A little too short to have any super hard opinions about it. The characters were annoying. Keiran was funny (derogatory). Didn't care at all about the legendaries. Even laggier than base game. The difficulty was welcome but also just a side effect of the fact that I built a completely new team from scratch out of Kitakami pokemon. Despite the wave of criticisms I had a passably fine time, probably because I played it on call with my girlfriend. It's at least better than Isle of Armor from SWSH because I could be bothered to finish this one and its dex.

I got this game on day one and it took me a long time to beat it. Not because it's particularly long or hard (I only ever got one game over on the absolute last level) but because for some reason my motivation to keep playing was really low around worlds 4-6. I was in awe at the beginning; the stylized artstyle is really charming and pretty, the movement felt great- I LOVE how they bring back so many mechanics from the old games such as the spin jump, the twirl, throwing shells upwards, etc- and they both held up all the way through, and at first the level design was very interesting with the Wonder Seeds, but eventually it started to wear on me just a little? The level design started to feel a bit repetitive for a bit near the end of the main game, it became kind of predictable and like I was going through variations of the same stuff over and over. That feeling suddenly faded though as I reached the final handful of main game levels, they were incredible. I was then immediately driven to go back and get all the collectibles I had missed so I could do the special world stuff, and it was a great time. Before my motivation came back I thought this game was a 3, maybe 3 and a half, but the final stretch of my 100% playthrough left me in such a good mood. I was a big fan of the NSMB series, I grew up with it and I'd honestly stand by NSMB2. But NSMBU made me realize how tired I was of the formula, so seeing 2d Mario this way was so refreshing. It's not perfect, there's still bits and pieces of this game that feel like Nintendo was trying to play it safe (cough the lack of interesting bosses cough) but the pure creativity and overhauling of the 2d Mario formula is incredible to see. I'm really excited to see where this goes, if the next game is another spin of this foundation or they do something else unique from this.