Yeah this is the best 2D Mario. After years of stagnation with the NSMB series (and i love Wii), Nintendo comes in with this banger of a game. I won't really be stating the obvious here, everyone knows how much of a breath of fresh air this game is, thanks to the new Wonder gimmick and just generally the really appealing artstyle. But in addition to the Wonder effects and the cool new powerups, the level design benefits from simply just removing the time-limit that the previous games had. It's enough of a difference that allows levels to be a little bit more complex than they were before.

If there's one problem with the game, it's the boss fights. For a game as creative as this one, the boss fights are lacking even by Mario standards. The exception is the final Bowser fight but that's it. Actually, there's a second problem: badges. Outside of the specific Badge Challenge levels, badges in this game are wildly unbalanced. The tierlist is Grapple Vine > Glide Cap > literally everything else. Great idea but the normal level design doesn't make enough use of them.

All of that said though, at the end of the day....it's still 2D Mario. Levels are fun and creative but even with the Wonder effects, they still don't reach the heights of Donkey Kong Country. The Wonder helps set them apart and there's enough variety, even when certain gimmicks are reused, but some levels do inevitably.....blend in. Difficulty is fairly easy (Special World good challenge though).