Super Mario Odyssey (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

Time to end this!

Land on the Moon

... ...I'm speechless. It's beautiful.

Mario and Cappy, with the Odyssey at full power, depart for the moon, with Cappy dressing Mario up in a white tux. The final showdown at Honeylune Ridge, Moon Kingdom. For a land up there, it’s got a lot of activity. Including a giant chapel in the distance. Low gravity, allowing Mario to make huge jumps around. The planet, giant and visible from this spot, truly magnificent. Makes one feel minuscule in the universe.

If you fall in the lava, might as well kiss that health
goodbye, you won't jump high enough to return to safe land.

There’s plenty of Power Moons to be found here as well, but it’s not exactly the focus now, is it? We have a nonconsensual wedding to crash. To get to the chapel, Mario passes by an underground cave… actually a long stretch of platforming over lava, with enemies to take over. That section felt more like a “Bowser’s Castle” area than Bowser’s actual castle! And it’s a tough part, too. I remember a portion where I had to capture a Chargin’ Chuck and run through on a tight stretch of platform. The underground ends with a rematch against Madame Broode.

Looks warm and welcoming. And yet, ominous.

Kind of incredible that for the wedding, Bowser even
bothered to get his messy red hair combed.

This leads us to the plateau, and into the Chapel where we find Bowser and Peach alongside a whole crowd of people seemingly kidnapped to attend. Even the audience is non-consenting! Bowser, you gotta learn to accept a “No”. What kind of example are you setting for Jr.? No means no! At the sight of his forever enemy, the dragon isn’t happy. A trapdoor opens and the plumber falls to an arena under the chapel. Final boss! This fight is very similar to the one in Cloud Kingdom; same gimmicks, stealing Bowser’s top hat and punching him repeatedly with it to send him flying into electrified barriers. Bowser’s pattern is a lot trickier than before, but aside from that? Yeah, pretty much the same fight. It’s kinda disappointing, really.

We got to play as Bowser before, in a Mario & Luigi RPG.
But we've ALL been waiting for the day we can play as
Bowser in a platform game, and the day has finally come.

To compensate, we get a better post-fight finale: When Bowser is defeated, the place starts falling apart. The turtle no longer has his hat, so Mario thinks of a plan: Capturing Bowser himself, putting Peach and Tiara on his back, and dashing out of there before they’re all buried under rubble. Yes! Love this turn of events! If the T-rex was an early display to interest us in the mechanic, getting to play as Bowser is the cherry on top, capping off (no pun intended) the game’s gimmick with the best use of it yet. we even get a final 2D bit we traverse as Bowser instead of Mario! This leads everyone to a room with a giant Moon Rock, and we use Bowser’s claws and fire breath to break four pillars so they’ll fall and break the large rock, revealing a spark pylon that they use to return to the moon’s surface safely.

Shippers! This is your moment.

Mario, Peach, Cappy and Tiara celebrate, and it looks like Mario and the Princess might just get married since they’re already dressed for the occasion… but Bowser regains consciousness and starts fighting with Mario to win Peach’s heart again, so she just rejects them both. She leaves on the Odyssey with the Bonneters, and Mario has just enough time to get to the ship before Bowser. Roll credits!

The Greatest Hunt of All

We’re nowhere near done. Your counter goes up to 999 Power Moons, and you likely don’t even have 1/4th of that when the credits roll. No getting them all in onw go, as several are unlocked only after beating the main story. For starters: You’ll come across Moon Rocks in every kingdom. Since their motherlode was destroyed during the lunar underground escape, the ones everywhere else have weakened. One ground pound, and they shatter into more Power Moons to look for. Hundreds more. See, even if you did collect everything you could find on your first visit, you have just as much work to do!

Feels like home. (Some screenshots past this point are
taken from this playthrough by packattack04082.)

