Super Mario Odyssey Reviews: 10 Critical Reactions You Need To Know

6. The Incredible Sense Of Freedom

"What changes the feel of the game so dramatically is not the fact that you can throw your hat and possess a man’s brain. It’s a simpler choice: You don’t get booted out of a level every time you collect a Power Moon, Odyssey’s version of Stars or Shines. Previous games would always throw you back to the game’s hub world after you snagged one of these tokens...In Odyssey, there’s no end: Once you enter a level, you can scoop up Moons to your heart’s content." - Kotaku

"This is the key difference between Odyssey and the Super Mario Galaxy games, as rather than short, linear levels the focus here is on a number of relatively small but densely packed open world areas." - Metro

"Claims that Super Mario Odyssey is a modern, open-world entry in the series (like what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was for Zelda) are overstated, but when I say that this game has really, really, really big levels, I mean it. Although I appreciate how the main campaign keeps Mario on a linear track, I’m more inspired by how much the game invited me to explore where and how I wanted." - Polygon

Odyssey is a huge game, yes, but more importantly it promotes a greater sense of freedom than ever before, hurling Mario into these sprawling kingdoms and largely allowing the player to tackle objectives, collectathons and boss fights in any order they want (within reason).

This certainly makes collecting moons feel like decidedly less of a chore compared to previous games, and the addition of fast travel between checkpoints also cuts down on it ever feeling like busy-work.

Simply, Odyssey is all about throwing the player into a series of sandboxes and letting them have at it. It manages to lean into the current popularity of open-world games without going too big or bogging the player down in repetition.