Was debating between 4 or 4.5 stars but I think I'll have to go with 4. Compared to PM64, I'd say I enjoyed this a little bit more, the story really engaged me, and I'm saying that about a Mario game, so that should speak to the quality of the story. What keeps me from putting it higher is some of the infuriating levels, cause some of them dragged on for sooooo long, and the gameplay isn’t as good as it was in PM64, but I could look past that for the sheer personality this game had. Despite sometimes getting frustrated with the game, I was always happy to turn this on daily, and although I've only mentioned the bad levels, there are some BANGERS in here that were super fun. More often than not, the levels would be enjoyable.

As I said, the story and characters are definitely the highlight, Dimentio is probably my favourite Mario character ever now. Seeing the perspective of the villains at the end of each chapter was always a treat, as you can tell they treated the characters with such care. This game is also genuinely funny, the dialogue is really good, Thudley's girth for example, was really awesome. Soundtrack was also great. This is definitely a great Mario game, albeit a very divisive one, but I think most people go into it expecting another TTYD, but if you look past that it’s really amazing in a lot of ways.

I feel like playing Sticker Star after this is gonna give me some major whiplash, probably for the worse.

Edit: upped it to 4.5 lol, i constantly look back on it very fondly