You run across large open islands collecting rings and grinding on rails scattered across the landscape, occasionally diving into tighter linear levels that play more like traditional Sonic stages. Some islands end with a giant boss fight where you climb onto a towering enemy and fight your way up its body. It mixes open exploration with classic speed sections, which is a different shape than earlier Sonic games.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The short version
This reinvention takes real risks, and while some open-world padding drags it down, the ambition alone makes it the most interesting Sonic in years.
In the hands
Cyberspace stages deliver familiar high-speed thrills, but it is the open zones' puzzle-solving and towering boss fights that leave the strongest impression. Combat can feel a bit stiff at first.
Look and sound
Islands look genuinely striking with a mix of lush greenery and eerie cyber-ruins, backed by a soundtrack that swings from calm to intense effortlessly.
The long haul
There is a lot of world to pick through here, more than some fans want from Sonic, but those craving a bigger game will find plenty to do.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You run Sonic across large open islands full of rails, springs, and floating platforms, and unlike older Sonic games this one lets you roam freely, climbing cliffs, grinding rails you spot in the distance, and fighting robotic enemies out in the open rather than only in enclosed stages. Early on you unlock a combat system with a jump attack, a homing dash into enemies, and eventually combos and a parry, which turns fights against the bigger machines into short action sequences rather than simple stomps. Scattered around each island are glowing portals that drop you into cyberspace stages, short, linear speed runs modeled on classic Sonic level design, which is where the traditional platforming lives.
Your overall goal on each island is to solve environmental puzzles, defeat enough enemies, and clear enough cyberspace stages to unlock a fight against a towering guardian called a Titan, a spectacle boss fight where Sonic transforms and the whole island's geography becomes the arena. Getting there involves a lot of climbing and puzzle-solving that opens up gradually as you gain new movement abilities, so the game noticeably changes pace from slow exploration early on to fast, fluid traversal later once your moveset is complete. A full island can take several hours to clear completely, and there are multiple islands across the story.
What can frustrate you here is that terrain and rails visibly pop into view as you approach them, which breaks the sense of a solid world, and the cyberspace stages feel noticeably different in physics and speed from the open islands around them. Fishing minigames with a side character and quieter story scenes give the islands some texture between the action. This is best for players curious about a stranger, more experimental take on Sonic who do not mind some rough edges in exchange for real freedom of movement.