Having nothing to game on but my 3DS for the last week or so I've been playing this a great deal. I really don't know what to make of it. I think it's my least favourite Mario game in a quite a while. Really not up to standard in my opinion, very big letdown.
Just a few levels left to do in S8 world... if I can be bothered to work up my gold coins to nearly 300 or something stupid
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
And I finished it. Damn. I think I have 295 gold coins at the moment of writing this. I seem to be missing one from all the levels which have those green distance-view telescope things. I gather those have some hint I'm too thick to get. There's always a toad screaming up someplace where I have no chance of getting to. Just can't seem to find those coins.
Anyway, think I'm done with the game. Not impressed with it much. Sure it looks nice, and it's mostly fun to play but it's not very original and for a Mario game that is very disappointing. The levels are shamelessly rehashed. The Bowser levels are repetitive and the Bowser encounters are identical. The Koopa Kid encounters are also once again almost all the same. So as far as I'm concerned the game has very few boss fights. The difficulty in the last levels is nice, it's nice to be challenged in a Mario game. I think even when I was frustrated at some of those smoke Mario levels near the end, I still enjoyed them and felt some satisfaction by beating them.
I think I'd give it about a 7 overall. Not bad, but not good enough for a Mario platformer.
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
That would be good. It starts to get awesome at world 8 actually, since then it really feels cool. i only started some of the special stages (that is what they are called) and it feels like Galaxy challenges. One of them had one of those dark marios chasing you around a crazy level.