The amount of creativity and craftsmanship on display is kinda insane. The game balances perfectly on the edge of creepily uncanny and utterly charming. The writing, characters, visual design, and voice acting is top notch. Albeit, with the game nearing 2 decades, visual and audio imperfections are abound.

What perhaps is most disappointing however is the structure and gameplay. Some new powers are taught to the character, others randomly given throughout the story, others obtained through the gathering of collectables. The game introduces a whole host of different collectables, but none feel all that important. Story progress is almost completely tied to level progression.

The camp feels like an open hub, free to explore with things hidden about. Going into a mind however is an odd mix of puzzle solving, talking to characters, combat, and platforming. Often within cramped spaces, which the dated camera and level geometry doesn't do any favors.

Psychonauts has so so much potential. Wacky characters, strange levels, and incredibly writing definitely make the game worth playing but mechanics aren't given enough room to mature, levels are often cramped and confusingly put together, and the overall structure feels confused and muddled.

Seems unfair to just call this Slay the Spire with movement, because the movement does add more than that may make it sound, but at the same time, that is totally what it is. It's StS but you also have to consider your own and the enemy's placement and waste mana on movement on turns, which I didn't really think added anything fun to the game. These games are already enough of an uphill battle without needing to spend your extremely limited mana on moving out of an acid pit your opponent just created.

It doesn't help that I'm just not into these punishingly difficult card games. I like the ones where you win most of the time and only have to really concentrate on the occasional tough battle, not these ones where every fight is tooth and nail, at least as a beginner. It also doesn't help that I find that both this and StS both have uninspiring and unexciting cards and this game's version of relics is even worse, because at least the relics in Spire are fun. It's like everything that might be exciting comes with a huge drawback like being expensive to cast and the fun is sucked out for me.

Solid game, but after a fun first few hours of learning it and getting pretty far into a run, I'm just not having fun anymore and when launching a game starts to feel like a chore, it's time to just uninstall it.

It's a game that definitely is different design wise from anything else in the series. Mario feels slower. He has less movement options and tricks. It overall feels more slower paced compared to the thrilling movement seen in 64, sunshine and odyssey. All that being said, this game revels in it's spectacle. The orchestrated soundtrack, as well as flying through space in linear automated sections mostly provide this spectacle. The thing that I find most impressive with this game though is it's level design. Sandbox Mario is great because there is so many different ways to get to the goal with your movement. It can vary so much sometimes that so many different players will reach the same goal in different ways. A drawback of this is that some design ideas feel looser and not as pronounced. Galaxy with it's more linear design instead, is able to throw so many ideas at the player since the level gimmicks is at the forefront of the game now, rather than serving as a backdrop to navigate around. The ideas feel more explored in this game compared to most other 3D Marios, excluding 3d world and maybe odyssey. The mechanics all are still in service to one overall mechanic, that being the gravitational pull of each planet you are on and how that interacts with every little thing in this game.
Overall, I don't think how Nintendo approached the levels in this game is bad, but it's certainly a departure from the past games. As a huge fan of the sandbox style, I didn't really like the game at first, but it's charm and imagination started to click with me, and by the end I was really appreciating what the game was doing with all of it's ideas. It's not for everyone, but I really enjoyed this and would recommend to others