Wario: Master of Disguise

Wario: Master of Disguise
Developer: Suzak
Publisher: Nintendo
Original System: DS
System Played On: Wii U (Virtual Console)
Rating: 1 star 

On July 3, 2025, I defeated Terrormisu, thus finishing Wario Master of Disguise for the Nintendo DS (via the Wii U Virtual Console). My playthrough consisted of both the 10 episodes of the story and the 5 special episode time trials (remember this, this will become important later on). In my playthrough, I earned $580,258 in money and treasures, which earned me the title of "Paragon of Disguise," the third highest title in the game. And I did it all in 24 9/10 gameplay hours in 45 gameplay sessions, averaging 33 minutes 12 second per gameplay session, over the span of 3 months. Let me review this game in order of when the things needing critique appear.

Obviously, the story sets the premise of the game. A bored Wario is watching a television show about a master thief named Count Cannoli, who has entitled himself the Silver Zepher. Jealous of Count Cannoli's wealth, Wario invents the Telmet (portmantua of television helmet) to put himself in the television. Now the good guy of the show becomes the bad guy, the bad guy of the show becomes the worse guy, and the worse guy of the show becomes the worst guy. At least it's not predictable in the sense that the TV show's bad guy sees Wario as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" or that the plot twist is the bad good is really the good guy and the good guy is really the bad guy. Still, the plot of this game felt predictable. The one thing I could appreciate about the antagonists, though, is that one is a caricature of Mario and another is a caricature of Peach. Very fitting for a Wario game.

As if the plot itself is not bad enough, what makes it worse is that the plot is developed over long discourses of information dump. This becomes most evident when dying multiple times to a boss and having to sit through long dialogues to just face off against the boss again. This got so bad that, while the game provides plenty of fair save points, rendering the Wii U Virtual Console restore points useless, I used them just so I wouldn't have to re-read the long dialogues again! Yes, the press of a button or the tap of the screen will make text move with more speed, but I wouldn't call it a fast forward. Yes, I get the developers were trying to communicate, "Look how witty all these thieves are!" but I never found it entertaining. It doesn't matter if you're into books, movies, television or video games, anyone writing for those mediums will tell you long exposition dumps is bad storytelling. Therefore, Wario: Master of Disguise has bad storytelling.

After a long introductory dialogue dumping some exposition, the gamer finally takes control of Wario. If you belong to the 90% of right-handed people, you will move Wario left and right with the left and right of the D-pad, you will crouch with down on the D-pad, and you will jump and ascend ladders/stairs with the up on the D-pad. Everything else will be controlled with the DS touchscreen stylus your right hand. Don't worry if you're the 10% that's left-handed. Left is Y, right is A, crouch is B, and jump/ascend is X. As if Suzak remembering the lefties is cool enough, even more awesome is that you can use both for movement. For example, if you wanted to jump from left to right, Nintendo expected the player to press right/A and up/X at the same time. The game, however, allows the gamer to press right and X at the same time for the same results. I used this option plenty. Sadly, however, all the other controls have to be done with the touchscreen. It's not as bad as Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass or Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, in which even the movement of Link was controlled by the touchscreen, but it's up there. To perform any attack, the gamer has to tap the enemy. Of course, the player has to first position Wario in close proximity of the enemy for the attack to work, but it still comes down to switching from button controls to touchscreen controls, which can easily be confused, as we will see as this review progresses.

