Chapter 3 of TTYD is one of its most beloved. And yet at the same time, it is also the most frustrating.
The starting conceit of the story is to get us to participate in a fighting tournament, with a wrestling theme this time around. To get Mario to participate, we get a very vague "we only want to deface the thing, let's win it properly first" reasoning, and we are allowed to just walk in and claim a spot. Once we're in the tournament, however, Mario's unstoppable determination makes an excellent main character to the internal story being told.
The minor leagues are a surprisingly low-key story. King K gets a minor arc to characterise him, and if you go out of your way to find Bandy Andy, you get setup for a plot point that is also covered elsewhere- the Glitz Pit isn't exactly on the up-and-up. The job of the minor league is to set up a plot for the major league to elaborate on: Fighters are going missing, their replacements are being ground through with no regard, and certain off-limit areas are obviously suspicious when observed. Part of this is for the Yoshi timer: They expect you to do around half the major league within 20 minutes, or maybe the 20-40 minute section, and part of this is because you can just run all the way through the minor league with nothing but the fights to worry about. The end of the arc nets you a Partner and the plot twist that the Champ's Belt isn't even the thing we wanted.
The major leagues are where everything starts coming down. X's favours expose the Gold Star connection, the malpractice in management and the missing fighters, in order, before X finally tells you getting the Champ's room is just what you need to get your hands on enough dirt to find the Gold Star. Your ascension gets you the unwelcome attention of Rawk Hawk, who wants to put you in your place. And Grubba needs you in order to keep the Glitz Pit feeding him fighters to snack on- and to also not find out about his scheme and put a stop to it. All three of Grubba, Jolene and Rawk Hawk trip over one another as they try to execute their schemes, a quality way to add some depth to an otherwise simple story.
The story culminates with the reveal that Grubba is the villain- something the game didn't expect you to pick up on early, but left plenty of good clues along the way- and that Jolene was X. Jolene as X is a bit more surprising, depending on how much you expected her to either be the villain or merely an arm of Grubba's grubby hands, but what's truly surprising is her involvement with Prince Mush, the former Champ. The backstory about their sibling bond, and Jolene's efforts being primarily motivated by Mush in particular, is set up only if you know Jolene's other secret- the fact she moonlights as an ordinary patron of the Fresh Juice bar, where her off-the-clock self reminisces at length as a fan of Mush. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly not helped by the fact that Mush... never actually appears again. Not even in the aftermath cutscenes, not in any cutscenes about Glitzville in the epilogue, and certainly not as a bonus boss fight if you revisit the Glitz Pit and continue the Great Gonzales's career. You could almost remove Mush entirely and Jolene could remain exactly the same character. I think I'd rather the story try to make more effort to put Mush in, but at the very least they could consider not making everyone dismiss Jolene for her aloof attitude. It's like I'm back in the naughties. Checks oh, right.
On the subject of strange appearances, we have Bowser. What the hell was Bowser doing here? This plot does not match his MO, the intermissions establish him as being busy being two steps behind Mario, and he does not seem to have contributed to the Glitz Pit in any way. There's a part of me that wishes Grubba was more active about draining powers to add to his own, and this part of me thinks Grubba could have drained Bowser (something that would be restored afterwards)- which would actually go some way to explaining Macho Grubba's appearance. This would require not making Bowser comic relief, though- and also making him not immediately grab for the Gold Star, although this could be relatively easy to write around. The idea of Macho Grubba explicitly using Grubba-versions of King K, Bandy Andy and Mush's moves, alongside other characters like maybe even Rawk Hawk, could help sell how utterly wrong Macho Grubba really is- although the plot has absolutely no trouble doing that with what they have, this would just be a cool extension.
Mechanically, Chapter 3 is an onslaught of battles with random special conditions. Sometimes you can get really lucky and have to do (or not do) something you were (or weren't) going to do already, but other times you can get locked out of a technique that you really kinda needed to use to disarm that particular enemy type. This chapter is sluggish on replays because of the pacing of the fights between the plot stuff (and also all the doors you have to use making "just run around on Yoshi's back" annoyingly complex), and getting the wrong Grubba condition can make battles run amok quickly. I feel like the smart play would be to make the first run of the Glitz Pit use custom conditions- ones designed to make you not just do the obvious wincon, but also ones that don't lock you out of winning the fight because there's no other way to do damage- while the one you can do later on uses random conditions. This, of course, runs into the issue of what to do if the player intentionally ranks down to go check out Wings of Night and the Destructors. The Glitz Pit is an overall fascinating story, but some of the things it needs to have seem to get in the way a bit when translated to gameplay.
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