Sonic Frontiers was a bit rough at launch, not having any options to adjust the gameplay. The core gameplay loop was very promising, and with a gameplay patch released soon after, the game felt phenomenal to play! The new "Open Zone" format of modern Sonic was much needed after the floundering of the boost. Offering creative freedom to solve the collectathon given to you at top speeds is exhilarating!

The story is good for a Sonic game, paying mind to the context of the entire franchise rather than attempting to live in its own little bubble. This writing feels like it would shaft a casual fan or a first time player of any Sonic game. As outside of the references, especially the off-hand character references, the writing isn't anything spectacular. It has very interesting ideas, and poses intriguing questions to the lore of the franchise, but the conflicts of the story doesn't carry a crazy amount of weight.

It's a shame then to point at the games atmosphere and lack of artistic direction. A criticism immediately poised since the gameplay trailers is the amount of floating debris around the levels. While they are fun to navigate, they are only there to facilitate gameplay and disconnects everything about the game's presentation. Standing around and looking at the world, it's crap everywhere! There is no story to why the obstacles are there, no worldbuilding, it's just gameplay when that cannot be all.

I say it now and I will keep saying it, if Sonic Unleashed's direction meshed with Frontier's gameplay, it would be the perfect modern Sonic game! But unfortunately, Sonic team can only seem to prioritize gameplay or art, rather than treat both as complements of one another.