Sonic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers really picks up the slack where this franchise started to falter. It’s still a Sonic game at its core and makes sure to stay true to the name even when branching out into other areas unfamiliar to the series.

It's not a home run, but Sonic Frontiers does so much of the things that really matter so well that it is easily the most fun 3D Sonic has been in years – maybe even decades – and a genuinely fun and engaging game on its own merits.

I love Sonic games. They’re cheesy, over the top, crammed with heart, and tons of fun. That being said, they’re not always… good? But I love them anyway. Sonic Frontiers is a perfect Sonic game. It tugs at your heart strings, it’s a blast to play, and it’s peppered with moments of intense frustration and grief. Whether Frontiers is a good game, as well as a good Sonic game, is a more complicated matter.

Sonic Frontiers is an ambitious step for the franchise that succeeds in some areas while falling into the same pitfalls as before. On Steam Deck, the experience can be a mixed bag and definitely could use some further optimization.

Sonic Frontiers marks a bold new direction for the series, meshing traditional Sonic action with an open-ended approach to progression and exploration across its semi-open world.

Open world Sonic should have happened a long time ago. One can only hope that they decide to give it another shot. Should that ever happen, we can just hope that they learn their lessons making this one. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a new Sonic game or are interested in a light single player experience, you could do worse than Sonic Frontiers. You could probably do better, but you could definitely do worse too.

There's something to love here, despite the messy open world.

Still, for Sonic fans, this is an entertaining adventure, with plenty of variety packed into its 20-hour running time. Chances are you’ll encounter plenty of frustrations while making your way through it, but when things are going right you’ll see that there’s great potential in this formula going forward. ‘Inconsistent’ is perhaps the best word to describe Sonic Frontiers: it’s a grab-bag full of ideas, all pulled off with varying degrees of quality. But there’s one thing for certain: it’s got a cracking soundtrack.

“Sonic Frontiers is loaded with downright puzzling design decisions, making for 2022's most bizarre game.”

Probably the best Sonic has been for a while, with open zones that make for scrappy fun and incredible frustration in your hunt for the Chaos Emeralds.

Sonic Frontiers is a brave new direction for the series, but this first ‘open-zone’ entry misses the mark by quite a margin. Traversal and combat annoyances plague the experience from start to finish, while structurally the game offers up very little variety, instead leaning on repetitive fetch quests that get exasperating after the first island. As far as the Switch version goes, it’s quite comfortably the worst option available to fans, with graphical compromises that make it impossible to recommend if you're able to play it anywhere else at all. If you’re going to get this game, we implore ...

Even with these positives, however, it doesn’t feel like enough to really save the game and turn it into something special. While many gameplay issues could be changed in the future via patches, currently, the core gameplay experience just isn’t fun. All the ideas are there, but they aren’t executed to their fullest potential.