This is the first time I'm revisiting The Two Thrones since the PS2. Having now replayed the whole Sands of Time trilogy within the last couple years, I'm surprised to say that Warrior Within held up the best.

All three games hold a special place in my heart, especially The Sands of Time, which beautifully blended acrobatic 3D platforming and puzzling with a charming aesthetic and story.

The weakest part of SoT of course being the combat, which is slow and repetitive, and boils down to killing every enemy by vaulting over and slicing. It's flashy at first but outstays its welcome by the end.

Warrior Within massively improves on the combat by adding secondary weapons, combos, more environmental interaction, and generally being faster and flowing way better.

So it's bizarre to see The Two Thrones take such a step backward and return to slow, awkward, clunky combat. This probably has to do with my choosing hard mode, but enemies have way too much health and take an eternity to kill. Taking several minutes to chip away at two or three enemies just to see another appear when you finally get one down is exhausting.

There's also the strange addition of a stealth takedown QTE system, which works fine and can be quite satisfying taking out an entire room nearly instantly. But if you fail or are detected, your punishment is having to fight every enemy plus reinforcements, which takes eons longer than stealth would've. There were multiple occasions where I'd opted to get killed and try again than even attempt the combat sequence.

At the very least, many enemy encounters aren't actually required and I found myself simply running past them whenever I could.

Besides the combat, everything else I like about PoP is here and done as well as usual, i.e. the platforming and light environmental puzzles. The story is serviceable, mostly a return to form to the style of Sands of Time both in how its told and returning characters like Farah and the Vizier. Glad to have Yuri Lowenthal, the original voice of the Prince, back as well.

The ending was also very cool, with the dreamlike sequence fighting the Dark Prince and being transported to locations from throughout the trilogy. And reenacting the Prince telling the story to Farah was a nice touch.

I had a good time revisiting these games. Nostalgia aside, they all had their frustrating moments, but mostly hold up as very solid with some of the jank expected of the early 2000s.

I just found it funny that Warrior Within, what I expected to come away thinking the black sheep of the trilogy, with its comical shift in tone from lighthearted to overly edgy, held up as the best experience overall. I started to miss the metal soundtrack in The Two Thrones!

Yuri Lowenthal is such a good voice actor, holy shit.

Everything here feels super refined. The combat, traversal, open world, side objectives. None of these are radically different from before, but feel close to their best possible iterations.

Big fan of how streamlined the abilities and gadgets are now. Consolidating everything to "L1/R1 + button" is intuitive and convenient. I always liked the old weapon wheel-style selection for gadgets in theory but never fully engaged with it. With this system, I used everything at my disposal.

Web swinging has never been more fun. First thing I did was set steering assist to 0 and fall damage on, and it's almost like a whole different game. I really enjoy having to put a little more thought and effort in to go fast and look cool. The way you can build and maintain momentum is so rewarding. And standout moves like the wings, slingshot, corner tethering, etc. gave me fun new tools to play with and made everything flow even smoother.

The story had some big moments that really did it for me. The black suit arc was basically everything I could've wanted if not slightly short-lived. There was so much going on overall though that I'm not sure how cohesive everything was by the end. Starting to think they can never culminate to an ending as perfectly as the first game.

Gotta say there were quite a few bugs, and I crashed like three times. Definitely less polished than usual in that regard.

I also found the graphics settings to be weirdly lacking? It was either full fidelity (30 fps) or performance (60 fps) with no in-between options like Rift Apart and Miles Morales had. Had to go with performance mode and it's still a beautiful game but I wasn't blown away by the visuals. Kinda felt the limits of the PS5 here.

Nitpicks aside, this was another special, cinematic experience and a joy to play. The ending sets up some interesting plot threads for the future and I'm intrigued to see how they innovate even further on this formula.

Short and sweet little tribute. A nice taste of what Celeste could be like in 3D. Like a bite-sized Mario Odyssey level with strawberries and secrets to find.

Retains much of the same charm though somewhat simplified by only being able to dash on one plane.

The platforming is snappy and challenging with room for expression, though frustrating at times since the camera and depth perception were not always on my side.

The controls are very simple, but I appreciated the nuggets of advanced tech in there like wavedashing and side flipping.

A treat from the Celeste team!

(27/30 strawberries, 1 hr)