The first game of the Ace Attorney series, a total banger and so much better than I expected. I've always heard so much about Ace Attorney through years of memes and crossovers like Marvel vs Capcom 3, but somehow was not quite prepared for what I was getting myself into.
Ace Attorney is a VN originally released on GBA, and it certainly has its restraints, whether from technical limitations or simply being the first in a series, the devs were still trying to figure out the conventions of this series and it shows in some ways. The trials are written and designed in a way where the game leads you to the right answer, to the point by the end I had figured out its patterns -- if you're being asked if you REALLY want to keep doing something, you almost always want to keep doing it. If you're being asked if you have evidence, even if you don't think you do, you should claim you do anyway, and there are so few pieces of evidence on hand it's typically quite easy to deduce which one you're supposed to use just by rule of elimination. That said, despite the game being quite easy, it's still so satisfying to go through these cases. The characters are written with such distinct manners of speech, the animations are timelessly captivating, the "objection", "hold it" voice lines never get old the music is just so iconic as well -- Ace Attorney perfected the formula for this type of game from the jump. It's quite easy to see why this game has endured for so long.

To talk about the writing, I really do love the story and the cast of characters.
Phoenix Wright is such an instantly captivating protagonist -- fresh out of law school, he's under all sorts of pressure, his first case is defending his best friend in a murder case, he has little experience and is flying by the seat of his pants, everyone around him has all the answers and he's struggling to keep up. However, despite all this pressure, he is fiercely loyal -- to his clients, to his friends, to his principles, and that's such an admirable quality. He's also such a funny guy, he plays the role of a straight man in a world full of eccentric people quite well. I often found myself relating, and laughing at his disbelief in the insane things happening around him.

The deuteragonist, Maya is with you for 90% of the game. Your second case is defending her in a murder case, and she garners the players sympathy from the get go. She goes through one of the most horrible things, being accused of murdering her own sister, when she's already quite a sheltered person with little experience outside of her home. It's easy to feel sorry for, and attached to her in this case. After you defend her innocence, she sticks around as a supporting character, and often helps Wright as a spirit medium. I thought this spirit medium element, while made with sweet intentions writing wise, it was a little weird to see how her design changes when she's speaking through her sister and it definitely took me out of it at first. But I appreciated seeing how Wright and Maya bonded over their shared respect for Mia, who still watched over them even after passing. As a deuteragonist, Maya brings a level of hope and optimism to the story when things are at their lowest. When Wright feels like he hits an impossible road block, Maya is always there to pick him up and show him that there is always a way to move forward. Even though she has no legal experience, and is not very good at being a spirit medium, she does everything in her power to see a case through and help prove someone's innocence, just like Wright did for her. She gets put on trial, arrested, tazed, but never allows herself to lose her determination. She is an integral part to the core of this game's themes and story.

Miles Edgeworth was a character who also surprised me. I expected a more cold, stoic character. And while he can fill that role, there's a human side to him that I really didn't expect. In the latter half of the game, he gets deconstructed so thoroughly -- at one point there is an earthquake and in response he has a panic attack and becomes completely impossible to talk to. Yet, the game never plays this off for laughs like a more lowbrow story might. It's treated quite seriously and explored fully, in these sorts of games that would typically be comedy relief, and I was relieved to see this treated with this level of care. Edgeworth while opposite to Wright in many ways, such as his pessimism, his nihilism, even his job as a prosecutor, or his color scheme, also reflects Wright. He is so compassionate that it destroys him, the thought that he played a part in letting a murderer in his childhood get away destroyed him so thoroughly that he spent 15 years prosecuting, even going as far as forgery and shady deals. He is so loyal to people he was friends with in only the fourth grade that he doesn't want Wright to defend him even when nobody else will. He is such a perfectly written rival character, I can see why he has so many fans after playing this.

The side characters are all quite memorable and distinct as well, of course. It really did impress me just how much variety there was in character design and speech mannerisms. Everyone, no matter how brief their appearance is, leaves their mark in their own way.

