I was very negative about this game when it was first teased back in May 2021, and everything that has been shown since didn't fill me with confidence. I can safely say that the game has a lot of issues, but it is fun and certainly better than Lost World and Forces.
The cyber stages' issues have been talked about a lot, there are like 29 or 30 of them and I don't like how they reuse themes and level design, but after getting used to the controls, they are fun to play and speedrun, but I can't fully give the game credit for that as it did copy paste level design. The few original 3D cyber stages are actually not bad, an improvement over Forces but certainly not on the same level as Unleashed or Generations still. Jumping into Arcade mode to replay some of the stages is the most fun I've had with boost stages in a long time; there are some cool skips you can do when you combine the double jump, stomp jump, and air boost.
As for the islands, a lot of people excused the theme and level design reuse in the cyber stages cause we're getting 5 whole new islands with unique themes! ...But we didn't, it's just 3 themes, and one of the islands is really short, and there are no differences between the islands outside of their enemies and aesthetics. What happened here? Regardless, Sonic controls well and the combat is good enough. I'm not a fan of how they slapped a bunch of rails, boosters, dash rings, rainbow rings, pulleys, etc. all over the island instead of properly designing the world to accommodate Sonic's movement, what happened to blending these elements into the actual environment as every other game does?
Chaos Island is easily the worst island, it has too many 2D sections that lock you in and it's unclear how to move to the other smaller islands to get the Choas Emeralds.
Bosses had great music and they...functioned, I guess? Most of the time I had no idea if I was doing the right thing, I refuse to believe that the third titan was play tested. The fourth titan is somehow the easiest, I don't understand why. And apparently, you needed to be in hard mode for the second phase of the final boss and...I have no words for the actual boss really.
Also, I'm sure this might be a controversial take, but I think Frontiers is the most unpolished mainline 3D Sonic game since Sonic 06, after 5 years in development it still somehow feels like it needed another year. A lot of things feel janky, some scripted sections straight up don't work, I've seen better animations in low-budget JRPGs, and the asset reuse all lead me to believe that this game was rushed.
The story is okay, nothing especially bad about it like the previous few Sonic games, but I wish Ian Flynn would start relying less on references to previous games during character interactions. The lore stuff will be controversial but I am okay with it, I just wish there was more to the story.
Overall this game is okay, I think it gets a 3/5 from me. I will do another playthrough for the PC version, and maybe with patches and such, it could go up to a 3.5/5.
The cyber stages' issues have been talked about a lot, there are like 29 or 30 of them and I don't like how they reuse themes and level design, but after getting used to the controls, they are fun to play and speedrun, but I can't fully give the game credit for that as it did copy paste level design. The few original 3D cyber stages are actually not bad, an improvement over Forces but certainly not on the same level as Unleashed or Generations still. Jumping into Arcade mode to replay some of the stages is the most fun I've had with boost stages in a long time; there are some cool skips you can do when you combine the double jump, stomp jump, and air boost.
As for the islands, a lot of people excused the theme and level design reuse in the cyber stages cause we're getting 5 whole new islands with unique themes! ...But we didn't, it's just 3 themes, and one of the islands is really short, and there are no differences between the islands outside of their enemies and aesthetics. What happened here? Regardless, Sonic controls well and the combat is good enough. I'm not a fan of how they slapped a bunch of rails, boosters, dash rings, rainbow rings, pulleys, etc. all over the island instead of properly designing the world to accommodate Sonic's movement, what happened to blending these elements into the actual environment as every other game does?
Chaos Island is easily the worst island, it has too many 2D sections that lock you in and it's unclear how to move to the other smaller islands to get the Choas Emeralds.
Bosses had great music and they...functioned, I guess? Most of the time I had no idea if I was doing the right thing, I refuse to believe that the third titan was play tested. The fourth titan is somehow the easiest, I don't understand why. And apparently, you needed to be in hard mode for the second phase of the final boss and...I have no words for the actual boss really.
Also, I'm sure this might be a controversial take, but I think Frontiers is the most unpolished mainline 3D Sonic game since Sonic 06, after 5 years in development it still somehow feels like it needed another year. A lot of things feel janky, some scripted sections straight up don't work, I've seen better animations in low-budget JRPGs, and the asset reuse all lead me to believe that this game was rushed.
The story is okay, nothing especially bad about it like the previous few Sonic games, but I wish Ian Flynn would start relying less on references to previous games during character interactions. The lore stuff will be controversial but I am okay with it, I just wish there was more to the story.
Overall this game is okay, I think it gets a 3/5 from me. I will do another playthrough for the PC version, and maybe with patches and such, it could go up to a 3.5/5.