really great game! I went into it a little worried that trying to cram a whole game of story into one night would make it unfulfilling, but once I got a little ways in it was clear that wasn't the case at all. this game oozes charm so hard and every ounce of it is engaging and exciting. the overall story was great, and it always felt like it was keeping me on my toes - leaving enough head room to draw my own connections while also constantly surprising me, yet never feeling cheap or forced. I got really attached to the main cast as well. the gameplay is also really unique and fun, and the variety of puzzles is outstanding; there are a couple I was less fond of (see: prison. lol) but I think all those really needed was an undo button or something since it was just the constant re-doing puzzle setups to get back to a point to try something different that was a bit of a pain. but that's barely a stain on this wonderful experience - would love to see more games like this!

absolutely the best kiseki game.
- gameplay is the peak of the series by far. action combat is rudimentary but complements the turn-based combat incredibly well and switching between them is shockingly fun. most enjoyable the combat has ever been
- story is excellent and im so glad they went a darker route than previous games. theres some seriously fucked up shit in this game and it rules. ofc there are some of the classic falcom tropes but they are pretty minor overall
- music is overall good, some of jindo's best work and koguchi is making a huge impact. i feel like singa's contributions have a lot of good ideas this time around but as usual they tend to be badly stitched together and/or poorly arranged, but in the context of the game they don't bother me much. also sonoda is there

overall: 10/10 please oh please let kuro 2 not be shit

i liked this slightly more than ff1 lol. there are definitely flaws to the exp system but i like what they were going for at least conceptually; it's solid at low levels but the curve for high levels is really absurd. luckily none of that is even necessary, since the majority of the leveling you need to progress is easily acquired just by engaging all the encounters. unfortunately the game is also somehow way too easy; none of the bosses posed a threat whatsoever, and pretty much all of my deaths were from regular enemies, which was pretty disappointing. aside from a couple strangely timed missables i didn't find anything too cryptic, which was nice. i find it kind of hilarious that each new fourth party member gets killed off and the rest of the characters just act like they never even existed to begin with, almost like it was just used as an excuse to force your party to change lol. i didn't mind that part too much but it probably could have been executed better.
i certainly wouldn't call this a "great" game but i don't think it deserves to be called "bad" either. 7.1/10

honestly a lot more fun than i expected it to be. i still have problems though

biggest issue for me is that everything is... well, too big. legends arceus did "open world" really well - each area felt distinct and open with plenty to explore, without being overwhelming. paldea on the other hand just feels massive and unwieldy, with way too much open space and next to no notable landmarks. the cities fall victim to this too; every single time i walked into one i felt immediately lost and there wasn't enough in each city to motivate learning the layout - i think this is also a fault of the giant open world, in that there isn't much reason to go to the cities except for the gym and maybe to buy new clothes; they don't feel at all like part of the progression, which really sucks compared to previous pokemon games. it doesn't feel like there are grounded objectives until the very endgame, and it doesn't help that there isn't any level scaling. i really really think if they want to go the open world route again for gen 10 that they should take more notes from legends arceus. area zero is by FAR the best area of this game and a big part of that is how self-contained it is

i also think the team star "raids" are really awful. i get that they wanted to force you to use the auto battle system but man its literally just "spam the R button for the next 2 minutes". on the other hand, the tera raids are a big improvement from the dynamax raids in swsh. still though, the shield is annoying and the fact that they can wipe stat changes and even uncharge the tera orb is total BS and makes the high level raids a lot less fun.

it's also really annoying that trading is still required in any way to complete the pokedex. like, they're already keeping the size of the pokedex pretty small to make it more accessible to fully complete, so why keep the biggest and dumbest blockade of all? either give each version its own pokedex with version exclusives, or better yet, stop making two fucking versions, the concept is way past its prime and we don't need it anymore!!!!!

and obviously performance issues. i actually didn't run into any major glitches (the worst i really saw was pokemon spawned inside a wall a couple times, and a couple really wonky hitboxes), but the fps is a whole other story. everything feels so, so sluggish, either because of the framerate or just because things take forever to load sometimes. the camera also controls really badly

a couple nice things to end off:
- the characters and their stories are great! while the main plot is whatever, arven and nemona and penny are all great. i liked all the different personalities at the academy itself too, especially clavell - it is really really nice to see an old man character in a position of power who is not just a good guy but also just really awesome - he's one of the best characters in the whole game
- the music is so, so good! i also was really impressed by how much effort was put into the transitions, whether going seamlessly from field to battle music or between gym leader phases or from battle to fanfare, it always felt shockingly natural, and the motif use is super super well done in this game overall
- it was still generally a very fun game, even with all its issues! i just wish game freak would get their shit together, really

