At the beginning of last year I was getting ready to do three challenges on Dragon Quest III. I actually did do a no-magic playthrough. I did that playthrough while simultaneously playing through the Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, and Android versions of the game, like I did with Dragon Quest I and II. But Dragon Quest III is a bigger game, and by the end of it I had burned myself out a bit on Dragon Quest. After being away from it a few months, I'm starting to dive back in to my Solo Challenge.
I've played some other amazing games this last year. Perhaps most notable was playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild through to completion. That is a truly remarkable game. At some point I'll jump back in to resume the daunting task of trying to find everything in the game. But this game is at least a magnitude of order larger than any previous Zelda game in terms of the size of the game world and the things you can do inside it. And I don't have the Switch version, so I can only work on it at home.
Another game I finally decided to play through which has been on my list a very long time is Super Mario Galaxy. I had been wanting to finish 100% on its predecessor, Super Mario Sunshine, but I finally decided, to heck with it. I have 118 Shine Sprites on Sunshine, and it seems obvious to me that the other two Shine Sprites are tied up in 15 blue coins that I haven't found. But it's incredibly difficult to summon the energy to play through the levels yet again to look for them. It's the hardest of the Mario-64-style 3D Mario games for me to get into by far. It has the least interesting level environments of any Mario game, and you have to revisit those same bland levels over and over and over again. It just gets very tedious.
I only recently realized that this was my real complaint about Mario Sunshine. I had a hard time driving myself through it both times I played it through and couldn't quite put my finger on why I didn't find the game as enjoyable as Mario 64. (I always knew it wasn't Fludd, who works really well as a game design element, even if he doesn't work well as a character.) It took playing through Mario Galaxy to really emphasize to me just what was different about Mario Sunshine.
Super Mario Galaxy, by contrast, has even more variety in its environments than Mario 64 did. And a lot of them are very enjoyable. I never felt I was working overtime in any given level, and didn't get overly tired of any particular part of the game. It was quite a delight to open each new galaxy and try every new level that I unlocked.
The story of the game is also the best story of any Mario game that's not an RPG. Rosalina's storybook actually made me cry when I finally got to the end of it. I couldn't put this game down until I got all 120 Power Stars.
Super Mario Galaxy reinvigorated a many years dormant love of the Mario series and spurred me onward to play more. This last Christmas I got Super Mario Galaxy 2 and played it through to the end and got 120 stars in this game too, though I set it down before going after the green stars.
I finally started Super Mario Odyssey, but have temporarily put that game back on hold while other games have called me.
In between Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, I started replaying Super Mario 3-D Land and finished it to 100% completion, and finally played through Super Mario 3-D World to the end. I'm still working on that bit by bit, having beat every level with all four of the starting characters and the first three worlds with Rosalina. I'm kind of holding back a bit while trying to help my wife finish her file, which has all the levels completed with everyone except for the Crown world levels. The mystery box on her file still needs Rosalina and the Champion's Road still needs a single character to finish it. But she doesn't have much patience to sit down more than a few tries on either of those levels. But she'll be sad if I finish my file out and hers gets passed over, I think.
I also did a replay of 100% completion on Super Mario World, which I have on my Wii.
Lots of great games. I've had fun despite a challenging year. And I hope to complete many more good games in this coming year.
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