tldr it's pretty much what New Soup always should have been. like going from bland, identical level design that was only fun playing with three other people to this is a pretty stark leap. platforming feels great, level design is great, and the new powerups are fun (though i like the older ones more ngl)

the highlight of this one is easily the wacky level designs - both with and without wonder effects. it's nice that pretty much every level is built around some sort of cool gimmick, but some of them do tend to be a bit boring sometimes. there are a lot of winners, but then there's just "in this level there's acid on the ground sometimes". i fuckin loved the wonder effects though, framing your entire platformer around how heavily you're gonna break its own rules in each level works really well. again, though, not all of them are winners, and i was pretty disappointed at how many repeat gimmicks there were (ie multiple levels where the Wonder is just bowser shooting at you).

game's aesthetics are great, and everything from the sound design to the animation is a massive step up from new soup. even the dumb ass talking flowers helped solidify its identity, even though i really hate them 99% of the time.

unfortunately, there are a few weird decisions that don't really vibe with me - like almost every boss fight being an identical rehash of bowser jr, or how two whole worlds just end without any sort of finale. plus i wasn't really incentivized to use different badges since there isn't really anything you get from experimenting with them - once i got the spin jump badge i never wanted to use anything else.

definitely not my favorite platformer, but i had a pretty good time with it and i can see myself going for 100% one of these days.