Review: Sonic Frontiers Switch: A daring new blur
Our Verdict
Sonic is back in a mixed bag of mixed bags, though the positives outweigh the negatives for the most part. Combat can be engaging, depending on the enemy, and zooming across open zones takes a while to get old. Still, if you’re looking for infallible performance, the Switch version might not be the best port of call.
Oh, Sonic. Very few people have experienced what you have. Few gaming mascots can match the blue blur's variegated career, spanning from the Sega Genesis's glory days of 2D racing to the post-Sonic '06 doldrums. Now that he's back, Sega is trying to turn the past around by claiming that a 3D Sonic game can still be enjoyable and that it can embrace the "gotta go fast" mentality in a manner that seems mostly new while yet including a healthy dose of irritation. Mario, we can't all be flawless, can we?
This new frontier has been years in the making, and the Sonic community has been speculating wildly about whether the game will live up to the hype or turn into yet another letdown for the series that frequently promises so much and ends up with some really bad games. However, a new age has begun, and as you will soon discover, this may finally be the beginning for the blue blur.
To begin with, the revitalization of Sonic gameplay in Frontiers is, for the most part, fantastic. The advantages are obvious. The game leans heavily on momentum as a fundamental element of exploring the vast islands, challenging mini-boss encounters, and the gigantic steel structures that thrust through the sky at various angles, evoking the hectic rapid pace of games like Insomniac's Spider-Man or the Tony Hawk arcade-style titles. I probably shouldve spent a lot less time than I should have simply nyooming—I think that's the right term—around the Frontiers islands, finding minor platforming sections or challenges to keep me busy, all the while inadvertently advancing the plot by discovering priceless memory tokens (more on those later).
But it doesn't mean the gameplay is flawless. Though it may seem like the player has some creative freedom in how they navigate the land, you frequently discover that there is only one route to a location, and there's plenty of time to be wasted trying to find that route. The islands become less intuitive as the game progresses. The third island, for example, marries some of the exploration with areas where the game forces you into a 2D perspective. As a result, it becomes increasingly difficult to zoom around the globe and hop from building to structure in search of the one jump pad that will take you to your destination.
The storyline of Frontiers is as intricate as one may anticipate from a Sonic game, as the blue blur searches an unidentified area while attempting to liberate his companions from their brand-new digital restraints. Naturally, Doctor Eggman is the reason Sonic finds himself in this weird new world. To keep our hero at bay, the evil scientist uses Sage, a new figure who seems to defend the digital realm or those who wind up there. Sonic is entrusted with rescuing his buddies from the digital realm across three islands, each of which requires memory tokens to enable advancement and reveal more about how they got into this pixelated situation. The narrative and delivery of the game are rather conventional.
The plot mostly serves as a framework to explain the presence of allegedly ancient cultures and hedgehog-killing futuristic tech in Frontiers, but for casual speedsters, there is little to no link between the events and places of the game and the rest of the Sonic franchise. I must confess that I find it difficult to connect with certain parts of the plot, particularly the Koko sections that attempt to explain the little-known past of the former residents of the Frontiers universe, especially when it gets buried in fan-service-heavy banter between the main characters.
In addition to the unique memory tokens for Amy on the first island, Knuckles on the second, and so forth, you can also upgrade your attack and defense by picking up two different kinds of fruit and use a bunch of adorable little stone figurines called Kocos, which are similar to the Korok seeds from Battle of the World, to increase your maximum speed and ring capacity. You visit the Elder Koco and the Hermit Koco, two giant NPC doppelgängers of your small statue buddies with enhancement powers, to boost your stats. Their speech adds a little flavor to the otherwise deserted islands.
The story is not only advanced by memory tokens; you also need to gather gears. them give you access the separate levels, where you must fulfill objectives to get keys that let you access the chaos emeralds. You must locate each of them on every island before facing the boss. Inhale as well. That may seem a little complicated, and it is, but I can assure you that when you play along, it seems easier than it does on paper. All in all, even if the gameplay is an odd mix of elements you would expect from an action role-playing game, these useful collectibles and unlockables encourage you to keep exploring and gather more to strengthen Sonic's abilities.
I'm not the only one who believes that, despite all the BOTW parallels, Sonic Frontier's universe seems quite different in terms of location and architecture. Death Stranding is a good example of a world that seems to be similar to another, particularly while it's pouring rain on Kronos Island. That resemblance just pertains to aesthetics of the visuals. The parallels with Hideo Kojima's contentious game stop there since in Frontiers, you have to move quickly in contrast to the barren landscapes of the post-apocalyptic postman. However, the world is not open. In that regard, it's more akin to Pokémon Legends: Arceus, since the five enormous islands are only connected via quick travel, making it impossible to move fluidly between them. The only issue is that these places don't get much more spectacular. If anything, the quality of them becomes worse as you go along, and the third island is especially characterless and lonely in comparison to the first.
