Summary
- Sonic Dream Team offers a shorter, mission-based gameplay experience compared to the open-ended exploration of Sonic Frontiers.
- The level design in Sonic Dream Team is praised for its character-specific platforming elements, adding a fun twist to the game.
- While the controls in Sonic Dream Team are simpler, it lacks the expanded controls and unique movesets seen in Sonic Frontiers. However, having a larger playable cast is appreciated by Sonic fans.
2023 has been a year full of plenty of surprises for all kinds of gamers, but hardly any Sonic the Hedgehog fans expected the announcement and launch of Sonic Dream Team in advance. Exclusive to Apple Arcade, Sonic Dream Team is a fully-fledged game, albeit rather short, that gives players freedom to explore gigantic acts to find Dream Orbs, Dream Orb Shards, and race around the area as fast as they possibly can within a time limit.
Since its release, Sonic Dream Team has been praised for the way its controls feel as well as its rather intuitive level design that keeps all six of the game's playable characters in mind. With it, it seems that 3D Sonic is changing to reflect more on open-ended exploration as Dream Team takes similar cues to Sonic Frontiers' open zones. However, there are a number of important things Dream Team does rather differently.
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How Sonic Dream Team Compares to Sonic Frontiers
Sonic Dream Team isn't necessarily another "open-zone" game, as while there are consistent maps that players can traverse, the game works through missions within specific Acts rather than allowing fans to explore the world at their leisure. Through this, the different ways Frontiers and Dream Team operate are much more apparent.
Sonic Dream Team's Level Design is Worth Praising
Where Sonic Frontiers made Knuckles, Tails, and Amy playable in a later update, Sonic Dream Team includes an extended cast from the very beginning. The level design features many character-specific platforming elements that are conspicuous compared to Frontiers' floating grind rails and colored walls. This makes the environment in the Apple Arcade game rather fun to explore, but there are more pitfalls and slip-ups to make in Sonic Dream Team as all six playable characters share the same speed.
Sonic Frontiers' Expanded Controls Are Nowhere To Be Found
As Sonic Dream Team was developed for mobile devices primarily, it makes sense that its controls would be fairly simple. However, as it follows shortly after Sonic Frontiers' post-launch updates ended, what it does with its main playable cast is a bit disheartening. Borrowing from Sonic Adventure 2's rule book, the six playable characters are split into three groups of two, with each pair playing the exact same as the other.
Sonic and Amy are capable of performing the Light Speed Dash, a move that was unique to Sonic in Frontiers, Tails and Cream can fly and take advantage of stamina-boosting rings to remain in the air, and Knuckles and Rouge can glide and climb specific walls. It's rather disheartening to see after Sonic Frontiers took great care in unique movesets for Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy. However, many Sonic fans will take any extended playable cast over just Sonic himself after being forced to play as only him for roughly a decade, so it may be a necessary sacrifice to keep his friends around.
Sonic Dream Team is a Cake Walk Compared to Sonic Frontiers
Earlier this year, Sonic Superstars and Sonic Frontiers' The Final Horizon update came with incredibly tough challenges that had Sonic fans considering it on a Dark Souls- like level of hard. Just as many fans figured these challenges would be normal for the series going forward, Dream Team lives up to its lackadaisical name.
The latest Sonic game may have a few difficult missions, but those who have mastered everything Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Superstars had to offer may find themselves wishing for a bit more of a challenge. Dream Team isn't even incredibly long, only offering four stages of three acts and a boss with their own missions. With simplistic controls that may take time to master, players will naturally get skilled at the game while beating many of its challenges with ease. Dream Team is pure Sonic fun from start to finish, however, so it's unlikely that fans will find themselves bored.
Sonic Dream Team is available now on Apple Arcade.