Maybe they couldn't get Cloud so they decided to have Dart from legend of dragoon in the game? I guess it's better than nothing 

Any LoD character is better than any Final Fantasy character, yes, but there is not a single Square Enix IP in the game, which is very strange.

Ok, I'm watching up to the first world boss stuff and yeah, the cameos really do seem completely inconsequential to the experience appart from the bits of interactions you can have in the hub area with those bots.

Also, yes this is definitely akin to weird mix of Kirby whimsies and Mario 3D World/Galaxy kind of level design. I'd jam with it, for sure !

The special stage right after the bosses are the only ones where the cameos take complete control of the game, and honestly, every single one of them are fucking awesome.

With 119 reviews Astro Bot is actually climbing back positions and is now closer to 95 than 93 on Metacritic.
Seems like it'll settle in 94.

While the acclaim being this universal was certainly a surprise, I think people were underselling the sales potential of this game.

When you end up selling +/- 100 mil consoles per generation, you are bound to accumulate enough of an audience for a 3D platformer, that seems to be on the ballpark of 3D Mario quality, to be a hit, regardless of what the dominant Sony IP tone is. It might not as frontloaded as other big Sony names, platformers never tend to be, but it's very likely that it has legs, especially with decent pricing strategy in the future.

I was trying to talk myself out of this line of thinking, in case it was wishful, but initial signs seem to be good.

I think this is more of a caution regarding stuff like Ratchet & Clank: Rifts Apart selling "only" around 4 million (and it took its time to get there), despite being 88 on MC and established and loved Sony's IP.

Yeah, I'm not sure what people expected with Ratchet. It launched on an install base of less than 10m at $70 and sold 4m in it's first 2 years.

Ratchet (2016) launched at $40 on a much bigger install-base and sold 7m lifetime, which rift apart could overtake. It's weird when I sometimes see people brand Rift Apart as underperforming.

Pretty sure Ratchet and Clank is growing in popularity, if maybe out of hunger for good Playstation platformers.

I (probably) under-predicted AstroBot to sell 4 million copies tops, but here's hoping it's the next "BotW/God of War 2018/MHW/Helldivers 2" in far exceeding most expectations.

Ratchet is great but it's been the same game since PS2 days. It's not a gameplay marvel like Astrobot, Mario Odyssey etc.