Super Mario Odyssey Analysis | A Deep Dive Into Why Odyssey is Better Than it Seems on the Surface

This is the only good Super Mario Odyssey video on KZbin.
Become a channel member today and watch my Bowser's Fury video before it goes public sometime between now and next year!: / @fromherotozeroyt
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Links and stuff:
‘Super Mario Odyssey - It’s No Masterpiece’ by Joseph Anderson: • Super Mario Odyssey - ...
‘Super Mario Odyssey - Not so Timeless 4 Years Later | Retrospective, Video Essay & Review’ By Platformer Game Design: • Super Mario Odyssey - ...
'Super Mario Odyssey Luncheon Kingdom Luigi’s balloon world best hiding spot' by Zezepanda: • Super Mario Odyssey Lu...
‘What Made Super Mario Odyssey So Perfect?’ by Mariomikester: • What Made Super Mario ...
‘Mario Odyssey is Absurdly Overrated’ by Small Green Lobster: • Mario Odyssey is Absur...
‘Super Mario Odyssey - Critique’ By HyperCharge: • Super Mario Odyssey - ...
‘Super Mario Odyssey Retrospective’ By KingK: • Super Mario Odyssey Re...
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Or, if you prefer to go via KZbin, click here to become a channel member for the exact same benefits: / @fromherotozeroyt
Twitter/X: / fromherot0zero
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Preview
00:01:00 - Intro
00:05:30 - Movement Overview
00:15:28 - Captures and Power Ups Overview
00:24:00 - Level Design Overview
00:29:09 - Power Moons Overview
00:31:10 - Cool but Pointless Details
00:36:07 - Mario’s Movement and How it’s Used
00:44:24 - Cappy and the Capture Mechanic
01:06:50 - Deep Woods Rant
01:11:30 - Level Design and Conditioning the Player to Notice Secrets
01:19:59 - The Hint System
01:22:20 - The Abundance of Moons
01:24:25 - Dismantling the Playtime Conspiracy Theory
01:33:53 - The Abundance of Moons Continued
01:43:04 - Why Doesn’t Odyssey Feel Like a Proper Mario Game?
01:47:00 - A Short Summary
#mario #nintendo #switch #odyssey #marioodyssey #fromherotozero

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Hey! Thanks for watching! I tried something new with this one by adding a one minute preview section with notable clips from the video. What did you think? Did it work? Was it too long? I'm legitimately curious, so voice your opinions here!

[@saltyshrimppasta]

I didn’t mind it, although I felt the out of context “wtf does this even mean” clips worked better than the more informational ones (not sure why that’s just my preference I guess)

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

@@saltyshrimppasta Gotcha, definitely something to keep in mind, thank you!

[@KylerGreer]

My honest 2 cents, this is the first of your videos I have seen (recommended through algorithm) and my first impression was that the intro was a bit long and didn’t provide enough context to be useful or engaging as a hook. I almost clicked off during it but decided to stick around and then thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the video. I think diving right into it without messing around is almost always the best hook you can have

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

@KylerGreer Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you ended up liking the video despite the slow start haha. I definitely have a bit of trouble with finding ways to have engaging intros and the preview thing was an attempt to remedy that!

[@saltyshrimppasta]

The indignation in “who even stands still in this game on purpose” is the best moment of the entire video

[@aguyontheinternet1532]

Your view of how the Mario series is a lead up to Galaxy 2 is how I view Sonic Generations for the Sonic series, what i mean by this is that both games are like a celebration of each respective franchises history and take game ideas and mechanics from a bunch of their games to create the most solid pure platforming level design in the genre 3D or 2D

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Yeah, though I guess an important difference is that Generations was made specifically to celebrate past Sonic games, unlike how Odyssey is just another game for the Mario series, but yeah I can see the similarities

[@Azrynel]

I really feel like so many reviewers and critics of the game like to think that everyone is going to want to 100% the game. While yeah, a decent amount of people do (particularly with Mario games), the majority of people just want to play the game. The best example of this is how negatively people seem to feel about the shop moons. There is no need for people who arent trying to 100% the game to buy all the moons. And if someone isn't trying to 100%, it allows them to skip some of the more frustrating moons and just buy them.

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

I agree! Using Balloon World to make enough money in order to buy moons to get access to the Dark Side and Darker Side of the Moon is totally valid. And even then, you won't get the gold sail that signifies 100% completion until you actually complete all the objectives despite how many moons you have in total!

