List of things I don't like:
Sometimes the camera angle will change while playing a fielder just messing up which direction you're running.
As a baserunner you will randomly get tagged out for leading off (even without leading off) with no warning.
Navigating the menus suck, the jukebox music selection sucks, and managing your collections/inventory sucks.
Sometimes your uniform settings for your Diamond Dynasty team will reset to defaults along with clearing out all logos.
Graphics SUUUUUUCK.
The commentators get really annoying really fast saying the same 5 things over and over.

List of things I do like:
Pitching/batting feels great.
Lots of options for customization for your players.

Pros: Scaled down world. No modern day gameplay segments. Ease of using tools while in combat. Skill tree is not huge and overwhelming. I only had to use a guide once and it was while trying to figure out the Enigma riddles. The character of Basim in this game made him an actual sympathetic villain in Valhalla.
Cons: Too short, there needs to be a balance between the massive games and the smaller scale ones. Due to it being shorter, the story felt rushed towards the end. I'm glad it wasn't 300 hours long but would have preferred it be a little longer. No post game unless you didn't complete all the optional quests along the way. No epilogue showing what Basim is up to now in present day.

Better than Forces and Lost World but that’s not saying much. Overworld was cool to explore but it was trying too hard to be Breath of the Wild. Combat was literally just mashing Y which wasn’t fun. The platforming stages remove the camera control which just makes you fly off the side if you don’t know what’s coming up. Sonic’s momentum is all over the place, the “action stages” are 1 of 4 themes based on past stages, and the over world and enemies are generic and boring looking. I guess the things I liked were the character interactions, all the references to Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, and that’s about it. Oh and the final boss was the worst in the whole franchise.

Completed Hard Mode. Very good. I enjoyed it more than Three Houses, probably because I didn’t have to play it 4 times to get the “full” story. I like most of the new characters and their silly yet heartfelt interactions. The new Engage mechanic was pretty cool letting whichever unit become broken with the right set ups. Also the ease of gaining weapon proficiency so swap to any class you want for whichever unit is great. I do feel the difficulty across the story maps was all over the place from going to very easy maps to insanely difficult and finishing the final map being very easy again. The skirmish difficulties was higher than any of the story maps throughout the entire game.

Overall I highly enjoyed this game and would recommend it over Three Houses for a new player of the series.