Sonic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers is Sonic's first open-world video game and it's not a bad foray by any means; but the grinding rails when you complete certain tasks can sometimes clash with the seamless open-world design and make things feel oddly rigid. Does this make the game bad? No. What about the story? Sure it's copying and pasting Zelda Breath of the Wild's homework in ancient technology (as well as Halo) and Evangelion's Herculean-scaled monsters, but it's still fitting the further you absorb the story and look over some of the obvious influences.

Basically, for a character as established as Sonic, Frontiers represents an interesting experimental phase for the character where SEGA's trying to see what sticks for The Blue Blur in the long run; and something tells me they're gonna keep trying new gaming twists (like JRPG stuff perhaps) alongside the more traditional platforming stuff the series has become known for providing; and it's nice to see open-world design finally in The Hedgehog's varied repertoire.

Sonic Frontiers is like a meal that tries having so many things all at once: some stuff works naturally, but the more 'far fetched' aspects give some nice flavour even if it's out of place for that part of the dish.

Sonic Frontiers is a good time with some flaws that are mostly forgiven here, and it's a bold playbook for franchise-'tweaking' in the 'Open-World Era' of gaming. 3.5/5 stars.