[@satan-kun8974]

I’ve been feeling like the nerfed long jump, side flip and wall jump make for much less dynamic movement than the previous sandbox Mario’s. The hat bounce combo is too good, I have to really force myself to look for opportunities to use his other moves. The roll naturally gets used a lot as well ofc

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

The wall jump definitely sucks. Nitro Rad brought up a good point in his Corn Kidz 64 and Pseudoregalia videos I think it was that a good wall jump is something that you can use for more than just jumping between two walls and the one in Odyssey definitely aren't used as well as those games. As for the long jump, I don't think it's that bad because of what I said in the vid, but I haven't heard anyone say something about the side flip being nerfed. I used it a lot, but that might just be because I'm used to it being the best height you can get while standing relatively in one place from the previous games

[@theIJPmexican]

Welcome to the "I've criticized KingK in a video" Club. We are the only 2 members I know of.

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

That's kinda wild ngl

[@thatguy5148]

Thank you for this! I love the thumbnail btw.

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Haha, it's my pleasure! And yeah, I'm really proud of this thumbnail! Definitely one of my best!

[@jam560]

extremely good vid man! i burned out hard after beating the main game a few years ago but now i feel like going back and completing my save i also didnt use the hint system because i didnt really know what it was but i will now

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Thank you! I'm glad my extreme fixation towards the hint system helped lmao

[@alessandroferrucci6087]

thanks for the upload :D

[@zennistrad]

Good video, but I really don't think Odyssey is the most polarizing Mario game. That'd definitely be Sunshine.

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Thank you! Sunshine's pretty polarizing too I guess, but like I mentioned in the intro, people either straight up love or despise Odyssey. I feel like there's a lot more balance when it comes to Sunshine, you know?

[@johnjekyllson28]

I was prepared to watch the whole thing but then you start out with it being the “most polarizing” Mario game? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a complaint for it beyond, “It was pretty easy to beat,” and “Other Mario games are harder to 100%.” It’s a beloved game, not a divisive one like Sunshine.

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Just a quick search here on KZbin will bring up a bunch of wildly polarizing opinions

[@joshwillcox7141]

I'm sorry but I gotta be honest. This video just seems like a whole lot of cope. I kinda enjoyed Mario Odyssey on my first run but felt no need to go back for more since I personally didn't enjoy the act of getting moons. After watching Joseph Anderson's critique on it, I came away almost fully agreeing with him. About the whole Nintendo claiming the amount of moons was an intentional design decision, I'll remind you Sonic Team said the exact same thing about the reuse of level design in Frontiers because "story reason". Everyone could see that was bullshit. What makes Nintendo any different? Why would they just admit "yeah we ran into problems regarding length and had to pad it out". They wouldn't. Of course they would say it's intentional. They trying to sell you a product and come across as competent. I realized the latter point was KingK but still. I believe you also completed missed the point about example tweets he used. He didn't have to get examples with tons of like or whatever, it is sadly true that far too many "gamers" simply won't buy a game due to it being too short. It's well known gamers complain about game length when a new release comes out. He was just showing the average response related to this behavior. Also you're completely missing the point on everything he brings up but he wasn't saying designing games around the hardware is always a detriment but rather it's a regular thing Nintendo does that in this instance is a problem.

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

That's not how I intended to portray my opinions, but that's fine! Whether or not you're going to like this game relies heavily on how much you enjoy the basic movement of Mario, I think. Like I explained, if you try to have fun with it, it opens up a lot of possibilities, but the level design doesn't always properly present you with these options so it can be difficult to "get". I still believe that this was a concious design decision though since there's so much variety in how you can traverse the levels. Even just that pillar you can long jump to in the inverted pyramid is such a good example of that. JA's critique of the game is flawed in a lot of ways, but it also brings up a lot of valid criticisms, because if the devs fail to get you engaged in the many mechanics and challenges because they're too obscure to grasp, then they might as well not be there. That said, his rant about the hint system was just plain wrong lol. The reasons why I don't think Nintendo is trying to pull a fast one on us regarding the amount of moons are simple: 1. They've been saying this for as long as we've know about the core mechanic of the moons. 2. The game is actually built around it and it makes sense when you take the portability of the Switch into consideration. 3. Nintendo actually has a good track record for their Mario games. Sega, well, not as much. I truly think Nintendo would never have released something they believed to be a sub-par core Mario game just because of the fear of having the Mario brand diminish in value. Also, I proved without a shadow of a doubt that even running through the game while doing mostly the easiest moons and skipping the cutscenes takes 3 and a half hours at minimum which would translate to about 9 hours if you were to only collect moons from KingK's example where he considers 40% of them being worthy of getting. Now, just how many moons someone would personally consider worthy is a different question, but this example was just so full of holes that I had to make a rant about it haha

