While this collection is definitely the best (or, at the very least, the most easily accessible) way to play these games, keep some things in mind before you buy:

1. They're the Dragon's Lair games, and I hope you know what you're getting into before you make this purchase because this collection probably won't change anyone's mind on the Dragon's Lair style of trial-and-error gameplay.
2. All three of these games take about an hour to beat. Yes, this means you'll be paying 20 dollars for a three hour game. Luckily, this collection goes on sale pretty frequently, unless you're buying the Wii version for over 50 USD, but why the hell would you do that.
3. The presentation of the menus can be best described as "early 2000's DVD" and it comes off as really unpolished. There's choppy music samples that loop, ugly button layouts, the full nine yards. I assume the Wii release of the game looked like this and they didn't really edit it much when porting to modern consoles.
4. There's not much in the way of bonus features. There's an interview and one deleted scene for Time Warp. Not a deal-breaker, but a major disappointment.
5. There's no way to pause or go frame-by-frame on the gorgeous 2D animation. Again, not a deal-breaker, but a disappointment.

But, despite that, if you are looking to play the Dragon's Lair games, this isn't a bad way to do it. The collection could've been better but hey, I'm glad these games are readily available. The 2D animation is charming and these games contain some of Don Bluth's best work. You just have to navigate some ugly menus before you play.

This game made me realize how tired I am of the main Pokemon series' combat system because I actually thought the GO catching mechanic on the wild encounters actually streamlined the game enough that it didn't just feel like I was playing the same game I've been playing since 1998.

You know, even though it's a remake of said game from 1998.

So there's my review. It's a game if you want to play a Pokemon games but you're tired of some of the Pokemon gameplay mechanics while wanting to play a game that has the other gameplay mechanics of the older Pokemon titles, creating a weird tonal Frankenstein's Monster of a Pokemon game that makes it feel weirdly out of place compared to Sword/Shield.

While I ultimately liked A Tale of Two Sons, it sadly falls into the common "Games Are Art" indie game trap where the great graphics, artistry and atmosphere are all directly in service of a narrative and gameplay that is nowhere near as impressive. The battlefield filled with the fresh corpses of giants and the man with the music box are definitely going to tickle my brain for years to come. The narrative that feels like one of those dreary coming-of-age Newbery Medal winning books you had to read in grade school as the two boys operate levers and shuffle along narrow ledges? Decidedly less so.

The downside for me is that, once I took a step back and ruminated on the game after beating it, I find the story a relatively weak progression of the two boys - one confident older brother, one wimpy younger brother - running into random events that may or may not be sad and may or may not feel a bit contrived while the puzzle part of the puzzle-platformer peters out in complexity after the troll mines. Once the environments and their masterful use of negative space and forced camera angles stopped dazzling me, the cracks began to show.

One part that bothered me in particular was the whole gryphon plotline. So the two boys save an abused, bloodied gryphon from a giant's home out of the goodness of their souls. They ride on the back of the gryphon, only for the gryphon to seemingly perish from its injuries, causing the two boys to have a moment of silence, a funeral, and a flashback to their dying father. This same gryphon - Sike, it wasn't dead! It just needed to curl up and lay on the ground like it was dead to heal its injuries! - then shows up at the end of the game to explain how they got back to the sick father in a way that feels less "narrative payoff" and more "wrote the characters into a corner and needed a method of fast travel" and doing this made the previous sad death scene feel cheap.

When the sad plot beats land, they really land. Unfortunately, not every weepy part feels necessary and there's a small amount of bloat.

I guess I can't complain too much since it's a three hour game and, at the end of the day, I did like it. The music in particular, which makes heavy use of Swedish kulning, does a lot of heavy lifting to make some of the sadder moments feel like a real gut punch. I just expected something a little...better. Especially from a game with such a high Word of Mouth pedigree.

Also this might be the only game I've played where the spear-waving, bone-wearing death cultists chanting and dancing in a river of blood and preparing a death sacrifice on a stone altar were actually the good guys. I owe you an apology, cultists. I wasn't really familiar with your game.