Man, I REALLY wanted to rate this one higher. The controls and movement are pristine, you can have some real fun just moving and doing stuff. I really dig the island setting and the way they tried to expand on what the typical Mario game looks like. I can understand the water mechanics not being to everyone's taste but I thought they did a pretty solid job of giving you interesting objectives that made use of it. Music is pretty nice too. Really, there's a whole vibe here that you won't get from any other Mario game. There's a lot to love here when things are going well, which to be fair is most of the time.
But man, when Sunshine falls flat, it falls FLAT. There are some missions in this game that are just absolute butt cheeks to experience, some of which are mandatory for standard completion too. It also feels like there's a bunch of things that just serve no purpose except to be tedious/obnoxious, like having to bring random fruit to Yoshi to hatch him or having to go through intro screens every time you return to the hub world. Hell I actually thought the secret linear platforming sections were neat thanks to how creative you can get with just Mario's basic movement, I just got tired of having to backtrack through the entire hubworld and manually dig up the entrance again inside the stage whenever I game overed. There's also some other weirdness with hit detection and janky level design that can easily result in you earning a shine just to die to some silly shit on your way to grab it.
This is a decent game, but there are just enough unavoidable rough bits (and they're REALLY rough) that I can't justify giving it a really good rating. I think it needed a bit more time in the oven, but barring that it would have been nice to have the Mario 64 type structure where you unlock stages through collecting Shine Sprites as opposed to repeating the same Shadow Mario chase mission (with no map at that), and you could choose what missions you want to do yourself. But I can imagine that they didn't want the game to feel too "empty" or "samey" for lack of a better term, due to having fewer stages than 64, so fair enough on that front. I think the game has enough good to justify a single normal playthrough, especially since most of the real jank is back loaded. But beyond that? I dunno man.
On the other hand Eely Mouth leaving behind a heart made of coins when I cleaned his teeth made me smile and audibly laugh, so in that moment it was a perfect 5/5.
But man, when Sunshine falls flat, it falls FLAT. There are some missions in this game that are just absolute butt cheeks to experience, some of which are mandatory for standard completion too. It also feels like there's a bunch of things that just serve no purpose except to be tedious/obnoxious, like having to bring random fruit to Yoshi to hatch him or having to go through intro screens every time you return to the hub world. Hell I actually thought the secret linear platforming sections were neat thanks to how creative you can get with just Mario's basic movement, I just got tired of having to backtrack through the entire hubworld and manually dig up the entrance again inside the stage whenever I game overed. There's also some other weirdness with hit detection and janky level design that can easily result in you earning a shine just to die to some silly shit on your way to grab it.
This is a decent game, but there are just enough unavoidable rough bits (and they're REALLY rough) that I can't justify giving it a really good rating. I think it needed a bit more time in the oven, but barring that it would have been nice to have the Mario 64 type structure where you unlock stages through collecting Shine Sprites as opposed to repeating the same Shadow Mario chase mission (with no map at that), and you could choose what missions you want to do yourself. But I can imagine that they didn't want the game to feel too "empty" or "samey" for lack of a better term, due to having fewer stages than 64, so fair enough on that front. I think the game has enough good to justify a single normal playthrough, especially since most of the real jank is back loaded. But beyond that? I dunno man.
On the other hand Eely Mouth leaving behind a heart made of coins when I cleaned his teeth made me smile and audibly laugh, so in that moment it was a perfect 5/5.