so the bad:
this game has atrocious performance first of all, and i have learned it's not my computer's fault. intended for 60 fps, runs 20-30 if you're looking at any geometry. sound design is terrible, many sounds don't go away when the source vanishes, sound effects play twice or are up to 10 seconds late, and certain things like picking items up have no sound effect to indicate you've actually done it. controls like butter on a skillet, incredibly easy to walk off a ledge to your doom. unlike other spyro games you can't glide if you walk off something into the air, only out of an actual jump, which means the game is far more punishing for small directional mistakes than it has any right to be. charging is way more dangerous because of this and the low framerate as it's hilariously common to just go right off a ledge.

world design is gigantic and vacuous, kind of yooka laylee syndrome, and finding all 7-900 gems in a level is a slog. some of the levels i spent 20-30 extra minutes just finding 2 or 3 gems in with no indication of where they are. the game is also really short compared to the older spyro games with only one hud and like 10 levels or so. models in this game are ugly all around, and spyro's recurring friends are basically absent aside from sparx. almost every challenge in the game is either mind-numbingly simple or very frustrating, especially the vehicle sections. spyro's abilities are barely utilized, with nearly no supercharging, simple platforming (not counting control mistakes), and as far as i remember no headbash actually needed. the wing shield ability is borderline useless except in one world where it's the only way to defeat enemies, and even then spyro has nearly no control over how to reflect the projectiles aside from readjust and pray you hit the enemy. also the wing shield ability is mapped to the very organic 'switch breath' button plus 'inventory' button so trying to use it fills your hud with pointless information

the only level in the game where using different breaths throughout matters is the last world, which is technically optional. the game only has one boss fight, the final one against ripto, which is really annoying as he can stunlock you to death nearly immediately if you aren't ready. also the find a collectible feature is a reward for beating ripto earlier in the game, which means fighting him before finishing two of the worlds and then fighting him again, not something i knew until, well, beating the game and finding out there were multiple ways to fight him. also the game has some of the worst guidance in a platformer, i missed so much stuff because npcs don't auto talk to you or, even better, are wrong. the game was clearly changed a LOT after dialogue was recorded because there's so much misinformation in the dialogue and the voice acting and text won't match, it's great

game is riddled with glitches (even on gamecube which was the version i played), such as what i posted earlier where spyro was just stuck flying upside down. you get caught on geometry and have to leave the level so much, like i mentioned even talking to NPCs can do this if you or them are facing the wrong direction. also gems would fly out of reach on certain levels and the level would have to be reset to fix that, too. i think that about sums up the problems i have with the game, which is basically nothing quite works like it's supposed to.

as for the good:
it's a spyro game! plays like the originals (theoretically) and can be 100%'ed without too much trouble. collecting things is always fun. the level ideas were basically all really enjoyable, in particular the crop circle and dinosaur terminator levels are very memorable. even as massive and empty as the levels can be they're still well enough designed that a single run through them usually cements the geography in your brain, navigating is not hard like it is in yooka laylee (which is i guess the only other mediocre collectathon i've played). flight levels are still very enjoyable for me (the whole two of them there are), though i imagine if you're someone who already doesn't like the flight levels the reduced framerates and slipperier controls would not make for a fun time. the game is very generous about saving progress in a stage, so even if you constantly are booting yourself back to the hud almost everything you've done in a world is saved, which is not the standard for spyro, and might actually be a bandaid fix for how bad the game is. all said, i did enjoy the game and basically played it in two big sittings, first half of the game a few months ago and the second half now. it's still a pretty fucking bad game, though, and sucks that it kinda irreparably damaged the franchise.

Yoshi's Crafted World is easily the second best Yoshi game released, and unfortunately that's not a huge deal. Yoshi's Crafted World has a great basic gameplay loop heavily hindered by QoL issues and repetition. Crafted World could comfortably be two or three worlds shorter without the game feeling empty.

One of the big aspects of Yoshi's Crafted World is the souvenir collecting, basically going through past levels and searching the background and foreground for specific crafts to collect. This is a great idea that encourages players to actually enjoy the well-crafted scenery! Unfortunately, pretty much every course in the game has at least three souvenirs and you can only receive them one at a time. This means that souvenir collecting is a ton of overworld conversations rather than allowing the player to get a longer list and just go through courses crossing them off. Combined with the 43 courses in the game, this is exhaustive to the point where I would only play one world per session.

Like most Yoshi games, there's a steep difficulty curve at the end of the game, and the secret boss challenge run is one of the hardest missions I've had in any Nintendo game. It's unfortunate that it's muddled by being tired of the game well before you get to that point. Additionally, someone can let Nintendo know that Yoshi games are allowed to have real soundtracks again.

Crafted World makes better use of the thematic gimmick than either Epic Yarn or Woolly World, and the levels are incredible in how they look, bringing to mind the aesthetic of LittleBigPlanet of practical crafting. There's also a huge variety in the crafting materials, from yarn to scrap metal to recycled cans and boxes, it's an incredibly immersive experience. One of my favorite details is the bosses being introduced in stop-motion crafting.

All said, Yoshi's Crafted World is not the best game on the Switch by far, and with Yoshi's Island on the SNES Online feature it's not even the best Yoshi game on the Switch. It's a fun and gorgeous game, still, particularly towards the end when the game ramps up the difficulty. It's a game worth checking out but one that could end up tiring the player before they beat it.

A very nostalgia-driven experience, Fire Emblem 7 has not held up over the years. The game is a good introduction to the series for the Western audience and the game is beloved for the memorable characters like Lyn and Hector. As a Fire Emblem title, FE7 is very neutral, feeling very much like a base Fire Emblem. Gameplay is solid but unimpressive and this title is generally considered one of the easiest entries in a series loved for its difficulty.

One of the biggest sticking points for Fire Emblem 7 is the story that's generally considered to be laughably worse than most Fire Emblem games (an impressive feat as many of the Fire Emblem games don't have that good of stories anyways). The lower difficulty harms how players who started on FE7 play the series. Units who would be terrible in another Fire Emblem are perfectly usable in 7, which leads players to fallacies about what makes characters good and leading to worse gameplay in later and earlier titles. Fire Emblem 7 is serviceable and nostalgic but the weakest of the GBA Fire Emblem titles.