When I first heard that Dr. Mario World was coming to mobile phones, I was actually pretty excited for it. I heard that it was also going to have an overworld, so I was thinking that Dr. Mario was going to travel from spot to spot battling viruses in the old Dr. Mario-style gameplay that I know and love. But what did I get? This:
And this:
First, the overworld. It's nothing like I thought it was. I thought it would have been something like an overworld from, say, Mario 3D World, where you could actually see your character traveling from place to place. There would be bits of interaction that you'd have to do, like traveling in pipes or crossing bridges or something. All this is is a generic road map that takes you from one stage to the next.
The gameplay is also completely different, too. It's recognizable only as Dr. Mario because of the pills and viruses, but gone is the Tetris-style piece falling gameplay. Instead, it's a Match 3 style game, one of the most generic kinds of mobile games out there. You also drag and drop your pieces and instead of falling down, they float up for some reason. I don't know why that bugs me so much, but it does. Hmm.. probably because your typical mobile user is used to those Bubble Pop style games.
Gameplay is simple. Match at least three block spaces with viruses and pills, then columns and rows will disappear. Bricks next to cleared viruses will be destroyed opening up more of the play field. There's also new elements they've introduced, such as shells that will bounce back and forth clearing out the row if triggered by a virus removal. Dr. Mario World has different characters that you can play as well, and each one will have a skill meter that will build up as you play and when full, you can clear out rows and columns at random depending on who you're using. So far, I've yet to actually be in a situation where I can use it, as I clear the stages well before the skill meter is full.
It's not the gameplay that bothers me much. I'd actually be fine with it if it were some completely different game. It's the fact that the game I used to love has been reworked to appeal to mobile gamers that play those Match 3 style games. That's NOT what Dr. Mario is! Also, because it's now a Match 3 game, this means that every stage has arbitrary three star rankings, which I'm guessing there will be progress gates later on, and of course, the microtransaction power ups. So far, I'm very early on and haven't had a need to use power ups, but just seeing the options before each stage to use them is irritating. What's more is that most of them can only be used by spending diamonds, which I'm guessing can only be obtained with real money. Why is it ALWAYS diamonds?! Can we please keep that shit out of Nintendo games?
I'm not surprised that Dr. Mario World turned out the way it did. Fire Emblem Heroes was rife with microtransactions. Animal Crossing Pocket Camp had them, but never felt that you actually needed to buy them. Same with Miitomo. Super Mario Run was the only Nintendo mobile game that felt like an actual game due to the fact that it had a one-off price. I was actually hoping that Dr. Mario World would have followed that model, but its puzzle nature unfortunately made it a perfect conduit to push more microtransactions. There are going to be those Candy Crush gamers that can't wait to buy up a ton of power ups they don't even need just because they're there, and because of this stupid business model, they've ruined what could have been a really fun Dr. Mario game. If only there was a pill for that kind of sickness.
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