Personally, I actually gave it a negative review. The exploration generally is very fun, but so much of the levels, activities, combat ranged from unimpressive to infruriating. It’s basically carried by just being open-world Sonic, which is a formula for success.
I actually enjoyed the open-world HUB of Shadow Generations, and the game as a whole, much more. In fact, that game probably set my expectations too high, even knowing Frontiers was infamously janky.
In order, from the first? I have only played W3, but I do have the classics on the backlog, or at least W2.
Continuing Metaphor: ReFantazio. It’s the most consistently polished game Atlus made (that I played) in years, though maybe SMT VV has a chance once I get to it. The only ones that come to mind are Persona 5/Royal (however much I prefer P3 and P4), and Etrian Odyssey V. Both of which had longer development times compared to their series, who knew?
My only complaint is that it doesn’t have any 10/10 aspect that I’d love, most of my favourite games are somewhat flawed anyway, as long as they have that special aspect that clicks. But then, Persona 3 had nothing like that until the endgame, so there’s still time for it to surprise me.
To clarify, I meant that I’m fine with multiple things not being 10/10 (I was thinking of Metaphor as a 9/10 across the board, assuming a 10/10 is something I say about things very rarely) as long as some one thing is, like just the ending or just gameplay. I’m not consisent with that though anyways, I thought that Dark Souls 1 really does have 10/10 world exploration early on, yet I don’t like it because of a lot of other problems. It’s all really just gut feelings in the end, it was the best way I could explain why Metaphor feels like it’s missing something.