The touchscreen issues become most apparent with the disguises. Of course, it can't be a Wario Land game (yes, I know it technically doesn't have "land" in the title, but most people put any Wario platforming game under the subcategory of "Wario Land") without transformation. Wario: Master of Disguise has 8 disguises Wario can transform into: Thief Wario, Cosmic Wario, Artsy Wario, Genius Wario, Sparky Wario, Captain Wario, Dragon Wario and Wicked Wario. For each transformation, the gamer has to draw a certain shape over Wario: checks for Thief Wario, circle for Cosmic Wario (to represent a space helmet), square/rectangle for Artsy Wario (to represent an easel), a magnifying glass for Genius Wario (looked more like a Greek letter to me), a lightning bolt for Sparky Wario, a semicircle for Captain Wario (I'm guessing a boat hull?), a less than sign for Dragon Wario (like a dragon tail) and a triangle for Wicked Wario (like bat wings). The mnemonic devices makes recalling the symbol for the transformation easy. I can't complain. What I can complain about is the game struggle to recognize these symbols. Constantly the game confused the circle for Cosmic Wario and the rectangle/square for Artsy Wario. Too often the game confused the dragon tail drawing for Dragon Wario with the triangle wing drawing for Wicked Wario. This becomes a problem throughout the  game, especially in the timed special levels, when the game expects the player to transform Wario on demand, yet he or she cannot because the game can't recognize the correct symbol. As if drawing to change costumes isn't bad enough, remember that a lot of these attacks require the gamer to draw on the screen more, which the game further cannot recognize. The worst offender is Artsy Wario. The game almost expect perfect squares to create blocks. One cool thing about this game's transformations is that some can level up to give more powers to the disguise. Cosmic Wario's space gun can ricochet. Artsy Wario can draw more blocks and draw hearts for healing. Genius Wario can punch. Captain Wario can dive with a submarine. Dragon Wario's fire breath can become hotter, destroying blue fire blocks. OK, that last one is lame, for it's just an excuse to create new temporary roadblocks. Lamer is Cosmic Wario's ricochet gun, for the lasers never ricochet where the players wants them to go. Lamest is Artsy Wario. Again, the game has a hard time recognizing the draw of a heart shape, whether big, small, skinny or fat. Even if the player can master drawing a recognizable heart, you can't do it with enemies on screen. Don't even dare during a boss battle (it's like the developers didn't want you to heal during boss battles).

These disguises can be found in treasure chests. Treasure chests hold everything from disguises to keys to money to treasure, depending on its color. All treasure chests are locked. To unlock a treasure chest, you have to play a microgame. Yes, a microgame. By this time, Nintendo has published 5 WarioWare games over the span of 7 years. Wario: Master of Disguise become a game that attempts to combine both Wario Land and WarioWare. There are 8 different microgames, which include connecting dots, tracing drawings, coloring in pictures, matching items with receptacles, squishing roaches, drawing a path and sliding puzzles. A cool thing is that these puzzles do level up, becoming progressively harder once the gamer has become a master expert in the easy puzzles. An uncool thing is that the higher-level puzzles become so hard to the point of becoming impossible. If the player ever fails a microgame, easy or hard, the game boots Wario back out with bombs. Wario must dodge the bombs and re-enter the treasure chest and do another random minigame. This becomes an even bigger pain for the special levels, when everything is on the clock, including the microgame! Yes, the clock continues to run on the microgame. The only fortunate relief is that if the clock expires on the microgame, and the gamer can successfully solve the microgame, the clock will reset. If the player gets stuck with a microgame that is not his or her strength, the player might as well reset the speedrun. If just playing just the 10 episodes of the story, the gamer will find himself or herself ranking puzzles by ease and difficulty, and then purposely losing some microgames in order to get the more favorable microgames. This isn't good game design.

I'll at least give the game credit on the level designs. It could have been way too easy to fall into the Super Mario trap of doing just a basic, generic grass level, desert level, ice level, water level, jungle level, sky level and volcano level. Instead, levels include a cruise ship, a museum, a pyramid, waterworks, a volcano (OK, that one is repeated, but it's taken a new direction with an under-lava experience!), a haunted castle and an ancient garden. As creative and original as these level settings are, they all have flaws. The museum, on the surface, looks creative with puzzles that can be solved with hints in exhibits, but the hints are way to cryptic. The volcano level depends on finding a heat-resistant suit every now and then, and they are hidden, so Wario can die just looking for one. The ancient garden teases the gamer by making it look like all the treasures chests needed to reach the final boss are nearby, but it instead has Wario travel the farthest. These are all flaws that ruin the creative atmosphere.

Most, if not all, episodes end on a boss. The bosses are interesting, and not in a good way. The boss itself gives no hint on a weak spot to defeat said boss. Instead, Goodstyle, Wario's magic wand, provides hints by telling Wario what disguise is necessary to defeat the boss, or at least this certain phase of the boss. This creates a dualist dilemma. Pay attention to Goodstyle's hints, and the boss is too easy. Don't pay attention Goodstyle's hints, and the boss is too hard because the gamer has no idea how to defeat him. I wish there was an option to turn his hints on and off, but I don't think that will solve anything.

Do yourselves a favor. Don't play Wario: Master of Disguise. Instead, watch Dana Carvey's family-friendly comedy Master of Disguise. You'll have a much better time.

Running Ranking
1. Wario Land 4
2. Wario Land 3
3. Wario Land II
4. Wario Land (1)
5. Wario World
6. Wario: Master of Disguise