Definitely the best Sonic game I’ve ever played. The movement is great, the open world works extremely well, combat is extremely simple but satisfying, the various challenges and collectibles are a lot of fun. The story is less ridiculous than we’ve come to expect from Sonic, and has some genuinely poignant moments.

Honestly, 80% of this game deserves four stars. It only gets knocked down because Chaos Island, the third area, is designed in such a way that navigation is extremely difficult and frustrating. Everything that was so great and fun about the other four areas is pretty much chucked out the window in exchange for difficult and annoying twists on the formula.

Mercifully, that island falls in the middle of the game, so you’ve got 40% of an extremely solid game on either side of it. Definitely worth playing, just know going in that Chaos Island is gonna be frustrating.

This game is the most overhyped game ever, it is not one of the best Sonic games.
The combat is fun, and I love the enemies, but the writing is whatever, and the boss fights are AWFUL. Don't get me wrong, the music is absolutely phenomenal, but the gameplay of the bosses is just so BORING, it just feels like mindless button-mashing.
This game is just an ok game at best and a really mediocre one at worst.

Also, a very bold move by SEGA to make an open-world game that looks like shit.

it's sad that people are praising the mediocre writing and the halfassed trend chasing this game exhibits

I had fun using physics mods that allowed me to launch myself from one platforming challenge to another, making use of the marketed freedom, but the actual challenges themselves are rigid and straight out of Forces.
Cyberspace sucks.

The Final Horizon challenges are actually fairly fun, and some of its Cyberspace levels are GOOD.

Good with physics mods and at LEAST a 50% sale.

Just some good ass Sonic The Hedgehog to be had here:

Run real fast, complete a bunch of small puzzles and platforming challenges across large open-ended islands, beat huge bosses as Super Sonic, and watch Sonic interact with his friends (and enemies) in entertaining - sometimes even touching - ways.

That being said, I didn't like the cyber space / portal levels much. They all felt kind of same-y after a while. Luckily you can skip a lot of them if you spend time fishing with Big the Cat (hell yeah) and buy the items you need to progress the story. Also, Chaos Island kind of sucks and is tedious to get through with its forced 2D challenges and annoying layout.

Other than that, though? I loved it.

This game was like a love-letter from SEGA to me.. I played the shit out of it, absolutely loved almost every aspect of it. But that doesnt mean it is perfect. I'd say the combat needs some polish, as in making it a little harder and more technical than it is right now, you can basically upgrade sonic to the point where none of your actions really matter, you can just throw out whatever and it will work AND deal a shit ton of damage. But still, I really enjoyed that SEGA finally tried to do something combat related in a Sonic game, I really hope they will develop this idea further in the next games. As for my final complaint - the islands could use some work, sometimes they feel quite empty, but I enjoyed blasting through them nonetheless.

TL;DR I am very satisfied with this game as an old Sonic fan. Long gone is my shattered heart from the unforgettable Sonic Forces hype...

Gameplay
The Open Zone kills it. Admittedly, its design with random platforms, rails, bumpers and dash panels isn't the greatest but what saves it is the sense of exploration you get from each island. The challenges that unlock the map are piss easy but that doesn't make them annoying. They are bite sized, small distractions from all the running and jumping around. The physics are great and the drop dash from Sonic Mania is in a 3D Sonic game for the first time! You can get some amazing momentum rolling down hills and can gain lots of height jumping after boosting on an incline or a rail.

Cyber Space... Bad physics. Most of the levels are bad. The ones that copy their level designs from SA1, SA2 and Unleashed are very fun. But yeah... The physics are bad. You can fix them with mods but they break some stuff with the game, so I do not recommend doing that.

There are some stupid mini-games in the main story quests. Sheep herding... And the worst: On the 3rd island, there's a bridge you cannot jump across, there's an invisible wall. Later on in the story, Sonic jumps through the bridge in a cutscene while jumping TO SPACE. And you have to get him to the ground IN A TIME LIMIT. I hate arbitrary time-limits. Stupid mini-games like these should NOT exist in the main story.

Elder Koco leveling takes way too long, just like Hestu from BOTW. I spent an hour pressing menu buttons and waiting through unskippable animations and text just to get my speed and ring capacity to the max level. Hermit Koco is better, he just levels your ATK and DEF at the same time while using all your resources. Why doesn't this also exist for Elder Koco? I have no idea.

