So I don't want to get into all the problems with texture pop-in, the suboptimal physics, or the overall lack of polish we've seen so far. Enough people have weighed in on those issues on all sides of the debate at this point that I don't feel like I can contribute anything that hasn't already been said.

What I'd like to say here is simply that I feel as though "Sonic Frontiers" is fundamentally flawed conceptually, regardless of the technical issues that do or don't exist with it.

When I heard Sonic was going open world, I pictured a game set in the Sonic universe with iconic imagery from the classics, combined with gameplay that employs the fundamental nature of a Sonic game, but adapted to compliment the sandbox setting. In other words, I imagined an open world which is traversed by exploiting highly refined momentum physics to explore every nook and cranny of its numerous regions: one filled with loopdeeloops and green grass growing on brown checkered dirt, another a flooded ancient abandoned subterranean city, and another an industrialised entirely mechanical metropolis replete with factories and casinos.

What I absolutely didn't picture was Sonic being in an entirely new world that looks more like a blatant knockoff of Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade Chronicles X than any Sonic game I can think of. I didn't picture gameplay that included solving basic geometry puzzles, or mixing and matching statues to open secret doors like some fantasy dungeon crawling RPG.

These are the reasons I say Frontiers is fundamentally flawed conceptually, not just in execution. The designers have ignored everything that makes a Sonic game a Sonic game - high speed momentum based exploration and an iconic visual and audio style - and are instead just chasing trends. They are clearly trying to jump on the Breath of the Wild bandwagon (both visually and with that gentle minimalist soundtrack) rather than attempt to just translate Sonic as he truly is into an open world setting.

So for me, I'm not overly disappointed in the visual and gameplay bugs/issues we've seen so far. I'm disappointed in the entire direction the project has gone in. Even without the bugs/issues, I can't imagine I'd be very excited about this game.

What does everyone else think? Was anyone else hoping for or expecting the Sonic open world game to be set in a world that actually looked like the universe Sonic is from? Was anyone else surprised to see basic dungeon crawler style puzzles? i'm curious to hear everyone else's thoughts on this aspect of Frontiers.