Review: Sonic Frontiers is a fine return to form for the series

videogameschronicle.com:

It may be tempting to compare Sonic Frontiers to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but the latest Sega platformer actually has more in common with a different Nintendo exclusive.

As a neat bookend to 2022, Frontiers reminds us a lot more of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which was released back in January. That ended up being the first big pleasant surprise of this year, and Frontiers is one of the last.

Much like Pokémon, parts of the Sonic fanbase have been crying out for fundamental changes to the series for some time now. Both series had nestled a little too comfortably into a predictable formula, and despite new gimmicks and generational upgrades it had been too long since either had enjoyed any truly revolutionary gameplay revamps.

Pokémon’s solution was to go properly open-world, giving the player true freedom to explore its environments, with quality of life improvements made to ensure everything ticked along at a nifty pace. With Sonic Frontiers, Sega has come to almost exactly the same solution, and the results are just as satisfyingly refreshing.

The story in Frontiers starts deliberately vague, and in respect of that, we’ll opt not to shed further light on it, other than to say it involves a strange ‘cyber world’ which ultimately gives fans of the series some backstory on what happened in Sonic’s world a long time ago. It’s a narrative that starts off quite slowly at first but eventually becomes one of the most engaging in the series, but more on that later.

The game’s main meat is its five open-world islands, four of which are large expanses filled with things to do. Each island starts with a completely hidden map, and as you explore you’ll find loads of small ‘missions’ represented by question mark icons floating