The best I can say of this game is that it keeps the original game's battle mechanics faithfully intact, with a few tasteful additions and tweaks to make it more approachable to new players while not sacrificing the expression/skill cap for challenge runners. That alone was enough to give this game high marks and keep me engaged the whole way through.

Visually the new coat of paint is very nice, and there are some pretty good traversal QoL updates, but the story segments still take up a bit more of the game's total runtime than I would like (especially given the lack of ability to quick-scroll through the mostly unchanged text, handily my biggest gripe with the game), so I probably won't be doing full replays any more frequently than the original. I'll probably explore around its challenge running potential like I've done with the original, though, and I'm sure I'll do a Pit of 100 trials challenge run at some point in the near future.

Having revisited this game alongside the other New Super Mario Bros. sequels this year, I don't think the level design holds up as being particularly engaging as a single-player experience; a good number of stages throughout have pretty wide-open expanses, meaning relatively few of them have a consistent sense of flow thorughout. There are a few memorable challenges (and a couple of memorably unreasonable ones, notably 9-4's second and third Star Coins).

I imagine it would hold up a lot better in multiplayer, and indeed I have fond memories of playing through the game that way back in college, but in a post-Super Mario 3D World world I don't see myself being too likely to return to it even for that.