I don't know how well this game sold, but back when I was young, this game was featured on EVERY SINGLE ps3 advertisement poster in my country. There's always been something about this game that just made me want to play it since I was a kid. Of course there's the half-naked warrior woman on the cover artwork🤣 but also the game's incredible art direction that somehow just got better to look at as I grew up. And now that I've played it, it's...... good. kinda.

Considering how low this game is rated on this site, I didn't go in with the highest expectations, but was quite impressed with the combat mechanics initially. But it didn't take long for me to realise how messy the controls actually are. There are three different stances in this game that are quite distinct, but the blocking mechanics in this game just suck. Your character automatically blocks when you're not attacking, and with a quick press of the attack button right after blocking you can cause massive damage to the enemy, which is my biggest problem here. You can either be on the offensive and deal little to no damage while getting interrupted and beaten by your enemies, OR you can wait for your enemies to attack you, so that you can counterattack them, which made the combat very monotonous for me. It's fun initially but gets boring over time. It's not annoying, but kinda dull

The combat is serviceable for the most part, but the game has other problems. It keeps throwing massive waves of enemies that don't bring anything new to the table, adding even more to the monotony of the game. And finally there are the absolutely cringe-inducing voice acting and live capture performances. Holy shit they're terrible. The story is cliche as well and fails to leave an impact on you.

Now that we're done with the negatives, here's what I liked about this game.... the art direction. This is always what kept this game on my mind for years. This is a 2007 game, and the just scale of this game, the attention to details, the interactability with the environment is mindblowing. There are some sections in this game where you're supposed to shoot arrows or fire cannons(oh and the aiming mechanics surprisingly don't suck) and just the number of things on the screen just blows my mind every time. Istg, if it wasn't for the incredibe art direction of this game I would've dropped it in no time. I'm not familliar with ninja Theory's other works, but I've heard that they're great at making their games cinematic, and if this is their worst, I'm REALLY excited to try out their other stuff.

Last but not the least, I just wanna say that despite the massive amount of flaws, you can tell that a lot of heart was put into this game. It's one of those times when you know that all the hardwork behind this game went completely in the wrong direction, but you can't help but still have some amount of praise for the team that worked on it. The amazing art direction aside, everything here is average to below-average, with the voice acting being an exception(it's straight up garbage), but the game never really annoyed me so just for that this is the rating I'll be going with. Would I recommend this, I'm not sure, but I'm kinda biased towards this game so yeah, that's my rating.

I've kind of been spoiled by Tropical Freeze's boss fights, so ig it's kinda natural that I didn't enjoy Super Mario Wonder as much as I had hoped I would. Don't get me wrong though, this is a solid platformer. I've never played any of the New Super Mario games so I can't compare Wonder to those, but I had a fun time with this game. It's a near-perfect game with fantastic art direction, really fun fast-paced levels, an overworld that actually looks interesting and not bland(uhh uhm Take notes Mario 3D World...), but here's what this game lacks: challenge.

If you know me, you know I'm the last person who'd complain about a game being easy, and I feel that should explain how easy this game is. My expectations were really high for this game because of my experiences with Odyssey and Tropical Freeze, and this game did deliver on pretty much everything. Every single level introduces a brand new mechanic that completely changes your perception on how to approach this level now.... but then you breeze through that level in no time without any problem. So yeah that's all. Really, REALLY fun, gorgeous looking game, but it's just too damn easy.

Or maybe Tropical Freeze just made me too good at 2D Platformers heh heh heh

(8.5/10)