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With Mario 3D World completed in 2-player with my daughter (after completing it in single player), we moved back to this. It turns out there weren’t actually that many levels left, and with our ridiculously overpowered White Kyurem NFC character we didn’t exactly struggle.
I’m not going to sing the game’s praises too much. It’s a very simple button basher (even more so than the Wii and 3DS precursors), with very few differences between levels. Even having different Pokémon means very little, providing they actually have some decent HP and moves. Yes, there are “defend the fort” levels, and “beat the boss in under 120 seconds” levels, but ultimately, you play every level the same – point your ‘mon at the baddies and hammer A and sometimes B.
Having said all that, there’s not actually much to dislike. It’s fun, it’s colourful, and it’s multiplayer. Shallow and repetitive aren’t features many 5 year olds care about, and frankly, I didn’t really mind either.
My only real complaint is that you can’t upgrade your non-NFC Pokémon. It’s not important; As I said, there’s little reason to change character, but when your co-player wants to use “the little crabby one!” with “power” of 150 on a level that recommends 1500+, it would have been nice to be able to spend some of those coins you win bumping Little Crabby’s stats up a bit.
As it turned out, I was still on World 4, and not World 5 as I though. Still, I was close to the end of World 4, and World 5 was indeed the final world, so I wasn’t that far from complete.
Now I’m even less far from complete, having completed it.
I may have mentioned it’s hard. Oh boy is it hard. I’m not sure it actually got harder on the final world (aside from throwing me a bit by changing the graphics, and by changing how some of the enemies appear – some now move when they didn’t before), but that’s probably just as well as it was hard enough already.
So many times I had the checkpoint (yes, I used checkpoints) or end of level in sight, but still died before passing them meaning I had to do it all again.
And then for the final level the worst fly in the ointment happens. You have to run from right to left, but the controls stay the same! So A is still Block, where Y would make more sense. Death after death. Not helped by having no idea what to do with the walls you come across (tip: turns out you have to slide-jump through them).
Which all sounds like a complaint, doesn’t it? It really isn’t. It’s a wonderful game which is just very hard. Unlike some games, though, it doesn’t suffer as a result. The short levels and instant restarts stop you getting totally frustrated, and the levels and controls are such that all mistakes, except perhaps the first time you hit something you didn’t see quickly enough, are entirely your fault. Hard but perfectly fair.
I should point out that I’ve not 100%ed it. I don’t have all the gold in all the levels, I don’t have all the bullseyes, and I don’t have all the chests, keys or anything like that. I won’t be trying to 100% it either – I feel it’s really beyond me. I almost 100%ed the first world and that was difficult enough, and although I know it would be a great achievement to perfect the entire game, I don’t think I’d enjoy doing it. Next!