanwhile the game will make sure I can do moves that are necessary to beat the game on loading screens (and make it not as clear that it is done loading).

But after all this… after all the collecting and running around (and fishing) is done, Sonic fights the boss of the island by going Super Sonic and they have these great tracks playing and I’m going back to the feeling I had in the final battle of Sonic Adventure 2 and I’m happy. Like sure the game has its issues, but they get it. Sonic Team understands Sonic again. They aren’t trying to avoid everything Sonic has done before; they are embracing it and its campiness and its very much Dragon Ball Z roots and it is just pure enjoyment. They don’t give you just one final battle. They give you four. You fight four different bosses, each with their own songs, and it feels great each time. Way. Past. Cool.

Ultimately, that’s the feeling I leave Sonic Frontiers with. It’s not perfect and it could never be perfect with the chances it takes but ultimately the chances are generally the best parts of the game. I have not been this excited to talk about a Sonic game since Generations which was over a decade ago. Sonic is fun, and I think a lot of people will have fun with it. I hope the team expands upon what they built here because I genuinely believe the next game built off this framework could be amazing.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.

Good
  • Feels fast
  • Open world is fun
  • All the fights feel good to play
  • Fantastic story with great voice work
  • Music is good, but that’s no surprise for a Sonic game
  • Fair variety of gameplay
  • Fishing
Bad
  • Inconsistent physics between open world and cyberspace levels
  • Open world can sometimes lock players into 2D sections
  • Too many collectibles. Too many
8
Great
Written by
Anthony is the resident Canadian. He enjoys his chicken wings hot and drinks way too much Coca-Cola. His first game experience was on his father's Master System and he is a loyal SEGA fanboy at heart.