This one had a false start for me and I'm sad to say I almost skipped it entirely. Initially quite turned off by the lack of direction and the unforgiving combat in the early game, I put it down and left myself feeling fairly disappointed.

After a few months, once a coworker let me borrow their set of homebrewed Amiibo cards, I picked it back up and didn't put it down until I'd completed nearly every piece of content the game had to offer.

The game is beautiful, challenging, puzzling, curious, and infuriating all in one. It's truly a remarkable achievement in scope and an almost unbelievable reboot to a series that's been with me as long as I can remember.

Personally, I didn't have the epiphany that most others seemed to experience after playing 3D World after having played Odyssey. Yes, this is the best version of 3D World, but at the end of the day, it's still 3D World, which is fine, but it's not a lot more than that for me.

Bowser's Fury. Damn. Bowser's Fury is what elevates this package. It's open world, yet it's focused on platforming (unlike many other open 3D platformers like Odyssey). It's super short and bite-sized which I appreciate. And it manages to remix 3D World so damn much that it seems like an entirely different game.

I quite nearly fell asleep during the tutorial. It was that boring. You can instantly tell that your first impressions of the game you get within the initial 5-10 minutes is what the next 45 hours of your life will be if you continue playing: drudging, slow, obnoxious, fiddly, and exceptionally dull.

Not to mention that the game is just really poorly optimized? I have a pretty decent rig, and it couldn't run it on ultra without some choppiness. I can accept that. But running on even lower settings, dipping below 60fps constantly, or with weird jittering? That's pretty wild, especially given that this is a fully released game that's nearly out for nearly 2 years (at time of writing).

If you're okay mindlessly throwing away 45 hours of your life on an experience you know is not very fun or polished, good luck to you. I do not want to do that, so this gets tossed in the rubbish.

The simplification of a once formative strategy franchise. Three Houses is about one thing: Dating lovable anime people. This sole focus leads to dozens of hours of busywork, with even battles being used as a device to strengthen relationships.

There is, luckily, some payoff in the deepened bonds, with some truly charming moments for plenty of the interpersonal relationships. Almost every character is worthy of love and attention. The meat of the combat, however, quickly becomes a routine action. Poor scaling makes characters capable of one-shotting literally any supposed threat except for the very last enemy.

Three Houses isn't a "bad" game; there's enjoyment in helping to build the world, one monastery visit at a time. However, it could've done with a ton less of these chores or shortened its run to fewer than 80 hours, so that it would have the replay value it alludes to having.

This is one of the best metroidvanias I've played, and it further cements the fact that this is probably the most consistently amazing genre.
The exploration here is sooooo rewarding and fun, the gameplay is challenging yet not overwhelming, the music is utterly banging, and the world + story are super-duper cool and interesting. I honestly can't find many problems with this game, it just really knocks it outta the park all-round.

I didn't get any good endings tho sadly because I simply don't think I'm good enough to be able to beat the bosses lol.

Edit: I lied, I got a new ending because I accidentally first-tried a boss the day after this review.

Great game to sink a lot of time into with sometimes daunting complexity.

I really enjoy the soundtrack, but I started muting it and putting on some other music (or simply the OST itself) in the background. A bit annoying when crisis music sets in and interrupts your workflow, because a fire broke out again. Would also be nice if the music faded into the new respective track instead of the sudden cut off during region shifts. I suppose this is more of a general Anno issue and a nitpick all in all.