LogFAQs > #976775868

Wario Land 3 (GBC)

What a weird, weird game. Aesthetically it's not even really Mario-adjacent, all the enemies are weird and there's a plot about an ancient god whose power was sealed in 5 music boxes. There's a soccer boss fight against the tortoise and the hare. Frequently you'll have to play golf to complete a level. The final boss is a giant evil clown god.

All the power-ups with maybe one exception are stupid anti-powerups that exist to annoy you and waste your time, but they can be coerced into being useful in very specific situations, which you need to do to solve the game's puzzles. Wario starts as an absolute useless piece of shit and it takes so, so long to get your first upgrade, and way longer to feel even marginally competent. You can't die but enemies hitting you either gives you anti-powerups (which waste your time), gives you huge knockback (to waste your time), or sends you to the previous screen (which wastes your time). I guess dying is ultimately just a time waster too but this feels more deliberately malevolent.

There's only four worlds with a few stages each but every time you get a treasure in one stage it affects the world, either by opening a new stage or changing something in one or more previous stages. This whole system is so insanely elaborate that it feels very modern. But the game constantly disrespects your time in a way that feels not modern at all.

Did I even like this game? I'm glad I finally finished it, at least. I've had this game since I was about 10 years old and I definitely got nowhere in it as a kid, which makes sense because some of the puzzles are extremely obtuse and the game's mechanics are not very intuitive at all.