When this game came out there were some massive waves among the gaming community. After all the game would be Apple exclusive and it’s crazy to see Sonic stuck on the mobile market since he’s usually on all of the big consoles. It’s a sign of how things are changing though and hopefully a port comes out at some point. In the meantime I figured this was the time to break out the 3 month free trial offer that Apple has. The game’s fairly short so it’s definitely beatable within that time.

The basic plot is that Eggman gets in a little over his head with a dream device but somehow puts up the ultimate comeback effort and takes over the dream world. I have to say that I was quite impressed with that since usually he would have lost. The guardian over the dream world is forced to ask Sonic and friends for help after they fell for Eggman’s trap and land inside the dream as well. Sonic and friends are always ready for a challenge and so they accept but will they really have what it takes to win this?

There are 4 worlds and each world has 3 levels and then a boss stage. Each level has 8 mini levels inside of them so that’s a fairly good amount. Beating each stage grants you an orb and you need orbs to unlock future levels. You will find that you need to clear most of the levels in order to reach the end but they tend to be bite sized so it’s not a huge undertaking. The first level is always the longest one and then they branch out from there.

The game steadily ramps up the difficulty level as the worlds go on though so you’ll notice yourself moving a bit slower after a while. The game has an infinite respawn mechanic so don’t worry about game overs or anything like that. The only kind of level you may have to restart are the time trials but otherwise you can die as often as you need to in order to understand and master the level. Once that has happened then you will be all set.

The boss battles are all handled pretty well. I appreciate that the game has unique bosses and they all fight differently. The final boss is the most different as you don’t actually fight him. It’s more of a chase scene type of level as you have to keep on running and dodging until you make it to the end. It’s definitely a very climactic way to end things off but it does come across as a little on the easy side. The rest of the bosses were all more difficult.

The graphics here are very good. This definitely looks like a full AAA Sonic game even though it’s for mobile and it shows just how far the market has gone over the years. Gone are the days where a mobile game looked like a last gen title. I also have to give a special shoutout to the soundtrack which is excellent. A lot of very catchy tunes here. They’re going for a very electronic vibe for just about the whole soundtrack and it works really well.

I’m also really glad that there’s a real story here. It would have been so easy for the game to have just skipped that and called it a day but that wasn’t the case here. The cutscenes may not have traditional movement but there are a lot of slides to get the feeling across. Also the opening is definitely very high budget. Hopefully the new character returns and I want them to keep on making more Sonic games with full stories like this. Sonic Dream Team keeps the light tone of the old games while having a full story like the Adventure titles which should keep both sides of the fanbase pretty happy. (Well most of them anyway)

The mobile controls do get a little tricky but of course I would say that’s not a big thing to be upset about since you can pair your PS4 controller to it. I didn’t bother in this case, I would have if this was a 50 hour RPG or something but I’m used to the phone pretty well as it is. I’ve been mobile gaming for several years at this point even if I’m still more of a console gamer overall. Now while I did enjoy the game, I do hope they really limit how many games are exclusive to Arcade because once this free trial is gone I doubt I’ll be able to get another.

For some closing notes, it’s nice how you can play as several different characters. It uses a system like Adventure 2 Battle where there are different classes and then each character in that class has the same abilities. So in this game that means there are 3 pairs: Sonic/Amy, Tails/Cream, and Rouge/Knuckles. Having 3 different gameplay styles is pretty fun and being able to change during a level is also cool. The game’s really trying out some interesting ideas here. I mainly stuck as Sonic when I was given a choice but there are many times you are forced to play as someone else so I recommend you to be as familiar with all of them as possible.

Overall, Sonic Dream Team is definitely a pretty good game. It’s not really as short as you would expect, I want to say that I put in around 4 hours so it’s about Sonic Forces level. There is some replay value as well although not a ton so I don’t want to trick you on that one. The levels are just big enough where getting all of the collectibles will likely take some work but also short enough where they are easy to replay and also just a lot of fun. I think that’s the biggest thing the game gets right, it’s just a lot of fun the whole time with colorful levels and high speed gameplay. Longtime Sonic fans will probably have fun 100% completing the game. Hey if you have Apple Arcade then you should absolutely play this game. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to play it if I didn’t have the free trial but I’m sure it is the best game on the whole Arcade system so you don’t want to miss out on it.

Overall 7/10