This might be kind of shallow but I think I would have enjoyed the original graphics a lot better. I just did not care for the cutesy overly-smooth look and didn't really get all the Mario stuff. That being said, it's a really fun romp around the island with a lot of really cute moments, and the idea of this whole island being within the Windfish's dream is so subtly brilliant. There is something so unnerving about every boss pleading with you to stop, that your success will mean the death of everyone on the island.

First off, the writing is really bare bones and uninspired so there was really nothing to sink your teeth into as far as the world of the game goes, but I guess the focus is more on the mechanics in this game.
I've never played any other Metroidvania games before so the level design of constantly retracing your steps with new upgrades to unlock new areas was new to me and felt like a really clever and satisfying way to play a 2D platformer.
The controls took a while to get used to, and I found the boss fights really challenging. True, there was a lot of satisfaction after beating a boss, but I found the process of learning all their telegraphed attacks and patterns pretty frustrating. Maybe that's a sign that I would suffer a lot playing something like Dark Souls.

Completely devastating. I was completely swallowed up by the tragedy and the despair and the hope against hope of this broken world filled with broken people. The dialogue is so beautiful and gut-wrenching and the experience of playing Harry really makes you feel the weight of every decision. Playing as a deeply fucked up protagonist lets the player accept the consequences of every bad roll, every mistake, and really lean in to the roleplaying elements moreso than most games that pretend to have that kind of gameplay. The collapsing of political, emotional, and supernatural crises is so acute and powerful and deftly done, and resonated with me at a deeply spiritual level.

Some really creepy little atmospheric dread-inducing short horror games. Leechbowl is a spooky lonely town to explore and throw blood on the walls, Pente has a beautiful almost vaporwave castle (but is pretty short and not very scary), but Grandmother is the standout, with a genuinely dreadful little farm in the woods to explore, as your grandmother stares lifelessly at the TV (or starts gasping horribly if you turn it off). With all of these the horror works by building up a sense of mystery and dread rather than through jump scares. You can see the seeds of the skincrawling masterpieces that Kitty Horrorshow would go on to make in her later entries in the series.

Gloompuke: Pretty weird little world to explore, but no real narrative progression or gameplay- just walking around and talking to the various characters, whose dialogues are pretty clever.

Monastery: The highlight of Volume 2. Controls are janky, but it's genuinely spooky exploring this old monastery and trying to guess what weird fucked up experiments the monks were doing. I love all of KH's themes of parasites and bloodsuckers and bodily transformation. Having to cut open creepy crawlies and dig up corpses to find keys is fun, but you spend a lot of time looking for tiny little out of place things to click on that are really easy to miss.

Roads: A strangely beautiful higher res version of Pente from Volume 1. This time, there are strange dreamlike twisting and intertwining paths taking you from floating stanza to floating stanza, all twirling around these classic vaporwave fairytale castles. A meditative journey to reveal a poem, without any "endgame."

Scarlet Bough: This one actually wouldn't load for me unfortunately, but I've watched gameplay of it and it looks like its got a pretty great Silent Hill kind of atmosphere. Thematically resonant with Monastery.

Finding a good user-made level, let alone a great one, in the menu is a total crapshoot, but when you do there are some absolutely spectacular gems that people have made. The level building interface is incredibly user-friendly and the design process of making a level difficult, but playable and fun is a really great creative challenge. Being able to build and play levels in (most of) the classic styles is a really fun nostalgia-trip for those who played those classic games (and those who haven't) while still keeping things fresh. The SMB2 and Link power-ups are really fun additions as well.

Finally beat that goddamn Boswer fight at the end. Nothing really to say except that the vibes on this game are fucking immaculate and the music and textures are just so mesmerizing. And some of those stars are just so goddamn hard to get (I'm talking about you, Stand Tall on the Four Pillars). The controls and camera are definitely a bit janky, and can make certain challenges really frustrating, but I think you come to appreciate the level of difficulty, and eventually Mario's movement takes on a certain gracefulness.