The final boss, even the true one which you only get if you play on Hard mode, is a joke. The true final boss comes out of nowhere and is a very, very big disappointment. Regular bosses in this game are more like the final bosses you'd expect from Sonic games.

Better get ready for some Ikaruga.

Narrative
The narrative. Oh the narrative. God bless you Ian Flynn. We finally have a serious and comprehensive Sonic story after years of junk and especially after the disappointment that was Sonic Forces, I am very happy with this one. Expect callbacks, direct references and actual story connections to ALL past Sonic media, including but not limited to Sonic 3, Sonic Adventure 1 and Sonic Adventure 2. The dialogues and writing are also amazing, Flynn definitely knows how to write the characters and playfully dances around their personalities, thoughts and dreams. There are some unexplained stuff in the game which I think they are saving for a future title. We'll see.

Graphics and Performance
This is a weird one. While the game looks outstanding there is an insane amount of pop-in and you have no way to fix it. There are 30 and 60 FPS caps for the game and while you can unlock the framerate using Cheat Engine, it breaks certain aspects of the game, so I do not recommend doing that at all. All cutscenes are locked at 30 FPS. Besides the pop-in everything looks gorgeous at High settings. I cannot comment on the Low settings but I'd assume it'd look similar to the Switch version, which I find very ugly. I don't think the game is very demanding at High settings, as long as you have a decent system you shouldn't have any issues running it at 1080p 60 FPS.

Voices and Music
I still don't like Roger's Sonic voice, even with this serious direction but many of the voice actors do a great job. They fit the tone of the game perfectly while not feeling too forced or cheesy. And while I don't like Roger as Sonic at all, I can't really imagine this story with Jason's voice either... But it is what it is. He does a great job and improves throughout the game. He starts sounding better as the game progresses, so maybe there were some issues when recording for the game first started.

The Open Zone musics are amazing. Some Cyber Space tracks are amazing. Most are subpar and forgettable. Boss musics are epic, except, again, the final boss. I have no idea why they thought that final boss was a good idea.

Final Thoughts
In my opinion, this is an amazing step in the right direction for Sonic. I finished it 100% in 26.5 hours without rushing. I hope they try at least one more game with this formula and improve upon it. Even zooming around the Open Zone mindlessly is fun, movement is fluid, it's just great. Very excited for the future.

I wanted to like this game really bad and unfortunately, there are just too many dishes to this large messy main course of a 5-year wait game that left me severely disappointed.

I do wanna kick this off by saying at the core of this game is an enjoyable time I enjoy doing the obstacle courses and climbing the poopisoft towers every once in a while however it is how this game applies its concepts together where I take issue, all overworld puzzles (if you can even call them that) are the most braindead easy nothing padding checkboxes and then the cyberspace levels are previous sonic levels with 3 of the most oversaturated themes slapped on them, I know the lore reason which is pretty cool but in the execution, it comes off as pretty lazy at least to me. My favorite part of this game as it is very common amongst most people who play it, is the boss fights. However, they cannot save the game the combat is just as simple it's just hype in a cheesy way I love it.

Don't really wanna address the combat it has potential but it feels tacked on but overall I came out on the other side of this game disappointed by most aspects and I don't really feel like replaying it anytime soon maybe hop on it to hop on those floating rails with some Spotify or something

After three purchases and attempts to play this game (refunded the first via steam, bought the 2nd for ps5, and finally bought again via steam for a discounted price) I can confidently say that I did not enjoy my time with this title.

In my eyes, the only redeeming quality for this game was the story. Frontiers has one of if not the best story we've gotten for a sonic game in a long while. With that being said, the game itself (structure, level design, controls) gave me more problems than I feel it should've.

In my experience, sonic would often pick and choose when he did and when he didn't want to control the proper way and it would often result in janky platforming/free roam that would cause me to die or hit a road block. There are certain points in this game that completely break the pace and the cyberspace levels are some of the worst things that have been put into this franchise. The only leeway I can give them is that they would probably feel a lot better if sonic didn't control like absolute garbage once you enter one of these levels. How they managed to make sonic feel worse then he did in forces is honestly beyond me and is hands down the most disappointing thing for me. All in all this game gave me more issues than enjoyable moments and for that I just can't give it a score that I would have wanted to. Lets hope that this gives sega the proper groundwork for another title that fixes the many issues I had with this game.