Sonic Frontiers New Content

Sonic Frontiers was released late last year, on November 8th, to a pretty warm reception from fans and critics. About a month later, on December 20th, a roadmap of new free content to be added to the game was shown off. March 22 of this year marks the first part of this free content being released to the public. 

“The base game is fun and this new content just adds to it, although it is small, it is the first wave of it, so I expect there to be more to do with it once it all releases.” States Mahomet-Seymour junior  Elijah Yanosik.

Sights, Sounds, and Speeds is what this part of the new updates for the game has been named. This update adds a new photo mode, a jukebox to the open world, a new boss and level rush, and quality of life improvements. 

“I think the game really needed these things, at least the quality of life updates like being able to give all to the koco and a shorter way to restart levels.” Said Centennial junior Julia Tompson. 

A very common complaint was the leveling system: in order to increase ring capacity and speed you need to collect these little creatures called kocos. After doing so, you would have to take them to the elder koco and go through an annoying menu in order to level these things up one at a time. As someone who experienced this firsthand, I’m very glad they changed this. Although I’ll only really be able to experience this on other playthroughs of the game, it doesn’t take away from the fact that they did fix this major issue that really did slow down gameplay. 

“I think the jukebox is really cool! As much as the overworld music is pretty good, it’s nice to be given the decision to change it.” Said Centennial junior Stejana Hopkins. 

As small as the jukebox feature is, I still find it worthwhile to talk about. Given to you right when you boot up the game, you are able to change the tracks at any time. The game also has music tracks out in the open world for you to collect. It’s fun to run around looking for these tracks, it’s like a game within itself wondering what track you’ll get next. The tracks themselves are from other parts of the game but many of them are music tracks from other games: Sonic Adventure, Sonic 3, Sonic Heroes, and even tracks from non-mainline games like themes from Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic and the Black Knight. Although the selection of tracks is somewhat small, it’s nice to be able to listen to these tracks while exploring. The only minor downside is whenever you get into an encounter with an overworld boss, these tracks stop playing in the background and switch back to the normal music. This of course is not a major issue, it’s just slightly disappointing. 

“The photo mode is somewhat interesting, I mean I think it’s kinda boring but it’s there for people who want it.” Claimed Elijah Yanosik.

The photo mode in the game is alright for what it is. It’s not very in-depth, other games like Devil May Cry 5 and Splatoon 3 have way more in-depth camera modes. It doesn’t take away from the camera mode at all though, it’s simple and easy to use, I don’t think anyone expected anything more from it. 

“I wasn’t sure about the challenge modes but they’re pretty fun, definitely for those who want to get the best times.” Stejana Hopkins

The ‘challenge modes’ are really a level rush and gauntlet respectively. This doesn’t take away from them at all, as they are both very fun. The level rush puts all the cyberspace levels together and makes you go through them back to back. The loading time for this is almost non-existent and it helps with making this mode really feel like a rush, keeping the momentum going. The gauntlet is similar to being timed but makes you fight smaller enemies and then build up to a mini-boss before encountering the actual boss of that area. For each mode, you get ranked for your time, shorter times lead to S ranks while longer times lead to D ranks. The modes are very fast-paced, and as stated before, have incredibly short loading times, which helps a lot with keeping you in the action. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this first update for the game, it improves things that were really needed, along with giving us some new things to play with. I’m excited for the future of Sonic Frontiers in the coming year and can’t wait to see how these new updates add to this great game.