I just beat __

Super Mario Odyssey (Main story complete)

This was one of the fastest times I've ever beaten a Mario game (6 days) because of how hooked on it I was. I outlined my reasons why I enjoyed it in my earlier post in What game did you last play???, but yeah 10/10, this was amazing.

The final boss was pretty good, probably the best out of the mainstream Mario games so far imo, also
The bit at the end where I got to control Bowser was brilliant, and the story ending where Peach turns them both down was good
Shame it scrapped the playable credits like in Galaxy 2, but otherwise the ending of this game was just as good as the rest of it
Also getting to have the Mushroom kingdom was good, I had heard from online that Peach's castle would be explorable and would be like Mario 64, but sadly it turns out that only the main room is present. However, the remake of the Castle theme from SM64 was really good, and I appreciate the SM64 reference of jumping into the paintings to replay bosses.

I'm probably going to go for 100% since I know that something cool happens once I get enough moons, I'll see how many I can do on my own and then look up the rest (otherwise I could be searching forever), whilst trying to avoid spoilers for the true ending. Not sure how long that'll take but I'm aware there's 880 moons in total. Wow that's a lot. But for some reason the shop on the moon seems to sell an indefinite number? And the number the Odyssey requires is way less than that. Idk I guess I just have to wait and see.
 
I just beat Metroid Zero Mission for the first time.

Honestly, I was kind of disappointed by it. It's a remake of the first game, and it's definitely the superior version. And the early parts of it were really fun and well designed. However the stealth section in the last part of the game really brought the experience down for me. I'm already not a fan of stealth sections in general, but in Zero Mission you get stripped of every item/weapon/suit you've obtained up until that point. It would've been fine if it were over quickly, but I felt that it overstayed its welcome WAY too much. I also wasn't a fan of the 2 bosses in this section.

What's worse is that the stealth section wasn't even in the original. It was something added on in the remake, and I think I would've enjoyed the game more if it just weren't there.
 
Not only did I beat Samus Returns again, I also 100% it (Which I don't do very often)! If you want to get into the Metroid series, I say start with this game. It's a remake of Metroid II, but it's got so many new abilities and QoL features that it doesn't feel like it.
 
I beat Super Mario Bros. warpless.
 
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D (Main story completed for the first time)

I got this game over a year ago I'm pretty sure and in between other games like Dream Team and the two Super Mario Lands I gradually played through DKCR3D, and today I finally beat it.

I stand by earlier comments I've made on this site that I regret buying this. Not because I don't like it - I do think it improves the original (I believe there are some extra postgame levels, the new mode with 3 hearts and extra items is cool too, and of course, having this game on the go is awesome), I just think that as I already had the Wii game it didn't have enough additional content to justify spending the price of a whole new 3DS game.

I've ordered Tropical Freeze (the Wii U version - as much as I'd love to expand my new Switch's library beyond just Odyssey it was way more expensive) which I'm going to try next, I've got high hopes for this game as it seems to be regarded as an improved sequel to Returns.
 
I finally got the chance to play through Bowser's Fury, so here's my thoughts:

This game is AWESOME! I started it, beat it, AND 100%'d it all in one day (And I didn't use any guides)! I was kinda disappointed by 3D World when it first came out, but Bowser's Fury is exactly what I would've wanted. A big sandbox Mario game with a creative scenario that isn't "Bowser kidnapped Peach" again. It has so many mechanics and ideas that I HOPE are in the next big 3D Mario game. I'm a little worried that Nintendo making Bowser's Fury means that we won't get another new 3D Mario game for a long time though. But even if that's true, having this game makes the wait easier.

My biggest problem with the game though is Fury Bowser. It's cool during the first playthrough, but when going for 100% it gets SO old and tiring. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of a task, then Fury Bowser comes out and I literally cannot progress until I wait for him to go away. But even then, sometimes he just DOESN'T LEAVE FOR SOME REASON?! I literally set my Switch down for several minutes, went to do something else, came back, and he was still active. I can use my Bowser amiibo to summon him whenever I need him to break some of those bricks, but I would honestly prefer it if there was an amiibo that MADE HIM GO AWAY. Even once I collected all the Fury Bowser related cat shines, he still kept coming back. It was really annoying when I was trying to get those last 5 or so cat shines.

