The whole game is pretty delightful, and it feels like a natural evolution for 2D Mario. They just spent 20 years making the same NSMB game over and over again, so it's really cool to see one that looks distinct from the rest. It used to be a normal thing for every Mario game to look dramatically different, and I hope we see more of that.

Beat Bowser last night, was a pretty enjoyable fight. Only got a couple levels in the special world left to tackle for completion. Wonder was as great as I knew it would be based on the very first trailer but the lack of boss fights is a bizarre blemish on an otherwise immaculate game. There was a lot of fan service from the 2D and 3D games with Metal Mario and the metal cap theme remix as a personal highlight, went really well with the stage it was in, too. I'm probably gonna get a quite a bit of playtime out of replaying levels with online enabled, I really love the antics

I've still only played the first world lol

Maw-Maws

!!!

Maw-Maws

!!!

just killed a mario

just killed a mario

did luigi write this post

this game are wonderful

Finally found time to keep playing this weekend. Man I really love the little challenge levels with varying difficulty.

I didn't notice as much during my first session, but the engine feels a lot like Super Mario World whereas the NSMB games all felt like SMB3. It's sort of hard to explain exactly why it feels this way.

The new voices don't sound as similar as I thought they did initially. Most lines sound fine and then there are a few that just sound like your buddy from college doing a Mario voice. I do think they suit the characters just fine though, and it's refreshing to hear a Mario/Luigi who actually sound 25.

having done basically everything except for the super duper extra whatever that unlocks after all flagpole tops (whoever came up with this idea for 3d world or whenever it began needs to be shot, if you need to pad the game out with that then make the game better to begin with)

it's a good game and i had fun but i'm somehow underwhelmed

the special world was cool but not really memorable like SMW's and it doesn't serve any greater purpose since it can't be a shortcut. you don't get anything for finishing the final level of it either. so it existing is essentially just more stages which is.. fine i guess? mario world's secrets actually accomplished things for you progression-wise rather than just acting as bonus content detours. the design decision of using the modern mario progression of "collect things in any level to open a gate later" fucked them bad on that front, the game just seems directionless. wow, nice secret exit idiot, here's 50 coins from captain toad. go fuck yourself. why no top secret area or something to find to excite you?? hell, if you're going to have pipes to other worlds, at least squirrel one of the levels away in the exclusive area so you get more interesting content for exploring??

there aren't any truly clever secrets like some of the shit in SMW either, no ghost house insanity where you use the cape to fly up around the suspiciously high borders or tight P-switch timer doors. it wasn't particularly hard to figure basically anything hidden out and there aren't that many secret exits in the first place.

it feels like it was rushed or undercooked somehow but i know that's not true because they spent a ton of time on it and there's a lot of stages and content. the level design is certainly better than it has been for a very long time but i wish some of that had gone to making more clever or trickier secrets. also as noted there aren't really many bosses and the ones that do exist are all pathetically easy but those aren't really a mario mainstay anyways so whatever.

the search party levels started off dog shit but the first two are by far the worst, the others are okay i guess. bizarre design choice there too. some of the shitposting was funny

yes i bring up mario world a bunch of times in this post but it's because it's the closest mario game to this one, clearly inspired many parts of it, yet it fails to match its inspiration.

the wonder stuff was fun and made for a number of cute gimmicks i suppose

I really hope they bring secret exits back in full force. One of the coolest things about SMW is how you can beat it in a few minutes if you know where to go