I may be biased because I helped with this mod and have otherwise followed its development fairly closely, but I still think this is one of the coolest mods I’ve seen in a while.
I can talk at length about how awesome each of the various aspects of the mod is, and there’s a lot to say in that regard, but I think the main thing I want to address is the level of polish. It is unmatched by any PM64 mod that has ever been released, and it is visible everywhere you look.
The music imports are not only clean, but they also sound amazing (and I’m not just talking about the one I made, of course). The sound design is top-notch, with audio details so subtle that I wouldn’t have even noticed if the dev hadn’t directly made me aware of them.
The maps are rich in actually meaningful detail, that is to say each map has something pretty to look at which adds character to the area as a whole. This is further strengthened by the fact that the maps have a strong sense of interconnectivity, so they lead into each other in a very plausible way. Because of all this, it’s inherently fun to explore the new maps just to see what’s lying around the corner. But exploration is also very rewarding, because there are secrets absolutely everywhere.
All of these are things that most mod creators don’t seem to put much thought into (myself included!), thinking it’s not worth spending the extra effort for things people aren’t actually going to notice. It’s my belief that, while people might indeed not notice some of the tinier details, they’d feel like something was missing if those details weren’t present. As a result, the focus on polish has created an inherently authentic experience, that feels like something Nintendo themselves might make.
With that all said, it’d be remiss of me not to point out the few places where this breaks apart a little. My main complaint is with the story and writing. The story is a tad generic (“find 5 magical artifacts to solve whatever problem Mario has now”), and I’m honestly still not sure if Mario was within his right to just waltz into that mountain and steal the artifact from those Goombas. Like, what did they ever do to him? That sounds like a joke (and it kind of is) but I think a well thought-out story could’ve really brought things home here.
As I said the actual writing often falls flat a little as well. In the opening letter, the Yoshi Village elder invites Mario over for a party, but not to the actual party, no, instead he tells Mario to show up “to discuss his role and whether he wants to participate or not”, which, aside from being an awkwardly written line to begin with, is also just a strange premise to me. Why not just say the party is happening and he’s invited to go to that? Luigi’s reading this letter, which clearly states that he’s also invited, but then just tells Mario to go alone anyway?
Some of the gags kinda fall flat as well due to less than ideal delivery. The whale mentions for seemingly no reason that he just ate something Tayce T gave him, then during the trip suddenly realizes something’s wrong, calmly apologizes, and just dies? Same with the initial Spear Guy meeting, I understand that some reason needed to be contrived for why you’re fighting him initially but I just don’t think that was it. The cutscenes in this mod are all beautifully animated and paced, the dialogue really is what ruins them.
Then some technical bits. Some indoor areas have a slightly janky camera, specifically there’s a cave map where the camera goes so far to the right that one of the walls starts to face away from the camera leading to it becoming invisible. Then there’s that one mushroom with the single missing collider face, you know the one.
All this to say, I hope the full mod can keep at this level of quality and perhaps address some of these issues, because it was an absolutely breathtaking experience playing through this demo.