Sonic Frontiers is far from perfect. Many parts of it frustrated me immensely. And yet, this is finally the game that the series needed. The most important thing Frontiers does is usher the series out of its aging "Boost-2-Win" formula that it had been clinging to for nearly 15 years (yes, Sonic Unleashed was fourteen years ago and you're getting old) and establishes a much-needed fresh take on the series.

At it's best, in those infrequent moments where everything CLICKS, Sonic Frontiers is the fanmade action-oriented open-ended Unreal Engine tech demo as it existed in your brain's section of positive memories. The game admittedly starts off pretty slow, both figuratively and literally, but as it starts to open up and you settle into the flow, it can work quite well at times. Some of the miniboss fights are pretty fun, the combat system is surprisingly competent, and the cyberspace levels almost feel like some sort of objective-based Trackmania. The controls have been updated too, and although they take some getting used to I actually like them a lot now that I've had time to acclimate to them.

And there's other stuff to like, too. The writing, outside of a few scenes that try a little too hard to be sad and dramatic, is actually pretty dang good. Sonic's relationships and interactions with his friends feels way more natural than it does in the other recent games, and the story has a sense of weight to it that we haven't seen in a long time. This isn't the "HAHA WOAH YOU'RE TOO SLOW!" Sonic that we've had for a while; this is finally a return to the serious, free-spirited, sometimes-a-bit-of-a-jackass Sonic that we USED to have. I think it works great.

And of course, the MUSIC! This is easily one of the best soundtracks the series has ever had; right up there with the Adventure games. Chilling orchestral overtures, high-impact bass-heavy electronica, pulse-driving drum & bass and even lofi hip-hip is all here. None of the music feels out of place or overproduced, and I think it fits the tone and vibe of the game amazingly.

At it's worst, in those more frequent moments where something in the formula breaks or otherwise doesn't function as intended, Sonic Frontiers is the fanmade action-oriented open-ended Unreal Engine tech demo as it actually was.

3D Sonic games have never been known for having great camera work, and those problems doubly manifest in an open-range game like this one. The camera is always fussy during combat sections, and there are many times where it'll snap to a weird perspective because you happened to run through the middle of some platforming section in the open world and then try to lock you to a 2D plane that you don't want to be in. It's a constant annoyance, and you're always wrestling the camera back to the position you want it to be in, like a poorly-trained dog constantly pulling at the leash. Wonky physics only compound this problem, and I flew off of on-rails sections more than once because either the physics screwed up, the camera said "SQUIRREL!" and shot off in another direction, or both. It gets old pretty quick.

And I have to take some points off for the terrible pop-in issues that this game has. I had hoped that these issues would be specific to the Nintendo Switch, or even other consoles, but on PC with all the settings cranked as high as possible there is still a massive pop-in issue. And not just with environmental props or rings and items. I mean like, WHOLE platforms and enemies and interactive objects. On it's own, it's annoying enough to be distracting. Coupled with the aforementioned camera and physics issues, it becomes a real problem at certain times. On rare occasions, I'd be running through an open field and the camera would suddenly snap to a rail or platform setup that it thought I wanted to do, but it wouldn't even be visible for the first few seconds because the objects hadn't popped into existence yet. Even outside of the game's settings, I pored through the directory in hopes that I could find a .ini or some other config file that might let me change the game's LOD settings. I couldn't find squat.


Alright, hear me out.

I fully consider Sonic Frontiers to be the spiritual successor to Sonic Adventure. Now, I know the two games are nothing alike. The plots have completely different tones, the gameplay is wildly different, and the control schemes have very little in common. So what makes Frontiers feel like a spiritual successor to Adventure? It's ambition.

Before Sonic Adventure, the mainline games in the series were really just Sonic The Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, and CD. The latter games were all refinements and expansions of the first game's established formula, but they were not in and of themselves new formulas. Sonic Adventure was radically different from what came before it, and it kind of fell on its face but it jumped REALLY high before doing so. It wasn't just jumping on baddies and skipping across pits; it had bumper cars and third-person shooter sections, the Panzer Dragoon-ass sections with the Tornado, exploration-based treasure hunting, snowboarding and sandboarding, the Chao Garden...I could go on. Sonic Adventure was far from perfect, but it was filled up and OVERFLOWING with ambition. And while it didn't hit all the marks it was aiming for, it's ambition propelled the series forward far more than a simple refinement of the existing formula ever could have. I love Sonic Adventure for that reason. And now, two decades later, I think Sonic Frontiers is kind of doing the same thing.

Frontiers didn't nail it. Not even close. But it's an ambitious leap forward that the series hasn't seen in a very long time. Sonic feels FRESH again, and in that sense it finally feels like SONIC again. If this is the new formula, and if the next game can build on what's here, I'm all for it. Sonic Frontiers has a lot of pitfalls, but I think it's really worth looking at because of the spirit that it carries around it.

Been a while since we've had a Sonic game that wasn't afraid to have a little soul.