Past the credits, we start anew in the Mushroom Kingdom, where the Power Moons are shaped like stars. It’s a full kingdom with lots of secrets. As the “final” proper kingdom, it has regular Moons, but it also hides plenty of pipes that lead to tougher versions of previous challenges, such as rematches with the various non-Broodal bosses.

At the entrance of Peach’s Castle, a panicked Toad informs Mario that the Princess has gone missing again, but she was last seen with a suitcase and smiling! She went off to do tourism in every other kingdom (…yep, even Bowser’s Castle), and every time you find her, she’ll have a free collectible to hand out.

Good to know Peach is having a good time traveling to
the many kingdoms and seeing the sights.

Free Moons for achievements, I can get behind that!

Also in Peach’s Castle, Toadette awaits with a long series of tasks Mario can do for additional Power Moons. This Mario game has achievements! 61 in total, ranging from “beat the story” (you get three freebies out of that alone) to “buy something in all kingdoms using the regional purple coins”. There are more for completing recurring challenges (fishing with Lakitu, meeting Goombette while inhabiting a Goomba tower, catching rabbits, speaking to NPCs while wearing specific outfits, winning races against runner Koopa Troopas in all kingdoms…).

Many worlds have areas that are completely inaccessible while you’re there; instead, you reach those areas through paintings found in other kingdoms. These areas have their own checkpoints flags, but offer little else aside from an extra Moon.

And every blocky pipe will lead to new, tough areas
with challenges you couldn't find in the overworld.

Breaking a kingdom’s Moon Rock creates multiple new, angular “warp pipes” to new challenges. Remember the hat doors, with thematic challenges? Yep, there’s more of those now. Once again, always make sure to inspect every nook and cranny for a second, secret moon hidden in there.

In several places, you can find hint art that reveals the secret location of a moon; you can save the picture to your Switch gallery, solve the riddle, go to the location indicated, and find the collectible. These can be tricky! Also, the moon collected that way counts for the kingdom in which you found the hint art, NOT the one where you found the moon. I know, it’s complicated.

An outfit for every occasion. Mario can even dress up as
Waluigi if he wants.

Although the selection of outfits and souvenirs to buy with regional coins never changes in a kingdom (you WILL need every regional coin if you want to buy everything), the classic-coins Crazy Cap Shop will update its inventory with new outfits as you find new Moons. The last article is available at 560 collectibles. Some sets can be unlocked ahead of time using specific Amiibos.

Luigi has joined the adventure; he has designed a new game in which you can hide a balloon in one kingdom, and other players can seek it out, while you can look for other players’ balloons. Playing both sides and leveling up in this mini-game nets you a decent number of coins, which is very good considering prices for new items in the shop can go all the way to the 9,999 coin cap.

But of course, there’s always something in newer Mario games for the diligent players intent on getting everything…

Eclipse

Hey, I knew we'd fight a gauntlet of these guys at some
point. It just feels right, since we've spent the whole game
chasing them down, beating them one by one.

At 250 collectibles, a new area opens: The Dark Side of the Moon. No clue whether its missions are more enjoyable when synced to the Pink Floyd album. The starter mission here is a rematch against the Broodals, one after the other, climbing up the floors of their carrot-shaped tower, ending in a second showdown with their mecha. We’re on the Moon, so its low gravity applies; the battle plays out differently as well, trading out the Pokio for a Hammer Bro. A tough mission since there’s only one heart to be found throughout and it’s after the 1-on-1 rematches. However, if you can spare it, you can buy a king-sized heart from a shop in another kingdom; these cost 50 coins, and will double Mario’s health temporarily, with the max returning to 3 once he has lost the extra HP. (You can easily collect 50 coins in the first battles of this marathon.)

This victory opens the remainder of the Dark Side, which isn’t much; a couple of extra warp pipes towards repeats of challenges you may have seen before, but made even harder, and scattered hint art leading to 10 bonus collectibles.

Who thought this was a good place for an art gallery
for bunnies?

I actually did beat Long Journey's End. Took me a lot of
attempts, but I did it. And just an hour or two after I finished
grabbing screenshots for this article, too!

