Okay so Sonic wasn’t good (see previous review), but Mario, unlike Sonic, has an extremely solid track record of quality up to now (as far as mainline 2D and 3D games go), and the trailers for this were pretty darn solid (I only watched the reveal trailer, but people were hyped for all the following ones too). These are 2 franchises on basically opposite ends of the quality spectrum, and it’s pretty interesting that these bitter rivals saw a release of similar styles of games in the same week.

So really this is just pure hype and, after release, very good critical reception as well, moreso than Sonic. I’ll try not to make too many comparisons in the review itself, but this whole point of reviewing both of these (especially when my review output has been low recently) is to compare them.

So let’s just go with it right now, not much else to say in the intro!

The good

This is a side-scrolling Mario game. There you go, review done.

Visually it’s a breath of fresh air to not have another “New” Mario game, those were a bit stale. Even if New U was definitely the best of the bunch, it wasn’t very original. Here, Mario looks different from usual, both the characters and enemies exude way more personality, and they do some wacky ass shit all over the place.

The game has a shitload of content. 129 levels total. Over half of those are the “main” levels, while the rest are cool challenge levels. And what’s truly crazy is that almost all of these levels are actually good.  There’s a few exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of this game is fun.

The biggest element here is the wonders. In every main level, there’s a Wonder Flower. Some are in plain sight, and some are required to finish the level, but a few are slightly hidden. What they do is make the game freak the fuck out and change everything that’s going on. Maybe pipes will come to life and crawl on the ground. Maybe a rampage of bulls will come in. Maybe gravity will stop existing and you need to float up to the sky to get a Wonder Seed while avoiding lightning. There’s a lot of cool ideas going on here. Those moments end when you find the related Wonder Seed, or finish the level (it’s occasionally possible to miss the Wonder Seed). Some Wonders even allow you to skip one level exit to get another, or in a few cases there’s a completely hidden secret exit (like in the game’s second level). Every non-challenge level has something to it that’s interesting, which is really cool.

As a comparison to Sonic Superstars, this game actually is interesting to replay levels in, because you have separate collectibles in each of them. 3 flower coins, 2 to 3 Wonder Seeds (you get one for finishing a level, one for the Wonder Flower, and some levels have a secret exit which has its own Seed) and getting the top of the goal post. Some of these are cleverly hidden and/or require real puzzle-solving to obtain, or are precariously placed. In Sonic, once you get all the emeralds, there’s no longer a reason to either replay levels or explore them. In Mario Wonder, I replayed a lot of the levels.

I think the badge system is pretty good. You can equip one at a time. They can do things like force power-ups to give you a specific power-up instead, start you with a mushroom, but mainly they give you a new action during gameplay. You can have the 3D Mario triple jump, the “New” Mario boosted spin, a vine grappling hook, the Super Mario Bros 2 crouch high jump, a unique vertical wall jump (some compare it to the Super Mario Bros 1 wall jump glitch), one thing where you can run faster and also jump while in the air, a speed boost while swimming and several others. It’s some fun stuff to play around with. The only badge I think is bad is the one that saves you if you fall down a hole. You already have a billion lives, you don’t need saving. The other things that might save you like the boosted spin thing is at least skill based.

This game’s version of Bowser might be the coolest in a mainline Mario game. Not quite as cool as MegaDragonBowser, but still pretty badass.

The bad (?)

I have only a few things to complain about, and they’re pretty fucking minimal.

Namely, the elephant power up is cool (it’s extremely simplistic though), but the bubble flower is basically a shittier fire flower that can kill more enemy types (and you can use the bubbles to get more height but you’ll rarely end up doing it), and the drill only has very few moments where it has any use at all to dig into places you can’t go normally. I was hoping there’d be some more interesting power-ups.

I’d say World 3 and World 5 are a bit disappointing compared to the rest. They have good levels, but they’re both very short worlds, and World 3 especially felt a bit repetitive.

The game is quite easy. There’s several levels where I did legitimately die though, especially some of the challenge levels for badges, or the Special World levels (one level literally took me over 50 lives). It’s not easy because of bullshit mechanics that let you win for free or anything, it’s just that a lot of the levels are not hard. But they’re still challenging. There’s a difference between “Difficulty” and “Challenge”. You’re not just pressing one button and auto-winning, there’s still substance to it. So while I wouldn’t mind a bit more difficulty, this is a very minor complaint, because in the end it’s a properly-designed game that requires some level of effort to beat.

I think my biggest complain is the bosses. There’s actually worlds without bosses at all, and the few bosses are mostly variations of the same Bowser Jr fight we’ve had for year, and this thing in the airships where you just avoid what basically aren’t even obstacles to press a button. At least the final boss is more interesting, but the Mario devs really need to start being more original with their boss battles overall.

I don’t like that yoshi and nabbit are journalist mode. Games shouldn’t have easy modes, much less so when they’re already easy.

Overall

This game was great. Not perfect, but man is it a stark difference between Mario and Sonic for the same kind of game. Mario Wonder has 129 levels, most of which are legitimately good, while Sonic Superstars has 26 level, at least half of which are just straight up bad.

The game is visually interesting, plays really well, has fun and unique levels, and its issues are fairly minimal. Yeah I wouldn’t have minded a bit more difficulty, but as long as there’s challenge and it doesn’t just play itself, good enough for me. The wonders and the fact that they’re trying to do interesting things in every level is wild. In a way it feels like a combination of Super Mario Bros 3 and Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (also a completely amazing side-scroller that you need to play).

Definitely get this game. It feels more like a proper Super Mario Bros sequel than the “New” sub-series did, while adding a lot of interesting elements.