It's very impressive and always a treat to see stuff like the Minecart and the new boss fight, but I think it generally suffers from playing to the typical idea of what makes good level design to an overly formulaic degree. The Star Coins too are overly formulaic. It's relatively rare that Star Coins are a part of a miniature challenge in the level as opposed to just being offscreen hinted by a ledge. While the design philosophy at work is tired, the levels themselves are still great, my favorites include the one where you bounce around bullets as mini Mario, the race one in World 6, as well as pretty much every haunted house.

World 6 is a treat since although the game breaks away from the typical trappings of world progression the New Mario series is infamous for, World 6 is a great callback. The rest of the worlds are like two worlds in one most of the time, adding to variety in the latter half of the world usually.

This game does have the one feature I love in any Mario game, and it's that you don't have to play as him. You can switch at the start of any level, but you must only play as Luigi. If you are playing as Mario, you're doing it wrong.

I only came back to finish this game way after dropping it and just picked back up at the dark world train section. Though very close to the finale, the last part of the game reflects the entirety of it. There is a lot of unique touch screen challenges that thankfully don't punish you too hard, but I sure as hell messed them up all the time. The game just feels janky even though the main Zelda parts of the game are fantastic. Have an open mind and give it a go, I think the awkward song playing and the train conducting has a charm the first go around and under it is still a great Legend of Zelda game.