I had a good time playing Sonic Frontiers: The Video Game!
I've got my problems with the game of course, some being technical issues, some being story beats, and many tiny, petty design grumbles... but there's still something here, I think. Something that occasionally shows very brief glimmers of potential brilliance.
And the last time I think I can say that about one of Sonic Team's wild & wacky Sonic experiments was... Sonic Unleashed?
That said, I'm maybe a little torn for reasons I can't yet articulate on whether this is the direction I'd want to see Sonic go in for the future (though I'm definitely done with boost levels, I skipped almost all of them during my playthrough), but it jumps over the laughably low bar Forces set and also didn't crash for me at all during my entire playthrough (glares angrily at Saints Row) so it's good enough in my book.
It's probably not gonna topple Mario the plumber man from his pedestal, but I find it really funny that SEGA and Sonic Team fleshed out Bowser's Fury's open world concept before Nintendo could do it, and all by what I assume is sheer coincidence.
if you're hankerin' to play a piece of interactive video entertainment that lets you potentially experience the dreaded feeling known only to grown adults as a "sense of childlike wonder", maybe this game's for you!
or don't, because who wants to feel like a dumb kid anyway, kids are all slimy and gross