I bought Sonic Frontiers yesterday. I don’t know why, I thought it seemed interesting. Anyways I’m two hours in and so far I think it kinda sucks. It’s so unpolished and feels very cheap. My least favorite thing about it is the visuals and the music. It feels like it takes place in the movie Annihilation or something. Even the “normal” Sonic levels feel weirdly creepy and sad. Also why does Sonic sound like he’s 40 years old? Also the level design is ridiculous, it just feels like there’s random stuff everywhere. I feel like kind of a sucker for buying this game for $60. But I do like the fact that Big the Cat is in it.
I like it (am Sonic fan, so disclaimer there) but to call it uneven would be a massive understatement. I’ve had plenty of times in my time playing it where I was awed and thought “This is how a Sonic game should play!” just to immediately be wrenched into “How the hell did this get past testing?” or “How did Sega think that something so unpolished was good to release now?”
It needed more time in the oven, like most Sonic games, and it probably needed some fresh faces who grew up playing the games and know what they want out of the series to inject some more interesting things in. As someone who meets that description, Ian Flynn was good to have as a writer, even if I’d say he didn’t do perfectly (some of the flashbacks were incredibly clumsy, for example). It’s not the best game in the series, and maybe not even an excellent one, but I think it’s decent for what it is.