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

I'll just make a seperate comment for the edits since you won't get notified about it otherwise. No, I don't think I missed the point about the tweets at all. The way he frames this is as if it was some huge ongoing discourse at the time that somehow made it's way to Nintendo, but the reality of it is that this is yet again the work of a very loud and very small group of people. The vocal minority, if you will. The tweets shown are seemingly supposed to be proof of this, but 1. they're from way after the game released, and 2. they have almost no interactions. Even the article in that one tweet concluded that short games weren't necessarily bad, so that was just him (or his editor) taking a random headline that looked like it would confirm the allegations and it's hillarious how wrong he is when you look at the full context of the article. So yeah, even if he did mean to show people's sentiment about games being short, he couldn't even manage that. You're giving KingK too much credit here. He says verbatim: "Since this game is on the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo are seemingly obsessed with designing games around a hardware philosophy now [...]". I don't see how you can interpret that as anything but him saying that this is something that has started happening recently. Don't know how to say this without sounding snarky, but feel free to explain what I'm missing though

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Also, I guess I'll add one more thing that I feel needs to be said before I go to bed. (I'm so sorry for blowing up your notifications, dude) I wouldn't have had as big of an issue with KingK's game length segment if he made it clear that this was just a theory instead of engaging in bad faith arguments and trying to pass it off as fact without presenting even a single piece of evidence to support it. If you've been following this guy for a while then you'd know that this is something he does regularly too, and not just when it comes to games critique.

[@greenxclips1733]

I agree

[@D-Nova]

Before watching this video: I liked Odyssey, but there is no denying that the game is suffering from what I call "open world syndrom". Most open world games - including highly praised ones like BotW - are just quantity over actual quality. Now, with SMO and BotW, it's not that there is an actual lack of quality - these are highly polished games after all - it's more that, instead of having to collect 999 moons with at least half of the moons being rewards for even the most generic shit imaginable, I prefer the approach of SMG, where every single star feels special. It's the same with BotW and the stupid seeds, but to a lesser extend. These games want to impress you with high numbers (999 moons, or over 100 shrines) but those numbers are ultimately pointless. What good are 1000 shrines, when they all look the same, have the same music and all follow one of maybe five patterns? What good are 10.000 moons to collect, when you get 1000 moons from talking to some stupid NPC over and over again? Obviously I'm exaggerating, but quantity over quality seems to be the overall theme with open world games. That and boring, uninspired sidequest. (None of the sidequests in BotW could hold a candle to the complexity and emotional reward of the wedding quest from MM.)

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

I can really do anything but agree, especially with the point about Majora's Mask, but the big caveat with these games is that you're not really supposed to collect them all! I hope I manage to properly convey this and a lot of other points that speak to the work done by the dev team by the end of the video, so feel free to report back with what you thought, negative or positive :)

[@D-Nova]

@@FromHerotoZeroYT Yeah, I guess, but we didn't have to collect every single star in SM64 or Galaxy, or every Shine in SMS either. I mean, okay, we were never supposed to collect everything but, still, there could have been a more elegant way of making sure that non-completionist gamers don't get locked out from seeing the ending. Better balancing the difficulty would be my approach. Making sure that every level has enough easy (but fun and creative) moons, alongside difficult and more cryptic ones. But that task obviously gets more difficult the more stars/moons/whatever your game has, which is why I think it was a stupid idea to raise the number that high in the first place. BUT THEN AGAIN, if they didn't do that, the worlds would feel empty, which is why quantity over quality seems to be a common "problem" with open world or big sandbox games.

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

That's fair, but 64 and Sunshine were also smaller games and not really as deep in the open world genre as Odyssey is and the Galaxy games are more course clear than what the other ones were trying to be. Odyssey would definitely have had good of a better difficulty balance, but at the same time, this might not have fit into the vision of the devs. Pretty much all of the 3D Mario games has some "padding" and I think this was done mainly so that people could get to the end of the story (70 stars in 64 for example) without having to strictly follow a set path and being able to freely choose which stars to get. Odyssey kinda takes this to the extreme, which is not for everyone, but I think the reason and thought behind it is clear.

[@Raging_Redhead]

Unlisted?

[@FromHerotoZeroYT]

Unliste.... Wait hang on something's wrong here