Playing this game again two years after its initial release and I’ve more or less have the same opinion on it.

The open zone formula is pretty interesting but the puzzles are generally all way too easy and the overall terrain isn’t all that pleasing to look at being just vomit realism. The pop-in really doesn’t help either but for the most part it's never gotten to the part where it bothered me at the very least. Story is in the absolute abyss, it tries way too hard to be serious for some lore I can’t fathom people would actually get invested in. The highlight of this game is still very much the bosses with how great they are in spectacle despite how light they actually are on gameplay, albeit replaying again makes me realize the cutscenes honestly ruin the pacing for me. My biggest change of mind has to be on the fourth island, with how I originally disdained it for not feeling interesting though in retrospect I’m now a bigger fan of the vertical challenge of climbing the towers.

Sonic’s overall skillset keeps the game fun with the amount of options you can use to travel the islands, but the combat is awfully mediocre even with the special skills you can use. Thankfully the auto combo allows the player to skip it entirely which is honestly fine by me even if it's an obvious sign that the devs weren’t all that confident in it. Cyber stages suck ass though, it's already bad enough these are ripped stages from previous games with only four backdrops which makes looking at them eventually nauseating, but sonic’s moveset simply doesn’t compliment these levels. What’s more is that the upgrades don’t even affect his physics in the cyberstages so it just feels jarring losing all the speed and movement you’d usually have in the open world. Overall replaying the game was a fun time, but with how rough it is it does make me worry a tad bit with Sonic x Shadow Generations. But this is without considering its expansion…

Final Horizon changes everything. The simple puzzles and obstacle courses pose an actually interesting challenge that I very much welcome in engaging me with the open zone structure. However, due to the level of complexity increasing, the flaws of the pop-in really begin to show as being demanded to traverse through the island more skilfully is hindered by not being able to see assets that haven’t loaded yet. The new mechanics such as the spindash and perfect parrying are very welcome editions I wish were included in the base game, but it’s a shame that the overall game doesn’t really accommodate the use of these new skills besides the last trial and the final boss.

Its great seeing sonic’s friends being playable in a way that doesn’t take away the core appeal of sonic games unlike the adventure games, but it really felt undercooked with how stiff characters like Amy felt with not being able to control her right. Knuckles was a lot of fun from the get go luckily enough, but I think my favorite new character to control was surprisingly Tails. He starts off sucky with not even having the homing attack compared to the other two, but by late game he's easily the most flexible character to use with how unlocking his skills such as the tornado make exploring the islands an absolute blast. These characters alongside Eggman are also more utilized in the story but at this point of my gameplay I just skipped every cutscene because I was already cringing at the overly seriousness of this game.

Ultimately, I didn’t like this game. As much as I do appreciate the bump in difficulty, the level design for the towers basically contradicted what I enjoyed about Sonic games the most by trading in high speed spectacle for annoying stressful precise platforming. I tried to push through all the friction because I heard the final boss was hype as hell, but it turns out to be an annoying version of the supreme boss with some mechanics the game barely tries to hint at you to the point of me just finding out the method through happenstance. Super Sonic 2 was supposed to be this cool thing but blue eyes and red aura is whatever to me. There was this cool form at the very end but it ended up just being a cutscene which again is my biggest issue with this whole game.

At the very least, I’m glad Sonic Frontiers was successful. Despite the meme, this is a step in the right direction and with how Sonic x Shadow Generations is looking to be, Sonic Team seems to be actually getting the respect it deserves from Sega with actual polish and quality control this time around so there’s something to look forward to thanks to this game’s success. Play the game just to show that there is interest in the series so that future entries can be more promising.

Playing this game again two years after its initial release and I’ve more or less have the same opinion on it.

The open zone formula is pretty interesting but the puzzles are generally all way too easy and the overall terrain isn’t all that pleasing to look at being just vomit realism. The pop-in really doesn’t help either but for the most part it's never gotten to the part where it bothered me at the very least. Story is in the absolute abyss, it tries way too hard to be serious for some lore I can’t fathom people would actually get invested in. The highlight of this game is still very much the bosses with how great they are in spectacle despite how light they actually are on gameplay, albeit replaying again makes me realize the cutscenes honestly ruin the pacing for me. My biggest change of mind has to be on the fourth island, with how I originally disdained it for not feeling interesting though in retrospect I’m now a bigger fan of the vertical challenge of climbing the towers.

Sonic’s overall skillset keeps the game fun with the amount of options you can use to travel the islands, but the combat is awfully mediocre even with the special skills you can use. Thankfully the auto combo allows the player to skip it entirely which is honestly fine by me even if it's an obvious sign that the devs weren’t all that confident in it. Cyber stages suck ass though, it's already bad enough these are ripped stages from previous games with only four backdrops which makes looking at them eventually nauseating, but sonic’s moveset simply doesn’t compliment these levels. What’s more is that the upgrades don’t even affect his physics in the cyberstages so it just feels jarring losing all the speed and movement you’d usually have in the open world. Overall replaying the game was a fun time, but with how rough it is it does make me worry a tad bit with Sonic x Shadow Generations. But this is without considering its expansion…

Final Horizon changes everything. The simple puzzles and obstacle courses pose an actually interesting challenge that I very much welcome in engaging me with the open zone structure. However, due to the level of complexity increasing, the flaws of the pop-in really begin to show as being demanded to traverse through the island more skilfully is hindered by not being able to see assets that haven’t loaded yet. The new mechanics such as the spindash and perfect parrying are very welcome editions I wish were included in the base game, but it’s a shame that the overall game doesn’t really accommodate the use of these new skills besides the last trial and the final boss.

Its great seeing sonic’s friends being playable in a way that doesn’t take away the core appeal of sonic games unlike the adventure games, but it really felt undercooked with how stiff characters like Amy felt with not being able to control her right. Knuckles was a lot of fun from the get go luckily enough, but I think my favorite new character to control was surprisingly Tails. He starts off sucky with not even having the homing attack compared to the other two, but by late game he's easily the most flexible character to use with how unlocking his skills such as the tornado make exploring the islands an absolute blast. These characters alongside Eggman are also more utilized in the story but at this point of my gameplay I just skipped every cutscene because I was already cringing at the overly seriousness of this game.

Ultimately, I didn’t like this game. As much as I do appreciate the bump in difficulty, the level design for the towers basically contradicted what I enjoyed about Sonic games the most by trading in high speed spectacle for annoying stressful precise platforming. I tried to push through all the friction because I heard the final boss was hype as hell, but it turns out to be an annoying version of the supreme boss with some mechanics the game barely tries to hint at you to the point of me just finding out the method through happenstance. Super Sonic 2 was supposed to be this cool thing but blue eyes and red aura is whatever to me. There was this cool form at the very end but it ended up just being a cutscene which again is my biggest issue with this whole game.

At the very least, I’m glad Sonic Frontiers was successful. Despite the meme, this is a step in the right direction and with how Sonic x Shadow Generations is looking to be, Sonic Team seems to be actually getting the respect it deserves from Sega with actual polish and quality control this time around so there’s something to look forward to thanks to this game’s success. Play the game just to show that there is interest in the series so that future entries can be more promising.