3D World is effectively the same game it was on the Wii U, but sadly without the goofiness that was Mii-verse. I didn’t like it then, I didn’t like it now. But a single world of 3D World is perfectly matched with my toddler’s attention span, so it’s pretty good in that respect.

Bowser’s Fury, on the other hand . . is a thing. They upgraded the 3D World Engine into some weird combination of 3D World and Odyssey, and then made a lame Odyssey world, and then crammed it full of stars to get. And cats. Everything is a cat. The bushes are cats. The Goombas are cats. The cats are also cats.

And then they screwed it up. Instead of just being a Mario Game it’s also a Kaiju battle like the end of that one God of War game. (God of War 2? 1? 3? I honestly can’t remember.) And they made it so you can’t control when it’s Kaiju Big Battle time. They get you two ways here, the game’s FPS takes a dive when it flips to Angy Mode. Everything starts swinging and the game just gets crazy un-fun. And again, you can’t control when it starts. You can control when it ends by either getting a shine or by collecting the dragon balls and turning into Son Goku Mario, which is a slow awful pain in the ass. So early game (and honestly, most of the game) you don’t want Angy mode and it’s just needlessly frustrating.

THEN when you hit late game and you need Angy mode for 10% of the shines of the mode, or 20% of the remaining shines, you both NEED it to start, which means dicking around while you wait for Angy Mode to begin, and then when you get it you have to edge it and NOT get a shine you just unlocked, because getting a shine stops the mode. At the end I was waiting around for it to start, then immediately unlocking the next shine, then rewarded by getting to wait AGAIN. Just awful awful design.

It’s better than Mario 3D World, but that’s all. This makes it the next-to-worst 3D Mario Game. Amazing job, Nintendo.

Do Not Recommend. Maybe when it’s on sale, which it never will be.