Don't shoot me for this PLEASE but at the end of the day Wonder shares many of the same issues I have with the majority of the 2D mario games, which is that at some point I go on auto-pilot and just blaze through a bunch of worlds because the main gameplay consists of holding right while jumping or throwing out some attacks if you have a power up. Sometimes there is a collectible to grab that requires a bit more thinking but generally these games just kind of fly by for me and while Wonder's central new mechanic, wonder effects, does help to alleviate this feeling, it feels more like a band-aid fix on a style of games that isn't particularly gripping to me.

This is easily among the best, if not the best, 2D mario, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that many of the changes are rather superficial. Wonder effects start out strong but as the game goes on they start to fall into various categories: Mario turns into enemy, Mario is chased by big enemy, Mario is put into a segment straight out of Mario Galaxy. Sometimes these are accompanied by musical numbers (which are great). This summary is obviously reductive but once you notice how similar many of the wonder effects are in terms of gameplay or aesthetics, that 'wonder' turns more into 'repetition,' especially when levels straight-up re-use wonder effects.

There's some actually bad levels here as well. The treasure hunts are clearly meant for 2-4 players but no effort was made to accomodate solo players because there's some dumb guess work involved in many of them if you don't have a bunch of players randomly jumping around or happening to be the correct character to see the hidden block.

The "break time!" levels are also painfully mediocre and feel like an excuse to give children free seeds so they can continue with the story without having to do many of the actual levels. They are so mindnumbingly easy and there's way too many of them, it never felt rewarding to complete one of these.

But realistically? The "Final-Final" level probably takes the cake for being the worst level in the game. What a middle finger to any solo player trying to 100% the game to put a bullshit invisible balloon fish jumping section at the end of your stupid challenge level, with a checkpoint FOUR entire challenges back. If there had been a checkpoint before the invisibility challenge I probably wouldn't be complaining about it now because you could grind it out, but there isn't so I am complaining. What a stupid fucking design decision man. 1/3rd of my total playtime was probably on this level alone. Additionally, this level rips into your purple coin economy so have fun grinding game over's after you are done with it so you can farm purple coins from those bonus levels to fill out your standee collection.

I think it's a good game, if I could give it a score between a 3.5/5 and a 4/5 I would, but the core on which it is built is rotten. This is a good game, albeit one that I'm not likely to remember particularly strongly, but it hasn't justified to me why 2D mario still deserves to be a flagship series for Nintendo: there simply is not enough meaningful innovation here outside of the aesthetical.

The story, music, world and characters be so good then boom, you have to do ten tedious fetch quests with no real directions half the time to keep up with the main story level jumps just so you can get back to fighting cool bosses with a combat system that is simultaneously quite deep and yet it plays so shallowly. Every encounter is a glorified stat check with a LOT of waiting around, and while Xenoblade 1's combat system can lead to some hype moments, generally it was something I tolerated for the sake of the 10/10 narrative rather than actively enjoyed. Also the AI in this game SUUUUCKS! Play definitive edition instead if you are interested in experiencing kinoblade the way it was meant to. Riki is the best character in fiction.

It's good but I can't say now that I've beaten it that I harbour much love for it or anything. It has a similar flaw to the XCOM games in that it really outstays its welcome by 8-10 hours. A lot of the midgame quests is grinding out the same missions you've been doing up until that point with maybe 1 or 2 new enemies to take into consideration (which became far too familiar far too quickly as well), until you finally unlock a new boss so you can get back to the fun part of the game, all the while hoping RNG doesn't decide to fuck you over on a random run. Furthermore these missions are even worse than XCOM's midgame because a ton of them feel like EXACT replica's of one another, with only slight variation in the layout. Also there's far too much walking through empty hallways and backtracking through dungeons for how monotonous and slow this can be at times. A fast walking option in the settings would've probably cut down my playthroughs length by an hour over the course of the game.

When it comes to game balance I generally think they did a good job class-wise, only the Grave Robber felt to me like it didn't serve that much of a purpose on many teams (it has a little bit of everything, but almost every comp I made i'd rather take someone else with me in their place). Vestal is a little too overcentralizing for my tastes; when the only other good (main) healer is the rng-centric Occultist you are setting up your strategy game to become vestal + 3 others as your comp on every (important) mission. Additionally, I think the bosses are mostly good as long as you know what you are getting into. Unfortunately a TON of them are matchup checks that become nearly impossible with the wrong comp, and a pushover with the right one. The wiki or a friend who knows what they are doing is a lifesaver in this regard. Going in blind can easily be the end of a run.
Enemy design is hard to talk about because generally they are well done but a lot of problems with them come from the structure of the rest of the game: There is too much RNG stacked on top of RNG meaning that any fight can be a complete push-over or spell the end of a run.

As a final note I want to say that capping your accuracy at 95% is one of the stupidest game mechanics I've seen in a while. Forcing RNG like that is fucking lame and it creates some really fucked situations where I set everything up perfectly but two of my guys decide to miss their 95% accuracy moves on their backline Madmen who promptly fears two of my guys and now the whole party is losing it right before I was about to camp etc. etc. It's just not fun, you are getting punished for the basic act of playing the game.

I understand if all of this comes of as supremely negative, but I swear I do think this is a good game over all. The core gameplay loop (in the early/mid game), the strategy, the art direction, the sound effects, the music, the atmosphere are all really great. It just falls apart bit by bit the longer this game goes on, and unfortunately this game goes on for a WHILE.

So, to conclude: This is a good game that I would not recommend to anybody. Or if you do play it, don't feel pressured to beat it. Play as long as its fun, and don't feel ashamed if you have to drop it because it is too hard or feels too unfair, because it really can be on many occasions. There is a reason that only 6.5% of players have even beaten the game on any difficulty.

Shoutout to Dismas and Reynauld the GOATS for being with me until the end and getting me that achievement o7