TL:DR - Bowser's Fury is great
 
Mario Golf World Tour.
I got the 1st place triple crowns and end credits. Mannnnn I've come a long way. It was not too long ago I was struggling to get better than a double bogey. But now I'm getting pars and birdies on the regular and occasional eagles.

Now I'm onto Smash Bros 3DS - Mario playthrough.
 
Super Mario 64 (N64 version) (100% completed for the first time)

Back in the summer of 2019, I got my Wii U for the first time but instead of starting with actual Wii U games (my first game original to the Wii U was 3D World in December 2019), I started with Virtual Console games as I hadn't taken an interest in older games until after the Wii shop channel went down, my first being Super Mario 64, which I'd heard was an extremely popular game and the predecessor to the two Galaxy games (which I'd grown up on and absolutely loved) and Sunshine (which I'd played earlier in 2019 and found only ok). So SM64 was the first game I really played on my Wii U, and alongside Superstar Saga was what I mainly played in the summer holiday of 2019, and was a start of a shift in focus away from Minecraft and towards Mario that later led me to joining this community, and I still have nostalgia for how cool I found it that it could be played on the TV or on the gamepad. Shortly before returning to school, I amassed 70 stars and beat the main story, I then got another 10 or so and then I basically quit that save file. I had another couple of saves in the meantime, getting 30-40 stars but none more than that.

Well in the last couple of weeks I finally decided to come back to that very same save file that was my first experience of playing this game, and today I swooped 8 coins in Wing Mario Over the Rainbow, flew into the star and got my 120th star.
I knew Bowser had different dialogue so I beat him again, I also cannoned on top of the castle and talked to Yoshi and flew around with the Wing Cap.
I had vaguely known what the post 100% rewards were but not exactly so it was still nice

Even though it's not a game I love so much, I wanted to 100% it because it's a classic and I knew there were iconic secrets, and it actually wasn't that tedious or bad (like SPM where I basically had to pull out my guide and go around buying a million recipes) as much as it was very difficult at times. The game is about exploring for the stars, so fully exploring the game was satisfying.

As for my thoughts on the game as a whole, the good parts include the non linear exploration of the 15 courses and the secret castle stars, Sunshine kind of went for the same thing but imo didn't pull it off as well, Odyssey did blow this game out of the water but I didn't play that until very recently. The fact that on starting the game for the first time, and every start after that, it puts you in the peaceful garden where you can just mess around, something that not even Odyssey has quite done since. The castle itself serves amazingly as the hub world from which to go into all the worlds, and its music is great. Even though I didn't grow up on this game, it has been a couple of years and it was my first game I played on the Wii U so there is some nostalgia value I guess and it has a great classic feel to it.

The negatives I think first and foremost are the physics, movement, and camera which all feel very sloppy in comparison to 3D Land, 3D World, Galaxy 1 and 2, and Odyssey imo. Especially the camera, which isn't analog like Odyssey and Sunshine, true the two Galaxies didn't have analog camera but it still felt a lot more natural in those games and didn't feel like I couldn't see nearly as much. Of course the game is still very vanilla and doesn't really have original characters but for a mainline Mario game my expectations weren't too high. The music is good I guess, Dire Dire Docks / Jolly Roger Bay being my favourite track, but it is annoying how repetitive it is as for instance Bob-omb Battlefield, Whomp's Fortress, Tall, Tall, Mountain, and Tiny-Huge Island all use the exact same track. I also feel this game was a little bit on the hard side, especially the 100 coin stars needed for 100% completion (Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Ride were the most stressful because I was always afraid of falling off and losing all my coins), and a lot of that difficulty comes from how janky the physics and camera were which is hardly a good thing.

So yeah, overall I like the game but not as much as most other 3D Marios, I can definitely get why people who played this as their first 3D Mario, possibly even their first 3D game, like @Count Olaf would love it so much as it was extremely revolutionary for its time and that explains why it's often looked back on as one of the best games of all time. But personally, as someone who played it for the first time in 2019, aged 16, having already played the two Galaxy games which I've always seen as being far more refined than their two predecessors, I don't love it but I don't see it as a bad game at all.

