Sonic Frontiers (PlayStation 4) review "This was different than I was expecting, both for good and for bad. "

The saying “More than the sum of its parts” is used to describe something where the individual components comprising it might not be all that great, but the end product of that combination winds up exceeding expectations. This is something that leads to very pleasant surprises, as expectations get blown out of the water by how something that, in theory, shouldn’t work winds up being excellent.

Sonic Frontiers is the inverse of that saying. Virtually everything about it is enjoyable, but all those pieces just don’t fit together properly, leading to a game that eventually becomes bloated and tiresome — best played in small doses to prolong that period before the magic starts to fade.

Now, before playing this game, most of my Sonic time — maybe all of it — was spent playing the hedgehog’s classic Genesis games, as well as a couple on the Master System. That in itself made my initial reaction to Frontiers shock. Those high-speed platforming levels that were the entire game back in the day are now side attractions, while the bulk of my time was spent exploring large open world settings to obtain all manner of collectibles to progress the plot.

This game consists of five worlds and in four of them, you’ll be collecting various types of medals in order to converse with one of Sonic’s allies in order to advance the story. You’ll also collect stuff that enhances his attack, so that enemies fall more quickly to his moves; as well as improve his defense, so he drops fewer rings upon getting damaged. There are tons of little critters scattered throughout the land that, if found, can be taken to elders of their tribe in return for a greater ring capacity or a bit more running speed.

And let’s see. By defeating mini-bosses strewn throughout the lands, you’ll get items used to enter levels that at least resemble classic Sonic stuff. By completing objectives in those levels, you’ll get keys used to acquire Chaos Emeralds. And you need the full complement of those in order to challenge each land’s main boss. Oh, and if all of this feels like too much work, just run around and snag as many purple coins as you can find and take them to locations where you can take part in perhaps video gaming’s easiest fishing challenge to obtain tokens that can be cashed in to obtain large numbers of most of those collectibles.

Backing all of this up is a pretty simplistic plot where Sonic and pals go to the Starfall Islands, but his friends get, I guess, partially trapped in the artificial Cyber Space dimension. So, he’ll travel the islands to seek to free them, while also getting stronger and solving the mystery of these islands. Serving as his mission control is a mysterious voice telling him how important collecting collectibles and defeating guardians is to freeing his friends. Meaning, a young, digital girl who is aligned with Doctor Eggman takes it upon herself to throw obstacles in his path while regularly talking about the futility of his mission.

And there you go. You’ll go through one island after another, solving simple puzzles and challenges to map out the place and doing quick action sequences that tend to utilize springs and guard rails to obtain those collectibles. At least until you’ve obtained a ton of those purple coins and can just fish your way to success because, after a while, doing the same stuff over and over again can get tiresome.

I have to admit that, initially, I loved Sonic Frontiers. The action levels did a fine job of whetting my appetite for what I expect from a Sonic game and I am a sucker for a fun open world game, so mapping and exploring the land and fighting mini-bosses had me in my comfort zone.

Each of the first three worlds basically plays the same way, with each new one being more complex and containing more to do than the one before. As you gain experience, you’ll obtain new skills to help in out battling tougher and more durable foes. Most useful is the Cyloop, by which Sonic will leave a trail behind him when he runs that he can use for various purposes, ranging from damaging enemies to solving those map puzzles to simply acquiring rings or other items. I mostly had a great time going through these worlds. There was a fun variety of mini-bosses and a lot of enjoyable challenges to get past. It might not have necessarily felt like what I expect the Sonic experience to be, but that wasn’t bothering me!

After beating the boss of the third island, diminishing returns started to set in. The fourth island is a large, but mostly barren mass of land where your only goal is to scale five massive towers — an endeavor that felt like time-wasting filler. And then…another large island much like the first three. Except it felt like the designers were running out of ideas. Several of the mini-bosses were recycled from previous worlds. The fast-paced action stages started getting tiresome because, despite having many games to derive them from, the vast majority seemed based on a tiny handful of classic Sonic levels. I get it, Green Hill Zone is an iconic world, but when the Sonic wiki site says — if you include the free “Another Story” expansion that allows you to play as a few different characters, while also adding content — 13 levels are based to some degree on it, that might be overkill.

And that’s not even discussing how this game ends, at least on Normal. On Hard, I guess the true final boss is a legitimately challenging encounter, but on the default difficulty, things get resolved anticlimactically via a couple quick-time events. And that “battle” took place immediately after a boss that was little more than a tougher version of the first world’s boss that likely will feel easier simply because you’ll probably have boosted Sonic’s attack and defense by a large margin.

I give Sonic Team credit for trying something new with Sonic Frontiers and I feel they nearly pulled it off. I was really entertained for a long while, but its dull fourth world kind of took me out of my groove and a bit too much repetition down the stretch prevented me from completely getting back into it and made me happy I could use the fishing mini-game as a way to obtain the goodies I needed to collect without actually having to put all that much work into doing so. I had a fair amount of fun with this game, but in the future I think I’ll stick to the more traditional Sonic titles.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (January 10, 2026) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.