As for the themes, considering the context of this game, developed by a Japanese developer and the history of the legal system in Japan, along with the game taking place in Japan in the original release, there's a counterculture element to this game that may be hidden for those who don't know much about Japan's legal system. In Japan, the conviction rate is 99%. That is staggering. There is some commentary that could potentially be observed here -- it's often pointed out how some of the prosecutors in this game will forge evidence, some will even try to intimidate you outside of the courtroom, one even outright assaults you. It's interesting to see just how far Capcom takes this idea of corruption, to the point where the game ends on a trial exposing a cover up where a prosecutor murdered a defense attorney. Even outside of the prosecutors, there's also a really interesting case that shows how much control a corporation in the game has over the courtroom earlier in the story. To put you in the pilot seat of someone who has all of these impossible odds against him reflects an optimistic theme, that no matter how bad a system can get, you can still oppose it and win, even in a system where your odds are less than 1% of victory.

Play new story/content update, catch up with the new stuff, then drop it for 6 months. Character creator, battle system, the graphics, everything about this game is amazing at a glance, but the content simply doesn't live up to it.

A revolution in the RPG genre, this is everything cRPGs have led up to

Before writing a full review, I'd rather wait until I do NG+ and finish the game on Final Fantasy mode, along with trying side content like Arcade mode, but regardless of how I will feel about anything after being completely finished, this is one of my favorite action RPGs just for how novel of an experience this was. Despite the recycling of mechanics from other games like Devil May Cry, Kingdom Hearts, or Final Fantasy XIV, it still manages to evoke the same feelings I had playing Devil May Cry 4 for the first time on the PS3, that childlike wonder I had from staring out at a wide, unexplored ocean of gameplay mechanics. If you consider yourself a fan of action games, I implore you to give this one a shot.

