Who knew the sleeper hit of 2023 would be a mobile Sonic game that is stuck on Apple devices? No seriously, Sonic Dream dropped out of no where and is suddenly one of the best 3D sonic games in the last 20 years. This Sonic game outclassed Frontiers with probably a fraction of the budget. Sonic Dream Team is the first fully 3D sonic game since Sonic 06, meaning you have a full 360 degree camera and there are absolutely no 2D sections. And somehow with no experience this team knocked it out of the park in their first try. You control up to 6 characters, each controlling very similarly but with slight variations in ability (as it should be), and the feeling of the gameplay is some of the best 3D sonic has to offer. The level design really encapsulated 2D Sonic level design into a 3D game. It's a fast linear, momentum based platformer with branching paths that you can take depending on your skill level. And it's all about getting from point A to B. No gimmick levels. The better you play, the better paths you take, the faster you finish levels. And I'll say it again, every single character is so fun to play this time. To compare, every other Sonic game which had multiple characters had Sonic which always fun to play, and then half of the other characters would have some sort of gimmick. Sonic Dream Team only has 4 zones with 4 acts each, but each act has multiple missions meaning there is so much content here. The game took me a good 10 hours to bear which is pretty good for a Sonic game. My only complaints is the fact that this is stuck on Apple, and very well deserves to be played by all players on console and PC. Also I don't like the sideshow cutscenes either. If you have been waiting for a good 3D sonic game, I urge you to play this.

While the game is overall a bit repetitive, the later quarter of the game really steps up the level design. But where this game really excels is feeling good to play, coming close to on par with probably some of the best 3D Sonic controls. Also, the final level actually rules.

I'd love to see Hardlight continue the momentum they got going with this release, ideally with less repetition to progress, and some more fully realized areas to play through. But for what this is, I'm sufficiently pleased.

This was so fun! It's not perfect by any means, but it is a real delight to experience, and that's all I really ask for from a Sonic game. I appreciate that a lot of the characterization beats carry over from Frontiers, the graphics are really lovely, the models are SUPER expressive (great to see them continuing to get better and better each game, especially after years of nobody emoting ever) and the story is quite charming. I love that it's neither sanctimonious nor afraid to take itself seriously.

I hope it gets ported to other platforms eventually, because it's a shame that one of my favourite Sonic games in recent years is on a platform most GamersTM don't regularly touch.

It’s an alright game that can pleasantly surprise you in many ways, but there are still flaws that stop it from being truly amazing. I personally like most Sonic games, even the ones that were disliked. It’s kind of perplexing to see this one receiving more love. I have been hesitating between giving it 3.5 and 4 stars but went with 3.5 in the end. Let’s start with the flaws:

-Camera can still get in the way
-Controls can still act weird sometimes but they’re still pretty good
-Not a fan of the boss fights, they seem a bit boring and slow compared to the rest of the game
-Ditto with the cutscenes/story, I’m not sure if me getting older (=less tolerance) or this one being considerably worse than many previous ones. It didn’t help that the cutscenes were images instead of actual videos and the voice acting wasn’t always good
-The game can be very grindy if you want to get all the in-game statues (more on that in a bit)

Positives:
-Lovely graphics and art
-The way the stages have been made is great. You usually have one big stage and a couple of challenges like reach checkpoints on time, collect 6 orbs etc. that are separate stages based on the big stage. You only have collectibles in the big stage which is better imo. The challenges are fun and quick to do
-6 characters have been divided in 3 types and all 3 are well thought out and fun to use

The game has 101 dream orbs (I got 91 and a YouTube videos speaks of 101 total), 30 blue rings in every big stage (12 big stages total) and you can do Tails challenges. Tails challenges look like the challenges you already did only randomised and you get 100 XP for completing each one. You get to do 5-6 per week. All that I mentioned earns you statues based on certain milestones reached. The reason I mentioned getting the statues can be very grindy is because of one where you need to earn 10k in tails challenges and you can only earn around 550 XP a week. This mode is basically the one to keep you playing and paying if you’re a completionist.

I’ve had a good time but I started feeling the game was overstaying its welcome. The blue rings can be annoying to find and I’m not falling for collecting all the statues and tails challenges.

Whoa what? A new review?? Surely not! (YES I AM STILL WORKING ON MY RED DEAD REDEMPTION REVIEW FOR THOSE IN THE KNOW.)

Sonic Dream Team is a new Sonic game that has been developed by both SEGA Hardlight, the mobile division of SEGA, and Apple themselves, which led to the exclusivity in the Apple Arcade app. Now I can DEFINITELY understand the frustration of this move, because I was actually one of the people who complained. But now that I have an Apple TV 4K box, I can play this game. Let’s get straight into it as this is not a long game by any means.

