Wonder Flowers are the most creativity a Miyamoto project has had since he stopped making games for fun and started making games for his dumb wife. There is genuine soul in these sections of bing bing, and dare I say, even a bit of wahoo. It's also, y'know, a Mario game, so obviously the actual quality of the game is top tier.

The levels are forgettable as hell as soon as the LSD flowers stop though. I genuinely watched a stream of the start of this game before finishing and didn't recognize half the levels I saw despite 100% clearing them, coins and flagpole and all. 1/4 of the new powerups are good (it's the drill). When Shiggoo said the elephant "did not look like a Mario character" he was so insanely right. I hate the elephant. The only thing I hate more than elephant Mario is small Mario's model in this game. It was a genuine jumpscare moment the first time I saw it. The only thing I hate more than small Mario is the fact that I can't play as Yoshi because Nintendo's insane designers think a difficulty menu is too hard to understand for their average user. Of course, that might be correct, but I am way smarter than the average nintendog and I want to play as Yoshi. YOHHI! Pellom----pam! Awawawawawawa. YAHNNNNNG

I was debating between 3.5 and 4 stars but they made the final boss an autoscroller. That's a cinemasins ding moment. In fact all of the bosses in this are extremely disappointing compared to the spectacle some of the flowers bring. Did I mention this is a Mario game? It's still good. I do think if this is your GOTY you are a boring person. I also don't think you will remember it in a year. It's still good though. It's Mario.

This is not slop, but it is feed.

A great example of a story that can only be told via a video game; the way the plot moves and develops is so interconnected with the game's mechanics that it's hard to imagine this really existing in any other form, and that in itself is already enough to make the game worth experiencing.

I love the characters, humour, and the way the animations compliment both of these aspects so well. The story itself is largely enjoyable and very engaging, though so relentlessly full of twists and turns, and constantly asking you to suspend your disbelief even further, that I never really gained my footing for long enough to form much of an emotional connection with what was happening.

The actual puzzles in the game are generally pretty easy, especially with the game's habit of pushing hints on to you, and sometimes they struggle to elevate far beyond "interact with everything you can see", but the way they're so deeply integrated with the story, and the manner in which the game uses them to express its humour, is so satisfying that I largely think of them fondly anyways.

Also; Missile is really good.

Alright so theres this one rock band called BEYONDS. I found them through Spotify recs, which is the most boring story possible for finding bands, but it is what it is. Some people say they're emo, but I don't think they're quite there, they're too thrash for that too at points beyond the vocal melodies and shit. They're alt rock but with a weird dosage of hardcore and thrash. SeaMeal has a way more emo version of their song "Revenge of the Lawn" which is pretty good, though.
It recommended me their first album, titled "UNLUCKY". I heard it and liked it but then I heard it many more times and their second album "The World, Changed Into Sunday Afternoon" many many times too. I became a fucking fiend for these 17 songs (counting the bonus song on "UNLUCKY"). I heard those 17 songs around 600 times total, I think, because I didn't scrobble all the times I heard them on my phone, so I can't be 100%. It's been some months and I still listen to these albums a lot.
My point in explaining all of this is I keep thinking of these songs, right. My favorite song on "UNLUCKY" is called "I CAN'T EXPLAIN". It's got a guitar solo that's like a watered down version of a Slayer solo as to make it sad, which then becomes a readable lead part which still feels slightly broken despite the melodic content being perfectly sound. After that solo, the chorus kicks in again but instead of singing "oh oh oh, I can't explain" like normal, Ken Taniguchi goes "oh oh oh oh ohhhh ohhhh ohhhh, oh oh oh ohhh, ohhh ohh ohh" then he goes "I can't explain". That section of the song is how this game feels.

Why does Mario feel so weird? I like him being weighty on SM64. Here he's just, you know, sad. It feels a bit sad seeing him slip around a little bit, like he does. It feels a bit sad seeing him get small again when he takes a hit, and seeing enemy sprites flicker. I feel a bit defeated whenever I encounter a Hammer Bro, especially. Like, why are they like that? Kinda deeply sad game. How does Bowser keep showing up? The stages feel so listless individually. It's both got a lot going for it and nothing. It's Super Mario Bros. and all that entails, but also, it's Super Mario Bros., in all its silly things we take for granted because it's so important and whatnot. The "cutscenes" where Mario just walks to a pipe and teleports into the next stage... so sad. I don't know, man.

after a lot of people died in sin's attack, yuna dances. this dance is called "the sending", where she makes sure their souls are not staying on this plane, wandering, with envy for the living and then turning into fiends. instead, she sends them to the farplane, where they can live in peace. a lot of cultures around the world have rituals for the dead where you dance to celebrate how great their lives were or to just be a kind of grieving. you see, our bodies express our feelings more than we could ever think they do. when you are anxious you are always shaking your legs, even grinding teeth sometimes. i like to believe that yuna's dance is not only to send those people to better places but also her cope mechanism to deal with everything -- spira's condition, her father's dead, her destiny.

then yuna finds a pair. this blonde boy that appears from nowhere, claims to be from a thousand years old civilization that does not even exists anymore. he is also constantly dancing. he has problems with his father, which calls him a crybaby -- and he is, really. he is constantly expressing his pain through his smile but you know he's not always happy. he just don't want to show his sadness or, as everyone, just don't want to be sad. yuna's not so different, too. and since her has a pair, it's important to say that when you are dancing with someone, at first it may not work -- your pair can be at the wrong tempo, overstepping you etc. when your steps synchronizes and you are connected, though, this is what we call love. not necessarily romantically, of course. yuna have a lot of friends with their own dances, grieving and trying to live their lives as hard as it can be. but, when everyone is together, even dancing with the dead, they can share their insecurities, being open about their problems and, truly, overcoming it. maybe not stopping dancing but dancing towards the truth -- the painfully beautiful truth.

the last time yuna dances, she's not only grieving, but also celebrating.