Now that the honeymoon is over, how does Super Mario Wonder really rank?

DryvBy

DryvBy

Member
We were hearing such hyperbole for this game like "This game is better than SMW and SMB3" as far as the 2D adventures go during the launch, which I disagreed with. I know it wasn't something people wanted to admit when Wonder came out, but I personally was extremely disappointed with how flat out easy the game ended up being. I beat it in one sitting with my kid and there wasn't much else to do afterward.

Presentation was great and I love how Wonder looked, but the game itself is like modern Pokemon games. They're so easy, it's kind of boring now. I'm not even the best platformer. I grew up on PC games with some NES. I beat Super Mario games over the years and I always look forward to them, but I'm not even going to pretend I'm a wizard at these games. But Wonder? I feel you'd have to try to actually die. Odyssey is the best Mario Switch game, followed by Bowser's Fury. Fight me.

While I think Wonder is fine, I think Super Mario Wonder should be ranked more of an 8 out of 10. Lots of charm, beautiful looking, fun, but there's just no challenge for adults.
 
Personally for me, I'd still consider it to be the second-best Mario game ever made. It's been out less than a year, and I've already played through it twice - once solo, and once in co-op. Controls are tight, platforming is great, there are little surprises everywhere - the game is just fun.

I doubt Super Mario World will ever be topped, but I'd love to see them keep trying.
 
DryvBy said:
I beat it in one sitting with my kid and there wasn't much else to do afterward.
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I don't think Mario games are designed for 10 hour sessions. At any rate, children shouldn't be playing video games for ten hours straight. The game is designed for anyone to play, but your experience with it is not typical for the target audience.

That wouldn't increase your overall play time of course and the rest of your observations are valid, but I would be shocked if most players stuck with it for more than 90 minutes at a time.
 
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jshackles said:
Personally for me, I'd still consider it to be the second-best Mario game ever made. It's been out less than a year, and I've already played through it twice - once solo, and once in co-op. Controls are tight, platforming is great, there are little surprises everywhere - the game is just fun.

I doubt Super Mario World will ever be topped, but I'd love to see them keep trying.
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It doesn't bother you how incredibly easy the game is? Even with everything right it does, without the challenge, the game just seems worse than it should be. That's the biggest issue I had.
 
I haven't finished it, buuuut NSMB was better, I liked the collisions. It made for very memorable playthroughs and fun laughs with the fam.
 
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When it came out, I didn't call it better but I did think it stands pretty tall with them. Yes, by the biggest issue is that everyone is supposed to be able to beat the game. It's clear that World and 3 were not made with worry that some people would not be able to complete it.

But it's still just a great game that got a ton right and was very creative. It's a good MP mario, better than NSBW.
 
I wouldn't give it the #1 spot but it's definitely up there among my favorite 2D entries. Somewhere in the top 5.
 
Probably the worst Mario ever.
I traded it right after finishing it.

Wonder seeds is the worst gimmick ever.
The game would be better without them.

The music sucked even more than the new series.

Graphics and animation were the only good things about it.

6/10

World, 3 and the Wii one remain the best 2d Mario games.
 
I played some of it and don't even remember it. ha! I haven't turned my switch on since Mario Wonder. Got a Steam Deck, Portal and gaming PC since then.
 
DryvBy said:
It doesn't bother you how incredibly easy the game is? Even with everything right it does, without the challenge, the game just seems worse than it should be. That's the biggest issue I had.
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No - but I'm old. I'm not in high school any more like I was when Mario 3 came out. I don't have time to play levels over and over again to build up my skill with timing jumps or avoiding enemies like I did back in the day. Game design has moved on from that - the value now comes from the experience, rather than "the game takes a long time to beat because we made the platforming and enemy placement so tricky that you'll have to replay these levels 100 times therefore artificially increasing the play time to justify the games price point" school of thought from yesteryear.

That being said, I still found the game to be difficult at times - just not so difficult that it gave way to frustration. Some of the challenge levels in this game were, indeed, challenging. But they also weren't required to complete the game.
 
Not good, I was at 99.whatever% with only the invisible bit of the very last level to go and have no intention of ever replaying it. The gimmicks of the levels can be fun but the vast majority of them are only fun the first time. I know I could hop online and float across what I needed to do but that's not what I want to be doing in a Mario game.
 
kingpotato said:
A) Tears of the Kingdom is a generational game.
B) Great contribution to the thread!
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Hey, thanks for the support! I'll make sure to play all the Nintendo games I skipped out on the last 2 years, and hopefully a new Punch-Out!!, when Nintendo finally releases a new console!
 
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Not sure I'd put it right up there with Mario World and Mario Bros 3, but it's certainly much better than every other 2D Mario game.

Completed it only a couple of months ago and loved every minute of it.
 
I honestly forgot the game existed even though I remember loving it when it released. I don't believe I ever finished it. Need to go back and do that.
 
nikos said:
I honestly forgot the game existed even though I remember loving it when it released. I don't believe I ever finished it. Need to go back and do that.
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It's easy. It's not even a bad game, but the crazy "this is the best!" is weird.
 
It's really great. Maybe the best 2D Mario I've played? That's a tall mountain.

I can agree with some comments that the game's on the easier side (but def not piss easy), but it makes up for it in spades with how fantastically creative it is. A far cry from Super Mario Odyssey which has one really interesting new level, New Donk City, and that's it. Star world levels are in the game and some of them are decently tough.

