“It should take the average player between 20 and 30 hours to finish the game”
How long will Sonic Frontiers take to beat? Well, it could be anywhere from 20 to 60 hours, based on a new statement from Sega (and depending on how much you actually engage with the game itself).
Speaking to IGN, it seems like Sega has provided a concrete answer on how long the game will actually take to complete. Here’s the full rundown, provided by Sonic Frontiers director Morio Kishimoto: “it should take the average player between 20 and 30 hours to finish the game, while completionists can easily spend double the time to see everything.”
Providing more context about how you’ll actually spend a variable length of 20-60 hours with the game, Kishimoto opens up more on the “playable world map” concept. So apparently, the world map is more of a vessel for the individual stages themselves. He explains that it follows suit with other “level-based platforms with a world map,” but the one in Frontiers is playable: “A playable world map that includes stage-like elements is something that hasn’t really been done before, so we had to come up with a new name. What is often defined as a World in other level-based platformers is called a Zone in Sonic games, so we took that and combined it with Open, which refers to a freely explorable field. So that’s what Open Zone stands for.”
Kishimoto calls this the extension of the world map system that was popularized in Super Mario Bros 3; which actually makes a whole lot of sense, and is something Sega probably should have said when they first revealed the game. That said, ideally, that 20-hour minimum can be cleared a lot quicker if you so choose, especially if the game overstays its welcome. It’ll be interesting to see if Sonic Frontiers can actually maintain a sense of enjoyment with the upper limits of that length figure, and how quickly speedrunners will be able to clear it.
On paper, 40-60 hours to 100% a Sonic game seems kind of absurd, doesn’t it?!
