Gortiamas
I think I missed out on a lot by not being able to understand Japanese, but the tunes are still good and the game is still fun. The finale is a bit worse than EBA's, but still great, cheesy fun.
Great slate of tunes and a lot of fun. Interesting to see how it was refined for Elite Beat Agents.
2006
E-B-A! E-B-A! E! B! A!
Perfect.
Perfect.
2017
A beautiful return to form that I've loved playing through twice. New Donk City brings a smile to my face like nothing else in Mario.
2013
While I enjoyed this game, I always felt that the run speed was far, far too slow. Multiplayer was fun with my sister, at least. Looking forward to playing the remake, which I think addresses all of my major issues.
2011
Probably the most underrated 3d Mario. Had a great time with it on release and when I replayed it recently. Didn't much care for the shoehorned 3d effects, but the levels themselves were enough fun for me to 100% twice.
2010
A great follow-up with a lot of variety, but I really missed the cut power-ups and the Comet Observatory. Still love Lubba, though.
2007
Excellent experience and the minimal multiplayer was fun enough to keep my sister and I entertained for multiple playthroughs. My favorite galaxies were ones like Deep Dark and Beach Bowl that leaned a little more toward the trappings of SM64 and Sunshine.
2002
I ADORE this game. Docking points because the blue coins suck, but I love the cohesive world a ton. Little details like being able to see other levels on the horizon really made me fall in love with this game as a kid. I've always found the somewhat janky physics to be an incredibly fun time.
1996
Mario... but there are 64 of him......waoh...
2010
Love the presentation and the music and found the world to be interesting. I like when RPGs feature actual stakes, even if two major twists are betrayed by a mismatch between character abilities and their current place in the story. Didn't love the combat so much. I thought tapping right and left on the wiimote seemed a little unresponsive at times.
I love cases 1, 2, and 3 and the setup for case 4 destroyed me, but case 5 (really just a finale for 4) left me wanting. I wish they'd gotten their funding for a full trilogy, because I think they could've made it work.
You-know-who returning was a little too much for me, even if I loved to see them again at first. I wish that character hadn't changed so much for seemingly no reason.
You-know-who returning was a little too much for me, even if I loved to see them again at first. I wish that character hadn't changed so much for seemingly no reason.
I absolutely adored this game and how it was so willing to go against the grain in a series whose tropes have slowly calcified into a rigid format. What Kazuma came to represent was handled a bit heavy-handedly, but I'll admit that his final appearance in the credits made me choke up a little bit.
Cases 3, 4, and 5 are some of my favorites in the series.
Cases 3, 4, and 5 are some of my favorites in the series.
2011
This game is GREAT but I don't think it's the best in the series. Case 3 overstays its welcome and Case 5 feels very rushed. I wish the question of who the mastermind is was left more to the player's own mind, rather than having it be essentially outright stated at least three times before finally asking the player to establish who it is. In a lot of ways, Case 5 feels much more like an epilogue than a proper case, and I hate that I left feeling so let down by what felt like myriad asspulls regarding a camera and a recording device.
I love the thrill of the hunt and case 5 enables me to feel like a wolf with a steak in my mouth. Cases 1 and 4 were also very enjoyable for recontextualizing locations that had been seen many times before in the main series.