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

(ARR review)
I loved everything about this game except actually doing the MSQ I’m all for worldbuilding but it took me about 120 hours to get through ARR + patch content. Should be clarified at least chunk of that was doing everything else the game had to offer and yeah what’s there is great I love doing raids and dungeons, the customization is great (minus not being able to have hats and glasses on simultaneously), ant seasonal events, and even the job quests I thought were pretty fun. I wouldn’t even say I hate ARR’s story, it’s nothing special with a few exceptions but it’s a pretty simple plot all things considered it’s just that it’s stretched out like you wouldn’t believe across the most mundane quests known to mankind. Some quests were memorable but I couldn’t begin to tell you what the point of half of the quests were. I would say around the end of the main campaign and most of the patch content I did enjoy, but that’s about 80 hours in being generous. Otherwise there was an agonizing amount of go here talk to them and general fetch quests. Mainly what kept me going was friends helping me out and constant encouragement that things got better. I realize that’s a hard way to sell anything especially a video game BUT for what it’s worth if you have friends encouraging you to play the game I think it’s worth a shot, at least the free trial including the awards winning Heavensward etc etc. For what it’s worth the players I met in my journey throughout Eorzea were almost always pleasant, probably one of the nicer online community’s I’ve come across. Players in raids and dungeons were quick to point out if I was doing something wrong but not in a mean way or anything, just trying to help and be nice which was appreciated, and were understanding about me watching my cutscenes when they popped up. Yeah there was a few jerks here and there but nothing to be done about that I just ignored them and moved on, going to be at least a minority like that wherever you go.
Overall I can say only one thing for sure:

“Well Cid, that really was the Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn.”

The core gameplay is fun but it has the problem that every other Mario sports game on switch has with the lack of content, all the CPU cups can be cleared in just a few hours. If I’m being honest from my playtime I think I prefer a lot of the gameplay and elements from the GameCube game and Charged. The roster in this game just kinda sucks too, and it’s really confusing since that’s usually the thing Mario sports games get right as of late but no Daisy, or really anyone else than the bare minimum you should expect for a Mario spin off. Unless something changes this will probably be the last Mario sports game I buy.

For the love of this stupid blue rat please do not get this game on Switch, that’s the version I bought at launch and I thought it was so slow and sluggish, I returned it and called it a bad game for years. Fast forward to last month and I have some friends telling me to try another version of the game and it was on sale so I gave it a try and I had a much better time with the game overall, it is an extremely fun kart racer that I’ve had a very positive experience with, the difference between the two versions is night and day. Graphics are one thing, I expect the Switch version of any game to look worse but the lower performance of the Switch version hurts this game a lot. As for the game itself, like I’ve said I enjoy the gameplay mechanics it feels very smooth, fast, and fun. Story mode was a decent distraction, I enjoy a good deal of the missions minus the way too strict Daredevil ones, and while the plot isn’t anything special (not like I really expect a kart racer to blow me away with its plot so in that respect I guess it was exactly what I expected) there’s plenty of fun character moments with full voice acting for series fans. Characters overall have a good deal of personality, I enjoy the funny attempts of trash talk throughout the race I live for silly stuff like that. On the note of the characters the roster is fine, unfortunately there’s some notable characters not present and some of the pairings for teams are just weird (Silver, Blaze, and Vector make up Team Vector which is so confusing it’s almost funny) but there’s enough characters I like to work with. Major props to the music as well, great themes all around that fit the tracks perfectly and I love that Crush 40 did the main theme.
Overall I’m sad I didn’t realize how fun this game was until much too late, the online is completely dead these days, but there’s still enough here to warrant playing. Do I like the All Stars Transformed better? Yeah, but Team Sonic Racing is still a good time and that’s what I care about at the end of the day.

I hold this and Halo Reach in the highest regards of how prequels should be handled, expanding upon the source materials story in a natural way yet moving the series forward with amazing gameplay improvements. Torna accomplishes all this perfectly. Assuming you played XC2 you know exactly how this game ends yet it’s world building and characters don’t suffer because of it, there’s so much to enjoy here. The combat is a blast too, nothing but improvements from the base game. Cannot recommend enough.