Right now my time is divided equally (mostly) between Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory. I am having the opposite experience of what I expected of each...
Age of Calamity is bad. I am extremely disappointed in this. I was fully prepared to put up with the horrendous voice acting (although god, I'd forgotten how awful Zelda was...) and tired, plodding narrative. I was hoping it'd be interesting, but I was prepared for it not to be. What I was NOT prepared for was bad gameplay. Because compared to the original Hyrule Warriors - hell, compared to the majority of Warriors titles from two generations ago and onwards - this game handles so badly. It's just so damn SLOW. Link doesn't control even half as well in this as he did in the original game, and the Champions are...a mixed bag. I'm having a lot of fun with Mipha and only slightly less with Revali, but the rest...well, they're more cumbersome than they are fun. Not that the original Hyrule Warriors didn't have its share of bad characters - hell, Mipha is a massive improvement over Ruto even though she uses about 90% of her moves - but this game...it just doesn't control as well as it should. It's more Breath of the Wild and less Warriors, and the end result is a game that seems to struggle against the systems imposed on it. It's not as accessible, or enjoyable, as its predecessor. I was hoping for another smooth and responsive gameplay experience, but I find this causes me more stress than relieves it when I play it, and that...isn't great. I'm still probably going to 100% it because I'm a masochist, but it won't equal the original without some serious patching. Playing this after Hyrule Warriors feels very much like playing Oninaki after Ys VIII - similar experience, massively inferior gameplay.
Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory, though? I LOVE IT. I don't even like Kingdom Hearts or its music that much - hell, the only track from KH I like is Oscurita Di Xehanort and that isn't even in it - but this is such a wonderfully relaxing and amusing little title! It's like a spiritual successor to Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, almost. I've been playing it on Proud - thank you, Hatsune Miku, for over-preparing me for this - and whilst having to unlock every song through World Tour is a pain, I love the structure of it, with the missions and things like items providing incentive to replay and a safety buffer for the nastier songs. The only thing I don't like about this are the boss battles and movie stages, which are as badly designed as the rest of the game is well designed. They're a horrendous blip and I'm so glad there aren't many of them, because they utterly ruin the experience.