Still not enough? At 500 Power Moons, the Darker Side is unlocked. Only one mission here, but it’s the hardest of them all. Long Journey’s End will put all your Super Mario Odyssey skills to the test, a grueling challenge with no checkpoint throughout; if you die, you start over. A final, extra-hard challenge for the best players has become a staple of major Mario platformers since the Wii, dating back to Super Mario Galaxy 2’s Grandmaster Galaxy. You want that last Multi Moon? Good friggin’ luck.

Final words

The tone, as usual, veers much more to the comedic side.
The Broodals are funny, and so many other villains are as well.

Wow, what a great game. Sure, we do away with the classic powerups we’ve grown so accustomed to in the Mario universe, but they're replaced by the new Cappy-capture mechanic, and it opens so many doors. On top of one of the best Mario platformers out there, this may also be one of the most complete, and by the wayside one of the wackiest, too. Nintendo had fun designing this one, making several worlds with contrasting or opposing themes put together, basing their feel and appearance on real-world locations (Cap Kingdom has a very London/UK feel, the Sand Kingdom is more like Mexico, etc.), filling them with silly inhabitants, and packing them to the brim with stuff to do and secrets to find. And it’s all gorgeous, from start to finish.

New Donk City is such a memorable world. I could say I
wished it was bigger, but I could say that of 75% of all the
worlds in this game.

The new mechanic is front and center, from the capture of a little frog all the way to Bowser himself in the final stretch. Power Moons are everywhere, and I can guarantee you that if there’s an enemy you can capture in an area, there’s a Power Moon to collect nearby using that enemy. Or maybe some regional coins. Exploration is the name of the game, perhaps even more here than it’s ever been; sure, Mario 64 and Sunshine had large, open areas, but Odyssey is on a whole other level. Further emphasizing this change is the swap from a classic lives system to losing 10 coins – almost nothing! – when dying, and the lack of a game over screen. There is no ticking timer to a potential failure to be worried about.

I do hope you did not do a drinking game out of the number
of times I wrote the word "moon" for this three-part review.
I'm not paying for your hospital stay.

Hunting for this game’s collectibles will force you to check every single corner, and if you’re the completionist type you’ll see everything each kingdom has to offer. There’s no other way to think of it; 999, that’s a TON of stuff to look for. Perhaps a little too much even, considering so many Moons are basic concepts repeated across the thirteen kingdoms, making several feel more like filler in the end. Unlike Power Moons, there's hardly any help regarding the location of regional coins, making the last lousy ones even more of a burden to find. (And it’s not like all Moons are all that easy to figure out, either; at several points in my hunt to get to Long Journey’s End I needed guides. There IS a way to find regional coins, but it requires the Bowser Amiibo. Yeah, really.) At least, this game is not lacking in content! And, of course, no completionist would feel like this journey is complete until they own every single hat and suit on top of everything else. The Balloon World post-release update is a welcome addition that can further help with collecting money.

Probably the most daring Mario platformer, between New
Donk City and this dragon's appearance.

To top it off, Mario’s movement options can best be described as “tough but rewarding”. He starts off not feeling as athletic as other platforming versions of himself, since the run button is replaced by the “throw Cappy” button. However, plenty of other options are made available, like holding L down to roll around or jump forward. Then, you can include Cappy into your acrobatics, making Mario even faster. It’ll take practice to adapt to all this, but it’s worth it, as the plumber becomes a speed demon once you've got everything figured out. (…I am still annoyed that while the Story Mode isn’t finished, Cappy will force you through a mini-tutorial anytime we travel with the Odyssey, but whatever.)

Incredible game, fully deserving of its high praise. Any points of criticism I have pale in comparison to how good everything else is. I had a great time and could see myself continuing until I do have 100% completion on my save file. It’s safe to call it a must-own for the Switch. Or maybe for Switch 2?

Anyway, see you soon for something else!