Screenshots & trailers
What players say
Why the number is what it is: aspect mentions counted across 299 sampled Steam reviews (238 positive / 61 negative), recent and most-helpful. Plain keyword counting, fully reproducible; nothing here is written by a machine.
What positive reviews talk about
- Story & writing18% mention it
- Music & audio16% mention it
- World & exploration14% mention it
- Combat11% mention it
- Visuals & art8% mention it
What negative reviews complain about
- Controls & UI25% mention it
- World & exploration20% mention it
- Story & writing18% mention it
- Music & audio16% mention it
- Bugs & crashes10% mention it
Satisfaction by hours played
Same score, different games: see how sentiment holds up the longer people play.
Under 5h
62%
73 reviews
5-15h
81%
73 reviews
15-40h
88%
119 reviews
40-100h
85%
27 reviews
Review sentiment over time
Weekly positive-review rate (green) and review volume (bars). Dashed lines mark significant patches; the amber line is the start of the current scoring window. Hover the dots to see what drove a dip or a jump.
How this score was computed
The VGC Score is a weighted blend on a press-comparable 0-100 quality scale. Steam approval rates are first calibrated (95% positive on Steam ≈ 89.5 quality, since Steam approval skews high). Press and tracked creator reviews each count ~2x a player review and share one cap against player evidence (creator buy/skip calls pool into an approval rate, calibrated like Steam approval); all-time sentiment is capped and halved (it's context, not verdict); reviews of the current build carry the most weight when a fresh patch anchors the window; and a 'typical game' prior keeps small samples from pegging the scale. Because press reviews and Metacritic user aggregates describe the launch build, their weight decays as the game ages (3-year half-life after a 1-year grace). That's how a game that launched rough can outgrow its old reception once updates win players over. Reviews under 2h playtime (the refund window), non-Steam activations, and free copies are downweighted.
| Component | Positive | Quality (0-100) | Weight (pseudo-reviews) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Press reviews (OpenCritic) | – | 71 | 104 |
| Creator reviews (3 tracked) | – | 35 | 3 |
| All-time Steam reviews | 89% | 83 | 1000 |
| Metacritic user ratings | – | – | 0 |
| Post-patch Steam reviews (trust-weighted) | 86% | 80 | 91 |
| Calibration prior (typical game) | – | 72 | 50 |
Scoring window: last 30 days (no significant patch detected) · 260 reviews sampled · 191 total reviews in window · weighted 154.7 up / 25.2 down · computed 2h ago · full methodology →
Press & Creators reviews (135)
Individual verdicts from outlets we track: scored reviews first, most trusted outlets first among them. The small badge is each outlet's trust score: how well its scoring history aligns with players.
- 15
“Sonic Frontiers is broken beyond belief with mechanics that barely work and a camera so disastrous it’s literally sickening. The “Open Zones” are disjointed, unpopulated wastelands that do less than nothing to justify their depressing existence. An unpleasant mess, looking and feeling like a mishmash of disparate assets duct taped together, and that’s before we consider the damning amount of recycled content. It’s honestly embarrassing that any professional studio could have made something so cheap, so sad, and so thoroughly incompetent. Even by Sonic Team’s low standards, this is pathetic.”
read full review ↗ - 70
“Sonic Frontiers takes a huge gamble on changing up its entire gameplay presentation and the open-zone approach mostly works. It's a blast running around in these open zones discovering all there is to offer. There's also plenty of variety in the side quests and minigames, although you won't truly love the throwbacks unless you're a long-time Sonic player. That said, Sonic Frontiers suffers from being glitchy, where you run into graphical issues at nearly every section. It also suffers from major pop-in issues, with noticeably fuzzy visuals and downgraded graphics from other hardware counterparts. It's also a weird game, even by Sonic standards. There's still a lot of fun to be had in Sonic Frontiers and I recommend checking it out.”
