It's been a pretty long gap between brand new 2D Mario titles with Super Mario Bros. Wonder releasing almost 11 years after New Super Mario Bros. U which launched with the Wii U just 3 months after New Super Mario Bros. 2 had released on the 3DS, the third and fourth entries in the "New" series of 2D Mario, which by that point had burned myself and many others out on the series, leaving us craving for something new and inventive with 2D Mario. Well Wonder is here now and it is exactly what I've been craving from 2D Mario for years.

In every single department, Wonder has taken steps to freshen up the 2D Mario experience, from music and art style, to animation and world design, there is so much new stuff to enjoy here. Starting off, we're now given a choice of quite a lot of characters to choose from. We have our New Super standards of Mario, Luigi, Blue and Yellow Toad as well as Peach and Daisy finally being playable. All of these characters play the same and the moveset has been stripped back a little bit, removing the triple jump but keeping stuff like the spin jump and wall jump. On the other end of the character select screen we have our "easy difficulty" characters which includes a variety of Yoshi colours being playable for the first time as well as Nabbit returning. These characters are all invincible, taking no damage though Yoshi does receive knockback and has his flutter kick jump for gaining extra height. Yoshi now being playable does unfortunately mean that he's no longer available as a mount unless you're playing in local multiplayer and someone picks Yoshi, which is a shame because I've been waiting for the full Super Mario World implementation of him to return since that game where he doesn't leave after every level.
Anyways, while the characters might all play the same now, you can earn badges to equip to your character that changes up the moveset. You want Peach's iconic float after jumping? You can equip a badge that allows a similar glide. You want the Super Mario Bros 2 crouch jump? There's a badge for that. You want to unleash vines to grab and stick onto walls like Spider-Man? THERE'S A BADGE FOR THAT! Basically badges allow the game to keep throwing fresh new challenges at you and change up the gameplay a little bit and I think they're pretty cool. I did stick with the little glide for the bulk of my playthrough because I love using it to guarantee hitting the top of the flagpole better but there's definitely a lot of cool options to switch to that could be better suited to your own unique playstyle and I think it's a great addition to the series.

Ok so for Peach to be playable, Bowser has to be up to something else as a villain so he's off to the brand new Flower Kingdom to steal the Royal Wonder Seeds and turn himself into a castle for some reason and it's up to Mario and the gang to stop him. Being in a new location means the developers have been able to be a little more creative with their level aesthetics so while on the surface you have your grass, desert, snow, lava level themes etc, they all have taken on fresh new looks with absolutely gorgeous background details helping to bring the whole thing alive. The characters are so much more expressive as they move through the levels and even the enemies can show fear when they see their allies stomped on before them or a shell comes flying towards them. These are all little details that yeah, they don't affect the core gameplay at all but they bring so much more life to the series, something that has been missing from 2D Mario for a while. Instead of rescuing Toads, we have new flower kingdom inhabitants to save and stuff like that just helps make this feel like a more unique experience.

Once again we're on a world map for a level select screen but this one has taken some cues from 3D World where there are points where it opens up and you can select whatever stage you want and find secrets hidden away. It's nice to have a more interactive world map and it helps break up the levels themselves a bit more. As for the levels, you've got your standard Mario affair here where reaching the flagpole is the goal. Hidden throughout the levels are 3 purple 10 coins replacing the big gold coins of the New games as well as 1-3 Wonder Seeds depending on the level having a secret exit or a Wonder Flower. Wonder Flowers can only be described as a wild trip as touching one of these completely changes up the level, throwing almost anything your way or even transforming Mario and co themselves into something else. An early one sees Piranha Plants popping out of pipes and seeing or a bunch of new bull like enemies stampeding through a level who can be ridden on to uncover secrets. There's stuff like becoming super tall and having to work through a level like that or even becoming a Goomba where your jump is really tiny but you're impervious to spikes though other things will kill you instantly. You can see a lot of inspiration taken from the Mario Maker games and the team have been very experimental with their level designs in the best ways.

So what are these new Wonder Seeds and purple coins for then? Well on the world map, progression is locked by certain levels needing a number of Wonder Seeds acquired to be unlocked. Each world has its own unique Wonder Seeds so you can't just collect a bunch in the first world and skip to the end but you can collect enough in each world to skip any of the levels that might be giving you a difficult time. Purple coins are used in the shops dotted around the world and can be used on things like extra lives or new badges but also each shop contains a Wonder Seed that can be bought and added to your total, just like the Moons in Mario Odyssey. There's also standees that can be bought but those are more for the multiplayer aspect that I'll touch upon in a bit.

Outside of the regular levels you have a few other types of level to play through. Break time levels that are nice chill bonus rooms that like to play music from a classic Mario title as you collect the coins. Enemy gauntlets that see you defeat a bunch of enemies and if you do so under a certain amount of time you can earn up to 3 purple 10 coins. There's badge challenges that test your skill with a badge and puzzle room levels which are designed more for multiplayer as each playable character can see unique hidden blocks so these levels work best with a group of four helping each other find the hidden blocks to collect the 5 pieces of the Wonder Seed and beat the puzzle together. Again, these levels all help keep the game feeling fresh as new ideas keep pushing themselves forward and it's brilliant.

