This game could be so amazing, and yet the devs use all their time to make the most unfun and unbalanced game imaginable catering only to top of the top Esports players. There are few games where you can get this steamrolled for having a bad player or team composition, that and the games complex systems make this a horrible game to pick up if you aren't willing to learn and communicate a lot. But even experienced players have it horrible if they get matches with with unresponsive or toxic randoms. This game could do so much fun and cool stuff with its massive and memorable cast and yet you are limited to playing the same like 2 PvP maps or Auto Chess? To think this is the same game that Arcane is based off of is baffling.

Paper Mario at it's absolute worst, maybe even Nintendo at its worst. The tedium, the backtracking, the convoluted mandatory puzzles that are near impossible without a guide lest you want to spend hours running around picking up random stickers hoping they solve the puzzle. It has bad gameplay, bad story, bad characters.

I'm not someone who just jumped on a hate bandwagon either, I've played the game to it's end and collected every thing sticker to unlock the secret sound test/music room it has. And yeah it's as bad as they say, maybe even worse than they say if you experience world 2 and 3 for yourself.

The only things this game does right is it's visuals which look really nice and it's music that is surprisingly good.

Overall could not recommend this game to anyone. It has very little to nothing for a long running Paper Mario fan, and any non Paper Mario fan looking for a simple Nintendo turn based 3DS game to play have the Mario & Luigi 3DS Titles right there.

Bravely Default is a JRPG with a super unique battle system. In battle you can stock up actions by using a defensive move called 'Default' mid battle to block attacks and store up 'Brave Points' to then use 'Brave' and unleash multiple different skills, items, or attacks all within a single turn depending on how many Brave Points you have.
As you progress and defeat bosses you will gain new classes or 'jobs' you can change your party members into to completely change how you strategize and go about battles.

The menu and battles screens can be navigated super fast with the snappy controls and helpful built in optimization that keeps things aware from being a chore. The game also has on the fly toggleable difficulty and the ability to disable enemy encounters if you want to back track without wasting time.

The gameplay is amazing, but its also carried by its music, voice acting, and characters. The music is consistently absolute bangers from the start to the end of the game. The final boss theme is one of the best I've ever heard. The voice acting ranges from just entertaining and funny to actually really impressive, it never got annoying and was enjoying to listen to throughout the whole game. The 4 main characters can be stubborn, annoying, and questionable at first in how they work together, however as it picks up and progresses they actually do grow and change in meaningful ways and its great to see how far they go. The villains and side characters are hilarious and amazing, with outlandish designs and voices that kept me wanting more of them.

The only real downside this game has (Besides for random encounters in general) is the horrible late game pacing. The gameplay pacing suddenly gets really weird later in the game and forces you to do a lot of the task you've already done over and over again countless times if you want to achieve the 'true ending' the game has. A lot of end game side quest also have little rewards or incentives unless you just want the challenge and the chance to interact with the characters and villians more. The story can also be questionable especially in the later half of the game as it becomes more convoluted with the pacing.

However for me the story, characters, voice acting, incredible music, and minute to minute gameplay kept me going even through the tedium (and entirely on hard mode) through all the side content and all the way to the true ending of the game. which felt like one of the craziest things I've ever accomplished in a game.

Might be nostalgia talking but this game is incredible. Somehow feels much better to play than 8 Deluxe despite 8's booster course pass bringing in most of this games best tracks and the few missing characters. This game also has the best music in the franchise, not even the options menu was left without it's own banger.

If the game had more options for battlemode like timer setting and scoring, balance with it's characters so they all felt more like the top tier's, and buffed karts so they could compete against bikes this game would be straight up perfect.

Roblox, a game profiting off of child labor more than Somalia and India combined and somehow getting even more away with it.

While it has its hidden gems, and I've certainly had some very great and funny moments on Roblox, good experiences are hard to find as every game is fighting for home page visibility.
The homepage, and by extension the whole platform is primarily made up of content farm slop with predatory gacha and live service models plaguing every corner, most games want both your undivided attention and unbelievable amounts of money, making many games impossible time commitments to play and massive money sinks.

They've lied about how easy it is to make games on Roblox, and how easy it is to start making money off of them. They've promoted speculative marketing and cryptocurrency to the tens of millions of children who frequent the platform. Even if the games were good the corporation behind it is vile and shouldn't be supported.

After years of creatively bankrupt 2D Mario games I had truly questioned how they'd ever release another new game in the series. Despite NSMB U Deluxe selling so well on the switch I could never see them making another game as safe as it, yet I also could never see them have the guts to try doing something risky and bold with 2D Mario after its 3 installment streak of safe same-y design and gameplay. I assumed we may actually not see another 2D Mario for a long time, so long that Nintendo's next console probably wouldn't even have a 2D Mario.

Wonders announcement was absolutely shocking to me, and the wait to play it from announcement wasn't even that long. And now after getting every wonder seed I can truly say that was a big, bold, incredible celebration of everything Mario. And did it ever pay off.

The charm and creativity are absolutely overflowing. You are constantly being thrusted from new idea to new idea, each full level has its own wonder flower section and almost every single one is completely unique from the last, with only a few overlapping ideas and some wonder transformations that get an extra level to shine.
The game is constantly showing off new and unique enemies, all of which I feel could AND SHOULD become staples of Mario, despite sometimes only getting a level or 2 to shine they fit right at home with the other enemies. The game also truly isn't afraid to let the some of the standard enemies either sit out this game or get a makeover to fit into the overloading creativity.
The gameplay is simply peak, this is probably the best 2D Mario has ever controlled, and the new badge systems allows for so much variety in how you overcome obstacles or just want to play the game. They removed the timer on levels which was such a needed change.
The character animations are so full of character and life, every character of the cast feels so fleshed out, and for the first time on forever you can choose who you can play through the whole game as someone other than Mario even if you are playing solo.
The visuals are absolutely stunning. There were moments I was genuinely jaw dropped, I do not know how this game runs so well consistently and yet displays such details.
The music is also amazing, the game has a large selection of new tracks and a surprising amount of remix's of legacy songs from 3D Mario's like 64 and Galaxy. Most of which definitely have a focus on being whimsical, but there is some serious bangers, it can not be understated.

This game is near perfect, but it does have a few unfortunate or just questionable things holding it back just that smallest amount.
The bosses are pretty dang underwhelming for how grandiose and bold everything else is, the game deserved much more variety in bosses for how varied the core levels are. And just like the NSMB games the bosses feel like they end way too quickly. Airship "bosses" can be done in seconds. Some of the games worlds actually lack final castles and bosses which makes them end oddly anticlimactically..? The worlds where that happened really deserved better as they had so many cool ideas that could have been utilized in a final test. And while the final boss is really cool I feel they build bowser up far too much just for him to put on more of a show than then actually trying to stop you, which can add to the charm of the game but he should be able to put on a show and also be a menacing threat as well!
The game also has some smaller levels called like "Break Times" or something, and those levels can be finished sometimes in actual seconds and feel like an afterthought to the whole experience. It also has a few "Puzzle" levels where you have to do more cryptic stuff to find all the flower coins, but they felt extremely cheap in some cases and like padding, there's a secret coin or two that's impossible to find unless you are playing online and another person has already marked it.
There was also no wario :(

Overall though this is an amazing experience that kept a smile on my face the whole time. And due to the overflowing ideas they never got to fully flesh out or give justice to I really hope we eventually see a sequel or this just be the new way forward for designing 2D Mario's.