With every new dialogue scene, I found myself either completely puzzled or laughing hard at how seriously the game was trying to take itself. Like Sonic Forces, it’s hard to take any of it seriously unless you’re fully bought in on the franchise’s extensive lore. Sad music plays over flashbacks to cutscenes you watched just hours earlier, and the game’s final shot wants to make you cry. Characters constantly muse about love, death, and if they’ve done enough with their life. Not far into its story, it becomes clear that Sonic Frontiers is a game about death and moving on. I get the sense that Sonic Frontiers wants to be a mature, somber game (Roger Craig Smith portrays Sonic with a deeper voice here). We’re stuck with a Sonic game narrative aiming to turn the cartoon series into something much more serious and not doing it well. Meanwhile, a mysterious digital girl named Sage, who has a surprising connection to Eggman, taunts Sonic as he explores the world Sonic explores the island from there, discovering that his friends are trapped in Cyberspace and that an unstoppable force that wiped out an alien civilization may soon return. When they arrive, a mysterious force knocks Sonic out and sends his pals ( & Knuckles) into a digital dimension. Sonic, Amy, and Tails are all attracted to the Starfall Islands by their Chaos Emeralds. Sonic Frontiers‘ long list of problems begins with its narrative. It’s not unplayable it’s just unpleasant to play. I had a thoroughly baffled look on my face throughout the entirety of Sonic Frontiers‘ 20-hour runtime, and you probably will too. Its jerky gameplay makes for a lackluster Sonic entry, design problems lead to a mediocre open-world game, and weak visuals don’t even position it as a great current-gen showpiece. I’ve reviewed some terrible games this year, but none have left me as confused as Sonic Frontiers. Sonic Team continues to demonstrate that it’s not quite sure what to do with the blue blur, taking a wild swing with a game that tries to rival open-world games rather than double down on the strengths of newer titles like Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania, or older successes like the Sonic Adventure series. While not outright broken like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) or Sonic Boom, Sonic Frontiers is a heavily misguided game that muffles good ideas with questionable narrative, technical, and gameplay design decisions.
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