I’ve never had a chance to play this game up until this year and to say it was worth the wait is the understatement of the century. This game honestly feels like the Fantasia of video games. Everything about this game feels so beautifully crafted and planned out that everything just seemingly flows together so elegantly. If Super Mario Odyssey was a jazzy and loud Looney Toons cartoon, then this game is a brilliantly presented Disney film. The music is that of both childhood wonder and matured masterpieces. The story goes into detail of things I would’ve never seen a Mario game go into, with a character with an intriguing backstory which discusses the concept of death, which is something that hasn’t been done in Mario before or since it’s inception. The games controls, while not as free flowing as something like Super Mario Odyssey, is still certainly great. Even with motion controls, it still feels great to pull of complex movements, and has still aged very well over time. The graphics as well still look delightful. When playing the game on Super Mario 3D All-Stars, it still looks really good even if it’s a game from 13 years ago. The lighting has a solid amount of depth and the animations are smooth and expensive, which surprised me a little bit. Walking into this game, I had absolutely no nostalgia of it. I never owned the game on the original Wii and never bother buying it on, say, the Wii U Virtual Console. I knew the game was excellent but I didn’t understand why people loved it so much. After playing, the best word to describe this game is “elegant”. Everything just flows into another and it makes an experience that is so brilliant and well thought out that if it weren’t for SMO being as important as it is to me, this would be my favorite game of all time.