STORY:

Sonic Dream Team opens up with Dr. Eggman trying to bring his dreams to reality with a new device called the Reverie. But due to its design, only the pure-hearted could have their dreams be reality. Eggman tries to go around it by using Cream and Cheese as a conduit. Ariem, the sheep Dreamweaver puts Eggman to sleep before he could do anything else. Sonic and co. arrive shortly and find Eggman conked out. They too are knocked out to sleep and end up in the Dream World where 4 stages reside: Scrambled Shores, Dream Factory, Nightmare Maze, and Ego City. Sonic gets as many Dream Orbs as he can to free his friends, and eventually, they face down Eggman and heal Ariem within the Dream Core. And that’s pretty much it! It’s a much simpler, yet effective story all the same, and this was written by Ian Flynn (who’s really surprised) and Dan Rossati. Amazing stuff all around.

GAMEPLAY:

The gameplay of Sonic Dream Team is what you’d normally expect from Sonic games in general nowadays: Boosting levels where you go up platforms and get to the end as fast as possible. Of course, the gameplay is Sonic Frontiers mixed with the controls of games like Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. It is very fun and I’ve really enjoyed myself here. The game is structured kinda like Sonic Colors where there is a main act that has you collecting blue coins and red star rings combined with missions that are the same; Collecting 6 Dream Shards, time trial where you have to get to the end before the time limit runs out, finding a Dream Orb on the stage, and reaching checkpoints before the timer runs out. It COULD be repetitive, but for me, with the new levels in Sonic Dream Team, it can actually be fun exploring them. Of course, it would be even more fun if there was a DAMN STOMP! I have no clue WHY they did not include the stomp as it can make platforming precisely a chore. Something that I think Hardlight should add in the future. The levels in and of themselves are quite open. Not as open as Frontiers (obviously), but it’s not as linear as the previous boost games like Forces, Generations, Colors, and Unleashed. And all the playable characters are paired up into 3 duo groups kind of like Sonic Heroes: Speed, Flight, and Power. Sonic and Amy are speed, Tails and Cream are flight, and Knuckles and Rouge are power. But they all play the exact same. Not that there’s anything WRONG with it by any means at all though. And while you play the game, when you unlock the rest of the playable characters, you can actually switch to any of them with a press of a button, but you have to be idle for it to work. And can I just say this? How EMBARRASSING is it to be Sonic Team right now? If SEGA Hardlight can program the character switch actions to a single button, then SO SHOULD SONIC TEAM. IT IS NOT THAT HARD. But NO, unlike Dream Team, you have to go to the Master King Koco to switch characters. IMAGINE THAT.

And finally, you face off against bosses that are quite easy and I’m very happy it’s not the type of BS that the Master King Koco trials and the Superstars bosses were, because holy SHIT, THOSE were a mess. Dr. Crabulous, The Four Man, and Guardian Hunter are great bosses, especially the 3rd one in particular. That monster would honestly be quite terrifying to face in your dreams.
And that’s pretty much the gameplay. Yeah, this is a very short segment, but hey, this game was very fun to say the least. I loved it!

STAGES:
Let’s list off the stages that you can play in.

- SCRAMBLED SHORES.
Scrambled Shores is the first introductory stage in Sonic Dream Team, and I won’t really lie here, this was a very nice change of scenery after the Open Zone in Sonic Frontiers. It’s more akin to a Seaside Hill type zone with lots of water, sand, grass, hot air balloons, etc. It’s a really cool setting, but it’s not as visually appealing as the next three zones.
- DREAM FACTORY
Dream Factory is a very cool looking zone here. You can see Magination, a fuel used to…well, fuel your dreams. It’s a really fun zone to run around in. Not much to really say here, but Act 3 is fun. You get to see the LITERAL Nightmare Fuel that Eggman creates in this factory. But that’s no surprise to anyone really, Eggman really wants to make his dreams a living nightmare for the heroes.
- NIGHTMARE MAZE
Now THIS is the best zone in the entire game. This is a labyrinth of Eggman’s inner insanity. This is a pure anti-gravity zone and it makes it a lot of fun. The fact that you can explore the labyrinth-like zone with the fun anti-gravity gimmick makes it a based level on its own.
- EGO CITY
This is quite a fun final zone. And Ego is right, because holy shit, this zone is what Eggman wants the future to be, and we all know that it’s going to be QUITE a bad idea. Eggman IS egotistical after all. The final boss, while disappointing, does have some fun level design that you go through with all characters.
And that’s all the stages! If I had to rank them from best to worst, they would be:
1. Nightmare Maze
2. Ego City
3. Dream Factory
4. Scrambled Shores
All of them are fun in their own right, but if I was to come back and replay the levels, it’d mostly be in Nightmare Maze no question about it.

Now for the music!

