You get these by exploring, doing question marks, or Cyloops (more on this ridiculous mechanic later). In order to progress the main story you have to grind the Island’s unique memory tokens. You get to the Island and discover a friend which starts the main story. Which I suppose is better then making combat a core part of the gameplay loop, but you have to wonder if any of this was even needed? A thought that extends to much of the game.įour of the five Islands follow the exact same formula. But the poor enemy AI and design make it all worthless because it’s such an easily exploitable system. The actual system and mechanics are fine, if a bit overcomplicated for a Sonic game. Plus, it does so while being quite ugly, suffering from frame rate drops and stuttering, and topped off by loads of pop-in. It makes every easily missed mistake possible. When people talk about copy and pasting in gaming, Sonic Frontiers is the game they’re thinking of. Quite literally everything in the background popped in right when I stopped. Then the open-world part of Sonic Frontiers kicked in. I was optimistic, hopeful, and kind of impressed. My first explorative boosts into Ares Island were much the same. I was so engrossed I made sure to S-Rank the mission before I moved on, I was genuinely enjoyed myself. Given this is a Sonic game, working is its own miracle. The controls are a little floaty and a touch imprecise I’ll admit, but they work. The opening Green Hills level you start off in really shows how well Sonic can move. At the beginning, things were looking good. While sure, I found the narrative and dialogue bewildering (to say nothing of the voice acting), gameplay is king. Still, the story and characterization were the least of my problems. But this is what we got, and I’m sure someone enjoyed it. Following the success of the Sonic movies, I don’t understand why Sonic Team thought this was the kind of story and characterization Sonic fans wanted. If you’re like me, you’ll ultimately fail to do either. As you explore you’ll discover your friends, old enemies, and a bunch of ridiculous anime nonsense you’ll struggle to understand and struggle even harder to care about. The Starfall Islands are made up of five open areas, which are the frontiers you’ll be exploring. Sonic ends up in a Green Hills Zone level, which after completion boots you from the Cyberverse and onto the Starfall Islands. Then plot stuff happens and everyone is thrown into the Cyberverse. Sonic Frontiers opens with Sonic, Tails, and Amy flying around on an airplane. The levels and open-world truly feel like two separate games glues together. With a little bit of tuning and polish, this could have been the perfect blend of past and present. A chief criticism of BotW was how it changed up the formula, whereas Sonic Frontiers’ traditional levels are far and away the best part of the game. Sonic Frontiers, on the other hand, has way too many unique currencies and a leveling system with a skill tree. For one thing, BotW had simple RPG mechanics and a streamlined progression system. But in many surprising ways, it also isn’t. On one hand the open world design, minimalistic overworld music, and focus on non linearity is clearly inspired by Nintendo’s magnum opus. Sonic Frontiers has been called a Breath of the Wild ripoff, which it both is and isn’t. Sonic Team came SO CLOSE to pulling that off that it physically hurts how monotonous and disappointing this game ultimately is. Sonic Frontiers was going to be Sonic’s return to glory, his return ticket to the big leagues. Even the bright light of Sonic Mania was dimmed by the subsequent release of Sonic Forces. Ever since then we’ve been subjected to terrible Sonic games, each one making a mockery of a gaming icon’s legacy. Sadly, reality didn’t agree and Nintendo’s Mario emerged the victor of gaming’s bloodiest console war, absolutely crushing Sega and Sonic under his brown heel. Mario was for nerds, and real gamers preached the way of the Blue Blur.
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