Sonic Frontiers from the offset had me interested in how an open world sonic game would function but after beating it, it is more synonymous to Bowser's Fury than an open world game

but anyways onto talk about my thoughts on the game in a mostly spoiler free form



-Sonics ground control may be my favorite in the franchise in the Open Zone specifically. Turning has never been sharper and adjusting the controls to your liking is something more platformers need to do. Next game maybe don’t make him stick to the ground as much. The air control is something that i want improved in future entries as making midair corrections is tougher than it should be. SA1's jump would make sense in this type of game. The double jump is pretty worthless to me as the air boost gives you a bit of height, much more distance if that’s what you want and it’s much easier to control imo.

-The Open Zone itself is 90% of what you’ll be doing so how is it? I have my issues with it but overall, it’s a fantastic playground as I expected before the game’s release. Seeing platforming elements strewn about in the sky may be off-putting but I never minded it as other open world games just have nothing to do in them like Elden Ring and BOTW. Having these little platforming challenges to do in any order you want along with maybe an occasional combat encounter leads to the player really crafting their own Frontier and I loved my time in the Open Zones. I got into that flow state the best Sonic levels put you in so many times it needs to be played in order to understand fully. I always had a smile on my face going through them. If I had to pick a favorite one it would probably be Ares in terms of the platforming and level layout and Chaos in regards to miniboss enjoyment. Favorite to least favorite would probably be Ares>Ouranos>Kronos>>>Chaos. Fishing portals can also be found and they’re oddly relaxing?????????? Listening to lo-fi beats while hanging out with big wasn’t something I thought I would want in a sonic game but here we are. The things sonic catches are hilarious most of the time since they either cover up most of his body or are entire alligators. The poses he does are also SOUL incarnate he’s such a happy boy while fishing.

-The OST overall is much better than forces and lost world’s soundtracks. Most of it is atmospheric tracks but those are still memorable to me. Especially kronos’ theme when it gets to the 4th movement. Cyberspace tracks are mostly just ok to me and nothing more. In terms of vocal themes this game has so many of my favorites. Vandalize and I’m here made it into some of my favorite vocals before the game was out and the Major Boss themes are legendary. Overall the OST isn’t my favorite in the franchise. But, the highs will forever be remembered.

-Combat gets a bad rap in sonic games. Heroes and Unleashed are some of my favorite entries in the series and they along with frontiers make it an important aspect of the game. Frontiers combat at first is simple but once you get access to more moves in the skill tree it gets more enjoyable. Sonics precise control along with the various skills leads to fast, flashy, and devastating combos that are a treat to see. Opening an enemy up with the Cyloop to build up the combo meter in order to get phantom rush while dodging every hit thrown your way will always put a smile on my face. This is probably my favorite combat in the franchise in comparison to heroes and unleashed. Unleashed you could argue has more depth with the various combos the Werehog has but combining the combat with the boost formula to form 1 unified playstyle is probably why I prefer frontiers combat but my mind may change. Heroes combat is more of a Rock-Paper-Scissors type of deal and knowing what teammate to use in the right scenarios and finding new ways to clear out a horde of enemies leads to most of the fun for me personally, so we’ll see how I feel about the combat between all 3 games in a few months.

-The miniboss variety is something I was surprised by even in the prerelease phase of the game. There’s so much variety with grind around the strider to make all the rails light up before you can damage it or the tank where you must time your homing attack so you don’t ram into the burners. One of the standout ones for me was Spider as you cyloop their legs you think you just go in to attack but NO he launches you into the fucking sky and you have to skydive down and avoid spikes, lasers, and go through hoops it’s so cooooooooooooooooooool. One of the best tracks plays while you skydive too I was blown away when I heard it for the first time. A thing to note is that I find the enemies and boss hp to be a bit too small when you upgrade your strength a lot so that is one problem I have with the combat and enemy encounters. Another one is that you usually only fight the mini bosses alone instead of mixing up with regular enemies to spice repeat encounters up. More regular enemy types would also be nice as well.

-I will not comment on the major bosses as every human being DESERVES to know as little as possible regarding them and it isn’t an exaggeration. Play the game and experience them.

-Same with the story I don’t want to talk about it too much, but it is a welcome improvement from anything we’ve seen in the past decade of sonic games, and I was fortunate enough to go into it without being spoiled at all.

-Cyberspace never really sounded THAT impressive to me. I’m glad I don’t care about them as much as literally everyone else during the prerelease cuz I can’t imagine being that miserable and hung up over such a small inconsequential part of a game. Basically, most of the stages use chunks of level layouts from sonic unleashed, generations, and adventure 2 and uses one of the 4 level themes available. Most people make a big stink about cyberspace and my counter argument is this. You can beat all the levels in cyberspace in 50 minutes and my 100% run of the game took me 23 hours approximately. That means cyberspace took up a whopping 3.62% of my time with the game so I can’t exactly say that they're this crippling weakness of the game that deserves a giant rant dedicated to it alone without sounding like a toddler. That percentage can go even lower by the way if you fish with big so teehee. Overall, I hate cyberspace discussion more than cyberspace.

-Overall, this game is in my Top 5 sonic games. I think the best experience is going for the platinum trophy and I’m glad I did it for my first playthrough as in terms of the Overall experience Unleashed was the only game that surpasses it. The top 5 is Unleased, Heroes, Frontiers, Advance 3, and Generations. The main thing holding frontiers back is that the replayability isn’t as strong as the average level to level sonic game. Replaying levels for the top rank in Unleashed and Heroes is what ultimately got my hour counts in those games so high and how I prefer game length to be handled.

This isn't my favorite fromsoft game but i have alot to say about this one in specific

The way the levels are handled in this game is just amazing. The levels are interconnected and lead to many other areas leading to alot of freedom even at the start(with the master key) and seeing which levels connect to which and planning out your routes on your expeditions similar to Metroid is something that elden ring or any open just can't replicate. However, I do think that the World design of Dark Souls 1 is top notch the LEVEL design of individual levels in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 is far superior to me with levels such as Cathedral Of The Deep, Yahargul Unseen village, Central Yharnam, Grand Archives, Castle Cainhurst, etc. being bigger individual levels with many many extra routes and secrets in each level as well as a consistent amount of shortcuts linking to a bonfire throughout the entire game. The levels in ds1 feel smaller with exceptions but the interconnectivity helps.

The game kinda goes to shit after anor londo with Demon Ruins + Lost Izalith just being unfinished and being more of a boss rush(all of the bosses here are terrible). The Dukes Archives and New Londo having insufferable enemies strewn about that gank you such as ranged magic from across the level and invulnerable enemies that can go through walls to hit you that are also spammed so thats cool i guess? Tomb of the giants also having the most aggressive enemies while your vision is limited reminded me of fire emblem so not a big fan of that either. So yeah that last 3rd of the game is filled with pretty rancid content.

The dlc gives some points back but im not as big on it as everyone else is. This is mainly cuz locking on in ds1 is just very jank and limiting(only 4 directional rolling and you cant run sideways or backwards) and locking on to the dlc bosses isnt the worst idea considering how much they move but the bosses movesets are still very enjoyable outside of manus's one shot spells that need you to switch items midfight and kalameet's entire body becoming a hitbox in the blink of an eye

overall the game is very fun but those shitty moments are like genuinely abysmal. BB and DS3 really dont have those moments for me or at least it doesnt get anywhere near as bad

Base Game: 7/10
Base Game + DLC: 8/10