really wanted to like this but there’s so many design flaws that appear to be antithetical to what this series has accomplished in the past:

-the elephant in the room is the severe lack of environmental design with the various assets strewn across the islands. gone are the days of grinding on vines native to its forests or jumping across grassy platforms that could’ve emerged from the habitats that surround us. across every island we get the same navy blue rails and platforms haphazardly floating in the sky. what i would argue is that the facade of naturally occurring level assets is one of the most significant aspects of sonic gameplay as a whole. the world isn’t made for sonic. unfortunately the reverse of this idea is what plagues frontiers in many areas.

-could not get immersed into the game due to what i’ve said above & how barren and hollow the islands feel. maybe that was the point but… i severely doubt it considering sonic team’s track record. a civilization once thrived on these islands, and all that’s left for us to ponder upon are.. random pillars and “houses” that are no more than areas to hide collectables and not much else. the ruins aren’t even placed around cohesively to give the illusion of a village or somewhere once occupied by living beings.

-minigames were never sonic team’s expertise but i genuinely think frontiers takes the cake for the worst ones in the whole franchise; either they’re absolutely braindead, too easy, boring, or a combination of the three. don’t wanna get into this one too much.

-cyberspace levels almost had me excited at their introductions until i began to realize the level design is all unabashedly recycled from previous games without much amends to them to accommodate frontiers’ different control style. adding insult to injury is the copy and pasting of these levels onto aesthetics that are also recycled! remember green forest and savanna citadel? now their charm and details are completely erased in order to transfer their level layouts onto green hill, chemical plant, or sky sanctuary. it’s a real shame they resorted to this since it was proven they knew how to make engaging level design in the same game! the challenges present in climbing up the towers were some of the most fun i had in the game.

-the gameplay. to give credit where credit is due, sonic actually controls pretty good! unfortunately even this has problems behind it as it was pretty obvious the devs couldn’t craft good enough controls on their own, hence the freedom is given to the player to make the game feel right. anyway earlier i had said that frontiers was oppositional to the idea that “the world isn’t made for sonic.” here, everything is artificially curated for our hedgehog. i wouldn’t mind as much as i do if the assets and sections covering the islands felt natural and were fluently strung together, but nope. minor 5-to-10 second mostly-automated mini sections are everywhere. wholly uninteresting and sometimes irritating when i’m just trying to traverse the island and accidentally touch a spring or dashpad, 9 times out of 10 sending me into a forced 2D section without any way to escape.

after waiting five years… i could definitely say i was disappointed. but! i did enjoy the story & the soundtrack is unmatched as per sonic standard. it’s just unfortunate that there’s such an absence of attention to detail and contextualization despite what you’d think for an open world title such as this. as for the final boss… i’ll say it was probably my favorite part of the game since it steals from a game much better than it.