Game Over Super Mario Odyssey

I’ve had a Switch for about six months, and played a handful of games on it. However, I’ve not put a good amount of time into more than a couple of them. Well, that changed when I decided to push through to the finish of Super Mario Odyssey, the first title I bought for the system.

Having made my way to the Luncheon Kingdom, I’d just kinda stopped playing. But, I went back with a vengeance and blazed through the remaining worlds in a matter of hours. Then went back to find missing moons, of which there were hundreds. I have found a couple of dozen…

For those not in the know, Super Mario Odyssey sees you playing Mario, on his way to stop Bowser from marrying Princess Peach. Along the way, he meets up with Cappy, a hat-shaped ghost that decides to team up with Mario because his girlfriend, Tiara, has also been kidnapped by Bowser.

They journey across the world in a hat-shaped flying craft called the Odyssey, but it needs Power Moons to fuel it. These are literally Power Stars, most of which are shaped like moons. Luckily, as you chase after Bowser, you come across plenty of these in the lands he has just pillaged. However, before you can stop him from leaving, his... friends? minions? whatever this rabbit-looking family called Broodals is, step in to stop you, each of them serving as the boss for two kingdoms. I really have no idea what their deal is, and I’m kinda bummed that the Koopa Kids and Baby Bowser were completely absent from the game…

Oh, were the Broodals supposed to be related to the Rabbids? Nintendo and Ubisoft have been really mashing Mario and those things together… I’ve literally no idea what their deal is either, so I’ll stop letting it get me off track.

As you travel from food-based lands, to ones populated by dinosaurs and actual humans, it’s not entirely clear how so many disparate kingdoms are on a single planet. However, it is quite fun to traverse each one as you pursue Bowser. Invariably you land on the opposite side of the kingdom to where his flying ship is, because that’s just how these things work. So it’s a good thing that there is plenty to do between the start of the level and the boss.

Once you’ve beaten the boss and discovered where Bowser is headed next, you then have to refuel the Odyssey with the Power Moons that you’ve been picking up along the way. Not grabbed enough? Then either find some more, buy some or head back to past kingdoms to grab some that you missed. Oh, you’ve finished the game and found out that you need more than 200 extra? Well, then you’re in luck! If you have an amiibo.

See, in each world once you’ve cleared it, there’s a little device which will “send” your amiibo “to search for hints”. So it will tell you whereabouts you should be looking, but not the name of it… But you don’t have an amiibo, and don’t want to look for them? You’ll just buy them?

Power Moons are available to buy in the endgame for 100 coins each. It should be quite telling that during my entire playthrough, I never amassed more than 3000 coins at any one time. In fact, I’m pretty sure I never quite reached 3000. From buying hints to the 10 coins wasted every time I died, to the costumes I had to buy so that I could go places (or because they looked cool, okay?!), I was usually around the 2000 coin mark.

In all, according to the Switch, I’ve played Super Mario Odyssey 15 hours or so. I honestly thought it was longer! I’ll be returning to it to find more Power Moons, but I doubt I’ll find them all. I’ve used amiibo to find hints, but even with the locations marked on my map I can’t find some of them...