‘Sonic Frontiers’ Wants You to Have Fun and Offers Plenty of Ways to Do Just That
Sonic Frontiers is a major departure from all the games before it, but it pays off to become the best Sonic game in a very long time.
In the last few years, we’ve heard how every game is turning open world now. While this may be true, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It worked out great for Breath of the Wild, and it absolutely works out great for Sonic Frontiers.
The last few years have been great for Sonic the Hedgehog. He’s got two great movies out with another on the way, a Knuckles spin-off series, and a new Netflix series on the way, and now the game Sonic fans have been wanting for years has finally been realized. All of this in the last 2 years! Quite a wild ride for the Blue Blur.
I’ll be avoiding any story spoilers, but there will be some general mechanics spoilers throughout.
Sonic Frontiers Understands Open World
The parallel between Sonic Frontiers and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is strong. They both took a well-established formula and tore it down to the base components in order to get to the root of what players wanted. In the case of Sonic Frontiers, it’s going fast and having fun.
Sonic Frontiers doesn’t care how you engage with it. After a very short “tutorial” area you’re dropped into the world and told in no uncertain terms “Okay. Have fun. You’re on your own”
Unlike Breath of the Wild, you do have to progress through the story in the order intended. However, Sonic Frontiers offers multiple ways of doing that. Basically, the player is tasked with finding Gears, which open portals to the various “typical” Sonic levels you’ve seen before.
Each of these levels grants Keys for completion and other bonuses like time trial, with a certain number of rings, or finding the 5 red rings. These keys unlock the Chaos Emeralds. But unlike previous Sonic games, finding the Emeralds is something you start doing very early, as they are also needed for progression.
However, the Gears and Keys can be found in many different places. You can get them by defeating overworld bosses, by cracking open hidden chests, and even random enemies will sometimes drop Gears and Keys. But, you can also find them through fishing! The point is, if you really wanted to, you could probably get pretty far into the game without playing any of the portal levels. It would just take a lot of grinding. But grinding is also very fun!
Exploring the World Is Exciting
Sonic Frontiers makes exploring engaging. Not only is Sonic fast to move, but he’s also still easily controllable. Plus, there are tons of objects to interact with: grind rails, springs, and random balloons to homing attack. Thanks to all of these elements placed around the world, exploring becomes something of a quick time event. But, the only penalty for failure is falling down with no falling damage, and the reward is reaching a new platform with more goodies to find.
Combat? In MY Sonic Game? It’s More Likely Than You Think
Not since Sonic Unleashed has Sonic has any form of combat outside of pure button mashing. In Sonic Frontiers, you can do that, if you want. But the bosses are tough and enemies won’t just take the hits without fighting back.
Sonic unlocks combat combos that link together in very cinematic ways, which really hits the dopamine injectors just right. If you build your combo meter, you can unleash even more devastating attacks. But, as I said before, Sonic Frontiers wants you to have fun in your own way. So, there is also an option to auto-combo. You deal less damage, but the game will perform the admittedly tricky combos for you if you’re a scrub like that. Plus, you can parry attacks to give yourself an even better opening.
Final Thoughts
I’ve been playing Sonic Frontiers all day and I’m having a great time. It’s such a breath of fresh air into the series that was getting stagnant.
The exploration is engaging, the combat is dynamic, the story is mysterious, and the humor is on point. Sonic is hilariously blasé to the bizarre happenings around him, and the other cast of characters are true to their form as well.
Also, of course, the music absolutely goes so hard.
