Sonic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers arrived with a specific, unusually strong piece of advice attached to two of its most-upvoted reviews, one with 736 votes and another with 196: go into the settings, set "Jump Deceleration" to 0, and turn on "Maintain Boost During Jump." "I promise the game is 100x more fun when" you do, reads the first. That's an unusual thing to see repeated independently across reviews written months apart — a specific, actionable fix that reviewers discovered on their own and felt strongly enough about to lead with. It's a good entry point into a game whose reception is warmer, and more specific in its praise, than the series has managed in years.

The series' best writing and boss fights in a decade

Sonic Frontiers reinvents the franchise as an open-world platformer across several sprawling islands, and two elements draw consistently enthusiastic, specific praise: the boss encounters and the writing. "They made a Sonic game with Metal Gear Rising boss fights," reads one review, "and if that doesn't sell you nothing will." The comparison recurs across multiple reviews independently. Writer Ian Flynn's dialogue and character work draws similarly strong, specific credit — "Get Ian Flynn to write every Sonic game after this, please!" reads one of the most-upvoted reviews of the entire corpus, crediting him specifically with making the cast feel meaningfully different from prior entries. "As a long time fan," reads another, "Sonic Frontiers is the most fun I've had with a 3D Sonic game since Sonic Generations."

A separate, growing complaint that has nothing to do with Sonic

Reading this game's review history in date order surfaces something worth understanding on its own terms: a complaint about Denuvo, the anti-piracy DRM the game ships with, that barely existed at launch and has grown substantially since. "!! Sega please remove Denuvo !!" reads a 323-vote review from September 2023. "Denuvo forces you to have an internet connection or you can't play the game, and let's not forget the 24hr lockout. Especially for Steam Deck and laptop users that do not always have internet." A 2026 review, 63 votes, reports being banned from launching the game for a day after dual-booting into Windows to test performance. None of the highest-voted DRM complaints in this sample are dated at launch — they cluster from 2023 onward, tracking neatly with Steam Deck's growing install base and the practical problem of a portable device that isn't always online. This is a separate axis from the game's design entirely, and worth weighing on its own if your setup involves intermittent connectivity.

The complaint about the game itself

Set the DRM issue aside, and the most substantive design criticism is repetition: 29 of the 100 most-helpful negatives describe the open-zone exploration loop as grind-heavy or repetitive, generally wearing thin partway through rather than at the very start. "The gameplay loop of running around the world is fun but can get old quickly," reads one. "There is little variety to the open zones/worlds, all areas just kinda feel empty." A smaller thread specifically calls the game a collectathon at heart, regardless of how it was marketed, and recommends adjusting expectations accordingly rather than expecting deep exploration in the Breath of the Wild sense some reviewers initially hoped for.

The achievement curve reflects a real, if imperfect, engagement level: early milestones sit comfortably in the 60-87% range, with completionist-tier achievements for fully clearing every island falling to 10-13% — a real minority, but not an extreme cliff, consistent with a long game whose middle stretch loses some but not most of its audience.

7 out of 10. Sonic Frontiers earns genuine, specific praise for its boss design and writing — the strongest this franchise has managed in years by wide reviewer account — wrapped around an open-world structure some players find repetitive well before the credits. Adjust those jump settings immediately, and weigh the Denuvo always-online requirement carefully if your setup doesn't guarantee a stable connection, since that complaint has only grown louder since 2022.