The first 3 paragraphs emphasize that the game is ultimately fun. When did that stop being enough? I played the game for over 50 hours and had a blast, but now I’m done. I’m not interested in completing it 100% because not EVERYTHING Odyssey does is brilliant in my opinion — but that does not invalidate the 50+ hours of fun I had with the game. And just to touch on the point that Galaxy explores each of it’s ideas to the fullest — it kinda had to. Galaxy is a game full of gimmicks, it’s good, but Mario’s move-set is the most stripped back it’s been in any 3D title, including 3D World. Because of that, the game feels less like a platformer and more like a collection of cool ideas that Nintendo had that were’t quite good enough to justify an entire game. Odyssey can’t do this because Mario’s movement is so insane that most possessions can be skipped entirely — you could tone down the movement, but then the game would be less interesting for more skillful players. As far as I’m concerned, Odyssey is all about exploiting the move-set and trying to beat levels as fast and efficiently as possible. I don’t believe the intention was for all players to collect every moon, but to populate each level with enough that players could choose their own paths through each level — cherry picking the moons that involve activities they like and ignoring activities that they don’t. And no, there are no objectively good and bad activities, everyone is different.
To summarize, Odyssey is a complete mess in terms of design, but it can be bloody good fun.
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