I finished this game the other day and ever since I've been collecting my thoughts about it. It's odd, usually when I finish a game, I have a concrete opinion on it, I've seen basically everything the game has to show me and my memory is usually pretty good, so I'm able to form a full opinion pretty quickly, which is also why I don't like leaving games unfinished. But Galaxy 2 is different, in my opinion, it doesn't really feel like a whole new game. Its development started out as an expanded version of the original game called "Super Mario Galaxy More" but later became its own thing, it's an innovative sequel on the same engine, similar to Doom II: Hell on Earth, Thief 2: The Metal Age and Far Cry 4. But, similar to games that follow this philosophy, I feel as though it doesn't quite live up to the original. Let me explain.
I like the original Galaxy for a few key reasons. For one, it was incredibly consistent. Before putting down the game I had gotten around 90 stars, I didn't bother to do the purple coin missions, though I may go back now, and I think that the motion control levels are pretty terrible; trust me, I actually like motion controls (more on them later). However, I did like a vast majority of those 90 stars. I don't think many of the levels were particularly excellent but the fact that the only ones I disliked were ones based around poorly implemented mechanics is a testament to how consistent the general gameplay is.
This is also mostly true for Galaxy 2, with some caveats. Level design is pretty good across the board, to explain how great it is, I'll use two examples: Fluffy Bluff Galaxy and Melty Monster Galaxy. Fluffy Bluff Galaxy begins with a small, but open area filled with shallow water, and within that water are various coins and star bits to collect; this is important as this Galaxy's main gimmick is the Cloud Mushroom, and the Cloud suit will disappear upon contact with water. Having the area be open is also a plus because, anyone who has ever watched or read a review of Mario 64 will know what I'm about to say, it allows the player to get familiar with the unique mechanics, this being how the Cloud Suit making Mario much more floaty as well as giving him placeable platforms, giving Mario significantly more distance and height. After this, Mario is either lead onto a large cloud platform or up onto a cliffside, with some cloud platforms along the side, but even if the player fails at platforming up these cloud platforms, the area below is mostly solid ground, so there is little reason to worry about falling down. This cliffside stops at a bottomless ravine which would kill any player if they fail to cross, with a couple of cloud platforms along the way, so therefore, these elements incentivises the use to the cloud suit to pass. However, players with a keen eye will notice that a well timed long jump can make it across the already placed cloud platforms, which creates some level of a skill gap. After a pretty mediocre section where we collect launch star pieces, we reach another section with a bottomless pit, however now we have platforms that disappear into the wall after a certain amount of time. This further incentivises the use of the cloud platforms whilst also adding a sense of urgency, which is then finished off by another pretty bland section that's basically just a repeat of the section with the ravine. This is level design 101, introducing a mechanic and then increasing the stakes as you go along the level.
If you couldn't tell, the game has an issue with levels becoming redundant after a while, where they figuratively repeat sections; not every level suffers from this but there is another thing to praise about the level design. Going back to that large cloud platform from the beginning of the level and feeding the Hungry Luma 100 coins (which rewards players whom had explored the open area below) we gain access to a brand new area, which is a 2D section with moving platforms. The moving platforms are important since it asks more of the player with their timing and tests their knowledge of the Cloud Suit more closely, whilst also utilising different mechanics than the primary star to do so. This is what I like to call "tree-like" level design, and it's most prominent in 3D Mario game, where you have a singular mechanic taken in one direction for one star, but taken another way with another star, and it is a major strength of the Galaxy games.
But Galaxy 2 doesn't just offer tree-like levels with branching evolutions of its ideas, it also features level design that does continuously innovate and expand upon its core ideas within singular stars. Melty Monster Galaxy star 1 is probably my favourite star in the entire game for just how good the level design is. We start off at a very basic pull star section with Lava Monsters attempting to damage us and in turn, kill us, lava and these "melty monsters" are this level's main mechanics; it's not too hard and even if you are hit, you can fairly easily pull yourself back to safety. We then blast off with a launch star, where we come across a trope of the Mario series: rising lava. It comes in waves and isn't too difficult, but it still requires a tiny bit of skill and patience to cross. This leads into a section without that rising lava (more on that later), replaced with rotating platforms which float like icebergs upon lava, but they only start rotating once you start moving on them, which is then intertwined with those lava monsters from early; this keeps the level fresh and interesting whilst also going back to the central mechanic. This then leads into an entirely different section with tornados, seen before in a previous game, where once you spin you activate a sort of "helicopter" form and slowly descend to the surface below, which happens to be lava. Once again, fresh and interesting. The final section involves a bunch of those lava monsters acting similar to the rising lava from before, in one final test of patience and platforming skill, where you have to traverse small planetoids, all with their own gravity, and then eventually break the star free whilst under constant pressure from the lava monsters.
