For all the things I enjoy about this game, the music, the later worlds, and the idea behind Spirits, everything for me just ended up feeling unsatisfying. The combat never felt great, there's not as much incentive to experiment with commands as there is in Birth by Sleep, and the story while I didn't outright dislike I felt didn't explore the idea's it introduced and made the journey feel like a slog until the end. I like the idea of Spirits, but they never had a major impact as party members, and basic combat skills being locked behind certain fusions means I was just never going to have the combat flow I wanted unless I went out of my way to grind. The Drop gauge is another cool concept on paper but it should of been used as a narrative tool more than a random 30 minute timer. The world's you visit didn't last long enough to leave an impression, which wasn't helped by the back and forth of the drop gauge meaning I was doing each world twice at almost the same time. The latter worlds in the game I felt did this better, but by then I was pretty burnt out. Don't think I want to revisit this one.

Birth by Sleep does a lot of good things, I got a lot of satisfaction from melding commands throughout each playthough, I thought the gameplay was solid as a whole, and I enjoyed the main three characters. I never had a problem going through each characters route, there’s so much variety in the command system not to mention the stories themselves that it never seemed repetitive. I played every route on Proud, and I’m glad I did both to easily see the secret endings and I found the experience easier than 1 or 2 on Standard, though still fine. As for my issues, I really wish that we saw more of the main three interacting with each other. There’s the opening, and some flashbacks, but I really just wanted to see Aqua Terra and Ven’s relationship fleshed out more than it was. For the gameplay, there wasn’t many boss fights I cared for. I can’t help it that I’m pretty fresh off KH2FM which has like a billion of the coolest boss fights ever. The bosses here are either boring or just don’t feel good to fight. There’s exceptions, I really enjoyed everyone’s final boss in particular, but a lot of the other fights just don’t feel special or just don’t feel good to fight. Overall, I had fun! I’m just not certain if I’ll ever feel like going through all three stories again.

This game is so fun that despite putting over 100 hours in a playthough in such a short amount of time I already want to start fresh on a higher difficulty, try to play with my friends, and try a few mods. I love the sense of accomplishment and the feeling of options opening up each step of progression, I love fighting the bosses, I love my movement capabilities expanding to a degree I never imagined they would, I love exploring the world and being surprised by things dozens of hours in. I played on the smallest world type and despite my dozens of hours mining there’s still large chunks of my world I never had the chance to experience. I love the variety in weapons which feels wrong to say because I almost never touched any magic weapons and I still felt like I had a lot of options throughout my playthough, and I absolutely want to amend that my next one because I really felt like I was missing out. Was there some dull periods? Sure. I think there’s a few points where progress feels sluggish and I wish things were done a little differently. But the fact I’m still having fun during those few and far between moments speaks volumes to how well thought out this experience is. I don’t know how I slept on this game for so long, but it’ll be a keeper.

Overall a good way to play these games but I wish they went a little further in a few areas. I never expected them to have fangame levels of customization but there’s some really obvious settings that would just be nice for a collection like this.
•The drop dash is weird as hell in all the games minus 3&K.
• Tails AI seems wonky?
•A few bugs, checkpoints being busted in a level
•The hyper sonic screen flash seems even brighter?? Could be a side effect of widescreen but I wish it was toned down.
•New sonic 3 music overall disappointing
• Missions are cool, fun extra
•It is very nice having these officially in widescreen
•Super nice being able to retry special stages
•Steam achievement was bugged, had to make a save file backup to fix it
•Mirror mode is cursed