"Hey, you know the Wario Land games? Those super idiosyncratic, beloved platformers made a passionate team of developers? Well why don't we get essentially an anonymous studio to make a new one of those, but with touch controls in all the places you don't want them!"

This game feels like a seat-filler. Something that exists just to say "Look how many games we have on our platform!" and move on from. Previous Wario games have so much thought and care put into them and their mechanics, and the way Wario affects the world and vice-versa. Here, all the power-ups that come from interacting with the world are just costumes you equip at any time, all controlled by the stylus and equipped by using it as well. This ends up creating brain-dead level design, where everything is solvable by just putting on one of the costumes or moving onto the next room and coming back when you have the right costume for it. It's as obvious as puzzle platformers come, because the devs here clearly don't understand there's a difference between solving a puzzle through the moveset given to you and objects in the environment vs solving a puzzle by using the Puzzle Solving Item.

Drawing on screen to switch to different abilities isn't horrible, but is there any reason this had to come at the cost of having a jump button? Or any buttons?? I guess they expect you to play this with a hand on the d-pad and another on your stylus, because up on the d-pad is jump and you need touch controls for any attack or action. While going through normal levels this set-up is ok, but for situations that require fast action, I always ended up fumbling over my DS trying to draw the right thing several times in a row. Why doesn't this game pause the action when you draw like in Okami? It wouldn't actually be that intrusive, it'd actually make things flow nicely. Instead, boss fights that require fast costume changes are way more annoying because I keep accidentally putting Wario in the boat costume instead of the one that gives him a gun.

One thing I will praise highly is the dialogue here. The premise of Wario ruining an actual master thief's life by stealing his powers and brute forcing his way through every obstacle is actually funny, and there's a lot of good jokes all throughout the story. This is just another way Wario is the anti-Mario, he can actually carry a dialogue heavy story quite well, just because he's so distinct of a character. I won't say it's the best story, as at a certain point a lot of the beats of each "episode" become repetitive, but it was a surprise to see how much work was put into turning in an entertaining script for this game.

I made a point earlier in this review about how this is a 2D Wario game not developed by the Wario Land devs, and I don't think I would've bothered pointing that out if it weren't for the fact that I feel it tries to evoke it a lot. The levels are set up sort of like Wario Land 4 levels but bigger, the enemies are in the same school of "somewhere between cute and weird" design, and whenever you find a chest, you have to do a minigame with a bomb as a countdown clock, which to me reads as trying to invoke the Warioware games as well. But of course, none of these are as good as the real thing, especially the mingames, which feel like the most obvious things to do with a touch screen possible (there's a slide puzzle). The levels are big in a way that makes them very exhausting to explore, since everything is so slow and often requires re-doing puzzles with specific costumes. Also, the music is just pathetic, no one is going to be bumping this shit, these songs are not going to be invited to the "1 hour nintendo music compilation" party.

Theres certainly a fair amount of usual Nintendo charm here but the overall design of this just feels clunky and rushed. On the face its a very simple platformer, running around various levels and using disguises in order to use abilities to progress. And unfortunately that face value sticks thanks to a variety of rather dull level designs.

The controls dont exactly help matters, in order to change costume, you need to draw various images on the touchscreen. Unfortunately half the time it just flat out doesnt work. Even when they do work, it just feels like a chore to swap in and out of costumes for minor tasks, some of which again involve the touchscreen, some of which again dont work half the time.

So yeah. A tedious mess of a game.

This'll probably be my longest Backloggd review. I didn't think I'd have too much to say but here goes. If you want the tl;dr just scroll down at the bottom.

Master of Disguise is Wario's most jaded release by far; It's reputation as the touch screen gimmicky black sheep of the series is hard to ignore and its a label that it'll stick with probably for good. That said, I do have PLENTY of thoughts.

I've seen a three-way split between opinion on the game: "It's underrated!", "It sucks ass!", and "It's alright." The 2nd viewpoint tends to critique the game for it being a weird marriage of Wario Land and WarioWare. The game is very much its own thing, while it does take some elements from both, the elements are peppered onto the main course of the game which is the exploration based puzzle solving.

Watching footage of the game doesn't really do it justice, MoD is one of those games where its extremely boring to watch (I streamed it for my friends one of em fell asleep) but engaging to play once you get ahold of it's quirks.

The disguises are kinda similar to Wario Land's transformations except Wario turns into them on his own accord rather than it be an environmental hazard forcing the transformation against his will. Wario uses each disguise to solve certain puzzles, take out certain obstacles, you know, standard stuff, and the way to activate them is with the stylus and drawing a shape near Wario that corresponds to each outfit. I did find the disguises fun to use, but I really wish they were easier to cycle through. It wasn't a big deal when I had 3 costumes to keep track of, but once I've unlocked most (and eventually, all of them) there were times I was drawing the shape of a certain disguise I wanted only to put on a disguise I didn't want. It was pretty annoying to deal with especially in boss fights. A flaw like this could've been mitigated with cycling through the disguises with the L&R buttons but the devs didn't think to use em. Attacks and inputs for each disguise are also done with the touchscreen (with the exception of one that uses the DS Mic). Wasn't too hard to attack and do what I wanted with the disguises, but the finicky nature of the touchscreen did lead to me triggering misinputs from time to time. If you're wondering how Wario can move, he moves with the Dpad (or face buttons if you're a lefty, I can only imagine how annoying this game would be for a left handed person on original hardware)