Pokemon Violet is a promising iteration on the series, introducing changes to the series fans have long clamored for, however it is thoroughly compromised by the long-standing issues of the mainline Pokemon games, and at times threatens to be crushed under the weight of this baggage.
The open, non-linear structure of the game is something fans have begged for since the DS days, however, trainer battles being entirely optional, along with random encounters being a thing of the past, and the new Auto Battle feature, means you don't spend as much time battling, unless a Pokemon sneaks up on you, or you want to catch a new Pokemon to add them to the dex. I understand why these changes have been made with how this game is structured, and I don't think there are many other open world games out there with turn based battle systems, however as someone who enjoys the battle system, it is a little disappointing. I think forced trainer battles at least would have been okay, but here we are.
With the new story routes, the best one by far is Path of Legends. Path of Legends has you going around the world and investigating Titans, huge Pokemon that are disrupting the environment, hunting for Herba Mystica, a herb that can enhance these Titans, or even heal wounded Pokemon. It's a brief story, however the emotional beats of it stroke a chord with me. It may be simple, but it's down to earth and it makes you really care about Arven, the main character of this route. The actual Titans themselves are also pretty fun to fight. They're not particularly challenging, but they reminded me of the Totem Pokemon from Sun & Moon. The best part of Pokemon has always been, well, the Pokemon, so whenever the series gets more into depth with how they interact with nature, and makes Wild Pokemon more interesting, I'll always love that.
Starfall Street has a really strong start at first. The first boss I fought, the fire one, really gave me a tough time, it was insanely challenging, especially for something you could attempt so early in the game. However, from there they got much easier, and with how pointless the actual raids are, where all you do is autobattle, it became something I found to be really boring filler and a waste of time overall. There were 2 other bosses that challenged me, the Fairy and Fighting ones, but that was pretty much it. As for the actual story of this route, it seemed promising at first, being a story that deals with bullying, it felt like it was exposing a darker side of the Academy that I didn't expect. However, it never really gets any deeper than that, and by the end of it I was left wondering what Team Star even did wrong in the first place to be viewed so badly by the people in Paldea, they never seem to do anything actually bad. The way this story is resolved at the end also felt weirdly half-baked, I wasn't sure why any of this even had to happen. Starfall Street overall just fizzles out pretty early on and serves as nothing more than a few cool boss fights.
As for Victory Road, where you collect the Gym Badges and challenge the Elite 4, well....it was okay at best? There's no underlying story for this since it's self-contained from the other routes, so it's really more about getting familiar with the individual gym leaders. None of them are particularly fascinating, but there are a lot of them that are pretty fun to see and interact with, so that's nice. There are Gym Trials you have to take to get a chance to fight the Leader, rather than the traditional Gyms of the past, which is a nice shake up in theory, however most of these Trials end up feeling uninspired and boring. There are some fun ones like the Electric and Ghost gyms, but aside from that you're never asked to do anything particularly interesting. Ram your body into a balloon to bounce it around with Half-Life 2 physics, do a terrible rhythm game, a lot of these just felt like filler. It really doesn't help that, even underleveled, these gym leaders are all pretty easy to deal with, they were some of the most disappointing gym leader fights to me since the 3DS games. Once you're done with the Gyms, you move onto the Elite 4, and weirdly enough, there is no Victory Road (as in the route) for the first time in the series. That was pretty lame, but it's not something I can't move past. The actual Elite 4 themselves were thankfully a ton of fun to fight, and for me represented a real turning point in the quality of the game. Fights actually start to get more difficult for once, with the Elite 4 taking advantage of weather, hazards, typing fake outs, etc, these teams were wonderfully made, and I actually appreciate that you don't find out the typing they specialize in until you're already well into the battle, it eliminates the planning you could do for the Elite 4 in every other game. However....after such a strong, memorable Elite 4, you're left with the lamest Champion battle since X and Y. Even when this game starts to get promising, it always manages to trip and stumble and disappoint you. Almost as an apology for this horrible Champion battle, you're given a battle with your rival for one last time afterwards, and it is so, so much more fun, and so much more challenging than the actual Champion, and I really appreciate that.
