Super Mario 3D World/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



These things about Super Mario 3D World are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Author's Saving Throw: Since the original release's stamp collectibles are now useless thanks to the death of Miiverse, the Switch rerelease uses them for a brand new photo mode included within the game itself.
  • Award Snub: In 2014, Super Mario 3D World was nominated for Game of the Year at the SXSW Gaming Awards, the British Academy Games Awards, and Game Developers Choice Awards - and in all three cases, it was beaten out by The Last of Us, which would go on to break the record of most Game of the Year wins for the time. A few dedicated Mario fans felt that 3D World was overshadowed by a game journalists repeatedly described as "elevating" gaming, and was treated similarly to Super Mario Galaxy 2 in terms of reception: a game that had the all-time highest average review score of its era, but didn't get the accolades that they thought it "deserved".
  • Best Boss Ever: All of the fights with Bowser. The first two have you chasing him down a huge bridge while he tosses exploding soccer balls at you from his badass car, which you have to kick back at him in order to hurt him. Then there's the final boss fight, where he turns two powerups against you in a fun and memorable chase up his enormous skyscraper.
    • The Hisstocrats, who you fight by climbing up their snake minions and pouncing on them with your Cat Suit while dodging the falling boulders and fireballs they rain down on you. You even get to fight them both at the same time during the post-game boss rush, though its difficulty might hamper the awesomeness a bit.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • Dry Bones have never been particularly threatening, so their Para Bones winged cousins arehere to remedy that! They are decently fast-moving, relentless, and will aggro on sight. And while you can temporarily get rid of them by stomping on them, they'll rebuild seconds later and continue their pursuit. You can kill them with a Starman, Lucky Cat Suit, or simply jump on them or throw boomerangs on them while they're over a pit, but the first two items are very rare, and the other options usually aren't a choice since they're usually encountered in levels where you don't have the freedom to jump around at your leisure, or are so hard that getting hit and losing the Boomerang Suit is all but guaranteed.
    • In Super Mario Galaxy, Octoombas were basically alien Goombas with the wimpiness that applied, hence the name. But they've become a lot more threatening in this game - they're downright vicious, firing three cannonballs in quick succession when you draw near, and are immune to most forms of attack save for Ground Pounds or thrown items. They also show up in tough levels where it's easy to get hit, making trying to kill them often not worth the hassle.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Plessie! He may be annoying to control, but his status as an adorable and friendly dinosaur makes up for it.
    • Rosalina's a secret character because of her already existing popularity. And of course, she was a welcome addition among the fans.
    • Bowser's car is wildly popular thanks to its awesome design, which has left fans wishing for it to be added to a future Mario Kart game. It even has its own nickname: the Pimpmobile.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Peach's floating already makes platforming as her a lot easier, but when you throw a Super Leaf into the mix? Her ridiculous hangtime defangs a lot of the game's challenge.
    • Once you unlock her, Rosalina is a real game changer. In her normal and tiny One-Hit-Point Wonder form have a spin attack they can use to defeat enemies and serve as a double jump that can help them clear tricky platforming sections, or rescue themselves from a poorly timed jump. The spin is so powerful that usually, getting power ups weakens Rosalina since it gets overridden by whatever she picks up.
    • The rare Lucky Cat Suit is just as powerful as the normal cat suit thanks to its useful claw swipe attack and ability to scale walls, but what makes it even better is that when you ground pound, you turn into a golden cat statue that kills whatever enemies touch it, and can withstand any non-one hit kill hazards. And since it keeps generating coins with every ground pound, you can easily load up on tons of lives by taking it to a vertically inclined level and constantly ground pounding from the highest point to the lowest.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: The game was near-universally met with cries of this when it was first announced thanks to early footage being very unflattering and making it look like an upscaled version of 3D Land. Once more footage was shown and the game's wonderfully diverse assortment of levels, mechanics, and powerups were shown off however, most naysayers went from critical to hyped.
  • Memetic Sex God: Meowser, who gives Bowser even more appeal to his large furry fanbase thanks to looking like a big badass strongfat tiger monster.
    • Predictably, Cat Peach and Cat Rosalina also became sex symbols despite the conservative cat suits. Because at the end of the day, they're still gorgeous Mario Princesses dressed like cat girls.
  • That One Boss: When fought alone, the Hisstocrats are fun. When they're fought together as part of a strictly-timed Boss Rush? Not so much. Thanks to how much time they eat up and how devastating it is to lose a Cat Suit while fighting them, they'll often be the ones to blame when you die thanks to time running out.
  • That One Level: In true Mario fashion, this game is easy for the most part, only for the difficulty to really ramp up near the end and in the bonus worlds.
    • In Grumblump Inferno, you spend a majority of the level having to slowly cross over wide oceans of lava while navigating rectangular crystal platforms that flip over into lava to move, with some flipping over vertically. Have fun!
    • Broken Blue Bully Belt almost feels like it came out of a bad ROMhack, thanks to the ridiculous amount of fast-moving spiked columns, Podoboos, and Parabones you have to dodge while making your way across platforms that slowly appear over a bed of blue lava. Thankfully, the Super Leaves around the stage can take the edge off, but one hit means you're in for pain once again.
    • Cosmic Cannon Cluster isn't hard in the sense of deadly obstacles or annoying enemies, but the obnoxious jumps you have to make by bouncing off of cannonballs in order to reach high places can easily eat up your time and lead to a death from time running out.
    • Piranha Creeper Creek isn't that hard to beat... unless you want all the Green Stars. All of a sudden, trying to keep yourself from getting hurt so you can light every torch to make them appear becomes an exercise in frustration thanks to all the awkwardly positioned Piranha Creepers that are even more awkward to hit, and the Parabones and Fire Piranha Plants that harass you while you navigate spinning and sinking platforms across a poison lake.
    • World Crown-Crown, also known as Champion's Road - the final level of the post-game worlds and a horrifying gauntlet of the hardest challenges this game has to offer. Highlights include having to ride cramped floating blocks around that have Octoombas perched on them, having to carefully platform around bunches of Beat Blocks that vanish and reappear every second, fighting a trio of magic slinging, teleporting Magikoopas on an arena with a floor that constantly crumbles under your feet... There's Platform Hell, then there's THIS. Making matters worse is the lack of checkpoints and powerups, as well as the sobering reminder that if you want 100% Completion, you'll have to beat it once with all five characters.
  • That One Sidequest: As mentioned under Fake Longevity, going for the flag-based bonus stamps is annoying because it essentially means that you have to beat the entire game with every single character and beating every individual level with them five times at the most, twice at the minimum. And yes, that includes Champion's Road.
  • Uncanny Valley: While the already great graphics look even better in the Switch remaster, the Tanooki suits take a bit of a hit. In the original they look perfectly fluffy and adorable, but in the Nintendo Switch version they look like they're made of this grotesque rotten foam, which can be distracting in levels that give you a closer look at the characters.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Super_Mario_3D_World/YMMV?oldid=1993684"