MUSIC:

Sonic Dream Team does have a good soundtrack on its hands, but like Sonic Lost World, not all tracks are really memorable. However, I have some favorites. Let’s list them off.
1. Scrambled Shores/Dream Factory/Nightmare Maze/Ego City Ambient (Yes I’m grouping them together.)
2. Nightmare Eggman
3. Intro Song
4. Guardian Hunter
5. Green Hill Remix (even though it’s in the files, it’s not in the game, and not a Green Hill level in sight).
6. Nightmare Maze Act 2
And last but not least:
7. The Four Man
All composers of the tracks did honestly great with the OST overall.


FINAL THOUGHTS:

I really, REALLY enjoyed this game. Even with the honeymoon phase still in effect, I thought this game was very fun. The levels were great, the gameplay had a simple but effective loop to get more Dream Orbs, the music was fantastic, and the story is very simple, but for what it sets out to accomplish, I really like it! My only real gripes with the game are the voices of Rouge and Cream not being as good as they should be; Rouge sounding like an OLD WOMAN AT TIMES, and Cream having a nasally and squeaky as fuck voice (and I say this with no disrespect to Michelle Ruff, the voice actress for Cream), and my other gripe is that Knuckles and Rouge’s gliding controls are DISGUSTING. That is MUCH worse than Frontiers, and it got an UPDATE to FIX its gliding. The wall climbing is disappointing as well as you can only climb on certain surfaces instead of on any surface like in the Adventure games. And finally, while backtracking is not really an issue for me anyway, often times, if you go on really fast to try and beat the game, you’re pretty much going to have to play the missions I listed in the Gameplay Section to get more Dream Orbs. They shouldn’t really take you that long.

Is this game perfect by any means? Not even CLOSE. Is it terrible? HELL no. Is it good? Yes. Would I understand that it could be mediocre for someone? Absolutely.

Now, would I recommend Sonic Dream Team? Absolutely…if you have an Apple device, that is; a Mac, an Apple TV, an iPhone, or even an iPad. And considering this is an Apple Arcade exclusive…this might be a turn off to some people. I hope that Apple allows SEGA to bring Dream Team to consoles and PC. With that said, my ranking for this game is:


RANK: GREAT!

i think it says a lot about the current state of sonic that this is one of the best series games in recent memory.

pretty short yet very inspired with some quirky writing and voice acting, as well as controls that are easy enough for newcomers to grasp and for veterans to break to the extremes. and yeah, you can expect to go through the same levels a few times over like a lot of other mobile games, but hardlight has really nailed their formula with this one. a fun saturday afternoon adventure, sega's mobile games are their secret weapon! i also really hope this gets ported in the future, would hate to see another chu chu rocket universe situation 😵‍💫

would definitely recommend playing with a controller

Well, not much to complain about here. Basically all I could wish for in a modern Sonic game. All of Frontiers' faults in my eyes are absent here. Dream Team is focused, has a great gameplay flow, sense of speed, momentum and generally well-functioning physics, responsive movement with both a controller and touch controls. The final boss was actually good for once.
The most striking thing, from it's initial reveal, was the visual identity of the game. It, oh great heavens, has one! Unlike a certain other Sonic game... The levels are vibrant, filled with actual character, the character models, after a few small tweaks, are finally expressive and well animated, and it all just looks really good, especially for a mobile game. Seems like they actually had a vision for this one. It also ran really well on my iPhone 11.
Then again, the game isn't without it's flaws. As it is, unfortunately, a mobile game, the difficulty level is... low. Understandable, as most people will play this with touch controls, but it is a fault nonetheless. It didn't really bring much challenge to the table. The soundtrack is pretty weak, with few songs that are repeated constantly. And none of them are particurarly good. It is, however, better than whatever Ohtani cooked up for cyberspace in Frontiers. It was also pretty hard to see stuff at times, but that is the fault of the device.
If I were to say what this game reminds me of, I would say Spark 3 and Super Mario 3D Land. Spark 3 because it really seems like Hardlight played the game and thought "Ey, why not try doing this?" and 3D Land because this feels like Sonic's 3D Land, if you know what I mean.
As sad as it is to say, the best 3D Sonic game since 2011's Generations is a mobile game not even made by Sonic Team. I do hope they make something in a similar vain to Dream Team but with a wider scope, a full console experience with beautiful graphics, even better gameplay feel, great soundtrack... but it's Sonic we're talking about. I wouldn't get my hopes up.

A surprisingly good 3D Sonic game, while it isn’t as fully fleshed out as the Adventure games it follows a similar formula with linear levels that you replay multiple times with different objectives. What is a fun twist is there are 6 playable characters split into three types that shake up the gameplay just enough to keep it fresh, and you often can hit swap mid level to find secret routes. Playing with a controller I had no issues and it felt good to play, minus a few camera issues (not a new issue in Sonic sadly). Also shout out the new character in the story, I liked the whole concept of the game and the comic cutscenes were a nice touch.