After finishing all 3 acts, you're left with one final act. This is something that had been hyped up to me, but it was kind of disappointing to me. You're introduced to a new area, descending to the depths of this massive crater in the center of the region, and the actual area itself is fascinating, with lore sprinkled throughout, weird Pokemon, abandoned infrastructure...however, this fascinating exploration gets undermined by these poorly done Walk and Talk segments. These sections get interrupted by Pokemon battles, which encourages you to ignore the battles, which is not something you want in a turn based RPG. Ignoring the battles makes your descent into the depths much faster and can even make the Walk and Talks interrupted by cutscenes, which leads you to try standing still. However, if you stand still, a Pokemon will almost definitely come and attack you, so it is pretty much impossible to get through this without the dialogue being interrupted. At one point, I fell off a cliff, and that not only interrupted the dialogue, it made it restart to the very beginning. When you combine this with the lack of voice acting, which meant I couldn't pick up items or else the pop-up boxes would obscure the dialogue boxes and make me miss parts of the conversations, by this point I was wishing these were just traditional cutscenes instead of walk and talks. By the time you get past this shoddily executed part of the story though, and reach the bottom of the crater, the story ramps up and increases in quality so much that it's almost easy to forgive how annoying this part of the story was up until now.
The main draw of this game, the Open World, is not great. It has some of the standard draws of an Open World, with a lot of the fun of it being how much you can break it, climbing mountains you're not meant to climb, teleporting across rivers, getting into fights with Pokemon way stronger than you have any right dealing with. Behind these standard conventions of an Open World however, you're left with the ugliest game in the Nintendo Switch's entire library, with bland, featureless plains, single texture deserts, horribly texture mapped mountains, constant clipping issues with the camera not being able to cope with anything, Pokemon just walking back and forth and not doing anything interesting in this world. With random encounters gone, you'd think seeing these Pokemon in their natural habitats would be interesting, but it really isn't. At times the world feels cramped, with hordes of Pokemon just wandering around, waiting for some random 12 year old to show up that they can run up to and attack. That's not interesting to me at all, and if it's going to be handled this poorly I'd rather have random encounters back where I could be left to my imagination to wonder what these Pokemon act like off-screen. It also doesn't help that Paldea itself is boring, featureless, and devoid of human life. There are only a few towns scattered around, there are hardly any NPCs outside of the towns, and all I could think about going through this world was how unbelievably boring and lacking of wonder it was for a Pokemon game. Older games had distinctive features and natural wonders, and the transition to Open World did not look at any of that when deciding what to carry over. There's no Relic Castle, no Tin Tower, no Sky Pillar, no Poni Island... The mystical, fascinating locations of other regions are gone, and Paldea seems to have absolutely no history behind it's locations, and in a game that is all about exploration, I'm left with absolutely zero desire to explore it.
As for battling, this is the most important part of the game I feel. The actual systems are fantastic, the new Pokemon and moves are great, and I love Terastallization and it's potential as both a defensive and offensive mechanic. However, battling is thoroughly compromised by how infuriatingly slow it is. Maybe Game Freak felt nostalgic after releasing BDSP, but this is the slowest game for battling since Gen 4. The cutscene for Terastallization is insanely long, and is SO long that it can actually be a problem for Raids, which have a time limit. The battle system also STILL pauses for every single redundant piece of battle dialogue. This is especially frustrating coming off of Pokemon Legends Arceus, which had the sensibility to speed up the battle system, by cutting down on all of these pointless pauses. On top of all of that, the game's framerate drops, and the game speed being tied to framerate, makes battles much, much slower than usual, with so much more waiting, to the point where half the time I was battling, I wasn't even paying attention to the game, because it was so frustratingly, agonizingly slow. Other RPGs do not feel this painful to deal with, I'd even appreciate an option to skip the Terastallization cutscene, but Game Freak has buried their head in the sand, refuses to look at other RPGs, and is dead set on making battles take as long and slow as possible. It can get so bad that it can kill a player's desire to even play the game, and it's something that I really hope gets looked into for future games. I can't understand how they improved on this with Legends Arceus, but took that away for Scarlet/Violet.
There's also the elephant in the room here with all of the technical issues this game has. A memory leak meaning you have to restart the game to fix slowdown, horrific FPS issues, constant clipping, unloading of assets, horrible pop-in, seizure-inducing visual bugs, this game is just a mess top-to-bottom.
tl;dr: There are vestiges of a good game in here, and for Pokemon diehards I think there is potential to have fun with this game, just like with any Pokemon game. However, I would steer clear of this if you're not already a fan of Pokemon, as the game is so thoroughly compromised by it's flaws that without the nostalgia and fondness for the franchise that Pokemon fans have, I can't imagine being able to forgive this game for it's issues. With how these games sell more and more with each installment, and the absurd amount of money this game makes, Pokemon fans deserve a better game for their unwavering loyalty to this franchise, and I hope Game Freak does better with future games.

