This is one of my favorite games ever, and I like to revisit it every few years. It still holds up magnificently. It's just a joy to play through, the atmosphere and writing are fun, the gameplay is light and enjoyable, the music is great, etc. It's always fun to come back to it with a new perspective.
As far as nitpicks go, I think a couple of them deal with Pixls. I enjoy their designs and dialog a lot, but they only talk during their intro scenes and never again. It would've given them a lot more character if they actually chimed in now and again like your current character does (also, let Mario talk. It just feels a little silly when he's the only silent one). I also think there's just a little bit of bloat in the number of Pixls, not even counting optional ones. A lot of the fun of the gameplay is "OK, holding forward stopped working, what tools do I have that might apply here?" and figuring it out. This starts out pretty simple, then grows to a nice tight loop, then eventually you have a few too many options and it becomes pretty rare to whip out some of the early game or niche Pixls to solve anything. There's already a wealth of options with the character swapping, flipping to 3D, and Tippi, so I think it might have helped keep things more creative if there were only 4 or 5 Pixls. Fleep, for example, really doesn't need to exist, and then the others get spread so thin, especially Slim (hehe). But again, this is nitpicking. It's fine to have some less notable Pixls just for the fun of collecting them or recognizing a rare scenario when they apply anyway. I do feel like >80% of the 2nd half of my game was either Bowser + Carrie or Mario + Dashell though (and my old favorite, Cudge). Something else that would've been nice is being able to bind more than one Pixl to certain buttons, like you can with items in A Link Between Worlds or something, since you swap around a lot and this would cut down on menuing.
Another very minor nitpick I noticed this time around was that for 3 of the 7 pure hearts you collect, it turns out it was the character you were escorting/rescuing the whole time. Kind of funny that it happens so often, doesn't really impact the story, I just thought it was silly. The story is Kingdom Hearts if it was good. Or Romeo and Juliet if it was good, idk.
A pretty perfect video game.
As far as nitpicks go, I think a couple of them deal with Pixls. I enjoy their designs and dialog a lot, but they only talk during their intro scenes and never again. It would've given them a lot more character if they actually chimed in now and again like your current character does (also, let Mario talk. It just feels a little silly when he's the only silent one). I also think there's just a little bit of bloat in the number of Pixls, not even counting optional ones. A lot of the fun of the gameplay is "OK, holding forward stopped working, what tools do I have that might apply here?" and figuring it out. This starts out pretty simple, then grows to a nice tight loop, then eventually you have a few too many options and it becomes pretty rare to whip out some of the early game or niche Pixls to solve anything. There's already a wealth of options with the character swapping, flipping to 3D, and Tippi, so I think it might have helped keep things more creative if there were only 4 or 5 Pixls. Fleep, for example, really doesn't need to exist, and then the others get spread so thin, especially Slim (hehe). But again, this is nitpicking. It's fine to have some less notable Pixls just for the fun of collecting them or recognizing a rare scenario when they apply anyway. I do feel like >80% of the 2nd half of my game was either Bowser + Carrie or Mario + Dashell though (and my old favorite, Cudge). Something else that would've been nice is being able to bind more than one Pixl to certain buttons, like you can with items in A Link Between Worlds or something, since you swap around a lot and this would cut down on menuing.
Another very minor nitpick I noticed this time around was that for 3 of the 7 pure hearts you collect, it turns out it was the character you were escorting/rescuing the whole time. Kind of funny that it happens so often, doesn't really impact the story, I just thought it was silly. The story is Kingdom Hearts if it was good. Or Romeo and Juliet if it was good, idk.
A pretty perfect video game.