Edit: I don't mean, help as in I'm distressed. I mean help as in help me understand.
Edit 2: I really appreciate the people who are taking the time to post what they love/hate about the game rather than telling me the game isn't for me and that I should move on. Wasn't exactly what I was trying to get out of this.
I'm actually quite glad that I'm finally able to make a thread because this has been burning for a long time. I've played through the main story of Mario Odyssey and spent a decent amount of time with side stuff on the way to get to the end, but discussing things with a friend of mine... we're both really disappointed with the game.
I had a really terrible suspicion I wasn't going to like the game based off the trailers that were coming out for it, and the game play bits that we'd get to see. I picked it up anyway. I love Mario and I didn't see how I could really dislike a game in the main franchise. But I got it home that night, played for a bit before I had to head to bed and felt a very deep sense of being underwhelmed. I figured maybe I was just tired and the next few days of playing, I'd feel different.
Turns out, I wasn't. I feel like I'm in an incredibly small minority of people that dislike the game. I find hardly anything, outside of how nice it looks technically speaking, and the stability of the game. I also do tend to agree that Marios moves feel absolutely incredible, and wish more had been done with this.
I don't like the level design, I don't like the world designs, I don't like the music, I don't like the story, I don't like the challenge the game provides. I don't like the fact there are so many, incredibly meaningless moons that are found by pure luck or doing something as silly as groundpounding a specific area on the floor. Everything in this game felt like an absolute chore, and picking up the game every time to play it was more so try and grasp what people liked about it that I just wasn't getting. I can usually, even if I find a game to be bad or not fit my taste, find the reasons why people enjoy it and live with that. But Mario Odyssey is a weird case of me not being able to latch onto it in any way, even to the sense of understanding why people love it so much.
I guess I'll list what I don't like, if you don't feel like reading that poorly conveyed garble up top.
Edit 3: I'll post it down here so people might actually read what's above first. My goal was not to come here and dump on the game with the sole purpose doing that. I wanted to have a discussion around what people liked about the game and potentially didn't like. The internet is filled with absolutely beaming reviews, threads, comments, posts, Tweets, whatever have you about the game and, outside of Joseph Andersons 2 hour long critique of the game (which you should watch even if you do like the game), I rarely see anything negative about it or discussions that may incorporate both sides. I'm not expecting anyone to convince me to like the game suddenly, I just want to be able to see things from different perspectives to get a better understanding of something that I really might have just been missing from the game. I love gaming, and truly love sharing that feeling with other people. I absolutely despise Gone Home, for example, but after having discussions around it, I could understand why people liked it so much. I'm trying to do the same here.
Edit 2: I really appreciate the people who are taking the time to post what they love/hate about the game rather than telling me the game isn't for me and that I should move on. Wasn't exactly what I was trying to get out of this.
I'm actually quite glad that I'm finally able to make a thread because this has been burning for a long time. I've played through the main story of Mario Odyssey and spent a decent amount of time with side stuff on the way to get to the end, but discussing things with a friend of mine... we're both really disappointed with the game.
I had a really terrible suspicion I wasn't going to like the game based off the trailers that were coming out for it, and the game play bits that we'd get to see. I picked it up anyway. I love Mario and I didn't see how I could really dislike a game in the main franchise. But I got it home that night, played for a bit before I had to head to bed and felt a very deep sense of being underwhelmed. I figured maybe I was just tired and the next few days of playing, I'd feel different.
Turns out, I wasn't. I feel like I'm in an incredibly small minority of people that dislike the game. I find hardly anything, outside of how nice it looks technically speaking, and the stability of the game. I also do tend to agree that Marios moves feel absolutely incredible, and wish more had been done with this.
I don't like the level design, I don't like the world designs, I don't like the music, I don't like the story, I don't like the challenge the game provides. I don't like the fact there are so many, incredibly meaningless moons that are found by pure luck or doing something as silly as groundpounding a specific area on the floor. Everything in this game felt like an absolute chore, and picking up the game every time to play it was more so try and grasp what people liked about it that I just wasn't getting. I can usually, even if I find a game to be bad or not fit my taste, find the reasons why people enjoy it and live with that. But Mario Odyssey is a weird case of me not being able to latch onto it in any way, even to the sense of understanding why people love it so much.
I guess I'll list what I don't like, if you don't feel like reading that poorly conveyed garble up top.
- I don't like the level/world design. I feel like the worlds are completely uninspired and uninteresting. I think the general idea of having these generic based worlds to go to isn't a bad idea if they had more of a touch to them, but outside of a nice use of color, I felt like they were pretty generic.
- In regards to the levels, I do like the fact that the platforming is tailored to Mario's incredibly robust moveset, but I feel like it's too open and doesn't offer much of a challenge. With a lot of the moons that are required, there is an objectively best path that I would notice, and would tend to take that. Maybe this is my own problem by not making a challenge for myself and approaching things differently, but I feel like this is something that should be best left to a second playthrough to spice things up a bit, not on a first go.
- Even the people I've seen who don't generally like the game seem to at least like the music. I, outside of a couple of tracks, dislike it quite a bit. It falls in line with the world design where I feel like a lot of the tracks are pretty generic. Coming off hot from the likes of Sunshine and the absolutely fantastic Galaxy OSTs, I feel like Odysseys came in pretty underwhelming.
- I don't like the chore of collecting moons. Usually, in Mario games picking up a star or a mooon feels good, it's a rewarding experience, but there are just so many of them that after the initial maybe... 50, they lost their magic almost entirely. Getting a moon felt like I was performing a task rather than having fun, if that makes sense. And a lot of them didn't even provide a challenge and felt entirely meaningless.
Edit 3: I'll post it down here so people might actually read what's above first. My goal was not to come here and dump on the game with the sole purpose doing that. I wanted to have a discussion around what people liked about the game and potentially didn't like. The internet is filled with absolutely beaming reviews, threads, comments, posts, Tweets, whatever have you about the game and, outside of Joseph Andersons 2 hour long critique of the game (which you should watch even if you do like the game), I rarely see anything negative about it or discussions that may incorporate both sides. I'm not expecting anyone to convince me to like the game suddenly, I just want to be able to see things from different perspectives to get a better understanding of something that I really might have just been missing from the game. I love gaming, and truly love sharing that feeling with other people. I absolutely despise Gone Home, for example, but after having discussions around it, I could understand why people liked it so much. I'm trying to do the same here.
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