(Edit: I'm considering getting SM64DS but not sure yet)
 
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Mario's Super Picross

I did not expect this game have a whopping 300 picrosses! It took me quite a while to beat because of that (57 hours, to be precise). I did quite enjoy solving all of them, although it did get a but repetitive when solving them in long periods of time. I was surprised at how much content there was - on top of the ten sets of Mario's and Wario's picrosses each (with twelve picrosses in each set), there were special sets for each, and eight Ultra picrosses for Wario, and afterwards an additional 24 picrosses based on the title screen. Although the picrosses at the beginning were quite simple, the final ones gave me a lot of trouble, with some of them taking me over half an hour to solve. My only complaint about the game is the music. It got repetitive for me to listen to, so I turned it off and listened to other music while solving instead.
 
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team (Main story complete for the first time)

Started this game back in February and played a fair amount of it for a month or so then put it off and then came back to it in the last few weeks and today I played a huge amount of this game - at the start of today I was just entering
Neo Bowser Castle for the first time
and I just beat it. And oh. my. god. what a brilliant game this was. I'd probably rank this as my top Mario and Luigi RPG and third in the overall MaRPG series to the thousand year door and super paper mario, I knew I was going to like this game but I was pretty doubtful that I'd like it as much as Bowser's Inside Story let alone more but here we are.

I'd say the game is so good because it builds on everything its three predecessors laid out. It's very clearly taking inspiration from BIS's success, with the Dream World paralleling the Bowser body mechanics from BIS, with it being 2D, having its own battle system, and things happening in one world affect another. I'd say the Dream World is not quite as amazing as Bowser's body in BIS but still amazing.

The story in this game is probably the best in this series, I like the background of the Pi'illo civilization and Antasma is a pretty good villain, its a shame to see Bowser demoted to the main villain again as this is actually the first time he's been the main villain in the M&L series (and only the second time in the MaRPG series after PM64). Still he was okay, I was spoiled
That Bowser betrays Antasma at the end, but the ending was still really epic with both final bosses and the ending was really nice to watch, the credits were awesome too with the music and the blocks just like how BIS had music from each area in the game

I did use Easy Mode throughout the game shamelessly, even for the final boss, I definitely could've gotten through this game without it, but I just didn't feel like making such an awesome game hard, and that's one great thing about this game, it lets you choose your difficulty level, however
I don't see why they made it so that you need to beat the game to unlock Hard Mode
One criticism of this game I do agree with is that the annoying unskippable tutorials dragged this game down a little, especially near the start, but not a disaster

Music in this game was also amazing, and the graphics actually looked pretty nice for a 3DS game, I played in 2D for basically the whole time

So yeah this game is excellent, I'll start Colour Splash next probably
 
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There's a couple I've played recently. This was the first time I've played these games.

Crash Twinsanity (PS2) - I would have already played this game years ago if it had been released on the GameCube. But now that I've played it, I liked it. There were some annoying sections like the ice area, but overall I think it was one of the better crash games.

Sly Cooper 1 (PS2) - I've only had experience with 2 and 3 long ago. I also enjoyed this one. The kart racing sections were kinda annoying, but that's the worst I can really say about it. I'm looking forward to replaying 2 and 3 in the future.

Final Fantasy X (PS2) - I enjoyed my experience. I enjoyed the story and the characters. I liked the leveling up mechanic with the spheres grid. Some bosses really did get annoying to fight. I had no clue on how to play Blitz Ball. The only other main FF game I've finished was 7 (PS1) a few years ago. (And also Crystal Chronicles on GC and both of the Crystal Chronicles DS games). The next FF game I play will probably be either 9 or X-2.

Spyro 2 (PS1) - I did play the first one not to long ago before I played this one. They both were fun, but I personally liked the first one more. I plan on playing the third one in the future.
 
I beat Super Monkey Ball 2 a few days ago. My god, I'm glad I skipped Helix because Nintendo, Long Torus, and Variable Width were hard enough.
 
