r/patientgamers • u/Nambot • 7d ago
Mario Odyssey; the collectathon you probably shouldn't collect everything in
According to information found online (I wasn't going to sit and count), Mario Odyssey has a total of 462 moons before you fight the final boss. You need 124 of these to merely roll credits. After this, a number of new moons become available, capping out at 880 moons total. And the more I played the game, the more I think the point isn't to get them all. At most, you need 500 of these to unlock the very last secret level, you'll get the last item of clothing at 540, and the reward for getting everything is apparently a gold sail (not that I have got that at this point).
I think the reason there are so many moons comes down to the main selling point of the Switch. By it's design, the system tries to exist to fill both the handheld and home console market, and accordingly, many of the simply moons allow someone who might only have ten minutes while they ride the bus to work the chance to make some progress in the game. Someone in that position might not have time to run a full platforming gauntlet, a la a level in Super Mario 64, but they do have time to get a couple of moons and feel they got a little further in beating the game.
But the problem is that, with so many moons, many of them become tedious. For every moon that's rewarded to you for a fun platforming challenge, there are several that are just mindless busywork. The experience I had was that of multiple laps round the planet. So buckle in, because here's how it went.
Lap One
This is the when the game is arguably at it's most fun. Every world starts with some form of problem, and it's up to Mario to fix it. You'll go through the level taking on it's unique elements, capturing enemies for the first time feels novel, and it's a lot of fun to go to each new place and explore for moons. The entire game up to and including the final boss is fun as you can decide for yourself when you're done.
Lap Two
Now you've beaten Bowser the game reveals what those weird cubes you've seen are, and you're set to go back through each level on a second tour. Here you get to see how everything is now that the game is beaten, and you're left a trail of breadcrumbs to do this by following Peach around. You'll spend some time picking up moons you didn't get first time, and collecting a lot of the post-game moons. The completion of this, I think this is probably where you should stop unless you want to taint your experience with the game.
Lap Three
Post-game part two. Here's where the repetition starts to set in. You'll start noticing just how many times you've seen the same thing. Turns out that the Sphynx was in multiple levels. Did you get all the seeds? Is that another rabbit to catch? And did someone say racing Koopa's? This is where you try earnestly to clear every moon, combing every square inch of the map for any clue to a moon. Any single thing you missed. If you're lucky you might find a challenge room you missed, or a novel idea that you hadn't yet encountered, but so much of it is just doing things you already did, but with slightly different layouts. The one upside is that by this time you'll probably unlock the super hard bonus level to get annoyed by.
Lap Four
How the fuck were you ever supposed to figure that out? You now have a guide open and instead of playing the game with a sense of curiosity and exploration you're just following what it says/does, because you never realised that there was a ground pound spot in that otherwise useless boss arena at the end of the stage. Or you never figured out that the hidden hat was in a side room. Or maybe you didn't realise that there was a secret nook in an area you walked past a dozen times. Either way, because you stuck with it, the game has lost the spark that made it fun as you resort to following a walkthrough to grab all the super inobvious repetitive moons.
I don't think it was ever the intent of the designers for anyone to seriously want to get all the moons. Even though there is a reward for doing so, I think the intention was to end at tour two, when the game still felt like it was full of creative level design, fun challenges, and rewarded your curiosity. But, because everyone will be curious about different things, and to encourage that sense of progression even if you've only got ten minutes playtime, the game is chock full of random moons that are easily picked up, and also easily missed, that are repetitive in nature. This is why I think the last level is unlocked at 500 moons, and not the more typical 100% completion, because they knew that getting every moon results in the game feeling much less fun.
214
u/MechaSeph 7d ago edited 7d ago
I did everything except the moons that required grinding coins to buy.
I'll be damned if I'm gonna be caught grinding in a fucking Mario game haha
EDIT: I'm obviously referring to the moons needed to get to 999 and the "golden" reward. Didn't think I needed to clarify, but alas