WONDERFUL!

[A Black Falcon]

I got it too.  I'm in world two so far.  It's good, but mostly easy.  The Wonder flower sections are often way too short, I was expecting more... like, sure a lot of them have cool effects, but when it's over in like 30 seconds I feel disappointed, the most clever section of the stage isn't much of a thing.  Those singing flowers?  That section was very low challenge and short... meh, it was kind of neat I guess.  There are some harder levels which are almost entirely a Wonder effect though, those are pretty cool.  The side level in the first world where you're on a herd of creatures was interesting conceptually, challenging, and fun.

So far, I'd say that Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a good game, but its certainly not one of my favorite Mario games.  I know there are harder levels eventually, but so far I'd put this a bit below Kirby and the Forgotten Land and definitely below 3D World.  It's probably better than any of the NSMB games, though... or the ones I've played, I've never actually played NSMBU and don't own it.  The only NSMB game I actually finished was the first one for DS, I lost interest in them after that.  (In comparison, I have over a thousand hours played in Super Mario Maker 2 now.  It's easily one of the best games ever made.)  SMBW does a good job of being more interesting than NSMB, I like how the world map and such mix in some 3D World style, but no way is it as good as Super Mario World.  That game is nearly flawless, the sometimes low difficulty is its only possible issue.

This one?  It's fun.  I like going to it and playing a few levels.  The graphics have a lot of variety, the new enemies and design elements are interesting -- the way Wonder does trees is entirely new, they are floating platforms now essentially -- and the character variety is very welcome.  Every playable character from past Mario platformers is here except for Rosalina, and Daisy is playable for the first time in a platformer.  That's a good surprise.  There's a lot to like about Wonder, but sorry, I'm on a 'it's a good probably A grade game' position right now, not 'wow it's the best thing ever'.  Issues include usually low difficulty, the often short wonder sections (the one on the bubbles in world 2 was pretty weak for instance, so short... the idea looked cool but actually playing it? not so much.), a somewhat forgettable soundtrack, and such.


[And also, I know why the game uses 2.5d graphics and they do a great job with variety and such, but sorry Japan, I don't like this look quite as much as I do sprites.  Sega apparently said they would not make a second Sonic Mania game because they don't want to make another sprite-based Sonic game, if it's not at least 2.5d they aren't interested.  The new Sonic game that just released, Superstars, is 2.5d, like Wonder but by all accounts nowhere near as good particularly because of obnoxiously long boss fights.  I haven't bought Superstars yet and won't for full price.   There is a general trend in Japan towards all classic remakes using 2.5d graphics even when the results look worse than the sprite-based originals.  Of course among 2.5d platformers Super Mario Wonder's got some of the best visual variety around, and there are a few bits where you go into pipes in the background, but still this is an interesting issue.  Western developers are much less liekly to make major sidescrolling platformers so most of the ones we get are indie, but still you do not see this 'sprites are over' thing from western games nearly as much as you do Japanese in recent years.  I'm sure Mario Wonder was always going to be 2.5d since all of the NSMB games are, and as I've said it well beats out those games' bland look, but in general it's a shame that Japanese developers usually seem to think that major releases cannot use sprites.  They are wrong about that.]