Previously on Toadgamer (insert cool-sounding show name)
I said:
oooooooookey that was all I wanted to get off my chest. Guess I'll just go review Rayman Legends and Soup metroid now. (It's nice that we're getting the metroid bread to dip into the metroid soup ain't it)
Click to expand...
Welp, here we are. Not gonna make it a giant-ass review that'll take up like, the entire page, but I'll share enough so that everyone knows how I feel about the games. Let's get to it:

Starting with Rayman Legends, I've kinda 100%ed this game. I say kinda because the last costume takes a shit-ton of grinding to unlock (I'm sorry naked rayman, I'm not willing to dedicate my whole life to unlocking you as crazy as that sounds), but honestly, replaying the levels several times was a joy, and I'm still not tired of them even though some of them I've played about 10 times. The fast pace and moveset is really what shines here, since it makes rayman feel really fluid and tight to control. Not to forget that the game can be pretty dam hard, and I was all for that, tho admittedly some levels took it a little too far (looking at you infiltration station invaded). The bosses, while nothing to write home about, were all fun. Honestly, this is just the kinda game I like to play whenever I'm bored and I happen to have my pc with me.
I'd never actually played a Metroid game before, and I played this game mostly to prepare me for Dread later this year, and HOOOOOOO BOY I might not have to play that game because this is in my opinion tied with dkc2 as the best snes game (im joking im definitely playing dread). I feel like it especially works as an introduction to the series because since it's an old game, it's much more simple than the games we get today, thus easier to comprehend. Despite that, the game was no cakewalk at all. It can be pretty hard, but it's never unfair or anything, which is a trap most hard video games fall into on at least one occasion; when you die, it's not because the game is taking it way too hard, you just need to get stronger, and that's kinda the main strength of metroidvanias now that I think about it. The bosses were fun, exploring is fun, and even just moving around and shooting innocent aliens was fun, which meant backtracking isn't much of an issue here. There's honestly so little wrong with this game, other than stuff that's just here because of the snes's limits, such as the save system.
 
Super Mario Sunshine (first any% completion)

Oh finally, I got this game for my 16th birthday after getting a GameCube for Xmas 2018 when I was 15, I just beat it on my two and a half year old save file, I did start 3 others but they never progressed beyond a few shines. Though it didn't really take me that much playtime to beat it as for the first few months I was quite active with this game and then after I got my Wii U it declined a lot and I just came back to this game on occasion. But yeah I'm pretty happy to have beaten this
 
Paper Mario: Colour Splash (first any% completion)

This was the first Mario RPG I overall didn't like, though I don't think it'll be my last. That said, there were some good things about it.

Story, setting, and characters were the main letdown. It starts of good with a mysterious force draining colour away from toads, and mario goes to an original location (an island where the whole game takes place save for some parts where you take a ship journey to nearby also original islands, sorta like dream team) to solve the mystery and save everyone. And then you meet Huey, and I gotta say, Huey is totally cool, probably one of my favourite PM partners, his writing is great and him being the only partner is a letdown sure but it lets him really shine and he interacts with loads of cutscenes and stuff, I just wish we could tattle enemies in battle like Goombario, Goombella, and Tippi. But it quickly goes downhill. First of all, Morton is revealed as the first chapter boss, and every other major boss in the game is a koopaling. That sucks, as do gameplay reasons I'll get onto. Then, predictably given Morton being the chapter boss, Bowser is quickly revealed to be the main antagonist, and he kidnaps Peach and saving her becomes a big part of mario's motivation in his adventure from then on. The Big Paint Stars are characters, but even though they are original, they do kinda suck, they all look the same apart from colour and have no real personality with little dialogue ever, and only the final one really gives an insightful story afair, that
Bowser wasn't actually malicious in the first place - a mitigating factor for him being the main villain and final boss.
CS could really learn from PM64 where the star spirits were just cooler in every way.
And do not get me started on the NPCs here. Most are toads, and unlike the toads in the first two games, they almost always look the same barring colour, and that drags this game down so much I can't put it into words. The game had great writing and dialogue and it just gets wasted on boring NPCs. Many others are just same old mario enemies we see all the time with no distinguishing features though. However there are some cool NPCs every so often, like the pirate captain.
Having just beat the game today, I was very saddened by the ending. I had been spoiled that Huey was going to sacrifice himself somehow, but still, this was saaad

