The Last 5 Power Moon Struggle - Super Mario Odyssey

There are a total of 880 Power Moons you can collect in Super Mario Odyssey with more to purchase with coins until you reach 999 total Moons. I made the journey to 999 Moons without spoilers, guides and only using in-game tips. There are already a ton of videos labeled "Top ____ Most ______ Moons in Super Mario Odyssey". Fill in the first blank with a number between 1-10 and the 2nd blank to an synonym to difficult, mad lib style.

To be honest If you've been playing Mario games growing up, none of these moons on this list are that difficult at all. Sure it might take a few tries but the clickbaity titles make it seem like a only veteran Dark Souls players can get the ones on these lists. The game is not meant to be hard, and after sticking with it you too should be able to get all of them on your own. By talking and giving 50 coins to the blue toad in each level to identify the location of the remaining moons and talking to the hint parrot if you get stuck, will help you get through it without looking at any guides. Like a puzzle game, you will get the satisfactions and the Ah-ha moment of solving it yourself even if it takes you hours, just for one single moon.

With that said, STOP reading if you haven't finished the game yet because spoilers are coming up. This will be my list of the last 5 Powers Moons I discovered, the ones I had to keep coming back to because they took me the longest to figure out.

5. Bench Friends - Metro Kingdom

For this moon, purchasing the hint takes you to a man sitting on a bench. For the longest time I though he was missing something similar to Pauline and her handbag, so I looked around every inch of the city and walked up to each per person to see if they were his friend. I even tried kicking a football all the way to him. What you actually have to do for this moon, is just have Mario set next to him on the bench yourself. There were multiple times where I stood on the bench, jumped on the bench, ground pounded on the bench. But I never realized that you could sit on any chair/bench by just standing on it for a couple of seconds. I accidentally got this one, when I put the controller down for a few seconds in frustration, only to be shocked that Mario can sit down.

4. Souvenir Savant - Mushroom Kingdom

Once you get all the moons in one kingdom you should have all the purple coins too. The worst is still having those last few because you thought you already explored the whole map. Now you have to go through the process of double checking each place of the map looking behind everything. For me the last 3 purple coins of the Sand Kingdom just drove me crazy. It's a big map and I had triple checked everywhere. The ones I missed happened to be off the edge of the map. I past times I went to this area I was riding the Jaxie so I was too concerned about falling off the edge instead of actually looking past the ledge.

3. Secret Path to Lake Lamode! - Lake Kingdom

For this one after you beat the game the first time, these painting show up in the different kingdoms that transport you to a secret area of another kingdom. I found all the other Secret Path moons, but this one I was stuck on for days. When I was down to these last 3 moons, I decided to make a list of other Secret Path panting I found in other Kingdoms. The ones that remained were the Metro, Lost, Cloud, Cap, Ruined, and Moon Kingdoms. I guessed that the bigger kingdoms would more likely have the paintings so I started with Metro and checked all the other ones too. In the back of my mind I knew it had to be in the Metro Kingdom, and checked everywhere. I eventually found it near where the Odyssey lands behind one of the girder things. That was a cheap one Nintendo, because this area is not connected to the rest of the map.

2. Found with Seaside Kingdom Art - Seaside Kingdom

There are many art pieces for hidden moons, but this one just never clicked for me. Because it was in black and white I initially thought that it was in one of the moon kingdoms. Even though it obviously says KEEP, after looking for anything that said keep for so long, I thought that I was reading it wrong and went to all the Kingdoms looking for the shapes in black instead of the white. Similar to the previous moon, I made a list of all the other Found with _____ Kingdom Art moons, writing both where it gave the clue and where the moon was found. Eliminating the small maps, of all the other kingdoms I saw that the Mushroom, Metro, Snow and Luncheon Kingdom where the only ones that one of these art moons were not found. So I checked all of them and was back at the Metro Kingdom again. Three of the top 5 from this list were from the Metro Kingdom so I already checked every inch of this place multiple times. I thought I was going crazy, but one time when I was on a building looking down, I happened to be looking at the street, instead of the buildings that I focused on before and saw the KEEP CLEAR and got super excited knowing that I finally found it.

1. Light from the Ceiling - Mushroom Kingdom

This was the last one, and I spent so many hours trying to figure this out by the name. There were lights on stairway so I initially thought it had something to do with that. I spent a lot of time throwing my hat on those lights. I knew I had to do with the ceiling also so I spent more time with the camera overhead thinking that the light shining down would highlight a moon under the floor. I played Super Mario 64, and know of the secret flying level by looking at the ceiling. I rotated the camera in all angles from all over the room with no avail. Then it just came to me and I was wondering if Mario 64 had 1st person perspective. I open the menu and controls to find that in this game you could look around using 1st person perspective by clicking in the right analog stick. I felt so dumb after this. I never used this button the entire game, and didn't even know that the Switch could do that. I have a PS4 but never done that for the Switch controller. If it was earlier in the game, I completely forgot about it.

Honorary mention: Beach Volleyball: Hero of the Beach! - Seaside Kingdom

This moon was also one that I had to revisit multiple times. The worst part about this one is that it starts out so slow, that each time you restart the first 10 hits seems to take forever. Once you get to about 40 it seems to go at the same quick speed, but I did this so many times that I started actually feeling anxious when it got close to 40 and started psyching myself out. My eye would keep looking at the counter instead of focusing on the ball and ultimately be my downfall. I would also loose attention mostly during the first 15 hits because it goes so slow. There were so many times that a split second would be the difference between getting the ball back into the air or having to restart. I tried jumping vs not jumping, and throwing my hat vs not throwing it. What eventually worked for me was not jumping but always using my hat to hit the ball back up.

As you can tell moons that gave me trouble were finding or figuring out the clues, not the actual platforming levels. I hope you guys liked my list. Let me know by commenting below which moons gave you trouble and which would be on your top 5. Thanks again for reading, hope you drop by again soon.