A lot better than I was expecting honestly, I love Three Houses, mostly, and despite the fanfic-y nature of this title I find myself strangely compelled to it. For reference, I've only done the Golden Wildfire route where it functions as a better Crimson Flower honestly, the deviations from the original story are well illustrated and easy to infer why Claude deviates so much compared to his Verdant Wind actions, and better yet, people are actually willing to call Claude out on his actions when he does some pretty terrible things, something no-one ever did with Edelgard in Crimson Flower. I will say that the new protagonist, Shez, is pretty flat and their storyline ultimately ends up as an optional footnote in the overall story at large which is pretty jarring, and very strange how barely anyone acknowledges it happened.

Gameplay wise, this is the only Musou to date I haven't bounced off of, it's really fun to be strategic while slapping buttons with some really satisfying movesets, shout-out to Shez's Asura and Byleth's Enlightened One movesets for being the most fun. The territories between missions can get pretty repetitive, but they take like less than 5 minutes once you know what you're doing so I didn't feel all too fatigued by the game until the last chapter, and character and class progression manages to be really satisfying with movesets that change as you advance down your desired true.

Three Hopes functions actually pretty well as a lite version of Three Houses in this regard, the main story isn't as good as most Three Houses routes but it's not bad in it's own right either, the gameplay and class progression is also a small version of Three Houses class progression but manages to capture the same feeling of satisfaction and character growth. The supports exist, and they're pretty good too, although not as good as Three Houses, again. All the redesigns and music is pretty good too. The one thing I'd say is straight up better are Shez and Byleth, with Byleth getting a pretty good set of supports, fun gameplay, and a personality a million times more entertaining than when they were silent. Shez might be pretty cardboard, but at least they're still more interesting than 3 Houses Byleth too. In the end, a game worth your time if you like Three Houses.

It's a Warriors game alright. The 3 or 4 stories really dont work as well in a warriors style since its VERY repetitive. Azure Gleam has my favorite normal story out of the 3 (just like how Blue Lions did) It definitely should have been a 1 story game since the secret ending NEEDS to happen for the story to actually conclude and make sense. The secret section is easily the coolest part of the game. I dont think its near the og though. Calm down on the warriors games pls cause I swear a new one comes out for a different series I like every 4 months lmao

An okay compilation of some classic games, even if they are some of the most widely available games ever - but this is the first time Sonic 3 has been available in at least a decade. Plus it's one of the very rare times Sonic 3 & Knuckles has been in a bundle as a full game.

The new additions are nice bonuses, but don't go far. Widescreen is great (I don't keep up with all the billion releases so I'm not sure if this is even the first widescreen release of these games), and mission mode is fun, but you can breeze through it in an hour or so. Boss rush is probably the best addition, even if the decision of which bosses to give you rings or not for can be baffling. It's also short, but it's the kind of thing that makes you want to keep going for the best time.

Speaking of which, the leaderboards on Playstation seem bugged to crash the game whenever you try to view them. I won't take that into my rating since it seems exclusive to the PS version and may be a hardware problem that isn't the games fault.

But the game does have bugs. A lot of them according to some people. I personally didn't experience that many though, with the only truly horrible one being when playing Sonic 2, Tails will get stuck in the stage and his constant jump sound effects make it an earsore. Other than that, the game crashed twice in the exact same mission, but never again (other than as mentioned in the PS-specific leaderboard bug).

You've got your museum content which is nice I guess. But I can't imagine anyone who is opening up an entire video game so they can listen to a playlist of music. The art and movies are nice at least, even if I probably spent less than 30 minutes total looking at them.

The animated cutscenes are super short, all less than a minute each, but they look pretty great.

Story mode is one of the weirdest things about this game. It's literally just the 4 games in a row. Zero, and I mean zero effort was made into making it feel like a real story mode. No making it all one visual style or anything. Even those new cutscenes aren't exclusive to it, as they play when you play the games solo. Even the freaking credits for each individual game will play. What's the point of a "story mode" when you still have to sit through the credits at 4 different points of the "story". I can't see a single reason to play story mode over just playing the games normally since this mode doesn't even give you a choice of characters, it's always just Sonic, or Sonic & Tails in the last 2 games. May as well have just called it marathon mode or something.

You can't customise the features in the game either. If you want widescreen but keep the lives system and no drop dash, you're out of luck. Also the "classic" version of Sonic 1 still has spin dash....why? You can't play the actual original Sonic 1.

I won't say anything about the games themselves since I have reviews for them all.

So basically it's a a bunch of classic games, which vary in quality but I find them all at least fun to play, but has a bug that basically ruins the default way to play Sonic 2. It's also a good modern way to get your hands on the elusive 3&K. But for what it promises, it feels underdelivered. It'd honestly have been better as just a straight up basic bundle (with the widescreen), but cheaper.

Oh and the Hidden Palace Zone bonus for Sonic 2, from the 2013 mobile version is included, which is great.

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity has been on my backlog for a while and I've been trying to power through it for the last week or so. I can only hope that I'm almost done with it though, because the gameplay loop has become so incredibly tedious at this point and I don't really want to play it anymore.

I don't think I'm able to judge Three Hopes appropriately yet, because in comparison to Age of Calamity this is incredible so far.

Looking forward to feeling differently about it in a couple of days.

This series never disappoints. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 continues that trend with amazingly satisfying gameplay and a truly unique battle system. Chaining attacks and using timing to cacnel auto-attacks and Blade Arts creates a truly dynamic and engaging system. Combine this with an amazing cast of characters, an epic story, gorgeous music and visuals, and enough systems to please any system-lover. The side quests are vastly improved over Xenoblade Chronicles, offering much more interesting quest lines. The only knock I've got against this one are the attributes that Blades have. Gating world progress behind their attributes can be annoying from time to time. Despite this slight flaw, the game is still stellar and I can't wait for Xenoblade Chronicles 3.