I'm a fan of Sonic, the series. I like the characters and the world. Calling myself a fan of the games is a bit tougher, however. Growing up, I would often play the original on our Mega Drive, as well as Adventure DX on our Gamecube. While there were other Sonic games I tried at this time (basically all the ones included in DX, plus Heroes), I didn't really play any Sonic games until a few years ago. I've tried some of the Boost games, but haven't played through them. With that said, I played through Frontiers at the start of the year, and I'm excited about the series' future.
Sonic Frontiers is the latest game in the series, focusing on "open-zone" areas. You play as Sonic as he rescues his friends from mysterious lands, with a scaled back story written by the writers of the comics. I haven't read the comics so I can't comment on their quality, but I enjoyed the game's story quite a bit, the characters were well written, and I enjoyed the references that are spread throughout. There are even Side Stories that unlock more details on the game's lore, as well as Egg Memo's that sort of tell the story from Eggman's perspective.
The open zones are large islands that Sonic can freely run around on, and they're filled things to do, mainly Challenges, Missions, and Stages. Starting with Missions, there are about two dozen of them placed on each map, and these range from puzzles and platforming, to timed runs and getting high combos. They aren't too challenging, and upon completion your map displays a larger area than before and rails appear to speed up travel through the world. Completing all of them also unlocks fast travel, so they are essential for exploration.
Going from Missions, the Challenges are platforming challenges (a.k.a mini-Stages) that have been placed all over these maps, rewarding you with a "friendship token" after completion. These challenges don't require activation and the tokens are just another collectible placed in the world, so with precise jumps some of these challenges can be bypassed, which is neat. These are neat overall actually, but if you're going after a specific one it can be tricky to find its starting point as many of them overlap. There are tens if not hundreds of these on each map, so there's plenty of Sonic platforming to be had. Just know, these friendship tokens are mostly just for the Side Stories, not all tokens are required to finish an island, and it is possible to grind them using the Cyloop, so don't worry about getting each one unless you really want to.
Finally, Stages. These are your typical Sonic affair: Get from point A to point B. Four missions are available in each Stage: Beating the level, getting S-rank, getting X amount of rings, and getting all 5 Red Rings. Completing a mission grants you a Vault key (used to acquire Chaos Emeralds in the open-zones), and completing all missions grants you an additional 3 of them. While the Emeralds are required for the story, not all missions in every Stage must be completed to progress in the story, and Vault keys can be found in the open-zone environment as well. One weird trait about the Stages is that almost all of them are lifted from either Unleashed, Generations, or Adventure 2, so if you've played any of those games then you're bound to recognize some of them. It doesn't bother me all that much as the Stages clearly weren't the focus for this game and it was fun playing Adventure stages in a modern Sonic game, it's just a weird experience, especially as they switch theme to one of either Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, or Highway. Stages are unlocked with Portal Gears, and you get these from exploring the open-zones.
Before I get into Frontiers' gameplay, I just finished a playthrough of Generations and briefly want to describe the Boost games' gameplay and my problems with it. Their gameplay is all over the place in a bad way. The focus is on speed, as Sonic is faster in those games than basically any other. The most obvious example is during the Boost segments, where Sonic runs in a straight line at Mach 1 and your job is to switch lane to avoid taking damage. They're essentially no different than if Sonic were to grind rails in a similar manner, so they feel unnecessary and are't even fun in my opinion. Anyway, the Boost game also have 3D segments that focus more on platforming, and these are painful to navigate. Sonic works well at high speeds, but not in platforming segments where you move slow and are expected to make somewhat precise jumps. During these, Sonic turns extremely slow compared to a typical Mario platformer, and he takes a while to accelerate, and he also barely has any air control, being slow and stuck on a turn radius. This makes for a frustrating character to control in a platforming environment, and feels very bizarre when juxtaposed with his character's focus on speed. The same goes for his gameplay in 2D environments, except I'm left wondering why there even are 2D segments. They're worse as you must move both left and right, meaning constant decceleration and acceleration with a character that does it slowly, and when it's just a straight line so much of the level can be skipped with a spindash.
With that said, most of the problems described above still mostly exist in Frontiers, though they have been made less prominent. Air control is still a major problem, as Sonic still barely has any from standstill, but on the ground he feels pretty good. Boosting has essentially been turned into a sprint button and turns into an air dash when used in the air. Almost all aspects of Sonic's movement can be tweaked, so no slow acceleration if that's what you want. I played through Frontiers with all these settings set to 100, though doing so makes him turn/stop/accelerate in an instant so in hindsight I should've set those values slightly lower just to make it more interesting. Sonic has a double jump now, the second of which essentially just extending your airtime and giving you barely any air. This is a bit frustrating, as running off an edge and jumping triggers the second jump (there is no coyote time for the first jump), meaning you sometimes jump from an edge with barely any height, meaning you'll fail the jump and need to start what you were doing over. Sonic can also drop dash by pressing and holding the jump button after a double jump, which activates a spindash when landing. I barely used this as I felt content with the boost sprinting, plus I forgot it existed. All in all, it feels pretty good, but there is some work to be done.
Sonic can be upgraded in various ways. You can increase his stats in four areas: Speed, ring capacity, defense, and attack. The latter two are used during combat, as there is combat gameplay in the game. It's relatively basic, but pretty good regardless. You can unlock new moves both through the story and from a skill tree, and they complement eachother pretty well. The enemy variety is surprisingly good, there are plenty of them and they are each taken care of in a unique way, with the exception of some that are simply tougher than previous enemies. Overall a welcoming addition to the game.
Final note: there are various currencies to deal with, and these can be found in the open-zone areas. Most of them can also be purchased from Big. That's right, Big the Cat is back, and he brought along a fishing minigame with him. You need to tap the button when a circle is within the area of another, so it's pretty simple. There is a fishing area for each island, and each contain different fish. The fish in an area is just cycled through however, so to complete an area, just memorize the first two or so fishes and fish until they come back (the fish are barely repeated). Fishing costs purple coins, and in exchange you get green tokens. The tokens can be used to purchase currencies from Big as mentioned, but they can also purchase the Egg Memo's, and this is the only place you can find those. Why is Big here? Who cares, it's time to relax with some fishing.
In short, I was pleasently surprised by Sonic Frontiers. It's a direction that shows promise for the future of the series, even though there are some tweaks that would be greatly appreciated. SEGA has said that more story and playable characters are on the horizon for the game, and I'm excited to jump back in when it arrives (hoping for playable Tails). Aside from that, I'm hoping the next game takes a bit more inspiration from the Adventures, but even if it stays similar to Frontiers it should be a good game.
