Super Mario Bros Wonder is a much-needed step up from the New Super Mario Bros titles. Overall, it makes some great changes and introduces many cool and lovable aspects that I hope become series staples in the future. However, as I read these reviews, I get the feeling I didn’t enjoy it as much as most people do. I can’t help but feel this game plays it a bit too safe in some areas. Wonder would’ve been mind-blowing if we got it in place of New Super Mario Bros 2. or New Super Mario Bros. U, so I’m sort of left with a feeling of “yeah this is where we should’ve been like 10 years ago.” Either way, I’m glad we made it here eventually, at the very least.

Starting with the positives, the most noticeable changes are the visual style and details. Mario’s world remains as bright and colorful as ever, but Wonder finally manages to have a style completely separate from NSMB. Even though many of the traditional environmental themes are used, they mixed up a lot of the color schemes to really freshen things up and create new visual aesthetics that will hopefully bleed into spinoffs and future entries. And of course, there are the characters, each one being super cartoony, expressive, and having a wide variety of poses, even for the smallest actions. Speaking of, I really liked the array of characters they had this time around. I sort of wish you could be Yoshi or Nabbit without it being easy mode, but it’s not the end of the world. Plus, I think it’s nice they managed to have more than one playable girl character for once. I also like all of the new enemies, lots of goofy new faces are always welcomed in my book. Some enemies are as expressive as the main characters, if not more. I remember in a snow level, a Goomba fell into a small space between 2 blocks. Rather than mindlessly walk back and forth in a 1x1 space, he just gave up, sat down, and looked straight at the camera with a miserable expression. I loved it. Wonder is just full to the brim of little details like that.

As for Mario and Luigi’s new voice actor, Kevin Afghani, I think he sounded pretty good! I’ll be happy to hear more from him in the future. As for the talking flowers, I didn’t find them as annoying as other people did, but I can see how they can get grating pretty quickly.

One of my most favorite bits was the online interaction system. I assumed I wouldn't care for it all that much, but it brings so much to the table. It’s fun to be thrown in with a group of random players as you tread new ground together and help each other out. Helping someone through a tough section and spamming the little smile icon at each other is such a nice feeling. Silently agreeing to cooperate and take turns at trying a difficult section is hilarious. Putting down a standee in one level and seeing tons of notifications that people are using it like 10 minutes later is satisfying. Plus it’s all optional too, so if you feel it makes everything too easy or if it’s too invasive, you can turn it off with no issues. Overall, it’s just a delightful little system that I had a great time with.

With Wonder Flowers, I’m a bit mixed. They’re definitely fun the first time around, but I can’t see myself replaying most of those segments if I already got the seed from them. It’s really cool that they came up with so many ideas, and even cooler that you only see a small portion of them reused only once. Though there’s just something about them that feels like a novelty that will wear off soon. Additionally, I’m also a bit mixed on the Badges. They have some fun ideas going on, but I’m literally never going to switch off of the Parachute Cap badge. The only time I will is when the game clearly expects me to use another badge to get a big purple coin.

In terms of the difficulty, it’s extremely easy the whole way through minus some of the special levels. I’m not too harsh on that though, because I assume this game is for kids first and adults second. I imagine designing modern, linear difficulty for both demographics is a nightmare. Generally, the levels are a lot shorter as well, which I assume also plays a role in the low difficulty ceiling.

In the music department, I have to say I’m a little disappointed. Mario games are usually chock full of awesome, memorable tunes. While this one had a handful of stellar tracks, the vast majority of them were fairly forgettable.

My biggest complaint with this game are the bosses. Bowser Jr. being the boss of every castle is really lame and I’d argue it’s even more boring than bringing back the Koopalings again. The airship bosses being replaced with 10 second factory sections was also a bit of a letdown. And ultimately, the final boss had a generally cool presentation, but it didn’t really feel as “grand” as previous entries. It almost feels silly to complain about this, as I feel nobody really plays Mario Bros for the bosses, but for a game that seems like it’s trying to think outside the box, they really, really missed the mark with bosses.

At the end of the day, it’s exactly what you’d expect from the next evolution of Super Mario Bros. It’s colorful, creative, and well-polished all throughout. I was hoping for it to push the boundaries a bit more, but it’s still a wonderful little game.

yoshi...

this game is basically the spiritual successor to kirby's epic yarn considering good feel and all that, and I will say that the yarn aesthetic and comfy vibes fits the slower, more explorative gameplay of yoshi than it does kirby. That being said, my goopy gamer brain felt yoshi's island was a bit too slowly paced for my tastes, and the same can apply here. The slow pace of everything can make levels feel longer than they should be, and I still am not the biggest fan of how the yoshi games do secrets in the "just have invisible items everywhere" sense (though once I got the "show hidden items" badge I used it til the end of the game). Despite that though I think that the comfy vibes, excellent visuals, and great soundtrack still make this game worth playing. The co-op is also fun as well, this would probably make a better 2-player journey than a single-player one. Glad I finally played through this one after owning it for so many years.