A frankly terrible retelling of one piece, where knowledge of the manga is mandatory to even know what's going on because the cutscenes do such a poor job at it. Of course, if you already know the plot points, the cutscenes become even more useless, because the presentation is rather terrible. Besides the cutscenes, I actually like the presentation of battles with the limitations of the 3DS in mind, and having seen how bombastic the special moves get, I think they're animated rather well. There's just not much to the battle system, the 'dungeons' if you'd call them that are just straight hallways... I didn't get very far into this one, but from what I have played, it looks like One Piece Odyssey is essentially doing what this game wanted to do, but actually delivering quality. So, go play that instead.

- Played on NSO -
So the general opinion I heard on this game was that it was well-liked and people were really happy to see the first mario land make it over to NSO when we previously only had the second one. I kinda liked the chunky aesthetic of it so I gave it a go and it… is definitely a game. The controls are extremely stiff to the point where making a very simple jump can still lead to you falling down a pit, while also being kind of slippery where I slipped down a platform at light speed. Yeah, mario DROPS in this game as soon as there’s no solid ground, so slide an inch of that platform and he’ll be off to his death in a flash. The shooter segments were actually a nice change of pace in that regard, enjoyed them quite a bit more than the usual levels… and then it just abruptly ends. I expected a little more, especially because levels aren’t shy to re-use the exact same segments by copy pasting them within that same level.
Short, stiff, not really that fun to play, but at least I see why they call it quirky. The random bamboo forest levels had a nice aesthetic, but the rest didn’t leave much of an impression.