This is a beautiful game that is brimming with style and substance. You can literally feel the heart and soul they put into every animation, every level design quirk, and every unique enemy design. The use of color in this game is just so gosh darn pretty. A huuuuge step up from the souless New Super Mario series.

Whereas its predecessor used 3d in a way that was just a formality, Wonder gives a damn strong argument that these updated 3D/2.5D visuals give the classic look of SMB3 and Super Mario World a run for their money.

Is this game perfect? No. Is it close, you can make a strong case for it. The biggest elephant in the room is surprisingly not the really awesome, flavorful and fun elephant power up, but in the character select screen. Wow! What a wide selection of characters! Too bad half of them are unusable. I want to use the Yoshis and Nabbit, however, there is zero incentive for me to use characters that literally can't interact with curcial parts of the level. The Yoshis and Nabbit can't take damage, Nabbit can't even have collision with the enemies! What's the point of playing a game full of wonder if you can't interact with it? A simple solution would have been to not tie invincibility and easy mode to any specific character. It boggles the mind how this was implemented.

Other issues include the abysmal boss battles with either nothing (some worlds don't have castles and bosses) or with Bowser Jr. again and again. The airship "bosses" are just 5 second segments where you jump/run from left to right and hit a button. A smaller sized problem would be the difficulty, which leans on the easier side, and the length of levels, which is rather short.

Overall, despite a few nagging flaws, the game is a beautiful example of games as an art form and games as a vessel for pure unadulterated fun... simultaneously. Therefore, this game should be played by pretty much everyone - Hardcore and casual gamers alike.

The game that is most out of context. Why is Bowser big/scary? Where are you? Why is everything a cat? And why is this game so good? That's right. This is a good game, despite nothing making sense.

The premise is to collect Cat Shines (wtf are them) so that they light up cat lighthouses and activate a giant cat bell so you can absorb its power and defeat the apparently angry Bowser. Nothing makes sense and it is a blast.

The world is a giant sandbox that you can traverse and platform in. The traversal method is insanely fun, with your permanent dino mount. The challenges and rewarding and are paced/spaced really well. The whole game is a polished Mario experience in bite sized format, and very few can say no to that.

It's just, so detached from reality, even more so than a regular Mario game. If they would have given the premise just a smidge more context, I feel like this game would have been a better experience.

A downgrade from its predecessor in almost every way, this farming-/adventure-sim is unlikely to offer more than a briefly enjoyable experience.
+ solid variety of old and new activities
+ ability to see and trigger town events by choice
+ overall quality of life improvement with some caveats (farming controls, slow animations, etc.)
- very short and badly presented main plot
- generic cast with limited involvement in the story
- cheap graphics and level design making the world seem rather lifeless