This review contains spoilers

Combat is great, when the game actually lets you engage in it. Bayonetta feels the best she's ever felt here, and the weapons in this game are amazing. One of them is a shameless rip-off of DMC5's motorcycle weapon, but that's ok, because it's fun to use! Viola is also pretty fun, but just feels a little unfinished, and she only has a few chapters so you don't spend much time with her. Here's where the positives end, because literally the only good things about this game is the combat and art direction (which is good! I mean, the framerate is crap, but the resolution is 900p and the special effects can look pretty cool. Aside from the grey city and Halo 1 island at the start of the game, the rest of the game can look quite pretty.)
HOWEVER, the game is filled to the brink with minigames, and it is just insanely overkill. I say this as someone who enjoyed the ones in Bayonetta 1! In Bayonetta 2, minigame sections were toned down and basically just there to give yourself a break to breathe. in 3, holy crap, there are so many, everywhere, back to back. Many of them feel terrible to control, are boring, and most of the time just feel like generic AAA set pieces with no flavor. Some of them are so bad it's offensive. I'm not sure who looked at the Spider summon and decided he deserved a godawful PS1 bootleg platformer section, but that was so bad it should be considered a hate crime.
The campaign is structured in an episodic format, with you going to a universe, getting a MacGuffin, and leaving after confronting the Big Bad of this game, to fight him again later. Here's the thing....you NEVER get an honest to god, real boss fight with this antagonist until the very end of the game. You do get to fight him, but only through minigames! Excited for the big confrontation with this scumbag? Nah, here's a rhythm game. Nah, here's a bubble bath minigame. What?
The only boss fight in this game that's actually quite fun is with the new rival character, Strider, but his placement in the campaign is sporadic and sparse. This leads to a really bad pacing issue going through the campaign, where things are just randomly thrown around in random places and nothing ever gets to feel particularly satisfying about Bayonetta's journey through the game. This is capped off by one of the worst final chapters in any action game, ever, which is filled with minigames, a boss fight with an adds phase like a typical AAA game, and a terrible, unfulfilling drawn out fight with the Big Bad. It felt like I was back on Namek waiting for 5 minutes to pass before it blew up, or I was fighting Perfect Cell and watching him get back up with asspull after asspull after you think he's beat, then he's not, then he is, then he's not. Then the ending comes, then a crappy boss fight comes, then the ending comes for real.
Story is also one of the worst video game stories I've ever seen in my life. It feels like a really, really bad fanfiction. Like, I'm talking 10 year old's first fanfiction.net story bad. Luka is literally only in this story to breed and die, Jeanne dies to the most obvious backstabbing of all time after accomplishing nothing and dooming the entire world, the Big Bad is a literal nobody who literally has no motivations, he is just evil to be evil, Bayonetta feels weirdly serious and out of character, the writing feels like a weird Kingdom Hearts parody written by people who hate Kingdom Hearts, and everyone dies, every universe dies, fuck you, Bayonetta is over, it's Viola's game now, Bayonetta 4 coming soon, please look forward to it, we really didn't want to make this game!

Not just a return to form, but a renaissance that has managed to break through a creative rut the series has been stuck in since Unleashed.
For the gameplay, this is the best Sonic's ever felt to control in 3D. The handling is tight and feels so, so good, you can stop on a dime with ease, and there is some precision platforming in the open world that would not be possible with the unwieldy race car controls of the Boost games. The open world itself is littered with tons of objectives and things to do, to the point where it can even be a little overwhelming when you're deciding what to do next. I really appreciate that fast travel is extremely limited, and how this game manages to set itself apart from the standard cookie cutter Ubisoft Towers open world games. Combat is also surprisingly good, but it gets a little muddled with weird control overlap between combat skills and movement. You lose control the more you upgrade Sonic, which sucks. The UX is pretty smooth for the most part, although I do wish dialogue options and tutorials could be navigated a little quicker. It's at it's worst with the Koco upgrades to ring count/speed, where you upgrade it one prompt at a time.
Graphically, this game is not some amazing AAA blockbuster, it is a Switch game at it's core after all, but it works well enough. The environments can be pretty, the animations for the character models also look great, and there are some impressive set pieces here with the Super Sonic battles. The biggest issue here is how bad the pop-in can get with the platforms in the sky, however for the actual environmental details, such as trees, grass, etc, pop-in isn't noticeable, so it's a bit of a strange juxtaposition.
Story is a bit unique for a Sonic game, taking a little more of a serious tone. It doesn't take itself TOO seriously, there's still quips in here, Sonic is still the cocky, sarcastic teen he's been since the 90s, however things are a little toned down here, which allows for some heartwarming conversations between Sonic and his friends, reminding you that hey, these are actually friends who care about each other. The tone in this story is most comparable to Ian Flynn's archie run and the IDW Sonic comics, and long-time Sonic fans will appreciate this.
By the way, OST is a 10/10, as usual for Sonic games

Would recommend this game to anyone who's been a fan of Sonic before. For people who aren't big Sonic nerds, I just want to stress that this is the best Sonic has ever felt to control, it's more comparable to a standard 3D platformer like Mario, and there are sliders you can change to tweak the controls if they feel too janky or hard to control for you.

