Sonic Frontiers Review: Rescue or Final Crash?

Of course, the last few years with their favorite video game hero have not been easy for many Sonic fans. The latest games have mostly been mediocre at best, and even the remaster of the otherwise good Sonic Colors got off to a disastrous start. The joy was all the greater when a new title was announced on May 27th of this year to mark the 30th anniversary of the Sega mascot. Later introduced as Sonic Frontiers, it would combine the well-known fast gameplay with an open world that was completely new for the series and thus also herald a new era for the future of the franchise. In view of the rather shattered image of the series, anything but an easy task and the fans remained skeptical at first.

We have Sonic Frontiers (buy now €34.99 / €53.99 ) tested intensively on several platforms in the last few days and weeks since the release on November 8th and will tell you in our review whether it lives up to what Sega expects from it, or whether we feel like this on the video game market after another flop finally have to say goodbye to our blue runabout.

Sonic Frontiers Review: Rescue or Final Crash? (3)

Source: PC games



Hedgehog goes open world

Once again, an iconic series moves away from its origins and tries its luck in an open world. The concept of a super-fast character running through huge areas at high speed isn’t bad at all. Finally, some games of the same kind often have the problem that it takes too long to get from one place to another. Ideal conditions for someone who already has speed in their name.

The open world you travel in Sonic Frontiers is called Starfall Islands. Sonic goes with his friends Tails and Amy in search of the Chaos Emeralds, which were drawn to the island by an unknown force. On the way, however, they are drawn through a portal into the intermediate dimension called cyberspace, from which only our main character can escape through their speed.

Now Sonic travels the Starfall Islands alone to rescue his friends. The entire world is divided into five different individual islands that have to be traveled to one after the other. On them you can move completely freely, find all kinds of collectibles and fight against robot opponents.

You’ll also find springs, boost strips, and rails everywhere that Sonic can interact with, leading you to new areas or collectables. In order to uncover more and more of the map, you also have to find and solve various puzzles. They are usually not worth mentioning, but they are all the more important to make orientation easier for you. In addition to the large open islands that you can explore freely, there are also the so-called cyberspace levels. These offer classic Sonic gameplay in 2D and 3D stages.

These are mainly already known levels from the predecessors like Sonic Unleashed or Sonic Generations, but they have been prettied up and partially revised. You can reach them through portals that can also be found throughout the Starfall Islands.

The goal on each individual island is to find the seven so-called Chaos Emeralds and defeat the main boss. These robots, known as titans, are so strong that our favorite hedgehog can only stand against them in his super form, which he gains from the power of the Emeralds.

“Boss fight” can even be taken literally here, because Sonic Frontiers actually has a fairly extensive combat system as a major innovation.

Hit it, hit it, hit it!

In classic Sonic gameplay, fighting is mostly limited to dashing towards enemies with the main character’s dash ability and knocking them out in one hit. There were already approaches to a real combat system in the series, such as the Werigel passages in Sonic Unleashed or the sword in Sonic and the Black Knight.