FreeMufasa said:
Easily the weakest of the 3D mario games IMO.
Galaxy 2 definitely gets more difficult as you get further, and most would agree that it ends up harder than the original. That's what anecdotal evidence says, anyway. My brother got 120 stars in SMG but gave up doing the same in SMG2 due to difficulty.
Is it ever really that hard? Not in my opinion. But I am adept at platformers so it all comes naturally to me. Many folks think that SMG2 is
too hard, which is a bit crazy but I guess that's the way it is. I think Nintendo nailed the game's difficulty, seeing as it's mostly satisfying to seasoned gamers but fully playable to a point with non-seasoned ones.
Easy or not, the SMG games are easily better than Sunshine, and I enjoyed Sunshine for the things it did right. But basically it comes down to this: the SMG games are extensive due to the number of defined challenges, where a game like Sunshine is extensive because of a ridiculous amount of filler. I mean, SMG2 for example tacks on the green stars after the initial 120, but even at the initial 120 stars that game felt more "complete" with its distribution of challenges than Sunshine did with its incessant need to eke out every sliver of already-mediocre (at times) level design by making players look for blue coins constantly, while also including 100 coin stars and such. Not to mention the whole deal of making blue coins mission-specific.
I haven't played 64 in a while, so I won't weigh in on that. I know a lot of people actually think that it has aged badly but whatever. For now I'm just going to say that the Galaxy games in my opinion are certainly contenders for the best in the 3D series (and probably the entire Mario series in general), and Sunshine's shortcomings alone guarantee that. To summarize, Galaxy's core design comes from unique challenges + a little bit of recycling, where the earlier games use design philosophies that revolve A LOT around recycling to their potential detriment. No knock against exploration-based level design though, I'm just saying that the Galaxy games' approaches allow for a favorable amount of variety, regardless of the level of challenge. Games like Sunshine are hard to complete for the wrong reasons.