Now I have mentioned the multiplayer aspect a few times now so let's get into the online side of that because I was genuinely surprised at how much I appreciated it. By connecting the game online, you'll find a bunch of other players playing the game at the same time as you and if you enter a level, up to 3 other players playing that level will be there in real time with you. However unlike Mario Maker or Mario 3D World where online multiplayer put you in the same lobby and relied upon an unreliable connection between players as you interacted with one another and lag kicked in, the players here are more like ghosts or shadows with very limited interaction on your game. You can see each other and emote to each other and stuff like that but you can't throw shells at each other or pick each other up or anything like that. No, instead Nintendo has borrowed a bit form Dark Souls and somehow managed to find a way to inspire cooperative play here. If you die near a player you'll become a ghost and be given around 5 seconds to touch another player to be revived, not losing a life and continue from that point. Now you can still be a menace and deliberately avoid a dead player until their time runs out and heck, some level design makes that almost impossible to avoid but my gosh hearing the little ghost screams and seeing someone desperately try to reach you, you'd have to have a heart of stone to ignore their pleas for help. The standees I mentioned earlier come into play when playing online. You can put these down anywhere in a level on solid ground and if someone dies within range of it, they can touch it as a ghost and be revived. What's even cooler is during my playthrough I saw people putting them down to hint at where there were hidden blocks. The first puzzle room level I found there was a group of us struggling to find one last part of the Wonder Seed but one person had left a standee in an area where a hidden block was so all we had to do was figure out how to hit it. And that's not even my highlight of the online experience because in the very final level, there was a red Yoshi player helping a group of us by waiting for us to catch up and placing standees in areas where we were likely to mess up. It was extremely heartwarming seeing a complete stranger just helping people through the toughest level in the game just because they could and I love that energy.

Moving onto power ups we have our usual staples of Mushrooms, Fire Flowers and Invincibility Stars and outside of that everything else is new. The main new one is the Elephant Fruit which turns you into an elephant. As an elephant you gain access to a trunk attack and you can store water in your trunk to use as a projectile. We also have the Drill Mushroom which is like a 2D incarnation of the drill power up from Mario Galaxy 2. Here you gain a drill on top of your head so you can defeat enemies by jumping under them and also use it to drill under ground or roof structures and move through gaps in walls to uncover secrets. Finally there's the Bubble Flower that does as the name suggests, lets you throw out bubbles. These can capture non spiky enemies and turn them into coins or you can use them to jump off if you time things well. All the power ups here feel very fresh and unique in a 2D Mario environment and I had fun using all of them.

It's been glowing praise so far but I do have one complaint with the game and that is the bosses. For a game full of variety and trying new things, it does suck a little bit that airship and castle bosses are reused every time. They do change up each encounter and I am extremely glad to see absolutely no Koopalings after their overuse in the Wii through Wii U era but at the same time, I was hoping to see a better variety on offer in the boss department.

It's been a long time coming but Wonder absolutely delivers on refreshing 2D Mario after the New series had grown a little tired and overused. As usual with Mario, you're getting a joyful experience that reconnects you with your inner child but you're also getting a top quality Mario game that manages to feel unique in a series that has been going for over 35 years now and that in itself is a testament to the strength of this game. I've managed to get through this review without dipping into the wonder puns but I have to end it with this: I had a Wonderful experience and time with Super Mario Bros. Wonder!

To this day, Final Fantasy VII remains being a blueprint for a brilliant plot, an excellently written protagonist, antagonist and even sidekicks and minor antagonists. I would love to give examples of how great the character development is for each party member, even the optional ones, but I don’t want to spoil it for people who still have or want to play this game someday.

Every time I replay FF7, I realize even more how many fantastic games and franchises it influenced. Literally one of my favorite game series, Trails/Kiseki, is inspired by it. Its Quartz system is without a doubt a deviating and further developed Materia system.

Not to mention its memorable soundtrack. The Prelude, Jenova’s theme, Aerith’s theme, Tifa’s theme and of course, Cosmo Canyon and One-Winged Angel. Many of them are so good, even people who never played this game immediately recognize Sephiroth’s unique theme within the first three tunes (Sephiroth for Smash reactions prove that very well).

All in all, a lot better than I remembered and now, one of my all time favorite games, especially because I took my time to learn all the mechanics and because I almost platinumed the game. Almost, because there’s that superboss, Ruby Weapon. This superboss has a really annoying glitch. Defeating it took me about 40 minutes, but I couldn’t leave the fight into the victory screen and as I’ve learned, it’s a very common glitch. That was very frustrating, so I delay getting the platinum to another time.

Other than that, I had a perfect experience. And with that, Final Fantasy VII became my favorite entry in the series.

I didn't even play this game until last year, and I was impressed by how beautiful it all was, the complexity of the narrative, how much I enjoyed Sephiroth as a character (among many others), the good music, the great visuals, fun secrets, even some of the gags got me going.

