Welcome to my full review of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, my favourite game of the Wii U era; now out on Nintendo Switch!
Captain Toad was in my humble opinion the best game on the Wii U, it’s ok if you disagree with that, but let me explain why I felt that way and still do. Captain Toad makes perfect use of everything the gamepad stood for and the Switch is giving us so much more. Aside from the better screen, we also got that thing called portability and well, even TV mode is lots of fun.
Either by touching the screen in handheld mode or by using the pointer function from the Joy-Con, this game is well-balanced in both gameplay as in ease of use. I must say, Captain Toad is what in my opinion represents the Nintendo Feeling. A Feeling that graphics do not matter, but that gameplay is everything.
And that gameplay is exactly what makes Captain Toad such an amazing game. It is the perfect set of puzzle games in a typical Mario 3D world, where you, as Captain Toad, just wiggle your way through the fields, through staircases, through ravines and lava filled mountain tops and so much more, this game has it all.
As I mentioned in my preview, Captain Toad can not jump. This adds a serious difficulty spike to a typical game like this, as you can not just take out enemies in typical Mario style, you need to use everything around you in order to think out of the box. Like how you can first pull out a turnip to then throw it at a flying crow.
You can jump or fall down parts to either solve puzzles or to restart bits that you might have missed.
Imagine you are in a world, where first you need to go left, cross a field while avoiding flying Bills, then go up to a cog, turn it around and make the Bills fire at their next location. This mechanic can free up the road for the next bit you need, because that part is hiding one of the three diamonds you need to get.
Those diamonds also make it possible to go to certain higher levels within the 3 story books present in the game. At certain levels, you will just need an x-amount of diamonds to enter. If you don’t have that number, go find yourself some diamonds. This is actually not a chore or a punishment, it just pushes the game integrity to a whole new level. It makes you revisit places and once again think out of the box in order to proceed and save Toadette.
Oh yeah, there is also a big storyline where you need to rescue Toadette, at least, so it begins. Once you finish the entire game, you get the bonus levels and this is where the game is different from the Wii U edition, you get some amazing Super Mario Odyssey levels that will make you smirk so much while playing, it is just too cool to see these 2 worlds perfectly mixed into 1 puzzle each time.
And it gets even better!
Once you finish a level in the storybook, you can go back in to find pixel Toad. A small pixellated Toad that hides itself in the level. This adds a whole new twist to an already perfect puzzle game. Move yourself through the level once again, to find a tiny little pixel Toad, usually hiding away from sight, this game can be so annoying in a good way. I was lucky enough to remember some of them from my previous playthroughs, but damn, finding these can be a real pain.
So how did it age and should you rebuy it?
It aged quite well, I still consider this to be one of the top games on the Switch and if I was to rate it solely on its puzzle merits, I’d have to give it a perfect score, without a single doubt in my mind, Captain Toad is right up there with the greatest puzzle games like the Boxboy trilogy, …
Wether or not to rebuy it, I can not give an honest answer here. I admit to being biased to shout YES from the top of my lungs. I love it and think everyone that never played it before should definitely give it a real try. If you already own it, you will need to pass the original 3 storybook adventures prior to being able to play the new levels. So it will provide you with several hours worth of fun again.
Some may find it tedious to go through the rounds again just for that added bonus content. I will leave it up to you to decide wether or not to buy it a second time.
In conclusion, Captain Toad is an amazing game and should be considered the ultimate hidden gem of the Wii U, out now on Switch and it still rocks like it did on that same Wii U. My rating for this game is 100% if we’d talk solely puzzle game and 90% if we can add other genres to the equation.
My rating is 90%
