This was an absolute joy to play, a "wonder" you could say. The levels were so creative and fun, with excellent visuals and music to go along with them. The physics were fantastic as well, taking everything that worked about the NSMB games and tuning the deceleration to give it a fairly snappy feel sort of between 3 and World. It's nice you can play as so many characters and I like that they don't have different physics so you have a uniform experience regardless of your preference (aside from the easy characters, that is).

The game is somewhat short but I think it's a perfect length given the variety of levels. It's a bit easier than a classic SMB which is to be expected, but the special world is definitely more challenging than the one in World which is very welcome. Bosses are mostly variations on one which is a bit of a disappointment, but the final boss is very imaginative and a great surprise. I'd say this game is on par with the best of the classics in its series, and better than most 3D Mario games.

As an aside, I actually liked the talking flowers and thought they were funny and charming most of the time.