Sonic Frontiers was a lot more fun than I expected.

I'd heard about the mesh pop-ins and the jankiness but honestly, it really wasn't that big of a deal.

It's a very fast and acrobatic game that asks you to zoom around rails and dash pads as fast hedgehogely possible. All of this is great fun and where the game's controls and level design shine.

The problem is when the open world tropes start to kick in. All the boring and superfluous cutscenes with Sonic's friends. All the side content which really isn't all interesting in the slightest (I'm looking at you time trials). These bog down the experience quite a bit and totally kill the fun as keep popping up again and again.

All in all, this ends up being a very decent game. It's fun at times when you can enjoy running around so fast your TV might break. It's really tedious when burned out tropes are there too often to pad the game.

If only they'd have pushed the acrobatic mechanics to their limit to make a game all about movement and completing challenges... Oh well. Decent fun all the same.