Highlights
- Sonic Dream Team is a simple game that offers fun exploration without deeper threats, making it enjoyable for fans.
- Dream Team falls behind in terms of character variety compared to Sonic Frontiers, despite having a larger playable cast.
- Dream Team’s playable characters lack unique playstyles and play similarly to one another, which undermines the quantity of playable characters.
Sonic Dream Team invites players to run, fly, and climb in a fantastical, brightly colored world with Sonic and his friends. After the risky and heart-rending adventure on the Starfall Islands in Sonic Frontiers, Sonic Dream Team is a simple game that many fans are likely to have fun exploring rather than dealing with any deeper threats.
While Dream Team and Frontiers take similar yet different design conventions to heart, players are likely to compare both titles considering how Sonic Frontiers‘ post-launch content wrapped up only two months ago, and yet there’s another new Sonic game for fans to enjoy so soon. Interestingly, one of the most jarring differences between both games is how they handle their playable characters. Where Sonic Frontiers lacks in numbers compared to Dream Team‘s roster, Dream Team seems to fall behind in terms of variety with its extended cast.
The Pros and Cons of Sonic Frontiers’ Sage Returning in Later Games
Sage played a huge role in Sonic Frontiers, but any future appearances from her could come with their own advantages and setbacks.
Sonic Dream Team and Sonic Frontiers’ Playable Characters Make Up For What the Other Lacks
The Sonic the Hedgehog series is starting to finally break out of a phase of only allowing a majority of the mainline games to have Sonic himself be playable. Sonic Frontiers, along with Sonic Origins‘ Plus DLC, was the first to finally mark multiple playable characters as a standard rather than a rare present for fans. The shift has been desired for some time, as Sonic games have been built around multiple playable characters for decades.
Sonic Frontiers Establishes Important Character Traits, Sonic Dream Team Takes Them Away
In Frontiers, each character had their own playstyles that elevated the concept that Sonic’s friends were just the same as the hedgehog but with extra abilities. Amy Rose’s triple jump made her an expert at reaching high places, Tails’ flight was improved with an in-air boost and his Cyclone plane only extends this ability even further, and Knuckles more or less functions the same as he did in Sonic Adventure 2.
For the blue hedgehog himself, as every playable character was given his iconic Spin Dash, his signature move was changed to the light-speed dash. With how Sonic Frontiers seems to go out of its way to establish a unique playstyle for every character, Sonic Dream Team‘s approach to the playable cast is quite far behind the times. Instead of trying its best to keep Frontiers‘ established playstyles, it instead chooses to reflect on Sonic Adventure 2 and make three sets of two characters play identical to one another.
- Each of Dream Team‘s six playable characters can homing attack, boost, and air-dash.
- Sonic and Amy can light-speed dash.
- Tails and Cream can fly and use special rings to re-fill their stamina.
- Knuckles and Rouge can glide and climb up special walls.
The way that Sonic Dream Team has such a huge extended playable cast is undermined by these decisions to have them play so similarly, especially after Sonic Frontiers made established important changes like Tails being unable to homing attack as the only one without one in-game. On the other hand, there’s an argument to be had that the controls had to be simplified for the Apple Arcade title as they were made to be played on phones and iPads. Sonic Dream Team also lets players swap between characters almost at any point, whereas in Sonic Frontiers‘ Final Horizon DLC swapping was rather cumbersome.
It makes one question if the quantity of playable characters is better than the quality of them. Having so many playable characters is great, but it comes at the loss of removing what makes the character in question so unique. For example, Cream doesn’t use her Chao friend Cheese to attack in Dream Team, and Amy’s hammer is reduced to being an accessory rather than something actually useful. Regardless, both Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Dream Team are fun, fast-paced adventures made for every Sonic fan, and sometimes that’s enough to warrant a fan-favorite character being included.
Sonic Dream Team is available now on Apple Arcade.
