Super Mario Bros. Wonder Switch 2 Review: The most magical Mario Game of all Time

I love Mario games and have played almost every mainline title. All of them are excellent but only a few reach the level that Wonders does. I would even go so far and say, if you take off your nostalgia glasses, then Super Mario Bros. Wonder might be the best 2d Platformer of all time.

A Familiar feeling with a twist

At first glance Super Mario Bros. Wonder feels like every Mario game you remember. Controls feel tight and responsive, the world is colorful and charming. You can straight away feel the typical Nintendo polish and love.

But Mario Wonders isn't just your typical 2d Mario Game. Within the first minute of gameplay you will encounter your first wonder seed. After you pick it up the world starts to go crazy. You see colorful colors everywhere, the typical green pipes you know from every Mario game start to move around and you suddenly feel like you entered a different dimension.

All this lasts only for a short moment but those wonder seeds become one of the reasons why Mario Wonder is such a special game. Almost each level has such a wonder seed and they all have different effects. One time the game becomes a musical, another time you float through space, the next time you have to solve a little quiz.

The constant sense of surprise is one of the strong points of Mario Wonders. The wonder seeds allow Nintendo to unleash all their creativity and none of these wonder effects ever felt dull. In some way this level of creativity reminded me of my Mario Galaxy 2 review. But in my eyes Wonder does an even better job with it.

It's not just the Wonder seeds that are full of creativity, the levels themself match this as well. No level looks the same and there is a constant flow of new ideas introduced all the time. This makes Super Mario Bros. Wonder, really hard to put down. The game also offers a Badge system.

These Badges often grant you a special ability like getting a second wall jump. But sometimes those Badges are just passive or simply a playful addition to the game. They are never boring and also help to keep the game fresh at all times.

A Technical Masterclass

Another reason why Wonder is such a fun game is its presentation. Visually the game is simply stunning. But it's not just how the game looks, it's also its animations. Mario, his friends and his enemies are animated with such love and care that it's hard to not simply feel happy while playing.

The same goes for the audio design. There are so many cheerful and simply beautiful tracks to listen to. Another fun aspect are the wonder flowers. Those little guys are talking flowers who speak to you while you play. Now this could easily be annoying but Nintendo struck such a fine balance with this.

They sometimes hint you to some secrets but most times they are straight up funny and fit wonderfully into the game. One aspect I didn't expect to love as much as I did was the online part of the game.

When you play while you're online you can see other players who play the same level at the same time as you do. You can interact with these players with emotes, but you're not really sharing the same level. So they can't help you with defeating enemies, but if you or the other player dies you can fly with your ghost into them to pretty much respawn.

You can also put down a standee which other players can use to respawn as well. Now this feature does destroy the balancing of the levels at times. But for me personally this was a trade off I gladly took. I had so many fun interactions with random players like I never had in another game in such a short period of time.

Without any kind of chat I managed to interact with others and help each other on many occasions. It simply felt rewarding and fun to reach the goal with another player and see them posting a smile emote as a thank you for your help.

In a way this system also feels like a very smart difficulty option. Mario Wonders is mostly not a hard game but specially some of the extra content and hidden levels can be very challenging. By including this online option you get a fun way of making those levels a little bit easier.Another way to balance the game are the different characters you can choose to play as. I personally always played as Mario but there are many easier options like yoshi you can pretty much fly for a short period of time. This ensures that Mario Wonders always stays a game for everyone without dumbing it down.

A package full of fun

The base game also offers the option to play each level with up to 4 players. The Switch 2 Upgrade with the incredible name Super Mario Bros. Wonder + Meetup in Bellabel Park adds even more fun to the game. Aside from a 4k graphics boost this update also adds a few really fun singleplayer challenges and a lot of multiplayer minigames.

In the past year I played a lot of 2d and 3d Platformers. I started with Donkey Kong Bananza and also finally played Mario Galaxy 1 and 2. All of these games are great but still Super Mario Bros. Wonder is special. I don't think I ever experienced a game in which every single level feels creative, well designed and always full of new ideas. Mario Wonders doesn't just reach the levels of the All time greats like Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World in my eyes it even exceeds it.

Rating: Masterpiece