You still collect gold and treasures like you would in Wario Land...Kinda. Money bags you blitz through and enemies you kill, they drop all that sweet valuables for keeps, but specific treasures are stored in chests. Red Chests have normal treasures that just increase your cash score when you beat a level, Green Chests contain gems that unlock your disguises and later upgrade them, and Purple Chests contain the episode exclusive items that help you progress. People tend to not mention the distinction between the three at all. If you're looking to just play the game and beat it then I highly advise focusing on the Purple and Green chests, ignore Red Chests. That said, the way to obtain the contents from any of the chests is to complete a small minigame from a pool of 8. This is where the WarioWare influence comes in. You're either tasked to connect dots, smash roaches, color a picture, etc. Green Chests always get the picture coloring minigame because it involves coloring a shape that corresponds to the disguise you unlock. Purple and Red Chests always pull a random minigame (excluding the coloring one). The minigames are fine, they're alot slower than microgames which isn't a bad thing, but I do wish there was more minigames (12-14 would've been great) just to maintain more variety. What we got is serviceable but I do understand the pace halting nature of having to do a minigame each time you wanna open a chest. Could've been mitigated if they went the microgame approach too, short challenges to obtain the contents of the chest.

After unlocking some disguises, you can revisit episodes you've completed and access new areas with outfits you didn't have before. Its an element shared between alot of Metroidvanias including Wario Land 3 where you revisited levels you beaten to access new places to progress. However, in MoD, revisiting old locales is optional and not required.

Bosses were fun, pretty easy as is, but I really enjoyed the puzzle solving you had to do with them since they all involved usage of the disguises in some way.

The game's writing is solid, while I wasn't too big on Wario leaning into the grossness, it didn't bother me and it was funny seeing Wario's brash attitude juxtapose against the semi-reserved/goofy nature of Count Cannoli, Carpaccio, Tiramisu, etc.

The visuals are...interesting. The characters look strange, Wario especially, but alot of the enemy designs look like they belong in different games. Pretty damn good spritework on the enemies and bosses though! The game also mixing in pre-rendered graphics was pretty odd too, kinda made the game look goofier than it is. The environments look very pretty though, best looking parts of the game by far.

The music is most likely the thing most people remember or know from the game. Its straight bangers from start to finish: Count Cannoli, Head Honcho Carpaccio, the standard Boss theme, Allegeria Gardens, etc. The soundtrack did NOT disappoint.


TL;DR Overall, I enjoyed Master of Disguise! Its a solid game that starts slow, and despite its flaws with its control scheme, I went into it with an open mind, and appreciated it for what it was and what it wanted to be, rather than criticize it for being something it wasn't trying to be (Wario Land and WarioWare). The music is great, the writing ain't perfect but it got some chuckles out of me.This adventure is something I won't forget.

Okay, so I played this years ago thinking it was gonna be like the Wario Land series, I played a bit, noticed it was touch controls and instantly gave up on it. I really didn't like the touch controls of drawing to put the disguises on and most of the attacks were done via touch screen and movement was either buttons or d-pad with no option to opt out of the touch controls. So that was it for me, until now.

So how do I feel about the game now? Well now that I finished it and saw my way through, I REALLY like the art style of the game, I honestly think this is the best Wario has looked outside his normal look in Mario games, but for this to be his own game with his own universe, he looks expressive and animated as well as the world. I can't quite put my finger on where I've seen this sprite style, it kinda reminds me a bit of Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland on GBA. It's actually a very good Metroidvania game, while it's not Wario's first time in this format, it sure is his best.

The story I gotta say is actually really good, I think this game capture's Wario's personality since he actually talks to people and has decent length dialogue and it's not anyone related to the Mario game or Wario Ware series or even Land, it's kinda it's own thing. I love Wario's personality here, he's brash, not much of a thinker, and has a one track (maybe two track at best) mind, but he's still very much in line with the Wario seen in other games, he just has a lot more to say and you get to see how he sees things as he goes on this adventure that kinda feels like a cartoon, which since it's supposed to be a TV show I guess it checks out.

Something that kinda threw me for a loop...the music to this game is fantastic! Like it doesn't even sound like Wario music, it sounds like music you'd hear in like a Shantae game or something Wayforward or Inti Creates did. If you never play the game, then at least listen to the game's soundtrack.

Alright...the controls...alrighty, I finished the game, and while I will say I was pretty harsh on the controls during my first playthrough, I did get used to it this time around, and while I don't think they are as bad as people say...it still is rather annoying to HAVE to use the stylus all the time and I feel like the touch controls just bogs down a game that is actually really good with great potential, but it HAD to have that gimmick. I feel like each disguise Wario gets is great and does really good with helping progress and has multiple uses as well as interesting puzzles. It's just sad that not only is the game held down due to the touch controls, it may not have a remake or re-release due to having to be reworked completely just to work on a modern system, unless they want to put in on the Switch, but force to use the touch screen...which would start the whole problem all over again unless it's an option.

Either way, I'm glad I came back to this game, the story and music was amazing and I felt I missed out not having experienced them, while the gameplay was good outside the gimmicky part of it, it's still a worth Wario game, I just feel it doesn't fit in the Land series, it's in series of it's own.

"A'ight" platformer that eventually "clicks". A lot of the game is figuring out how to talk to it the way it wants to be talked to (a common problem for touch screen-heavy DS games). Even when you "get" the game, you still run into issues of mixing up symbols for transformations. But as the game comes together, there's a lot to love: great writing, kick-ass music, some really solid challenges in the late- and post-game. You even come around on the mini-games, tedious as they are, once it comes to the Special Episodes. A remake for this would do well.