Also agree the music kinda sucks, which is a shame.
 
For 2D Mario, the sheer fun & creativity you can find in Mario Maker 2 is >>>>>>>>> miles ahead of Wonder, being honest.

Wonder feels like a peculiar experiment where they wanted to add some transformations / magical effects, and it's neat but I don't consider it a top tier 2D Mario at all, nor something that should influence the series going forward.

The greatest Mario innovation in recent years was probably 3D Land/World, both of which should have shown the path forward for the franchise except for the occasional open-world 3D outing on the side.
 
Top 3 2D Mario game for me.

Super imaginative, super fun.

The gimmicks and the talking flower going "LOOK HOW QUIRKY WE ARE!" got a bit annoying. Mario is at its best when npcs don't talk.
 
(Scrolling passed the haters) Possibly the best 2D Mario despite the final final level not really gelling. As always people accusing a Mario game of being too easy probably didn't go for the completion.
 
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It's good. Polished, tight, well-designed on a micro level. I could kind of take or leave the talking flowers and the extra dialogue between stages was pretty superfluous. Multiplayer was good and easy for my kids to get into, but as a beefy single-player experience, SMB3 (and to a lesser extent World) still reign king by far.

The music was indeed disappointing; the main theme was too low-key and kind of meandering with all those 7ths, I didn't like it much.

The difficulty...well, it was usually too easy, it's true. Until the very very end of the game where you have the now-traditional "for super players only" stage. That one was a beast for sure (not that I didn't conquer it twice, mind you!) but it doesn't retroactively make the rest of the game the right level of challenge. It's more like 90% of the game was too easy, 9% was just right, and 1% was ridiculously hard.
 
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I really like it. It's in my top 3 2D Mario games, easily.

I kinda want the Wonder team go bonkers with a 3D Mario game, tbh.
 
It was fun, but neither me nor my 6yo have returned to it after finishing it. He's playing way more SM3DW. Can't put my finger on it but I never felt an urge to return to Wonder.
 
I enjoyed it quite a bit. Main gripe being that it's pretty damn easy. Even the hardest levels only took a few tries. With that said, I'd rate it somewhere with the New Super Mario Bros games. I think NSMB U is as good if not better.
 
Borrowed it from a friend and thought it was fun, best 2D Mario in a long time with some really creative levels.
That said, It was nothing mindblowing and the actual platforming was pretty easy until some of the very late levels. I still think Tropical Freeze is miles ahead of every 2D Mario
 
It's in the A tier for me. Much better than all the NSMB games, but not in the S tier with SMB3, SMW and the best 3D games
 
Incredible game, it can be easy at times, but 100% can be extremely difficult.

It might be a top three all-time Mario game for me. Definitely top three in terms of 2D Mario games.

Super Mario 64, SM3 and World are the only ones I would say are without a doubt better.
 
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March Climber said:
OP from your posts it sounds like you are wanting Mario Maker 3.
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No, not at all. My overall complaint is this game is for toddlers, but even then I don't know if they'd find it remotely challenging.

I agree with everyone else as far as how the game is fun (for different reasons), it looks great, it has charm. But that's not all what makes a game great.
 
It's pretty average. The novelty of the Wonder segments wears off quickly because it's so predictable that one's going to show up in every stage and have some sort of different mechanic that you marvel at for a few seconds, but that ultimately doesn't change much. Then you go back to the normal platforming, which is fine, but presents absolutely zero challenge. The creative mechanics should've been woven more deeply into the levels than just the small, fenced-off segments where they appear, and they should've pushed the player to actually utilize those mechanics with a bit more challenge.

So... it's fine. I'd put the game way below Super Mario World, New Super Mario Bros U, and Super Mario Bros 3. Maybe below Super Mario Bros. 2, as well. It's better than the other NSMB games, though.


What I would've liked to see is something akin to Donkey Kong Country Returns/Tropical Freeze where the pacing is a little bit slower on your first playthrough and you have to be careful about how you navigate the environments... but there's still a ton of room to zoom through the levels once you understand them. Those games also did a really good job of having a feeling of progression in the environment of each level - lots of them almost feel like they're telling a story where you start at point A, cool shit happens to the environment, and then the end of the level feels distinctly different. Wonder is basically static throughout any given level, which is a little dull.
 
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My second fav 2D super Mario game after world

Significantly better than the "new" series
 
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Played it with my, then. 7 year old and it was great. Still had a couple of levels we ended up giving up on. I had more fun with it being on the easier side. I really cannot handle SMW now. I played that thing so hard in 1991 the cart melted and returned to it often, but 30+ years later, no way.

I plan to play through it again with my 5 year old when he is ready.
 
Had a lot of fun playing through it with my wife and kids, but for me, it was one of the weaker Mario games.

I liked the animation and some of the level design creativity, but did not enjoy the music, lack of challenge, nor the eldritch elephant transformation.
 
Very surprised that people are criticizing Wonder's easy difficulty and then praising World in the same breath. Aside from some late-game levels, World is ridiculously easy and forgiving.

Among 2D Marios, I'd put Wonder near the top around 3, Yoshi's Island, and NSMBUD. Clearly the best visuals, controls, and mechanical variety, but it's true that some of the levels can feel a bit insubstantial compared to the other top 2D Marios.
 
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