Time for some quick-fire reviews! First up is a game I borrowed from a friend. I previously played Galaxy 1 and it was pretty fun I guess, so I gave the sequel a go to see what they added that was worthwhile.
The answer is not much. It’s pretty much the same thing again, with a few new bells and whistles and tweaks and so forth. For some reason though, I actually 100%ed this one. I guess it strung me along and kept me going better than the first one. Could be the new level select mechanism. At first I was against it as a menu-driven NSMB-style surgical removal of flavour, but the Starship Mario was a reasonable “hub” on its own, especially with the extra friends you accumulate as you go on. Plus it just made your progression easier to grok quickly, and after all this is just a Mario game. Better that they drop the pretensions of ambition and be honest to the relentlessly gameplay-driven design.
You can see my SMG1 review I guess for the basics, although I don’t remember all the specifics of what I said. SMG2 changes up things very often, so it’s stimulating but there’s no consistent theming except within a galaxy.
Uh, I didn’t like Rosalina’s reduced role, her character as presented in these games doesn’t deserve all the fan attention she gets, although personally I think she’s cool and I’m glad she’s part fo the “main” cast to some extent now. She really is just another princess though. Lubba is pretty cool, I suppose. What is he, like some Luma that just kept growing but decided not to turn into a planet or something? Sure.
I liked the wide availability of Luigi, and I used him as much as I could. Speaking of green things though (themed paragraphs wahey!) I hated the green star idea. Only after you completely finish the game and get everything, thus being satisfied and experiencing everything it has, it makes you go back and do it again and search the levels for secret stars in areas that you’re now bored of. The secret stars should have been obtainable from the beginning, that way you can find them while searching for regular stars. I think this was a dumb choice and so ignored that post-game stuff entirely.
I also found a curious thing. I unlocked the boss rush galaxy of the SMG1 bosses, and realised that I’d missed some of them while playing that game. Funny how so many are technically optional, since you can just do levels in any order.
Now even more than before I’m trying to do really short reviews so I’m not so daunted by this blog, so I’m leaving it at that. I think if you’ve played the first one, this one is more of the same so take that as you will. Which one I would recommend depends on your tastes. This is more streamlined, maybe some level themes are more underdeveloped but others are more so, and it has Yoshi. The first is somewhat more of an open experience, edges out this slightly in the plot department, and I suppose the gameplay is more focused? I dunno they’re running together in my mind at this point.
Oh and it didn’t change my mind on main series Mario in general. In terms of the whole series and its progression, I’m very apathetic. It’s fun and all for a while but you should know that I’m not running out to buy 3D World. Regardless, thank you so much for to reading my blog.
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