tbh I'm extremely indifferent to Mario as a brand, can't understand why people care about it, and actively groan when they show like 3 games with the same turtle mushroom question block crap on them every Nintendo Direct™ (I only want to watch commercials about things I care about, like Pokémon™ or Kirby™). So when the trailer rolled around with some Kickstarter ahh music, couldn't care less forced soul it's the same shit etc etc. Then they showed the grappling hook and hm,could be interesting let's wait like a year to play it.

The early levels had me confirming that this was just gonna be NSMB with a semblance of an artstyle and shitty gimmicks sprinkled on top but by the end, most of these levels would probably be considered "the best one" if inserted into those games. If anything, this one feels a lot like 3D World, the best 2D 3D Mario. They don't feel like they were made in Mario Maker!! The gimmicks are fun, the one where you turn into Gish is king.

Only things I can really point out as "dislikes" are most of what probably demanded to be included by executives (e.g the character roster is weird why not just make Yoshi a powerup), the grappling hook actually being pretty bad (most other badges are really cool movement options so it feels like a huge snub) and 90% of players probably not getting to see the remaining 45% of the normal levels before the Wonder Flower kicks in (there's barely reason to do so).

It'll be interesting to see how it stands the test of time. Don't know how much of a collective sentiment this is but I feel like Switch generation has a ton of enjoyable games that somehow moved a gazzilion units with little actual discussion. Most of the talk surrounding Wonder was about the flowers and.. they're pretty minor but they were also the first thing actually dubbed in my language in a Nintendo game (with options for brazilian portuguese too!). After years of seeing kids play DS games in spanish since it's "close enough", feels good. It's more fun to be a lover than a hater and this is the best 2D Mario.