A fine addition to the Metroid series. It plays extremely well, there's very few issues mechanically, and it's overall just a blast to play.

I only have a few issues. I wasn't huge on Samus acting as a silent protagonist, it felt like a step back from Fusion in some regards. Mercury Steam's art direction is also a mixed bag; some things look great, but other elements feel lacking in comparison to the rich sprite-based visuals of Zero Mission or Fusion, or the excellent visual design work Team Ninja did in Metroid: Other M. It definitely looks better design-wise compared to Samus Returns, though.

Overall, it's a great game and I sincerely hope we get more 2D Metroid entries.

A fun addition to the Dragon Quest series. In some ways I get even more excited to play Dragon Quest spinoffs than the mainline entries, and had fun with this one.

The handful of new character and monster designs introduced in the game are pretty dang good, and the gameplay itself is fun as well. The treasures you can obtain are all references to different entires in the series, both to the mainline titles as well as the spinoffs, and it was fun spotting stuff I recognized from the other games.

It did feel a bit lacking in some areas, though. The amount of monsters in the game is remarkably limited, and I was a bit let down by there only really being 17 or so unique types, with the rest being palette swaps. For a game with monster recruitment as a main mechanic, it felt a bit sparse on variety, given the Dragon Quest Monsters series usually features hundreds of different varieties with mostly unique designs and only a handful of palette swaps. I wasn't expecting as many as there are there in those games, but it just felt kind of underwhelming in comparison. I also felt the maps were a bit TOO easy to totally explore, so after a certain point it doesn't feel like you're progressing as much.

Despite my nitpicks, I like this game a lot and recommend it if you're a fan of the series, or just looking for a more casual RPG-type game.

A fun game and solid entry into the series. The combat is really fun and unique, and it's definitely really fun to blaze across the map at high-speed. Sonic's movement options are definitely fun as well, and I love the addition of the Drop Dash giving us the second 3D Sonic game to actually feature a Spin Dash since Sonic '06. The Open Zone format is an interesting experiment for the series, and while I generally prefer more linear gameplay in my platformers, I'm interested to see where Sonic Team goes with it. I do appreciate the inclusion of the Cyber Space stages to provide that more linear style, though. The bosses are also some of the best in the series, and I honestly can't remember a single Sonic game where I had THIS MUCH consistent fun with the boss fights across an entire game. Even my absolute favorite Sonic titles tend to skew "just okay" on average in terms of how much I enjoy the bosses.

The story has plenty of fun notes, though I feel some of Ian Flynn's writing here can be a tad TOO self-referential to other games in the series. While I appreciate a number of the callbacks, it definitely feels odd to hear the Black Arms or Dark Gaia get namedropped in a series that's typically avoided that sort of thing.

My biggest gripe has to be the art style, as it's just insanely generic and bland, which is kind of a bummer as the Sonic series usually excels at making interesting looking environments. Sonic Lost World and Sonic Forces both featured excellent art direction and visuals, but here it just feels severely lacking. Some of the enemy designs are pretty cool as well, but a lot of them unfortunately feel a tad same-y and they don't really stand out that much visually for the most part, with only a handful of exceptions. The fact that the last two islands are almost identical landscape-wise to the first one is also kind of a bummer.

Overall, it's a fun time and worthy addition to the series, and I'm excited to see what Sonic Team does next.