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I do think Sonic Team are hack to be honest, because nearly everything that resembles any form of "level design" is just a bunch of props awkwardly stiched together. It's no miracle it functions though, after all it's stuff they've already programmed ages ago. Rails, springs, wall running, balloons, boost pads, launchers... frankly, Chaos Island honest to God feels like it was made by an algorithm that studied Sonic Colors' levels. Basically everything else "new" to Frontiers is just messy, repetitive, unpolished... like the combat, the other playable characters, the open world itself. Not to mention stuff that worked fine in 2010/2011 getting absolutely f'd here because of their incompetence. Sonic Frontiers is a prettier (being gentle here) test level. Empty area full of props. At triple A price. To anyone who ever complained about Utopia being too sparse, or lacking any sense of where to go/what to do, but has no problem with Chaos Island... lmao. If any lesson is learnt from this and we get another open world game where Sonic interacts with the world instead of props awkwardly floating around, then we talk. 

I'll just say this. No game whatsoever is perfect. Even the best of the best games have their share of issues. Just look at this clip of me playing Horizon Forbidden West (which also had a shockingly difficulty spike for the entirety of every difficulty setting, compared to the previous game) on a PS4 Slim, and it's got varying degrees of pop-in. This being the worst example. Does this automatically make the game bad? No. It's just not entirely suited for the console. But that's besides the point. It doesn't mean Guerilla, a 1st party PlayStation Studio, are incompetent at making a solid game. Which they did! Blew it out of the park! Did it win a lot of awards? Only 2, but still. Sonic Frontiers has it's issues. I'm not ignoring that fact, but I'm also forgiving of such issues, due to some of the things Sonic Team's had to deal with. Including getting the game pushed back for another year 'cause Sega wanted them to push it out much earlier. Not to mention the smaller team & budget over the years. A type of thing that's happened time & time again, to more studios than just Sonic Team. You guys remember the 1st few Crash & Spyro games post Insomniac & Naughty Dog? Exactly what happens when you rush a project out the door, despite how much I enjoyed Twinsanity. Now I'm not here to debate objective or subjective (don't ask me which is which, 'cause I'll forget by next week) opinions within the Sonic fandom. 'Cause that's a minefield. But truth be told, I really enjoy the Werehog sections of Unleashed, which are the most hated part of the game for most people. Colors was pretty good, but not my favorite 3D Sonic game. Lost World, also pretty good, tho I only played the 3DS version not developed by Sonic Team. Generations, up there with Unleashed! Forces...uh...I don't think I really need to go there. Heck, I can say better things about Sonic '06 at this point, least I got all the achievements in that one. Not sure what that says about me, but it is what it is. So Frontiers was a breath of fresh air for me personally, and still is. It's a much better feeling than playing Forces, issues and all. There's a lot of good, but sometimes you get some bad, unpolished things as a tradeoff. Everyone also has their own opinions on everything, and nobodies will be the same. But the fact Frontiers did sell as much as it did, and convinced Sega to increase the team size, or even allow all this DLC support in the 1st place, and so on, so forth. I don't think the game would technically be considered a failure. All they gotta do is build upon what's already here, for the next title (which hopefully Final Horizon gets patched before then). And how that goes, only time will tell.

I do truly respect Sonic Team's passion with this game, honestly, but for me the frustrating thing that makes me question their competency is just that every single success always has to come with a massive asterisk on it. Sonic Colours and Sonic Forces didn't have any of these jank issues but they were SO tightly designed as to be unengaging to play.  Everything felt stiff and automated, all the 3D gameplay was extremely barebones.  There was barely anything in terms of really novel or engaging platforming gimmicks.  They played it so safe. I have more respect for Lost World and Frontiers which dared to break the mould and do some weirder, more freeform stuff that wasn't so tightly strung to avoid ever breaking... but the end result is still that it often broke.  And this DLC sort of reveals that the base game WAS playing it safe most of the time.  I mean, I knew this - up until Ouranos Island pretty much all the open zone obstacle courses are Sonic Forces/Colours grade level design, 90% automation, rail switching and homing attack chains etc.  But here they really took the safety wheels off and the gameplay systems just weren't built for it. When I LOOK at the level design for the towers and such it LOOKS fun and engaging, pretty creative even.  The way they came up with unique gimmicks for every Cyber Space stage was really cool too.  I respect the effort.  When I imagine playing them as a Sonic that behaves himself or has some leeway in how accurate you have to be, I bet they'd be a blast.  But alas. With Sonic Team it's always the execution, it's so frustrating to see time and time again. I just desperately want Sonic Team to go from being a developer that can theoretically make good stuff to having that ability to just polish things up a bit.  There are just so many issues with shifting cameras and pinpoint accurate jump requirements and frustrating punishments and lack of communication that I can't FATHOM how they were missed in playtesting and they just get in the way of the potential fun So Much. Of course... that's the thing with video game development, they probably weren't missed in playtesting.  All the parts that were fine to play are the stuff that they DID have the time and resources to polish, and the rest wasn't.  But it's just... annoying that they went with this instead of just throwing in some failsafes.   The one saving grace is that I do think Frontiers felt like a feature-complete game at launch, so the fact that this is free does give them some goodwill with me.  But I'm still left dumbfounded at some of the overarching decisions that not even "didn't have time to polish" really excuses for me, and that's the point where I start to question the competency of the creators.