Chris InglisSonic Frontiers is an open-zone, action-adventure platformer by Sonic Team and published by SEGA. It will release on November 8, 2022 (November 9 for us in ANZ) on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and PC. I haven’t played a Sonic game in decades, so I am going into this game with fresh eyes only ever having played the 2D sidescrolling Sonic games. As such I found it jarring to be playing Sonic in 3D, however my disorientation quickly abated as I got stuck into the fast-paced cyber space levels and then switched to a slower pace as I explored the plethora of activities on the ground, in the sky and all around the five land masses of the Skyfall Islands.
In search of the missing chaos emeralds, Sonic becomes stranded on an ancient island teeming with unusual creatures. As we start to explore the first location, it feels a little on rails as you are guided by the landscape structures, however, don’t let this deter you as once you get out of the tutorial area, the first island really opens, and you are free to explore as you wish. The Starfall Islands are home to strange creatures Sonic has never encountered before, some are friendly, and some are deadly. It was great to see that once I got to the second island, it had completely different monsters, puzzles and mini-boss creatures, so it felt fresh each time you completed a zone.
Your primary goal is to collect missing chaos emeralds from vaults, but to do that you will need to unlock portals using vault keys. Once you discover and open a portal, you travel to a cyber space level and complete challenges. The levels are huge and range from 3D perspectives behind Sonic, to 2D sidescrollers and a mix of both. They play like the older more traditional Sonic games collecting rings as fast as you can while dodging obstacles. Sometimes the camera angle, both in these cyber space levels as well as the open world, can fight with you. There is a crossed-out camera icon in the top right of the screen whenever the game locks the camera angle on you, so you eventually know to look there if you are thrust into one of these phases, but it did cause some frustration at times.
Once you complete a portal, you will earn a chaos emerald vault key, and you can earn multiple keys from each cyber space level depending on the requirements. You will get one for just finishing, then there are 3 or more challenges such as finishing within a ‘S’ time rating, collecting all red star rings, and collecting a certain number of regular rings. I usually got two keys straight away and left that portal to move onto exploring further. It wasn’t until I was close to clearing the first island that I needed to go back and complete more challenges to obtain enough keys to unlock the final emerald. Alternatively, there is a portal that takes you to a familiar friend where you can play a fishing mini game. Catching different types of fish will give you different rewards that can unlock vault keys, rings, collectibles to progress your friends side quests, and more. Fishing in Sonic Frontiers is quite zen and peaceful with beautiful soothing music and was a good change of pace. And really, if a game has fishing in it, it’s got me hooked, line and sinker!
The puzzles you come across are quite varied and exciting to complete for the first of each puzzle type. I’m not sure if it was because I haven’t played a Sonic game in years or if I just didn’t interpret some of the puzzle signs, but it took me hours to work out that some puzzles must be completed at night-time. Now that I know this, the symbols on those puzzles show a moon – dah! Some are simple and just require you to use the Cyloop ability around an object. Some require you to race to a distant location within a time limit, while others will have you climbing objects or jumping to platforms and a mix of all methods. Each island had some different puzzle styles and objectives to complete which refreshed the gameplay at each new location.
Not only are the puzzles fun to complete, but they are also key to unveiling the shroud over the map, which in turn opens new points of interest for you to visit. In addition, completing a puzzle and unveiling the map will also connect huge ancient sky rails to previous locations you have visited which makes traversing between areas so much quicker. After you have solved all puzzles on an island, fast travel will be unlocked on all portals so you can zoom back and complete cyber space levels to gain more keys. Once you have collected enough keys, the final chaos emerald will be unlocked.
As you explore the landscape, you will come across various types of monsters, some small and some humongous. Starting with just a simple attack move, Sonic will quickly unlock new manoeuvres using skill points and various types of upgrades you find as you solve environmental puzzles, defeat monsters and unlock portals. With just the single attack type initially, it sounds like it would get boring fast but on the contrary, each monster type has different attacks, shields and powerups to keep you on your toes. Some monsters are simple, and you can kill them in one hit. Others are shielded or spiked and will knock back Sonic, spilling coins. Some require you to engage them and then wait until they activate their unique abilities or moves which exposes weak points to exploit. There were a couple of large monsters on the first island, the Asura and Squid, that took me a few times to learn their mechanics, but wow were these cool to take on. The Squid especially is a fun and challenging fight as it flies leaving a sky trail for you to travel on.
As you kill monsters, they will drop skill fragments. Collect enough and you will unlock a skill point that you can spend in the skill tree menu. Once you unlock a new skill, you are given a tutorial sequence that teaches you how to use it which was very helpful. Another great feature of Sonic Frontiers is, whenever there’s a loading screen, you are given an opportunity to practice these moves with prompts at the bottom of the screen. I thought this was fantastic and more games should adopt this instead of the stale loading bar screens. It’s not enough though to just unlock skills, you will also need to upgrade Sonic’s speed and ring capacity. To do this, you will need to rescue small creatures called Koco, and return these to an Elder who will offer you the upgrades. In addition, there are red seeds of power and blue seeds of defense that you will find and turn in to Hermit Koco who will upgrade Sonic’s attack and defense power.
I have got to give a shout out to the amazing music score. The various music tracks are incredible, from fast-paced techno/dance for cyber space levels, to soothing exploration music as you move around the landscape, and intense battle music that urges you to victory. I never once got tired of a particular song, and it was always fitting for the activities I was doing at the time. There are over 150 songs that have been composed for the game, and lucky Japanese players are able to purchase a six-CD collection titled ‘Stillness & Motion’. There’s no word on a worldwide release date though which is disappointing as I would definitely love to have these songs for road trips and general chill out music.
With the emeralds collected at the end of each level, you will come across a huge boss fight. This felt epic as you put all your skills to use and eventually take it down, with a great sense of relief and achievement. You then start on the next island which features a different biome (desert for the second island) and face all new monster types and find yourself helping other friendly characters which adds more side story to the game. It took me around 6 hours to fully complete the first island, though I was taking notes for this review and no doubt there are faster ways to compete it. It was refreshing to land on a new island that looked and felt different, but more importantly had new puzzles and new monster types that weren’t just copy/paste assets with different names like most games do.
Overall, Sonic Frontiers is one of the best action platformer games I have played in some time. The mix of fast-paced on rails levels balanced with exploring the open zone islands was a pleasure to progress through. Just when the gameplay loop was getting tired towards the end of an island, the boss fight before the next island reinvigorated you to charge on through a new biome with new monster types and it became fresh again. Plus, any game that has fishing in it gets a vote from me!
This review utilised a PlayStation 5 key provided by Five Star Games and Sonic Frontiers will release on November 8 (November 9 for us in ANZ) on PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Steam.
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Written by: @ChrisJInglis
