What You Can Unlock In Sonic Frontiers’ Skill Tree

Sonic Frontiers seeks to transform the fighting style of the franchise’s long-running characters in new and meaningful ways. A skill tree was introduced as part of this process. It is the first such skill tree in the franchise. Sonic is known for his adventures that include unlocking new abilities. Sonic Team plans to expand the franchise’s longest-running mainline title, Frontiers by adding a skill tree.

Sonic Team creative officer Takashi izuka stated that fighting enemies is an integral part of Sonic Frontiers. “Starting out with Sonic at full power would make the combat simple and repetitive, so we made it so the player gradually unlocks Sonic’s abilities through the skill tree. To unlock new skills the player must collect the points by beating enemies or exploring the island. They can then unlock stronger skills by playing more.

Enemies spawn close to me when I am first learning Frontiers. With ease I eliminate these common baddies, but skills pieces are scattered all over the place after the barrage homing attacks. I sprint over to grab them, adding to the meter. Although this encounter doesn’t give me enough skill points to earn my first skill point in the game, later battles increase its capacity and award me an upgrade point. To unlock any content, however, I must continue to advance in the game.

My first boss fight against Ninjas in the real world opens a huge gate that allows me access to another area. A basic platforming sequence is completed. I then open another gate, which opens the in-game message that says I am now eligible to use Sonic’s Cyloop ability. When activated, this upgrade creates various effects depending on the circumstances. No matter the application, it seems as though you need to draw a complete circle for any of these effects to work; drawing a circle in an empty field spawns rings while doing it around a series of torches extinguishes them simultaneously and helps me solve a puzzle. You can use the Cyloop in combat as an area of effect attack to draw around several enemies or to cut through tougher creatures’ armor.

Cyloop appears to be the core skill of Sonic in Frontiers. But it’s not the only one he can unlock through his skill trees. After Cyloop has been unlocked, Sonic will be able to unlock eleven additional skills from the main tree and three more skills via mainline story progression. While the story-progression skills were hidden behind question marks I managed to get a complete view of all the skills players can use over the course.

Sonic Boom (which shoots projectiles at mid-combo), Speed Burst, which increases your power when the max combo is reached and Air Tricks (the ability showboat in mid-air) are all next levels of unlocks. You can then open Wild Crash, which allows you to run in a zigzag fashion towards your enemies and attack them. From there, you can unlock several different skills, including Auto Combo, an ability where battle skills automatically activate during combos (if you unlock this one and don’t like the autopilot nature, you can toggle it on and off in the options menu). There’s also Quick Cyloop (the ability for Sonic to automatically draw his Cyloop circles), Homing Shot (an attack where Sonic launches a volley of energy spheres at an enemy), Spin Slash (a move where Sonic surrounds an enemy with a multi-hit spinning attack), and Loop Kick (a looping, rapidly accelerating kick in mid-air). Recovery Smash is the final unlock on the main skill tree. If you are blown away or fail to follow certain prompts, you will be able to immediately counterattack.

This skill will give Sonic the feeling of advancement throughout his adventures, and also help diversify the fights to prevent monotony. Sonic Team had to create skills that felt right at home in Sonic’s arsenal. Morio Kishimoto, director, says that there are many fighting games. However, for the title we were able to concentrate on how Sonic fights, which enemies Sonic should face, and what Sonic’s skills would need to overcome them. “We are not making a Sonic game where the combat and fighting is the core fun element; rather, we want to present a game that has a fun combat that suits Sonic’s character – that’s the fundamental idea.”

Sonic can learn new moves from the skill tree, but that’s just one of many ways to improve the Blue Blur. The mysterious Koco, small stone creatures that inhabit the islands, can also upgrade certain elements of Sonic if you seek out the special types. You can exchange seeds with Hermit Kocos to boost Sonic’s defense or strength. In my case, Sonic got stronger homing attacks, combos, and strength from the Kocos found in open zones. To boost Sonic’s speed and ring power, you may encounter an Elder Koco. Much like with the Hermit Koco, I decided to funnel all my upgrades with the Elder Koco into one bucket: speed. Although the speed increase is not as obvious as an increase in attack power or speed, it’s still noticeable when exploring large areas. 

Up until launch, it won’t yet be known how important these new upgrades and skills are. We also don’t know what hidden story-progression skill they may have. But on the surface, it seems like Sonic Team is on the right track with its method of growing its combat suite over the course of Sonic’s latest adventure. Sonic Frontiers is available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. It will also be available for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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