The Mario Mandate is basically a thing of modern game legend at this point: The story goes that around 2007, Miyamoto was unhappy with the more bizarre routes the Mario franchise had been taking around that time (Rosalina's storybook in Mario Galaxy, the edgier animations of Mario Strikers, everything about Super Paper Mario) and implimented a course correction towards genericizing the series. While I'm not here to speculate on whether or not this really happened (It probably did), it certainly lines up with the decline of Nintendo doing much interesting: The same cookie cutter platformers, bland sports games and uninteresting RPGs were all Mario's had for us since, with little exception. However, these Mandaters, as I will now call them, claim there was a last bastion of creative freedom in this franchise, the last sign of soul in a growing ocean of soulless: Dream Team. Dream Team was the last of the Mario RPGs anyone seemed to have much praise for, seemingly continuing the trend of the Mario and Luigi games being quirky adventures among a weird and unique cast of characters, and I am unfortunately here to say that by all accounts, this seems like bull.
It's almost shocking how immediately uninteresting of a world Dream Team makes. Basically every NPC you find in the early stretch of the game is either recycled from one of the previous games, a toad, or a bird. The enemies are mostly composed of geometric shapes with eyes. Outside of the Pi'illo people (Who are fine, I guess), there's absolutely nothing interesting. It's barely one step removed from what would become of the later RPGs, almost exclusively using recycled Mario designs with, like, maybe a hat on or something. Game's ugly, too. Very ugly.
The overabundance of tutorials is something basically everyone complains about with this game and it's for good reason. They literally never stop. Every thirty minutes or so you're given a new tutorial on some new mechanic they introduce, some skippable, some not. Why they spread the mechanics out so far is beyond me: It takes around three hours to get the hammer, and over ten before you get access to any of the combination field moves. Why not just dump them all at the beginning like the other games, and then leave a couple to be added throughout? It makes the game's flow way better.
Why is this game so long? It's basically twice as long as the prior games for no discernable reason. Despite playing it for almost as long as, say, Superstar Saga, significantly less happens in it! You go to maybe 5 different areas in the time it takes that game to near completion! They filled the game with endless long, unskippable cutscenes that add almost nothing to anything. The main villain barely has any kind of presence, he shows up once every 5 hours to faff about in a bad Dracula impression and then just leaves.
The gameplay's...fine? I think the battles are pretty fun but there's way too little enemy variety for how big a lot of these areas are. These games can already feel repetitive with how little you have to think outside of doing the same couple button presses over and over, but this game really shows how uninteresting a lot of the core gameplay is. The bosses are usually fun and have higher pressure to them but outside of that it's mostly a slog.
The dreamworld transformation stuff is slow and bad. I don't like it.
Anyway, the giant battles are what made me basically drop the game. Sure, they rarely happen, but they're some of the least fun I've ever had with a game in general. They're like puzzle battles that are both way too easy to solve and go on for way too long, the swiping often feels incredibly unsatisfying with little indication of if you're doing it quite right or not, and they make my arm hurt after swiping for too long. 17 hours I tried giving this game a fair chance but these really made me tap out.
I'll probably finish this game like a year for now after I get curious again but for now this is how I'm feeling. I'd give it like a 1.5/5 if I was rating it but because I got less than halfway through I'm just gonna leave it blank for now. Fuck you Mario, you ruined my childhood forever.
It's almost shocking how immediately uninteresting of a world Dream Team makes. Basically every NPC you find in the early stretch of the game is either recycled from one of the previous games, a toad, or a bird. The enemies are mostly composed of geometric shapes with eyes. Outside of the Pi'illo people (Who are fine, I guess), there's absolutely nothing interesting. It's barely one step removed from what would become of the later RPGs, almost exclusively using recycled Mario designs with, like, maybe a hat on or something. Game's ugly, too. Very ugly.
The overabundance of tutorials is something basically everyone complains about with this game and it's for good reason. They literally never stop. Every thirty minutes or so you're given a new tutorial on some new mechanic they introduce, some skippable, some not. Why they spread the mechanics out so far is beyond me: It takes around three hours to get the hammer, and over ten before you get access to any of the combination field moves. Why not just dump them all at the beginning like the other games, and then leave a couple to be added throughout? It makes the game's flow way better.
Why is this game so long? It's basically twice as long as the prior games for no discernable reason. Despite playing it for almost as long as, say, Superstar Saga, significantly less happens in it! You go to maybe 5 different areas in the time it takes that game to near completion! They filled the game with endless long, unskippable cutscenes that add almost nothing to anything. The main villain barely has any kind of presence, he shows up once every 5 hours to faff about in a bad Dracula impression and then just leaves.
The gameplay's...fine? I think the battles are pretty fun but there's way too little enemy variety for how big a lot of these areas are. These games can already feel repetitive with how little you have to think outside of doing the same couple button presses over and over, but this game really shows how uninteresting a lot of the core gameplay is. The bosses are usually fun and have higher pressure to them but outside of that it's mostly a slog.
The dreamworld transformation stuff is slow and bad. I don't like it.
Anyway, the giant battles are what made me basically drop the game. Sure, they rarely happen, but they're some of the least fun I've ever had with a game in general. They're like puzzle battles that are both way too easy to solve and go on for way too long, the swiping often feels incredibly unsatisfying with little indication of if you're doing it quite right or not, and they make my arm hurt after swiping for too long. 17 hours I tried giving this game a fair chance but these really made me tap out.
I'll probably finish this game like a year for now after I get curious again but for now this is how I'm feeling. I'd give it like a 1.5/5 if I was rating it but because I got less than halfway through I'm just gonna leave it blank for now. Fuck you Mario, you ruined my childhood forever.
3 Comments
I'm actually more important than you so this is still a net loss for the world.
that sucks
Lynxelot
1 year ago
thank you, you've at least saved one life with your suffering. it was not in vain