The Citizen Kane of Super Mario 64 DS

Really cool fighting game. Not a fan of the balancing, though. I wish my boy Rock was better...
The scene for this game is very cool -- if you're playing on PC, just beware that you will have a hard time finding any matches through the official Steam release. Fightcade has a more active playerbase.

This review contains spoilers

Nier Replicant is a masterpiece, and one of the greatest games of all time. It's a celebration of video games as a medium, and it explores the unique ways it can tell a story that truly cannot be offered through any other platform.
Nier sets your expectations using well known video game tropes, only to completely flip everything on its head. In many ways, Nier is a deconstruction of popular games that have been central to the industry. It's structured very similarly to Ocarina of Time, in some really interesting ways. You start out as a young boy, set out on a mythical journey to gather the Sealed Verses, which will allow you to confront the antagonist of the story. A clear parallel to Ocarina of Time, where you gather the spiritual stones, only to inadvertently help the main antagonist, Ganondorf, who plunges the world into ruin, and you come back as an adult years later, stronger and more prepared this time, and having to clean up the mess you helped cause. Hell -- story aside, this game even has block puzzles and a big field reminiscent of Hyrule Field. There's also a segment in a forest where your senses are taken away, you're lost and forced to rely on only one visual stimuli to progress. In Ocarina of Time, this was the Lost Woods where you're supposed to navigate by paying attention to sound. In Nier's Forest of Myth, you are instead forced to read rather than listen, and guides will not help you here.
Nier Replicant does something very similar to Ocarina's story, but actually explores it in a more realistic way, and what such a state of affairs would do to the world and the people inhabiting it -- and shows just what other people would think of someone doing all of this. Nier Replicant is filled with grey morality like this. There's no true heroes or villains here, everyone has their own motives, some more admirable than others, and the most evil people in this story are people who are long dead and cannot be stopped, since they set events into motion hundreds of years ago and are not here to see the results of their plans. There are parallels to other games like Resident Evil, but I think the clearest thing here you're supposed to notice is this game's almost parody-like take on Ocarina of Time, and other popular JRPGs like Kingdom Hearts.
One important thing to note here is the gameplay, which is tied very strongly to the narrative. Combat is fast and fluid like Nier Automata, and has modern innovations like a proper lock-on system. However, it's not as deep as something like Devil May Cry, instead relying more on the RPG mechanics -- which is totally okay! Nier suits a large variety of playstyles. You can use item buffs like a standard RPG, you can be slow and methodical like a Souls game, parrying to win, or you can play this like it's a Platinum game and dodge your way to victory. There's also a mechanic called the sidestep, which is like the Reversal from Kingdom Hearts 2 but way cooler. Nier feels more grounded and realistic than Automata, but is still fun to play, which is good. There's a disturbing element to the combat as well, in how well the blood effects are done, the enemies making sounds that almost sound child-like when they die -- plus your magic death book absorbing the blood of your enemies to use spells. It's all very masterfully designed, and in my opinion, an improvement over Automata, which felt much less accessible to multiple playstyles, as it was more like a typical Platinum character action game with tacked-on RPG mechanics that felt redundant. The presentation of Replicant is also very well done, which is a nice cherry on top for the game. On an HDR TV, the game looks hauntingly beautiful. Many of the quirks from the original game like the dramatic bloom is carried over, just executed in a more appetizing way.
Nier is a story of humanity itself, touching on everything good and bad about people and the footprint we've left on this speck of rock in the vast emptiness of space. With the constant reminders of how little about the world is out of our control, it's so easy to experience feelings of nihilism, hopelessness, and impending doom. One day, humanity will probably end -- but what's important in life isn't how your life goes out, but how you lived it, and how you impacted other people's lives. In much of the conversation around these games by Yoko Taro, so much focus is put on the multiple endings, the ultimate fate of the characters, etcetera. Nier Replicant is a reminder of how important the journey through life is -- and how vital it is to learn to understand other people, other cultures, other ways of life, no matter how outlandish other people might seem, even if they speak a different language, or they don't look like us. Human connection is a concept that is constantly played around with, whether it's through the story's exploration of language, the choice to sever your connection with the world, and ultimately your friends by erasing your existence. How far will people go to maintain what gives their life meaning -- and, in the process, lose themselves? So often in media, self sacrifice is painted as a noble, heroic trope, but in Nier Replicant, all of the ugly aspects of sacrifices are shown. By choosing to erase yourself, the remaining cast suffers without you, having constant nightmares, crying when they think about you, even your sister, who you fought so hard to save, weeps over something she doesn't understand in her diary that can be read in the E route's loading screen, because you didn't even allow her the solace of understanding why she's traumatized. Everyone in Nier Replicant is so self absorbed and convicted in their beliefs, that they rarely ever stop to question what they're doing, if there's a better way to go about things, or if they can find a mutual understanding with their enemies. When the protagonist, Nier, spends so much time trying to cure his sister's disease, that he becomes obsessed to the point of risking death, chasing mythological, questionable leads, he forgets that all his sister really wants is to see her brother more, and spend time with the only family she has left. Nier is filled to the brim with tragedy like this, but as you're constantly reminded throughout the game -- it's too late to stop and dwell on your mistakes. Trying to save the world on your own and fight things out of your control can ultimately be fruitless, and filled with nothing but tragedy. However, there's always time to change course and focus on what really matters. Spend time with the people important to you. Try to understand people different from you. Don't allow your preconceived prejudices to cloud your judgment of strangers. Even if the world goes to hell, as long as you have your friends, you can find meaning, and worth, in your life. This is Nier, and it is one of my favorite games of all time.
I'm not used to writing reviews like this, so this might be all over the place, but I just wanted to let my thoughts spill out, because I had a lot of them after finishing the game. :)

