Sonic Frontiers is a strange, mercurial joyride: a game that flickers between sublime and maddening with every new challenge, every new sequence, and every increasingly unexpected minigame its developers managed to cram inside its open-world shell. Evangelion-esque in its enemy and boss design and carrying shades of Nier Automata and Breath of the Wild in its world and (largely nonsensical) story, it manages to create a kind of spectacle that's fun to just swim around in, even if it never quite puts everything together for a sustained, coherent experience. It is a game of circular references, of objects and symbols emptied of meaning, included just because they, from its variations of classic Sonic zones to its overworld's post-apocalyptic sheen, might have once meant something, but now just serve as triggers for atmosphere and feeling. At its best, flitting between movement challenges and fishing minigames, it's a strangely lonely, calm experience — not words you'd expect to hear describing a Sonic game — and it manages to carve out a unique, compelling niche in a long series of disappointments.