Sonic Frontiers

As a life long Sonic fan I feel like Sonic Frontiers is THE worst Sonic game I've ever played, for me, personally. Worse even than '06. No, the game isn't poorly made and it has some genuinely amazing atmosphere, the platforming stages are gorgeous with amazing music too and the story while IMO completely unnecessary for a Sonic game is actually very lovely. Controls are decent enough and the new fighting/action mechanics are a ton of fun...when you automate them, performing combos is hell, good for those who can do such things not for me. So what's the problem? BLOAT Open World BLOAT The developers don't know when to quit, they keep adding new and new challenges and other nonsense, locking the map behind challenges, some of which are very difficult to spot especially on Chaos island. The entire experience felt like pulling teeth, even if you take it slowly, little by little it was incredibly tedious. It was not difficult, fortunately, not on easy mode at least, but it was such a pain doing all these small things for everything. Visually while atmospheric, the game lacks artistic identity, outside the linear platforming stages, the art direction looks like asset swaps. Sure it's pretty, atmospheric but ultimately lacks the Sonic touch, then again most 3d Sonic lack this touch with the exception of Unleashed, Colors and the highly underrated Lost World. Sonic Frontiers had no business being an open world game. It should have been linear, fun, something similar to Adventure 2 minus the annnoying radar stages. Open world is annoying as is, it's even more annoying when it's used for a Sonic game IMO A great game, a game with well balanced difficulty, fantastic music and lovely art, completely ruined by dull open world mechanics. You HAD to do tedious tasks just to do basic progression.