Onto gameplay. I hold the unpopular opinion that I actually really liked the battle system in this game. It's a little in the easy side but no worries imo I like easiness. It actually does have legit interesting strategy with what cards you wanna play when and how you use your paint. Outside of battle though, I feel this game doesn't do so good. Gone are accumulating partners to have abilities that let you solve cool puzzles and explore fun environments, instead it's talk to this toad then that toad; wring that thing and put it in its place; search every inch of the area to find the way forth; don't have what you need? gotta go back to previous levels to get it, and if you're not in a stage you're beaten, backtracking for you. Stuck? Use a cutout. But only when you're stuck, since it's not very obvious a lot of the time when you need it. You can tell it wasn't very fun imo. Despite generally being poor, there are some levels which are actually really fun; I loved the pirate chapter and the boat minigames and the other world thingy, and my favourite level in the game without a doubt is the Green Energy Plant, the SMB3 section is rad as hell and gave me such good vibes cause they featured the flipping mechanic from SPM (though it does work a little differently). I get what people mean when they say this game has no progression, yes there's the paint meter but tbh that sucked, during the early game it already gets large enough that it's usually no worry and for over half the game it progresses so slowly I just don't feel very motivated anymore. But the battle system was fun so I didn't really need a reward for it, and as you progress you amass a fortune to get better cards, and you unlock those in the shop. That said, coin farming in Kiwano Temple plus the Roshambo Tournaments do break the game and I admit to using the former a fair amount. The chapter bosses (Koopalings) suck though, because each one requires a specific item, Wendy O' Koopa was especially infuriating because I had to leave the pirate chapter, go all the way back to Cobalt Base, pay for the new card set and perfect the quiz to get that instant camera (I was annoyed even with using my phone camera (huh irony cause i was getting the instant camera) to cheat the game.) The final boss whilst pretty good musically and in its drama and
Having a secret second phase like the shadow queen and star rod bowser, and whilst yes the final boss is dissappointingly bowser, it's at least better than most mainline mario games and maybe pm64/dream team because bowser in his right mind isn't trying to do evil, it's the black paint possessing him that is making him bad, something we see evident in the fight itself, sorta like in superstar saga, when bowser in his right mind wasn't a bad guy but cackletta possessed him.
it did not do so well gameplay wise, as it was still mostly quite easy and just had a huge attack at the end that caught me off guard once because i thought the projectile would be faster and wasn't anticipating a 120HP attack, but if you don't have enough cards that can deal good damage to him, you're basically done. I lost my first attempt at the final boss for this reason; since you could damage bowser with jump attacks in the first two (you couldn't in spm, but that game lacked a turn based battle system) I assumed the same would be true for colour splash but no, so I just couldn't do it with the hand I had and had to let myself game over to be able to return to port prisma (since luckily the game puts you back on the map after a game over not straight into the level, otherwise i'd have been royally done), but once I stocked up on huge hammers it was not hard

The game's soundtrack is pretty great, particular highlights would be credits, Blackout [Final Boss], Marmalade Valley, Kiwano Temple, Tangerino Grill, Mondo Woods, Rainbow Road, Farewell, Peace once more (the usual peach theme remixed via piano), and pretty much all the pirate music. I hold the unpopular opinion that I actually don't really like the way the game looks, I thought it looked cool when I saw YT clips of it before playing but once I played it I just didn't like it... how everything is obsessed with looking like paper and the cardboard artstyle just makes everything feel off and not real, whereas the first 3 had artstyles that were papery yeah but not as obsessively as this game. That said it does still kinda look nice in some ways with cool lighting effects and high resolution with very detailed textures, but it doesn't hold a candle to some other wii u games. IMO TTYD running in dolphin with enhanced internal resolution and the hires texture pack looks much better

So yeah. Had some fun moments for sure with this game, but overall I am too dissappointed in its characters for me to overall say I like the game. If you're mostly a gameplay fan then I'd maybe recommend it. May do a replay at some point but not soon, I'll definitely never aim for 100% (I looked up the 100% ending on YT and it was not much but heartwarming, same with origami king which I watched after finishing watching fawfulthegreat64's streams). Paper Jam is likely next, sorta looking forward to the gameplay with Paper Mario being the new playable character and I heard starlow's back again but other than that I don't have high hopes for the characters. I still remember seeing a tv commercial for paper jam back when SPM was the only paper mario i knew about and thinking how cool it was (I think I was 12 or 13)
 
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Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story

I beat the game's final boss over three times
The second time I did it with The Bros and Bowser at their highest ranks to see if there was a good ending
Third time I was just bored
 
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