The hate for Sonic Forces is extremely, overwhelmingly overblown. What's here isn't a bad game. It's just...an "okay" game. It's mediocre, maybe disappointingly mediocre, considering that it was supposed to be a return to the boost formula. Even watered down, the boost gameplay is still fun to me. It's not as good as Generations, and the levels are too short, but that doesn't make it bad, it's just not /as good/ as the other games. Classic Sonic's levels are mostly tolerable, except for the last time you play as him in a totally awful auto scroll level. The player avatar to me is the most fun aspect of this game. With the drill equipped, the speedrunning possibilities go absolutely crazy. People often complain about the story, but to me, I love how cheesy, over the top, ridiculously stupid it is, and that is 100% unironic. Stories like Sonic Adventure 2, filled with cheesy, genuine shonen fluff and B movie cringe, is the essence of Sonic to me. It's not for everyone, but that's okay.
If the levels were longer and the moveset for modern Sonic wasn't gimped, I think Forces wouldn't have gotten such a bad rep.

Lost World on 3DS has a number of issues preventing it from being great, like the aerial controls being way too sensitive, a lack of grind rail switching like in other games, and the special stages. However, this is 100% a better game than the Wii U version. It doesn't overstay it's welcome, and despite the twitchy aerial movement, this is way more fun to play at high speeds. You can do some really fun stuff with the parkour here, and some of the stages are a blast to speedrun through. Overall...it's not bad!

Coming off of Generations, this is one of the most disappointing Sonic games I've played. The series was really going places, just for it all to be thrown away for some weird experimental title. This is where the rut Modern Sonic is currently in started. It's a shame this game is not so great, because the parkour system is actually really interesting and could be a neat mechanic in future games. Everything else weighs the game down, though, which doesn't give the parkour system any room to shine.