Galaxy 2 was made to be a more linear game than it's predeccesor basically revolving around the philosophy of throwing great ideas and level designs at the player at a breakneck pace and moving onto the next thing asap to keep the game fresh. fun and everdevoloping. The problem that I found with the game, however, was that it was constrained in it's delivery of this philosophy due to it existing as a sequel to Galaxy and not as it's own original entry built from the ground up to facilitate these concepts. 3D World to me is the game Galaxy 2 set out to be. And this comparison isn't made just to shit on Galaxy 2 they're both great games (and I probably even prefer Galaxy 2 just for how good some of it's level design is) but the difference highlights how well 3D World exceeds in being the type of game it wants to be.

This game has some of the best pacing of any platformer I've played. Levels have enough depth between collecting stars and engaging with unique mechanics to be thoroughly enjoyable yet only take up a couple minutes at a time. And with the switch port especially, jumping into the next levels takes only a second. Hours will fly by playing this before you even realise you've played most of the game in one sitting. The only thing really holding this game back for me is that no matter how well designed a game like this is I'm always going to prefer the more adventurous tone of games like Galaxy 1 or the sandbox style of games like Odyssey. And also, more obviously could've been done to differentiate aesthetically from typical Mario conventions but the approach makes sense within the context of this game. As is, 3D World exceeds in being a purely linear 3D Mario more effectively than any other in the series and that's worth praising.