While the concept is clever and interesting, the stylus controls feel clunky and awkward
The game is mainly a side-scrolling platformer, but simultaneously it's much more than that. You can control Wario by moving, ducking and jumping with either the D-pad or the A, B, X and Y buttons (convenient to suit both left-handed and right-handed players). The stylus is used to enter doors, shoot, draw, open chests and a bunch of other little activities.
To get through any given stage, you must use Wario's disguise abilities to solve puzzles. As you progress and open more chests, you will find different outfits to disguise yourself with, each of them having a particular ability that proves extremely useful in the right situations. To use each outfit, you must draw a particular sign over Wario.
Thief Wario is the basic outfit, it makes Wario jump higher and run faster. It also allows you to attack with a tap of the stylus. To use this, you draw a check mark over Wario.
Arty Wario can draw portals and boxes, but he can't move while doing so. To use it, you draw a square with a diagonal line inside. Boxes are very useful to reach higher platforms, while the portals take you to the last save point or the beginning of the stage.
Cosmic Wario defies gravity with his jump and attacks with laser. To use this outfit, you draw a circle around Wario's head, like a helmet. You can use the laser to shoot star blocks (they give coins), activate switches, lower chandeliers and attack enemies.
Genius Wario has special goggles that allow him to see things you couldn't before, such as platforms or hidden passages. To use it, you draw a sort of a magnifying glass.
These are the first four outfits that you'll be using, but there are more. Dragon Wario outfit gives him fire breath and can be used to destroy red blocks. Sparky Wario can generate electricity to light up dark environments. Captain Wario allows you to shoot torpedoes and cross lava and water without any problems. Wicked Wario gives him flying abilities by blowing on the microphone.
Level progression gets complicated as you go, since you aren't given any hints as to what outfit you should use at a certain spot. If you get stuck somewhere, chances are you will end up using all the outfits available to see if you can do anything differently with one of them.
After you have found all of the different disguises, it's worth going back to the previous stages, and see if you can access places you couldn't before by using the new abilities. After all, and aside from the Wishstone tablets, Wario really wants to collect all that treasure.
Treasures are visible on the levels in the form as colorful chests. Each chest has a treasure (or an outfit) but you only get it if you clear the mini-game. Think of it as a lock, and to open it, you need to complete a task. Some of these mini-games include coloring objects, squashing cockroaches, finishing a sliding puzzle and connect the numbers in the right order without lifting the stylus (like in Brain Age). There are only 8 types of mini-games in total, so what you will end up seeing is a harder version of what you already did to open a previous chest.
If you fail to open a chest, bombs will come out and explode. There are no big consequences aside from losing health if you're too close, so you can just move aside and try to open the chest again.
Boss fights require you to change disguises on the fly, to use different properties on a boss. For example, there is one that you must switch into Cosmic Wario to shoot it in the eye first to remove the hat, then switch to Arty Wario and draw a block over it to press the switch, and finally change into Thief Wario to jump on it and hit it. All boss fights have a little hint thought balloon that tell you which disguise to use next, and although that helps a lot, most of the time it's not really clear what to do while wearing the right disguise.
The Wario franchise goes in a completely different direction this time, but unfortunately, while the concept is clever and interesting, the controls feel clunky and awkward, which can turn the experience into a frustrating one. The stylus controls seem a bit superfluous outside of the mini-games, and disguise changing could have been done differently and a lot simpler.
Nevertheless, Wario: Master of Disguise is still a game worth playing for both the challenge and originality.
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