Disney Infinity 3 adds even more improvements over the previous games and created a really good foundation for a great online community of fun custom maps. Sadly, with the servers shut down, none of that is available anymore. Additionally, with the figures being difficult to get, Disney Infinity in general is not really playable. I understand that the core of these games is maybe not the best but I absolutely loved them and 100%'d all 3 games. As a toy collector, a Disney fan, and a gamer, I loved these games. The figures were really well-designed collectibles with a great aesthetic, we still have some of them on display. I have fond memories of this game and the community and I wish these games had found some way to continue after the death of the toys-to-life market.

Disclaimer: These are my brief thoughts based on my memory of playing this 7 years ago:

The original Disney Infinity game just barely qualified for inclusion in my plan to play every Pixar game since the starter pack came with a level based on Monsters University.
So, if that's the case, why am I playing 3.0? and why have I skipped 2.0?

3.0 contains two Play Set packs based on Pixar movies that don't have official video games, 2015's Inside Out and 2016's Finding Dory, which I'm playing in this playthrough instead of waiting until I've seen the film because I plan on playing Rush: A Disney Pixar Adventure, which I'll talk about when I play that.
While it is true that adding these two packs could possibly open me up to playing other "DLC" based on Pixar movies that don't otherwise have official games, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it..

I've also skipped 2.0 since that's entirely based on Marvel, although to appease the part of my brain that'll nag me about it, I've decided to play 2.0 pretty soon anyway.

3.0's official Starter Pack comes with a Play Set based on the Star Wars prequel trilogy (or, I guess The Clone Wars TV show since Ashoka is here). Since the game came with this set, I'll be playing this first.
It plays a lot like the original game, but it's a lot bigger (although that could be attributed to the fact that this whole playset is one story instead of three like the last one). I do like that each planet has its own collectables list, that makes it easier to get them.

The Star Wars playset is actually a lot of fun. A short, open world Star Wars game where every planet has only a small amount of collectables makes this like a smaller, self-contained LEGO® Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and if the other two playsets (based on the original trilogy and the sequel) are like this I might actually consider picking them up.

The second of the three I own for this game is based on Inside Out, and is the main reason I bought this game.
It's a pretty boring 2.5D platformer that gives me LittleBigPlanet vibes (maybe it was developed by Sumo Digital). Getting all the collectables in this is surprisingly hard on a first run through and the game doesn't really give me much incentive to go back to this (I much prefer the open worlds).
I couldn't actually complete it since I didn't figure out exactly how the final level of it worked, and losing a round makes you redo the entire level from the beginning.

I wasn't really interested in the playset and I don't really have an incentive to continue, so I decided to just ditch it.

The Toy Box stuff is honestly a hell of a lot worse than the original game - the hub world feels a lot emptier, the Toy Box Adventures are incredibly confusing, and a lot of the feats require you to buy additional characters for next to no reward.

A cool addition to this game is the fact that progress on characters is saved - this means that because my figures are pre-owned, I'm a higher level and the skill trees are mostly complete without my input, but other than that little, interesting detail I think the only reason you should pick this game up are the Star Wars playsets and the excuse to buy the figures since now they actually do something.

There's no other reason to pick this up over the original, at least not since 2017 since the online servers are dead. You can't get 100%, or anywhere close anymore since not only are a handful of trophies unobtainable but there are also two playsets that came with trophies.

One of these two is Finding Dory, which I own. I'd like to get the other one, based on Marvel, since it's developed by United Front Games (they did Sleeping Dogs), but it's expensive for some reason.
Dory is a pretty simple and quite short game that's actually pretty fun to get 100% on.
It has a similar vibe to the Inside Out pack, but instead of being an irritatingly monotonous 2D platformer, it's a fun one.
You play as Dory, and you're collecting lost fish and putting them at home in a reef.

This means that between levels, instead of having a match-3 game or a generic menu, you get an open world to add buildings to and do mini missions in.
This is what Disney Infinity should be, and I hope 2.0 is the same.

I used to play this game a ton. I never got either of the other Disney Infinity games but the fact this game had Star Wars in it, I was sold. The game has a lot to do in it, I remember finishing the "Twilight of the Republic" playset, I began messing around with the INterior, and that was a good time. There is also no telling how long I spent creating stupid shit in the toybox. I also got "Rise against the Empire" and its definitely my favorite playset in the game. The sidekicks were also super fun and I spent hours just farming so I could feed them food to level them up.
While I really enjoyed this game, I hate that so much cool shit is locked behind a pay wall. At the time I thought toy's to life was cool but now I just see it as a money pit that didn't need to exist. I think the game would have been way better if all the content was unlockable instead if locked behind plastic figures.

A childhood favorite and still a game I look back on so fondly.

Disney Infinity was such a wonderful toy box of creativity for me as a kid and I'm so grateful for those memories.

I love all three, but 3.0 is the one that perfects the formula imo.