I think "mixed bag" best sums up Sonic's new fighting skills. It is beneficial that there is a tutorial available for almost everything, including the enormous enemies that prowl Sonic Frontiers' islands and resemble Nier Automata. Even so, there are situations when the need for speed makes it difficult to try to lock on or initiate a combo with a spare finger. This is particularly true if you play in the action mode as opposed to the classic speed-oriented mode (you get an option at the start of the game, making this criticism semi-invalid, but I'll make it anyway). Thankfully, the variety of assaults Sonic can unleash evens this out as you go via skill unlocks, a la Ghost of Tsushima, with many attack paths opening up after picking up a few additional abilities.
The issue with Frontiers fighting lies not so much in the mechanics themselves, but rather in the application of the combat. Throughout the area, there are frequent foes and mini-bosses that are either too simple to defeat or a little too challenging. Some opponents, such as Striker, Tank, and Squid, are more annoying than challenging, yet opponents like Sumo and Asura seem like precisely what Frontiers should be doing. Luckily, the huge boss encounters are quite different experiences as we will see later.
Controlling Sonic is as much fun as it has ever been outside of battle, with the overworld islands and the traditional Sonic Adventure type levels providing many opportunity to experiment with the title speedster. While some of the lightning-fast parkour you can do on the overworld's buildings carries over into the individual levels with quite the same vigor, I do believe that Sonic's island free-roaming has received a little more attention to detail in terms of mobility. This presents a bit of a dilemma since, while the stages are reminiscent of earlier eras, the wide areas are obviously an effort to give Sonic a more contemporary vibe, and it sometimes seems as like they are lifted from other games with disparate goals.
The only things in this game that work precisely as you would expect them to are the individual stages. They bring out the kid in me that spent hours playing Sonic Adventure DX on the Gamecube, speeding through either linear 3D, where Sonic is moving forward, or 2D, where Sonic is moving to the side. This is the part that will appeal to retro Sonic fans the most, and it feels even better when it serves as a refresher from some freerunning around the islands. While there isn't much that separates these sections from what they were twenty years ago, there should be a bit more creativity here (a speedier method to restart levels would be ideal, to start). Still, it worked then, and it works today. Furthermore, it's abundantly evident from the majority of the remaining game that Sega never gave this area any thought—rather, it was all the other things that required improvement.
Having experienced a few boss encounters, I must admit that the size of these end-of-island set pieces astounds me. To get out of the digital realm, you must defeat titans on many different islands while gradually establishing your value to Sage. These enormous monsters still have the Nier flavor about them, but they also have a strong Neon Genesis Evangelion influence. The titan on the first island looks a lot like the third angel from the original anime series. The fact that Super Sonic appears in the game early further increases the stakes, as your mind is immediately drawn to what the difficulties that lie ahead may entail after the first major combat. There's no finer feeling in Frontiers than midway through a boss fight, but it's unfortunate that you can't recreate these monumental encounters without creating a fresh save.
I can't write this review without praising composer Tomoya Ohtani for his outstanding work, which combines traditional Sonic gotta-go-fast melodies with a particular feeling of mystery to reflect the uncharted territory the game's title hedgehog finds himself in. The use of adaptive music, or music that adapts to fit the action, is flawless throughout. As you start fighting a big mechanical Squid, the quiet piano and string accompaniment of exploration explodes into a fuzz-laden synth soundtrack without startling the listener. Ohtani is obviously aware of Sonic Frontiers' goals and fully supports them.
Though not flawless, Sonic's performance on the Nintendo Switch is surprisingly good. Though not quite as noticeable as that example, there is a hint of the GTA Trilogy Remaster in that objects are somewhat more difficult to read in the rain. However, when the sky are clear, the screen is as well, allowing you to explore the terrain at your own pace. There is pop-in, maybe more pop-in than I would want, but it's difficult to argue against given the technology available and the ambition of the world design. Though, in my view, it doesn't detract from the experience, it could be worth choosing a different console version if you want the crispest experience possible and can't play Frontiers portable.
Overall, Frontiers toy with creativity in a way that hasn't been seen in a Sonic game in a while, but it doesn't have the will to throw out some of the less-than-ideal concepts. Since the enduring character's potential is now dispersing over the universe like a million threads, the blue blur team is faced with some difficult choices. Nevertheless, whether this is a little step or a huge leap for the series, it's still a red-and-white shoe in the right direction, bringing Sonic's quality closer to that of his rivals than it has been in a long time.
Check out our Xenoblade Chronicles 3 review, Splatoon 3 review, and Bayonetta 3 review for more insightful analysis of the greatest blockbusters coming to Switch in 2022. Threequels all the way around.