Going into Sonic Frontiers, I was pleasantly surprised with what I found.

This open-world approach to Sonic the Hedgehog was far from perfect but, to me, represented an interesting direction for the franchise. That was until I arrived at Chaos Island.

Chaos Island is the third of five island in Sonic Frontiers. It features a lot of unique aspects that do set it apart from the rest of the islands. Unfortunately, it is those aspects that nearly halted any desire I had to play the game.

Up until this point, Sonic Frontiers had many flaws that I could overlook. The first two islands, to me, had more pros than cons so it made the bad parts easier to manage.

Chaos Island, however, either highlighted those flaws intensively or added new elements that made it hard to explore.

The key ingredients of Sonic Frontiers is exploration and speed. While the speed aspect never fully seemed realized, it was still manageable because exploration was decently handled. Chaos Island made exploration an absolute slog.

For one, the island forced players into 2D sections that were reminiscent of side-scrolling Sonic games. This isn’t the worst thing, but it was its implementation that made it so difficult.

Players could be racing along the island and hit a speed pad. Rather than that speed boost taking them further into exploration, it would force the player into one of these 2D sections. Getting out was a pain because you can’t just run off the side, you had to work your way through the puzzle or go backwards.

This messed with any flow the player may have in exploring. Furthermore, because the perspective is forced, returning disorients the player in trying to regain their bearings.

Again, the 2D sections are not the issue because, when I was in the mood for it, I thoroughly enjoyed these sections. The problem is forcing the player into it unknowingly.

Sonic Frontiers is all about speed and exploration so it is infuriating to have both stopped. This led to a pain of a time exploring.

Chaos Island is massive with several different elements. Getting around the island was a chore most times so having that interrupted with the forced 2D made it harder.

Fast travel would help with this, but the main story on the island doesn’t allow you to reveal the entire map until near the end. This forces the player to slog through exploration until the near end.

This was not the case on the first two islands as you had the option to fast travel or manually explore before you fully ran through the main story. This was nice for my play style as I love to reveal the entire map before doing much with the main story.

The result of this slog made me less enthusiastic to return to the game. This was unfortunate because the first two islands were intriguing enough and the fourth island reconnected me with the game.

Sonic Frontiers is far from perfect. It takes a lot of chances and lands some while crashing on others. Chaos Island felt like the biggest crash and not matter where the developers placed it, it was going to grind the game to a halt for some.

If SEGA opts to return to this format, I hope it decides to build a more user-friendly approach to exploring and not let one major area get in the ways of its games.

What about you? What did you think about Chaos Island? What level from any game nearly ruined it for you? Let know in the comments below or head over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: SEGA (via Sonic Wiki Zone)

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