I know I foreshadowed a different game in my last post, but as fate would have it, my brothers came to visit, and they brought their Nintendo Switches! The new console doesn’t have many games for it right now, and my brothers have even less games for it, but out of the games they do have, there was one that I was interested in, and I beat it today:

This is a collectathon platformer. Like in previous Mario games, you have the triple jump, long jump, and back-flip, but new to this game is your method of attack: you throw your hat at your enemies, and it boomerangs back toward you. Some enemies get possessed by you when you throw your hat at them, at which point the controls change to reflect your new body. Also, for the first time since Super Mario 64, this is a mainstream Mario platformer that doesn’t have lives! When you die, you lose 10 coins before being sent back to the last checkpoint (and if you die on land, you can get those coins back).

As with previous collectathon platformers, there are multiples of a certain item scattered throughout the level, and you have to collect a certain number of them to progress through the game (this time, it’s Power Moons). Like previous Mario collectathons, there are the easy-to-get ones for Nintendo’s target demographic of 3-year-olds, and there are some more tricky-to-reach ones for those of us who’ve played a video game before. However, something this game does that bothered me is that certain Power Moons in a level can’t be accessed until after certain story missions are cleared. You see, this isn’t like previous Mario collectathons where each collectible has its own mission on a mission select screen with certain changes being made depending on which mission was selected; this game tries to be more open with its levels, with all Power Moons being in their designated spots from the beginning. For a game that requires exploration to get all of the Power Moons, I find it odd that they’d force story progression like this, especially since there are plenty of optional Power Moons that can be gotten in levels without completing the story missions first. After all, this forced story progression only serves to discourage exploration (it isn’t even like you’re unlocking new powers like in Mario 64 and Sunshine; the game literally just puts up walls in front of obvious doors, forcing you to backtrack to them if you want all the Power Moons). In fact, many of the levels are designed more like linear one-and-done stages with the occasional small, branching path rather than a large area meant to be explored, perhaps implying that the devs were originally going to make a game more like 3D Land and 3D World than Super Mario 64. I also found it odd that you get certain Power Moons by buying them at shops; it’s like the developers were required to put a certain number of Power Moons in the game by management, but they weren’t able to think of enough challenges for all of the Power Moons, so they said “screw it, lets just make them shop items.” Curse you, arbitrary management requirements! Then again, previous Mario games had equally arbitrary ways to get certain collectibles; Super Mario 64 had the 100-coin goal, Super Mario Sunshine had the blue coins, and Super Mario Galaxy had the purple coins.

Something else this game does differently (from previous Mario collectathons, at least) is that it doesn’t require a flat number of Power Moons to progress to each location; rather it requires a certain amount from the previous level. I always ended up with enough for each level; I just thought it was something worth bringing up.

Another issue I have with the game is the way it treats bosses. The bosses themselves are well designed, but the game makes you fight most of them twice just for story progression, with barely anything different done the following battle. Heck, even the final fight against Bowser is just a slight alteration from a previous boss battle. As you can imagine, I have this same issue with most other Mario games.

Despite all of the previous issues, the levels and challenges are well made for the most part, and I did have enough fun with the game to beat it. However, what really got to me was the post-game content. When you beat the game, you get to travel to the Mushroom Kingdom, and when you get 250 Power Moons, you get to travel to a level that’s essentially just a boss-rush of bosses you’ve already fought twice. At this point, the game notifies you that “New Power Moons have been added to the shops!” which already bothered me since the game is essentially saying that it’s expanding upon one of its worst parts. However, the game really went all-in on this aspect. You see, there isn’t just one per shop like before; there’s over 50. If you have 1000 coins or more, the game gives you the option to buy 10 at once, but at those numbers, why not add an option to let us select the exact number players want to buy?

Plus, there’s an NPC in the Mushroom Kingdom who gives you a Power Moon for each achievement you get (the achievements include things like beating the game, making me think the player was originally meant to start the game here). However, this NPC gives you the Moons one at a time, and since you’ll have likely gotten several achievements by the end of the main game, you’ll have to talk to the NPC once for each Power Moon, and just like buying the Power Moons in the shops and defeating the same bosses over and over, it gets tedious. Plus, some achievements are really dumb, like “jump 10000 times” or “throw your hat 5000 times.” I haven’t seen achievements this dumb since Out There Somewhere.

Even if I could unlock the dumb achievements and gather enough coins to sell out the shops just by going back and collecting all of the Power Moons I missed, I won’t bother doing so since the game already showed that it isn’t above devolving to a tedious grindfest (especially with the post-game level that’s just a boss rush of previously reused bosses).

Overall, I did like most of the game, but I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone who likes collectathon platformers. If you’re okay with just beating the game and leaving it at that, then you’ll like it. However, if you’re the kind of person who prefers to 100% all of your games, it may not be worth it.