After experimenting with a return to more linear "get to the end of the level" design in Mario 3D Land for the Wii U, Mario Odyssey goes back to the established 3D Mario design of having you track down items held by bosses or hidden in puzzles.
Odyssey is a very fun game, and one that is filled with charm. Attempting to stop a wedding that Bowser has planned for himself and Peach (of course against her will - there's kidnapping involved, as always,) Mario finds himself stranded in the Hat Kingdom and befriends a hat-spirit-creature named Cappy who becomes the main mechanical conceit of the game - you can toss your hat at various creatures in order to inhabit them and use their abilities - something that recalls, of all things, the now-obscure Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64.
With a hat-shaped ship provided by the Hat Kingdom, you travel the world to various different Kingdoms that each have their own inhabitants, ranging from friendly Mexican skeleton people to tree-growing robots to realistically-proportioned humans who all wear suits and hats.
Along the way you collect Power Moons to allow your ship access to the next Kingdom. Each of these Kingdoms has a "main story" that you can play through first to get a good number of moons (often getting three-moon clusters that also look weirdly like bunches of bananas) but along these paths and after finishing these stories you'll have plenty of stuff to find.
Coins, oddly enough for a Mario game, actually function as a currency. You'll be taxed a very modest 10 coins if you die (I think you'd have to actively avoid coins to run out of them, as it's pretty easy to get into the thousands) but otherwise you can spend them in the shops in each kingdom for various costumes and stuff you can decorate your ship with.
Each Kingdom (with one or two exceptions) also has its own currency that is finite and can be used to purchase a limited number of local items including costumes, travel stickers (like the ones you'd find on an old-timey suitcase, only these go on your hat-airship) and other cosmetic rewards.
It's a great entry in the series and feels inventive and charming in a way we haven't seen since the first Mario Galaxy game.
I also want to take a moment to talk about my favorite area in the game: the Metro Kingdom. Here, in its capital of New Donk City, Mario gets to return to the place he bested Donkey Kong and rescued Pauline, who is now mayor of the city. And she is also a singer in a band! Granted, when I was a kid Mario was from Brooklyn and Donkey Kong was set in New York, but... New Donk City is a very Nintendo-ized New York City. Every car on the street is a yellow taxi that looks like it's from the mid 80s, and everyone there dresses like it's the 1940s. One would think its inhabitants, being realistically-proportioned humans speaking some strange nonsense (the exception being Pauline, who is cartoonish like Peach and who actually speaks, and most notably sings in English,) would be off-putting, but the place is actually very charming (the music, exuberant as any Mario music tends to be, helps.) There is a kind of innocent urban aesthetic the feels like something from my childhood that this seems to embody.
Anyway, this a great core-franchise Mario entry for this console generation and definitely recommended to anyone who likes the classic Nintendo offerings.
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