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Sonic Frontiers, A wonderful and enjoyable experience but with shortcomings and flaws

It fixes problems from previous games, yet ignores some problems and creates some new ones.
The game shines in many aspects but also makes you question the design choices made in some places; I'll mention what I like about the game and what I wish was better:
Steam didn’t let me dump my 4000-word essay review so I shortened it a bit, if you want to read the whole thing you can on the Steam forums :
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2894587117
• GAMEPLAY LOOP:
The gameplay loop of fighting mini bosses, finding portals and gathering chaos emeralds is actually well designed. it encourages exploring the map, you can even find some of the collectables like keys and gears in the open areas which sometimes are cleverly hidden, thus skipping some challenges if you want to. So, it’s not mandatory to complete everything in the open areas, yet I did anyways because of how fun it was.
• OPEN AREAS:
The open areas are the highlight of the game, you'll easily get sidetracked and wander off to do puzzles or platforming challenges somewhere else. So, going from A to B never felt like a chore and I never wanted to fast travel.
Sonic's fluid mechanics and physics is the factor that makes traversing the map and completing the challenges fun, you can partake in precise platforming sections whilst being fast. I just wish its world had more style to it rather than being a realistic looking terrain with floating rails and platforms scattered around it. Even though these generic assets are what the maps mainly consist of, it’s fun to go through them and complete their respective challenges which I fully credit Sonic's well-tuned movement for. Keep in mind that custom structures, terrain, ramps and loop-de-loops are currently present in the maps but are overshadowed by the abundance of low effort floating assets.
• COMBAT:
Combat is also well executed and feels responsive, it’s easier than most action games but it’s not mindless button mashing. Enemies are unique and their designs are great, I really enjoyed fighting the Ninja, Tower, Asura, Sumo, Ghost and Spider mini bosses. Although for some of them you have to wait for an opening which kills the flow of the fights and makes encounters cumbersome. The main boss fights at the end of an open area are the cherry on top, the heavy rock music really pumps the adrenaline into your blood.
The actual problem with the combat is the balancing. The left side combos of the skill tree are easy to execute, they are better described as overpowered automated fancy cutscenes, as most of them require two input presses which makes it more likely for you to execute them by accident. Annoying thing about this is that to start some combos you have to use your movement/mobility abilities like jumping or boosting, which you normally use to evade and run around enemies; after you unlock said combos, you’ll most definitely accidentally start a combo when you just wanted to gap close your enemy.
Also upgrading Sonic’s attack damage and defense makes the game really easy, it’s much more fun to make fights longer and not one-shot enemies.The above-mentioned points are balance problems though, they could be tweaked and modded; So, If I ever wanted to replay this game, I’d simply avoid unlocking most of the left side skill tree combos and keep Sonic’s attack damage and defense at level 1.
• CYBERSPACE:
Cyberspaces are linear short stages that have the same formula as old Sonic levels, but for some reason the design team decided to change Sonic's perfectly fine physics and movement from the open world just to accommodate for the smaller and narrower level design, the best platformers have enjoyable movement and physics that are complemented by their level design which Sonic Frontiers’ Cyberspaces fail to do.
Most of the stages here are a permutation of slightly altered level layouts from previous Sonic games with different themes that are also from previous games, with only 4 themes at that.
They copied older stage layouts with no regards to Sonic’s movement and then tweaked the base physics to balance him for the said stages. you have two different feeling Sonics, the one in the open area feels good and the one you control in the cyberspace stages feels unresponsive and janky. Cyberspace Sonic steers much worse in higher speeds than the open area version and feels clunky, you lose your momentum when jumping, top speed is also heavily nerfed and besides the initial burst of speed you cannot feel the impact of boosting when holding it.
The challenges like collecting all red star rings and getting a S rank are a lot easier, not a single level had complexity in its Red Star placements, you can collect all of the rings in a single run and not bother at all with the branching paths, and besides a couple of stages getting a S rank wasn’t challenging at all.
To be fair not all of these stages are a slog, some are enjoyable. There are original stages that do not copy old level layouts which were fine. Some levels use stage layouts from Sonic Adventure 2 (2001) which fit Sonic’s Cyberspace physics quite well, the copy pasted levels from the Boost Era (2008-Present) make me want to play the games that the levels are actually based on.
• STORY:
I want to commend Ian Flynn’s story writing and how he respected each character’s development from the past 30 years. Since he himself is a Sonic fan, you can see how meaningful the character conversations are here.
• SOUNDTRACK:
I nominated this game for the best Soundtrack at the Steam Awards, loved mostly all tracks the game had to offer.
• MISCELLANEOUS:

5 islands are advertised on the Steam page; however, there are only 4 islands in the game. the 4th in-game island, Rhea ,is actually the second half of the first island Kronos and does not follow the mentioned gameplay loop. it acts more as a plot device to explain the mysterious story that was built up until now; Besides the 5 colossal towers , the map is devoid of any activities and puzzles. You can see towers and ruins in it and there are walls to be climbed, but when you reach the end of them there is nothing to be collected, it seems like this was going to be a part of the first island but got scrapped due to time constraints, it takes 5 hours to complete each island while it only took me 30 mins to complete Rhea .
The 5th island Ouranos is identical in theme and aesthetics to Kronos, they both have lush green lands with flower fields with a lot of old ruins scattered around, although the map is designed well, I wish they changed the grass texture to yellow/orange (or something else) for an autumn themed island.
The first 3 bosses are unique but Supreme, the 4th major boss in Ouranos is a reskin of Giganto the first boss with a more bullet hell approach . The true final boss is also a reskin of these hacking mini games which play like your average arcade space shooter games and it was just anti-climactic.

• CONCLUSION:
As discussed in this review, the open zone sections carry your experience, you spend more time exploring the open world than engaging enemies in combat or playing the Cyberspace stages, so it was fun overall. it’s also gorgeous looking and performs well, I didn’t have many bugs besides the obvious pop-ins which they should patch. The frame rate was also smooth, I heard the Switch version is also performing well and has steady 30 fps. So buy it if you're a fan, wait for a sale if you're not. This game deserves a score between 70 and 80, I give it a 74/100.