MASTERPIECE!

Surprisingly fun ( first Mario game I've played)

This is the one game I was the most hyped for in my life. The waiting was definitely worth it. The single best Mario game out there with so much to explore and so many in-game items to collect. You'll never run out of fun things to do considering there are 999 total moons to collect. I shed a few tears and got a few chills playing this game. If you're a Nintendo fan I cannot recommend it enough. Thank you for this masterpiece Nintendo. It will never be forgotten.

People say this game is too easy , but I don't understand why you would play a Mario game for it's difficulty. This game is just pure fun nothing but good times honestly. I'm not really into platformers but this game slaps.!

Amazing. Fantastic. Nothing overstayed it’s welcome (except the volleyball and the skipping moons). This is the first game I genuinely wanted to 100%. Just wish the 100% reward was more than a top hat on Peaches Castle.

lives up to the hype / former prestige of 3d mario

This may not be the longer or wackier Mario, nor is it truly innovative, but it is certainly the most solid, fun and cohesive 3D Mario game ever. It has just about the right pace, enables you with a simple to learn, powerful to master controls, has a good variety of worlds, with some true challenge at the end, without requiring memorised choreographed movements. 3D Mario games have been all over the place: 64 had the castle overworld with the paintings, with a semi linear approach; Sunshine upped the overworld to a city, but made the stages fully linear; Galaxy simplified it all; Galaxy 2 and 3D World/Land did away with the overworld entirely and went with a stage based map, like Bros 3 or SNES World. Odyssey goes back to its 64 roots, having this large map feeling with non linear objectives, extrapolating to mini open worlds. It works like a charm for a Mario game, almost like a Paper Mario. This long legacy is ever present in the game: there are inspirations everywhere, and even replicas of the 2D and 3D Marios. It recognises its history constantly, and yet it borrows as much as it grows, clearly creating its own identity. The controls are phenomenal, as expected from a Mario game: tight, responsive, rich, deep. The combination of classic 64 jumps, the hat toss and new jumps and moves make this one hell of a platformer, providing even more freedom than Sunshine did with the water jet. The game usually doesn’t demand much of this richness, but when it does, it’s nice to be able to use a variety of moves and improvise, rather than to choreograph a single viable path. It also makes traversing more fun, incentivising finding new ways to cross the map or using the paths faster, or just flashier. The possibilities are endless. This control power is complemented and suppressed by its unique mechanic: possession. Possessing allies and enemies make for a very unique gameplay, and the fact that each has its own way of moving and singular capabilities makes this a very interesting mechanic, usually fun to use. At times, it errs a bit much on a key-lock mechanism, and possessed beings are usually less fun to control, having limited or impractical movement. There are some superb exceptions, though, and it does introduce variety throughout the game. There’s a little more of a story than usual, with a light resemblance to Paper Mario, however much shorter and simpler, and it doesn’t get in the way. The mini worlds are colourful, lively and fun to explore, with fast travel to checkpoints to avoid needless repetition. The game is just long enough, being mostly very easy and using repetition as a form to present a more challenging version of a previous part of the game. It manages to avoid the sameness that the latest entries end up causing (too many races, too many stages with the same theme) similarly as 64 did, with mostly unique puzzles and settings. It also provides optional in-game guidance to avoid aimless exploration and reliance on in-depth walkthrough websites for most of its content. However, it has some flaws: some of its content is artificially blocked by story progression, but not all of it is straightforward to find out when it becomes available (paintings being the worst), purple coins are sometimes very tricky to find and the only in-game way to find them is via amiibo, and many controls are super obscure (first person camera being the greatest offender). It also lacks ambition, as most 3D Mario games push forward the boundaries of gaming of their time (first 3D platformer, complex water mechanics, gravity phantasy, 3D screen immersion). Instead, it favours familiarity (like Galaxy 2 and 3D World) and introduces the possession gimmick, almost borrowing the copy mechanic from Kirby and similar games. It is novel only when considering exclusively Mario games. However, none of these flaws make this entry worse than any of its predecessors, or any platformer at all. It is, in a sense, the ultimate 3D Mario experience: a pleasant and powerful platformer, approachable and challenging, familiar and refreshing.

good, not mario galaxy good, but good regardless

ITS TIME TO JUMP UP SUPER HIGH

This game got me back into Mario, so captivating and rewarding

Platforming fun at it's finest

Crash could never be so mid bro

Pure joy in video game form.

played a bit

10/10 Game is very Fun

Mario but really good

Fantastic all round experience

my favourite mario game

I found the contrast between Mario and his environment pretty weird at times but pretty fun game?? just didn't grip me visually

One of the best games of 2017, gives Sm64 a run for it's money.