This game is cool, but I don't think it fully deserves the reputation it holds. It is absolutely packed with charm and character, and is pretty stellar when it comes to the visuals and music. All that stuff is great. My issues come in with the gameplay, and I have quite a few small issues that build up into major ones. Let's start with the combat. Timing attacks is fun, but pretty slow. Doing the same repetitive timed inputs over and over can get tedious when it comes to the special moves. I like the dodging system, offering some risk and reward for skilled players. Overall, combat is alright. It's generally easy, but feels much slower than something like mario and luigi. Exploration also has some issues. While I like some of the unique area gimmicks, exploration can also be quite sluggish. Some areas are just slow to get through, like one chapter that makes you backtrack through the same island area several times over. Changing characters and using their abilities also just feels slow. Some chapters, like the Glitz Pit, really really drag since it's mostly just a few hours of easy combat encounters with a little bit of exploration spliced in between. Much like the combat, it's got good fundamentals that just feel slower than necessary. And that's really my biggest issue with this game. It's creative at every turn, but getting to some of those turns and get boring. Granted, I played Bowser's Inside Story way before this, and maybe asking for pacing and speed as excellent as that isn't totally fair. This was mostly complaining, but I do like the game. I would enjoy it a lot more if there were a lot of changes made to speed up animations and attack timings, as well as condensing several areas down.

While it's certainly weaker than superstar saga and bowser's inside story, it's still pretty fun and well worth checking out. The gameplay, combat, exploration, everything is well done. But there's many small flaws that steadily mar the experience. Most areas go on a bit longer than they probably should, most bosses and enemies have a bit too much health (like the terrible final boss that has an INSANE health pool). There's a lot of padding and unintuitive design. It's still fun at it's core, however.