Sonic Frontiers: Why You Should Manually Save Your Game Before Boss Battles

Reviews are in, and it looks like critics are split on the new direction "Sonic Frontiers" has decided to take the franchise. The game currently has "mixed or average" critic reviews on Metacritic, with many either commending or criticizing the risk the developers took with the open-zone design.

The average fan, however, seems to be having a better time with the game overall. Twitter is full of franchise veterans and newcomers raving about the story and gameplay, with players posting videos of drawing crude and humorous doodles with Sonic's new Cycloop ability as well as their misadventures in the titan boss fights. There's lots of praise for the new combat mechanics as well as the enormous scale of the boss encounters — colorful and full of character, these titan battles are shaping up to be one of the fans' favorite parts of the game.

It's not all sunshine and super-hype boss battles, however. With a new game formula comes new concerns, and there's a reason you might want to start making manual saves before heading into any potential boss fights.

Whether you love it or hate it, the fact remains that the open-zone design changes the way a player can approach boss fights. Instead of a linear campaign where all players would meet the same boss at more or less the same point of progression, "Sonic Frontiers" gives players the chance to pick and choose their battles, as well as how prepared they are going into them. If you find yourself struggling with a particular titan, you could simply back out and grind up for better chances before trying again.

That's only if you've made a manual save before entering the boss battle, however. Unfortunately, it seems that the game's autosave function kicks in at the start of a boss battle, trapping you in that encounter if you haven't made a separate manual save beforehand (per GameInformer). While "Sonic Frontiers" doesn't explicitly signal when a boss fight is going to happen, it's a good idea of getting into the habit of saving separately before heading into any big story missions to save yourself some potential grief.