(Note: I played this couch co-op with a friend!)

Finally got around to playing and it was an absolute delight!

The visuals and sound design are definitely the best part. Everything is so colorful and whimsical! It’s really nice to see these characters be so expressive again, it rivals the first Paper Mario in terms of little details! Things like Mario grabbing his hat to take in the pipes with him or the change in expression when pushing a pipe vs pushing a pipe against Shova are such little details but they add so, SO much. The music theming throughout the game is also super cool, but it’s hard to explain in words.

I also surprisingly really liked the talking flowers! I caught myself saying hi back to them a lot and they got some laughs out of me. The Poplins and Prince Florian are also quite cute!

I think the only complaint I’d have is that the Bowser Jr. fights were extremely easy and not very interesting, but it’s not a big enough deal for me to take away from the experience. I certainly don’t play 2D Mario for the boss fights.

Overall, I had a wonderful time! I never thought I’d see the day we get a 2D Mario with OVA and Paper Mario influence. My second 5 star as of now!

Picross 3D: Round 2!

I did a short review of this a while ago, but I'm redoing it since I can word my thoughts better, and cause I did a long-er review on the first game. Let's go!

So, just like the first game, it's a 3D take on Picross. Instead of a square filled with squares, you get a cube made of cubes! You have to chip away at the cubes to reveal the shape. Unlike the first game, you have to paint each block as well. Instead of just very-square models, your shapes in this game are stylized as wooden figures! Here's the game cover, for an example. You get two colors: orange and blue. Orange numbers are used for curved blocks and non-straight lines of blocks, and blue is for straight lines of blocks. This game also introduces a bomb button, which will clear all the 0 blocks. It's very useful to shave off time and also so you don't accidentally tap the wrong thing and get a strike. While you do get strikes, you can only get a game over in time trials/one-chance challenges. Outside of those, strikes only affect your score.

Instead of being sorted by difficulty like the first game, this game has puzzles themed by category from the start, referred to as books. The actual puzzle difficulty is adjustable from easy, normal, and hard. You can only get the highest gem ranking if you play on hard, but you only need the white gems to unlock more books.

The presentation is really where this game shines. The game is themed after a cafe/book shop. Your file is referred to as a membership card, and you get stamps for every 3000 points, and can get up to 10 stamps. This is also why the categories are referred to as books! Each book has it's own unique cover. As mentioned earlier, the actual puzzles are themed as wooden figures! In exchange for the styliaztion of the figures, the puzzles aren't animated here. The music is all various flavors of jazz, and I think is probably one of the best soundtracks ever made for a game. There's also some nice detail in the sound design, such as the noises for painting cubes orange and blue being different from one another.

There's no puzzle maker or sharing like the first game, unfortunately. There's some amiibo puzzles, but that's about it for fun extras. The Kirby ones are specifically themed to also be related to the game.

I think the only real downside to this game is that it's SUPER easy to make a misinput, but the first game has that problem too. Such is the nature of a touch screen based game.

I think this is the best game ever made. Its first ever (and probably only!) five star rating. (And my first rating ever, actually!)

If you like puzzle games or touch-screen based games, I absolutely recommend it!

Thanks for reading!