On release, Wonder was quickly crowned the new king of the 2D Mario series by legions of folks who’d been burned deeply by the New Super Mario Bros. tetrology's hollow aesthetic. I was there. I’ve played all of these games. 2D Mario games are important enough to me that I will play them on a TV, even if it means passers-by can look in and clearly tell that I’m not filing my tax returns. I finished Wonder with 100% completion on the weekend of October 20th, 2023 (unless you count the standees. I don’t). I’ve replayed all of its levels at least twice, with and without grabbing each Wonder Flower. You know I like this game a heck of a lot. Nevertheless, I’ve got a lot to say, not all of it good. This is gonna sound a bit dry.

On Super Mario Bros. Wonder (OR — "No Country for New Super Mario Bros.")

Visually, Wonder is closer to my Dream Mario than any other this side of Yoshi’s Island, and I do hope the next one commits even harder to the cartoonishness of this aesthetic. My first impression was that it had the best control of any game in the 2D series, and in most respects, I do still believe that. The “New” games carried with them this lumbering heaviness that I’m glad we’ve shed away. The Elephant power-up is a bit undercooked, but the other two additions appropriately shake up the player's relationship with enemies and the environment. Just being able to jump into enemies from below while at a full sprint makes the Drill a treat, even without considering its burrowing ability. The removal of a flight-based power was likely due to multiplayer, but in principle, it helps the game stay centered squarely on running and jumping, and encourages creative use of the Bubble Flower (which, yes, is more or less a retooled Bubble Yoshi from off of NSMBU). The Demon’s Souls online feature is welcome; I didn’t see myself playing as a guardian angel in a Mario game, but here we are. Badges are a solid addition too, especially for newcomers. I can play as Daisy. Awesome stuff. Promising. Shame that, to my taste, there’s a lot left on the table here.

Every stage of this game locks its enemies and visuals and stage gimmicks down almost completely; you’re not likely to see much crossover. There’s one rolla-koopa stage, one hoppycat stage, one condart stage. These guys are stuck in their zones. It results in an impressive level of variety, but also prevents the game from meaningfully building on concepts from stage to stage. You don’t get that blending of flavors you’ll find in the series’ earliest entries. In this respect, it’s arguably even more formulaic than the games it’s trying to subvert. Each level’s gimmicks undergo a similar arc before being put away, each of them with a Wonder Flower to find which activates a minigame or setpiece. Nothing so plain as the well-documented and scientifically-proven "Four Step Level Design" of New Super Mario Bros., they just remembered to add the sugar. Would people still be talking about Mario 3's Angry Sun if you had to pop a regularly-mandated Wonder Flower to activate it? I don’t think it helps that these stages are threaded together as loosely as they are.

Playing into its save feature, Super Mario World invited its players to revisit levels for alternate exits and hidden secrets. Wonder doubles down on that attitude, with a wide-open map and only a single file per user. You’re meant to dig around in these levels and scour the world, but there isn’t really a whole lot to find. Yes, there are large coins to collect, tops of flagpoles to grab, but – and I hate to grumble – these pale in comparison to the discovery of warp zones, unique power-ups, and routes which alter the trajectory of a playthrough. I think they’d have been better off hiding badges within full stages than keeping them in shops or bespoke levels on the overworld. I’m of the opinion that collectibles should feel immediately tangible and exciting. Wonder sidesteps the checklist school of design for the most part, but I’d like to see it drop outta these games completely.

Here's what I'm getting at – I don’t think Wonder is adept at curating its adventure, and I don’t get the impression that its developers made that a priority. There’s a sort of halfhearted effort to add a single story beat to each world, and it's unconvincing. Possible plants just don't tend to pay off. The talking flowers never do. Stages are clustered together with respect to difficulty and theming, but any pretense of a “flow” between them, that levels together form an arc, is rarely suggested. A level is an island unto itself. It’s because the game isn’t concerned with its own replayability, actively obfuscating the option to start a New Game. It’s because Wonder isn’t all that interested in blending ideas between stages. It’s because the “Wonder” gimmick, ironically, requires each level to follow the same general beats.

I came for an album, and what I got was a collection of singles. They’re good, even great singles, but I don’t think it comes together as a whole game in the same way each of the old classics did. I hope Wonder is a sign that Nintendo is open to getting even more experimental with the conventions of this series (maybe cut out the world map next time, have one continuous game of back-to-back platforming levels), and I’m glad it was well received. You can feel those seasoned designers stretching their legs with this one — it beats out the New Super Marios on charm factor alone — and I squeezed every last drop I could out of it. I believe greater heights are within reach for this series, but if this is the last for a while, I'll still be more than appreciative that Wonder got its moment in the spotlight.

(...if you'd like to see where this falls on my list of the Thirty-Five Best Games I Played in 2023, you can check it out here. Thanks for reading!)

Excellent distillation of A Link to the Past into shorter stages. Each stage has a limited selection of Link's usual arsenal and the puzzles require smart use of the items and how they interact with each other. The art style is a weird middle ground between The Wind Waker and A Link to the Past. Four Swords Adventures would be 4/5, but you need additional Game Boy Advances and GBA to Gamecube link cables to get the most out of it, not to mention friends. That being said, it's a great entry into the 2d Zelda sub-series regardless, and it's worth checking out.

This game is entirely carried by its likeable protagonist and iconic ending. The story is an underdeveloped mess. It's paced terribly. The story jumps from one plot point to the next. The game never really slows down long enough for you to get to know any of the characters. Their motivations are kind of waved away. The game has all these new characters and I feel like I don't know anything about them. I feel like the game needed to be twice as long and have a much slower pace. They should have really focused on fleshing out Zacks relationships.

A remake of Fire Emblem 3. People don't like the story in this one, but like its immediate predecessor, Shadow Dragon, the gameplay is great. It's a pretty cool port too. They reintroduce all the characters the SNES original had to cut for space, they adapted the Satellaview Broadcast Fire Emblem maps, and they added a couple stand-alone story maps to flesh out some of the more plot important characters.
Some complaints though. The new maps for the original characters are a little annoying, and the final chapter has four (sort of) forced deployment slots in addition to Marth, which restricts the potential team you can take to the final chapter. The second issue is present in the SNES original though.

After Shouzou Kaga's departure from Intelligent Systems, it feels like they weren't sure what to do next. While all Fire Emblem games make use of the character archetypes established in the original Fire Emblem, the early game recruits are functionally identical to Shadow Dragon's. You even start the game with an identical set of units to Shadow Dragon, minus a stand-in for Caeda. This improves as the game goes on.
The maps seem to borrow from past Fire Emblem as well. The large waves of reinforcements and overall large size of maps make some chapters play out like a small Genealogy map. The layout of Chapter 7 of Binding Blade is Thracia's Chapter 6.
The Binding Blade is post-Kaga Fire Emblem at it's core. If you strip away all the bells and whistles of every succeeding Fire Emblem game (maybe not Three Houses though) this is the game you're left with. And it's good.