I was quite nostalgia blind to this game for the longest time since it was one of the first games I owned.
I did replay it later in life though and I think this might be my least favorite Mario game now.

There is just way too many stages in this one past the 2nd world that feel like pure tedium. A lot of mechanics being introduced at this point tend to just slow you down or force you to wait instead of adding more challenging platforming.

I'm sure this was probably great when it first came out but today it doesn't hold a candle to 90% of indie platformers being made.

Also the art is very inconsistent and sometimes it just doesn't feel like the artist were on the same page when drawing the enemy sprites.

This game no doubt deserves the praise, but at the same time it kinda feels like 2D mario games got a lot easier from here. I remember i really struggled with this one as a kid but playing it now i effortlessly get like 10 lives every two levels like i'm playing a NSMB game. And sometimes when it does get really hard, it's for all the wrong reasons (fucking Butter Bridge 1...)
Being easier doesn't necessarily make it bad though, but i just personally like SMB3 more for this reason, that game still filters me to this day

I do feel insecure when I play an absolute classic and I'm not completely enamoured by it. A lot of my love for Mario comes from Galaxy onward. I do really like the original Super Mario Bros. and I love playing all the styles in Mario Maker but SMB3, Super Mario 64 and now Super Mario World don't fill me with the adoration they probably deserve. As dramatic as all that sounds, I still did enjoy the game. It is very fun. The level design is great and the influence it has had on gaming is undeniable. It is remarkable how many secrets there are in the level. There are so many secret exits to levels that in some ways, I found exhausting but it does add a lot of depth to it. I did find myself getting frustrated with the game which I can admit was a skill issue. I never fully grasped the movement options with the cape. It doesn't control like Mario Maker which was hard to get used to. I tried not to use save states but there definitely were some of the later levels that I gave into the temptation. The platforming is great though and having some challenge is nice after coming from Wonder. I wish I could appreciate it more but I can still see it is a fantastic game.

Mario World is remembered a tad too fondly. It's a landmark in game history for paving the way for what was to come. but it doesn't hold up at all. It's definitely something I'm surprised to no longer enjoy after growing up with it.

I get this is a preference thing, but Mario controls horribly in my opinion. To me, every level genuinely feels like an ice level. I think this is due to you not really being able to stop Mario by pressing back on the d-pad. This applies in the air too, when you're trying to position yourself to stomp on enemies heads in, you know, a precision platformer. When in the air he'll fly the other way too quickly when I'm just trying to get him to stop moving forward. It was something I still have not been able to get used to.

The graphics are very bland. I get it's an early title on the system, but the backgrounds and color usage are so monotone. Every level looks the exact same, and it's honestly tiring to look at the same exact set pieces throughout the entire game. Why not add something other than a purple coral squiggle in the background of the water stages? Even SMB3 makes better use of colors and aesthetics than Mario World, by all accounts.

The lack of power-ups in this game is kind of annoying. We went from having 4 in SMB3 to a meager 2 in this game. There's Yoshi, which kind of counts, but you can't bring him into the castle stages. But we only have the fire flower and cape. The cape is really good and kind of makes the flower undesirable due to how much worse it is. The Cape also has a flying mechanic where, if you build up enough speed, you can jump into the air and fly with proper timing. You can use this to skip a chunk of levels, which seems odd. I get rewarding players for mastering the game, but skipping the whole level?

The level design is also all over the place. Stage layouts are extremely repetitive and get old quickly. The level layouts seem like they were randomly constructed with no real progression. It's confusing and at times, deceiving. I vividly remember the optional fortress leading to Star Road, which you can access from a secret exit in the Forest of Secrets, having these crushers come down from the ceiling. There are crevices in the floor, and you'd think to stay in them and duck to avoid the crushers, but instead you'll get crushed in the screens auto-scroll or have a spinning blade creep above you when trying to jump out. Also, Fortress 7 has the snake block trail with no checkpoint and a strict time limit as you wait for a Kamak to hopefully break open the blocks for you. The special stages are complete messes too. They're not actually hard because they just prey on artificial trial and error. Tubular is a great example because you need to repeatedly get P Balloon powerups to last until the end of the stage but you won't know which question blocks hold the item until you trial and error your way through. These are cherry-picked examples, but the entire game lacks craft for its level design, sometimes less evil than the times I mentioned.

The one redeemable quality I find about this game is the secret exits. This was a really cool idea that rewards exploration and is made better with the World Map that lets you trek back to any levels you completed. I liked the option of stopping your main quest to look for secrets or continue on.

Arguably the only 2d platformer with triple A quality in the past two decades. This game is a perfect follow up to Returns in almost every way and has so much attention to every detail, with every level having one or multiple unique gameplay ideas that additionally tie into the scenery and theme of the level to create an extremely immersive and pretty world.

The 3D environments created for each level are so fun and inspired, with one of the world's entire themes being the factory process of harvesting, juicing, then jellifying fruit which translates to the gameplay is so unique, on top of all the call backs to Returns and previous dkc games. That attention to detail is the biggest selling point of Tropical Freeze and why it sets itself apart from every other 2D platformer.

The gameplay elements of every level keep the game from ever feeling repetitive or basic, while never introducing mechanics that are overwhelming (outside of the post-game levels) or feel like they aren't from a DK game. The fact that the worst level in tropical freeze is just "ok" just goes to show how great it is.

There's only a couple of aspects that stop it from being a perfect 2D platformer for me, the main one being it feels like it's missing some sort of X factor in the game's core mechanics, such as more tools to play around with or a bigger skill curve to optimising movement, but the main goal of DK games were never the core mechanics and always focused on level design and immersion, so it also doesn't worsen the game for me. I'm also extremely biased over platformers that are able to use the gameplay to tell an actual story which is something this game lacks, but who gives a fuck if there's no story it's fucking donkey kong

The other aspects that draw the game back for me are the bosses and the side content, both of which are still "good" but so many other platformers from the same decade have done both platformer bosses and side content so much better where I don't think I can say this game succeeds at everything it set out to be.

The music is also perfect for the game and its crazy how the only composer for donkey kong ever was grant kirkhope and no one else. what a talent