Yeah it's shown its age a little bit with a little bit of clunk here and there, and the party isn't what I'd call balanced, but man is this an experience that lives up to its name!

Now would you stop acting like a retard and climb?

Mahōtsukai no Yoru is likely Nasu at his most restrained, mature and delicate - and it is so emblematic of his progress as an author as a result. This being the fourth of the big four Type-Moon works I've experienced - after Tsukihime, Fate/stay night and Kara no Kyōkai in that order - it's clear for me to see the evolution play out in real time; ironic considering that both KnK and Mahōyo were, as I understand it, initially written before Tsukihime. Though, it's clear Nasu et all took time to really rethink their approach with this one, and frame this ultimately tiny and breezy story as the introspective-yet-removed narrative masterpiece it is. As I've sat and reflected on Tsukihime and Fate/stay night in the months since I completed them, while working my way through Mahōyo, I think I've come out the other end loving all three of these works about equally, for different reasons. I'll talk about that more when I get around to rewriting my review of Tsukihime as well, but for the moment, know this - I've officially come to really love and be deeply inspired by the works of Type-Moon. These are wonderful stories, no matter how flawed in their varying levels of execution. As far as execution goes, though, I think there's a very strong argument to be made that Mahōyo represents Type-Moon at their very best...

First and foremost, while my personal tastes lean more towards the time-stood-still, distant Y2K-ish look of the original Tsukihime, there's simply no denying that Koyama, Takeuchi and their team were on the top of their game here artistically. The amount of polish and detail present in the character sprites, backgrounds, and CGs in Mahōyo is simply astonishing. And, when combined with the animation direction of Tsukuri Monoji, the result is an often jaw-dropping experience that pushes the boundaries of what can be considered typical visual novel presentation. Simply, I think Mahōtsukai no Yoru is the most visually stunning visual novel I've ever played, even outdoing the 3D modeling and impressive pseudo-animations of Muv-Luv Alternative. Lead composer Hideyuki Fukawsawa and longtime Type-Moon contributors James Harris and Keita Haga deliver my favorite soundtrack to a Type-Moon title since the original Tsukihime, with highlights including the somber, beautiful “Aozaki Aoko” and the truly fairytale-ish “Kuonji Alice”, the motifs for Mahōyo’s heroine pair.

Mahōtsukai no Yoru is a story rather atypical for Type-Moon, refreshingly. There’s not much in the way of twists and turns here; what you see is largely what you get, and the game telegraphs its moves in a way that allows you to see why things will play out the way they will, rather than anything catching you entirely off-guard. There are no trademark Type-Moon mind shatterers here like Tsukihime and particularly Fate/stay night were fond of, but the tradeoff comes in the subtle, fleshed-out characterization of its main trio. Rather than the protagonist-centric focus the narratives of the other big Type-Moon works focus on, Mahōyo is notably distanced from its cast, allowing each of them their own time to exist on a 1:1 level with the text. Neither Aoko nor Sojūrō nor Alice is the focal point with which our moral or thematic comprehension is balanced; they are three equally weighted presentations of the same ideas, granted the same weight and the same time alone and with one another to gather understanding of themselves alone and in communication. This is a morally dubious and somewhat standoffish trio of protagonists, but three people who you also come to understand, appreciate, and fall in love with over the course of the story. Simply put, it’s my favorite cast dynamic Type-Moon has presented since the Far Side of the Moon’s take on the mansion cast in Tsukihime - and there’s some very obvious overlap with that group here.

Sojūrō gets an extra gold star from me here, arguably my favorite male lead of the big four Type-Moon works - his background of growing up in the wilderness is reflected clearly in his dissociation with what could be considered the “moral binary”, and while being a sweet and well-meaning person, he’s still very much alien to the world around him in a way that feels isolating, complex, and earnestly believable. Aoko was a favorite of mine already from her appearance in Tsukihime, but I’ve come to love her further after visiting her own story of youth and complicated relationships with her surroundings and herself. Alice struck a real chord with me; her type of emotional despondence that melts little by little overtime has always been a favorite story of mine when told well (Hisui also happens to be likely my favorite Type-Moon character) and I found that she was probably my favorite of the cast when all was said and done.

The thematic drive of Mahōyo isn’t that far-off from some of their earlier works, but the means with which they’re explored are refined and a great deal more interpersonal than in those stories. These are people with their morals and drives largely figured out, but need to learn how to deal with the overwhelming experience of simply understanding and being understood by other people - not always an easy thing to do. Rather than Shiki or Shirō’s journeys to allow themselves some sympathy and genuine understanding, Aoko, Alice and Sojūrō must look outward and extend those things to each other - because they are a group stronger together than they ever could be alone. I’d be very curious to see how Nasu actually intends to follow up Mahōyo with its two sequels (which I’ll believe when I see them out, not just concept art or a teaser - signs I’ve become a real Type-Moon fan), but as it stands… yeah, Mahōyo is another masterpiece to rest Type-Moon’s laurels on. A provoking, beautiful, somber and yet… breezy and light experience. The game, in some respects, I’d been waiting to see from them since Far Side of the Moon in Tsukihime.