I was very surprised by how good this game is! This isn't what I''d expect from a mobile Sonic game. This is all but a full fledged Sonic game, which happens to only be playable on mobile. I wish you could customize your controls, and I wish I could play this on my PC, but other than that I really have nothing bad to say. The story and characterization is done expertly, all of the characters are fun to play, and it's wonderful to see Rouge and Cream playable in a "real" Sonic game after all this time. I truly hope Sonic Dream Team gets ported to PC someday in the future.

Functional (and somewhat fun!) but ultimately unmemorable for a Sonic game. It’s interesting seeing a Boost game with far smoother turning and less hallway-like design, but in turn lacks a lot of the cinematography and impact of the Boost games, or momentum-based fun and endearing worlds of the Adventure games.

It doesn’t do much aside from providing some fun bitesized Sonic gameplay - which is excellent for an Apple Arcade title, but it always feels like it’s reaching for something a bit more. It feels like Apple gave them a good amount of budget to put into creating these really nicely designed models and level environments, but the general interface and storybook panel cutscenes feel really low budget - which causes it to sit on a weird in-between plane between substantial experience and Cotton Candy Fluff Of A Game. Nothing bad, nothing offensive, but also not much to stick your teeth into.

Did a monkey’s paw come with every single Genesis? Astonishing number of curled fingers over at the Sonic fandom. So this time, one of the better Sonic games I’ve ever played is an iOS exclusive; I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad that I, a certified “Sonic is okay sometimes” gamer, got to play this day one.

And that it’s good, ackshually. Aping the mission structure of Mario 64 (it’s not identical at all but there are overt similarities) as well as vibrant visuals, solid level design, and liquid controls make this is a slick and thoroughly enjoyable Sonic experience. It seems like a 3D Sonic Mania type beat. It also ran well on all my devices, but a controller is the way to go. I don’t always talk about technical performance but we know which way the sonic monkeys paws been curlin these days.

I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take, when people run in circles it’s a very very Sonic I forgot the title of the game and I’m too lazy to go to the top of the page. Soniiiiic the title of the game but again. The Dream Warriors?

This game is really really good and although i don't consider it a "mobile" game (because you can play apple arcade in other devices besides a mobile phone) most of the negatives i have with this game exist because it was designed so it can work well in mobile devices, so it has some limitations, also people need to stop shitting on apple/sega for the exclusivity, apple IS THE REASON this game exists in the first place, you rather have no game at all because you can't play it? lmao
Besides the community is so talented that it wouldn't surprise me if they ended up remaking, porting or decompiling the game so it can work on pc like they did with project-06.

The animation in this game is wonderful, the characters look really cute and fluid, it can look awkward sometimes but those are really small moments, when the cutscenes are fully animated is when they shine so whenever the game starts using slides and static pictures for the cutscenes is really boring in comparison, at least they are better than the ones in generations 3d lol.

The controls are fine, i still think frontiers has better control and movement especially in platforming, but the level design complements the movement options you have really well, i think the game is lacking from a stomp/bounce attack because falling sometimes feels slow and i don't like losing the rhythm/momentum i have, also people seem to complain about the knuckles/rouge glide? the glide is fine, you're supposed to glide in pretty much straight lines and the level design is made so you can do it in straight lines, is not like sa2 where you had more mobility because the game expected you to move around all over the place to explore (sam really exaggerated that shit when he was playing lmao).

The music was good, i don't know if it was just me but the music was really low when i was playing so i couldn't focus on it that much, but i would say that this is tee lopes weakest soundtrack, there's nothing really THAT memorable in the game except maybe the final boss music, but is far from mediocre, i would say that probably sonic runners had a better ost than dream team.

I also saw a few people saying that this is how sonic is supposed to look in aesthetics? but i doubt that, because this is just lost world's aesthetics, sure they are better executed and a little less saturated in colors but they are pretty similar, and most people didn't liked how lost world looked so i don't trust that statement lmao, this aesthetic felt a more like "classic sonic" than "modern sonic" to me, not that modern sonic shouldn't look like that but this is far from my "perfect sonic aesthetic" lol.

The gameplay and level design were really good but i'm not a fan of the mission style levels like in sonic colors where the levels end up being really short, except the ones when you need to finish before the time limit, those work perfectly, the wall running was awkward sometimes because the camera changed positions quickly and disoriented me, the multiple characters returning in "duos" reminded me of sonic advance 3 and i love that and how they use them in the final boss, even though it was really easy and kind of underwhelming lol.

I have lots of thoughts on this game so i'll stop writing already, but in conclusion this game is really good, really fun and really worth it to play if you can, just borrow an apple device and try the free month of apple arcade and you'll be able to beat it, is really short (and that's another negative lol).

In my opinion the perfect sonic game would be the fusion of sonic frontiers and sonic dream team, using the strengths of both games, and for that reason i love both of these games : )))))