read full review ↗ - 35
“If this was just a collection of the mini-levels thrown together with a sort of hub area to hone your skills, Frontier may have been a solid Sonic game. As it stands though, there’s so much wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to start. Some will undoubtedly have fun with this one, pointing out other, worse, Sonic games on the market, but compared to platforming giants like Mario and Crash Bandicoot, this one barely stumbles out the gates before being left in the dust.”
read full review ↗ - 70
“Sonic Frontiers can't offer any outstanding visuals, but some of the levels give a strong nostalgic vibes, while open world segments are filled with some great boss fights and nice puzzles. Frontiers is definitely better than anything Sonic Team has done in the past 10 years time, so it is a step in the right direction at the very least.”
read full review ↗ - 40
“All that said, there’s still a solid-enough idea at the center of Sonic Frontiers that could possibly make for a great game in the future, which is more than could be said of infamous stinkers like Sonic Unleashed or Sonic Lost World. If a sequel could provide players with the same type of freedom that Sonic’s been afforded, and, perhaps, if it could stay in the incubation chamber a little longer until proper gestation, then Sega’s blue hedgehog might get to soar to new heights.”
read full review ↗ - 80
“Sonic Frontiers is certainly not a perfect game, but thanks to its boldness in venturing into uncharted territory, it can definitely be counted among the best in the entire series. The open world has a few flaws, but even so, you’ll enjoy exploring, uncovering the story’s various pieces, and deepening the relationships between the characters. Sonic has managed to take a step in the right direction.”
read full review ↗ - 40
“Sonic Frontiers is a brave new direction for the series, but this first 'open-zone' entry misses the mark by quite a margin. Traversal and combat annoyances plague the experience from start to finish, while structurally the game offers up very little variety, instead leaning on repetitive fetch quests that get exasperating after the first island. As far as the Switch version goes, it's quite comfortably the worst option available to fans, with graphical compromises that make it impossible to recommend if you're able to play it anywhere else at all. If you're going to get this game, we implore you to try it out elsewhere.”
read full review ↗ - 60
“Sonic Frontiers is not a bad game and I’m pretty forgiving when it comes to its issues. You can’t make a series be better without making some risky choices.”
read full review ↗ - 60
“Bloated world design doesn't take away from the thrilling high of zooming through a landscape at mach speeds, nailing a good time on a platforming challenge or catching a comically large fish in Big's fishing minigame. There's just not much else to hang onto here. Sorry, Sonic fans: your malaise continues.”
read full review ↗ - 70
“Sonic Frontiers is a flawed but fun title that introduces some new ideas that could bring the Blue Blur back to the spotlight, namely the open world and combat, that are satisfying enough and might be expanded in future titles where they can be fully realized.”
read full review ↗ - 80
“Overall, Sonic Frontiers is a great return to form for 3D Sonic adventures. It features a slightly more mature story, an easy to grasp core gameplay loop and multiple islands filled with fun and replayable stages that really make you feel like the blue blur himself. While certainly not a perfect game, it’s the type of game Sonic fans have been waiting many years to get to enjoy and there’s plenty of fun to be had.”
read full review ↗ - 80
“Sonic Frontiers is going to be a good first-time experience for many gamers who have never played a Sonic game, and the story/narrative is standalone enough that you don’t need to have played any other Sonic game before playing Sonic Frontiers.”
read full review ↗
The Jimquisition
Pure Nintendo
TheReviewGeek
GameMAG
Slant Magazine
Gaming Professors
Nintendo Life
GRYOnline.pl
Paste Magazine
Fun Factor
ani-game.com
Kakuchopurei…and 123 more tracked reviews.
Patch history
- Sonic Frontiers – The Final Horizon UpdateSep 28, 2023
- Sonic’s Birthday Bash Update is available now!Jun 24, 2023
- Sights, Sounds, and Speed UpdateMar 23, 2023
- Patch Notes - Version 1.10Dec 2, 2022