man, where do i even start lol.
the story and characters are outstanding, leagues ahead of the first game. that said, i think it would not be nearly as effective without the setup from the entire first game, so it's hard to judge it purely on its own merits. frankly though, i loved pretty much every beat of the story, and the twists/reveals/tie-ins near and at the end were actually way more satisfying than i expected them to be; if i was judging the game on that alone it'd probably be a solid 10. but of course then there are the trials. luckily the minigames are still a quite minor part of the experience, but pretty much all of them are significantly worse than the originals (or just plain bad). the new hangmans gambit is so awful i don't know how it even got through testing. panic talk action is way too cluttered so it's way harder to focus on anything that isn't just the timing indicators. the new "consent" mechanic in the debates is usually just confusing and felt wholly unnecessary. the rebuttal minigame, as well as the increased number of truth bullets in general, highlight a really annoying flaw that was present in the original too, which is just... there's no time to actually think, and no mechanism provided to the player to actually inspect the relevant information without a tedious stream of pausing, unpausing, checking which things are available, possibly writing things down, etc.; even if the game just showed like a little checkmark in the truth bullets menu next to the active ones, that would be a massive improvement. luckily new closing argument and logic dive were actually quite fun; logic dive does have the same problem of no time to think though, especially when it hits you with questions you have zero possible way of predicting and expects you to pick the right answer with absurd speed. BUT as much as i can go on and on about how bad the minigames are, they are again such a minor factor that they had a minimal impact on my overall experience. ultimately a great game.
9.5/10

this was very much a "just okay" game. the core concept is great, it's mostly the execution that flops for me. many of the puzzle stages feel very arbitrary either in the actual objective (which is often unnecessarily cryptic) or in the rules of the given stage (i.e. what you are allowed to kill, what is allowed to be destroyed, etc). i also felt that many of the more creative potential solutions to puzzles were either not rewarded at all or just completely didn't work when they reasonably should have. the action stages are differently flawed, in that many of them feel like repeats of the same thing, or are just big mazes, or are literally just puzzle stages with gates. some other minor issues as well: collision detection is fairly buggy, and a number of times i ended up stuck in walls or had unfair glitched deaths; also, for puzzle stages especially, it was annoying to not be able to see the hint (which often contains necessary information!) again without resetting the stage.
overall not a bad game, but has a ton of room for improvement, which i hope is more realized in the sequels. 5/10

way too much to comment on so just gonna do this in point form

general:
- the camera is horrible in all three games. it floats around like it's constantly on ice. the locked camera during certain bosses/etc also gets really annoying when trying to locate ammo/etc
- the motion blur is fucking awful and headache inducing, thankfully it can be disabled but it shouldn't exist in the first place
- spyro's controls themselves are a bit floaty, but not that bad
- many of the remastered character designs are awful creepy disney knockoff abominations (especially fairies and "humans"). some are okay though

spyro 1:
- the flight stages are god awful. they should not exist
- thieves are purely a nuisance and add nothing
- the (instant death!) water everywhere is super annoying
- some glides are stupidly precise
- while i do like the collectathon nature of things, the stages doesn't feel like they have grounded objectives
- tree tops sucks dick and can rot in hell
- 5/10

spyro 2:
- the flight stages are still god awful
- kinda annoying that cutscenes play every time you enter and leave, and challenges reset
- so glad that water is just a thing now and not deadly for no reason. but also the swimming controls are fucked beyond belief
- much more grounded objectives, which were mostly okay-ish
- surprisingly buggy, often broken text boxes and random lighting and draw distance issues
- gulp is an absolutely garbage boss
- 6.5/10

spyro 3:
- so glad they got rid of the stage cutscenes, and also really glad that the stages don't completely reset every time you enter
- the stages in general are the best designed of the trilogy for sure, with a few exceptions
- the flying stages are actually not that bad somehow!! but the hidden minigames in them are all really bad and control miserably. game would still be better without them entirely
- i liked the gameplay variety with the extra characters, though most of them felt pretty sluggish and a bit awkward to control
- several of the egg challenges are still really, really miserably awful. notably, every skateboard area. final area snowboard zone is the glitchiest most bullshit part of the entire game. also the whack a mole thing was awful
- sparx stages kinda suck
- lost fleet is a horrible stage
- haunted tomb is terrible
- the camera when controlling agent 9 is the absolute worst. also why does he look like the en eff tee monkey i hate it
- by far the glitchiest of the 3 games too somehow. some parts should never have passed QA. felt like i was constantly fighting against the collision detection, randomly getting stuck and so on. the text boxes were somehow even glitchier than in 2, over half of them i couldn't even read and had to rely on the voice acting.
- 7/10

overall, averaging the three games, 6/10 for the trilogy. i haven't played the originals so i can't compare, but the games all just have too many really terrible moments for me to say i thoroughly enjoyed them, even if i did quite enjoy many parts of them.

this was such a refreshing experience!!! i pretty much loved everything about it, from the catching to the exploration to the boss fights... well most of them, anyway. the music (even though it's mostly/all remixes) is maybe some of the best game freak has ever put out; ichinose has been on the absolute top of his game lately. the graphics i don't care about, they look fine for what the game is. the character models and expressions are adorable, and the clothing options are excellent. i loved having a pokemon game where catching everything was the actual goal and was actually feasible to do; pretty much every change to the battle system and to the way evolutions, moves, etc. work is a plus that i hope carries over to the next main generation. honestly my only real complaint is that some of the boss fights (especially the last few) are too hard to read/react to and do not give you enough health, but the mechanics themselves are fun and i generally still enjoyed the bosses; i would definitely not complain if pokemon leaned even more into the action rpg genre in the future. sorry this is super stream of consciousness but UHH yeah i hope we get to see more in the "legends" series, this was a blast. 9.7/10