This star shows everything great about Galaxy 2, it's got a lot of variety and it's consistently fun to play. But, there's two issues with this level. For one, see how there are many mechanics that are just placed in and never brought up again? Yeah, Galaxy 2 does this a lot. It's not bad, it stops levels from getting repetitive, but it also results in a lot of the mechanics feeling shallow. Perhaps this is simply because I've been spoiled by Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze which continuously innovates upon mechanics whilst intertwining them with entirely new ones, but I definitely think more could've been done in Galaxy 2. The second issue is, do you notice how I only mentioned the first star? That's because the 2nd star of Melty Monster Galaxy is easily one of the worst. Why? because Galaxy 2 has a major issue with theming, as many secondary stars are just trivial minigames that have barely anything to do with the primary star, and nowhere is this more evident than Melty Monster Galaxy Star 2, where it's essentially just a challenge course with the rock mushroom. It's a fun level and pretty good for grinding star bits, but how the fuck is this related to the first star? Why would you put a minigame involving a power-up that was barely present in the original level? Of course, it was in the original level, but it was only present in a "hidden" section where you play... bowling. Do you see the problem here? Both of the negative points with the galaxies I've analysed can be lead back to one central problem: consistency. The game really does have some great levels but they're placed alongside these underwhelming levels that have little to no theming, and/or are just rip-offs of galaxies from the first game. But this sadly isn't the only issue with this game.
The progression in Galaxy was also another highlight of that game. I have not finished Mario 64, and that's because I don't like that game's progression. While levels were generally open, I didn't like a lot of them, and felt that only about half of the levels were competent, for one reason or another, but because of its consistency, Galaxy 1 comes out on top. I mention this because the progression is basically the same as 64, you can only play a select few levels at a time before fighting a boss and moving on, and only when you have reached a certain amount of stars can you progress. In Galaxy 1, it's way more lenient, so it doesn't feel like a chore getting those last few stars. There's 119 stars to obtain before you fight Bowser for the last time, and you are only required to obtain 60 of them to actually fight him. It's not that much less than the 70 of 64, but it's a welcome change nonetheless.
This is where my third complaint with Galaxy 2 lies, the progression isn't as good as the first game. This was an issue with Mario at the time, because ever since NSMB Wii, the series had begun to simplify itself to a very severe degree, some may argue that it started with the first NSMB game but that's not important; the progression goes like this: You must complete one star in a Galaxy in order to progress forward. This, of course, once again raises the issue of consistency, as if there is a level you don't like, you will still have to play it regardless. This was an issue solved by 64 and Galaxy (which was apparently absent in Sunshine but I haven't played that one yet) by having your progress be dictated by how many stars you have, and you're pretty much free to do what you want in that case. Thankfully, the game doesn't have any particularly bad level which would warrant this sort of criticism, the closest one I could think of is "Rolling Coaster Galaxy" from World S, which forces you to use motion controls. It's thankfully very short and isn't very difficult, I beat it on my frist try, but to some people it may be a much bigger issue, and because of that, I think it would've been better if they retained the structure of Galaxy 1.
From my previous statement, it would be reasonable to infer that because of the motion control levels, getting 100% in Super Mario Galaxy 2 would be tedious. This is true, but motion control levels were also present in Galaxy 1 and they were still pretty bad, and there is another major issue, but for the sake of being fair, I'll go into why the motion control levels are so bad. Simply put, the technology wasn't there at the time. The gyroscope in the original model of the Wii remote wasn't very advanced and really could only pick up on whether you were waggling the controller, which is why waggle was used so frequently in Wii titles, they literally couldn't do much else. "Wii Motion Plus" was supposed to be an answer to this, but it came near the end of the Wii's lifespan and, as far as I could tell from my research, it isn't compatible with Wii games outside of a few select titles; I say this because Wii Motion Plus specifically has to be calibrated, and Galaxy 2 has no such feature (plus there is also a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_Wii_MotionPlus). This is completely fucking baffling to me, Galaxy 2 was released a whole year after the launch of the Motion Plus accessory and a few weeks after the release of the "Wii Remote Plus" which had Wii Motion Plus built in. Similar to the Classic Controller on the Wii and the Wii U Pro Controller (to a lesser extent) it seems Nintendo has a habit of just straight up not using its technology for absolutely no reason. Okay, maybe you don't want to alienate consumers by making them buy more things with the console they already brought, but why make it in the first place then? Even if it does help the motion controls , they still feels like shit, which only furthers the point that the technology wasn't there at the time.
Okay, this has been very conflicted so far but I would like to mention, up until you defeat Bowser, this game is pretty much on par with the first game, and for those first 6 worlds, I recommend this game regardless. However, the straw that broke the camel's back on whether this game was better than the first game comes after you've defeated Bowser, in the post game. It's terrible. Now, the first game was also tedious to 100%, simply because of the motion control levels, but this game takes it way too far. In the first game, once you've defeated Bowser, you unlock some purple coin missions; they're basic collectathon missions but they add some good variety to the game. In Galaxy 2, you have the green stars. Fuck the green stars. They are the most blatant, most unashamed form of padding I have ever seen. Okay, re-using levels for stuff like prankster comets is fine, it is a form of padding but at least they add something new with new challenges and sometimes adding entirely new elements to levels; the green stars however are way too excessive and don't add nearly enough to the game to warrant there being so many of them. They're basically how stars in Mario 64 worked, where you collect one, get kicked back to the level select, and are forced to go back and find more of them in the exact same level. They're very bad for the game's pacing and they make getting 100% a chore.
I've been pretty harsh on this game but that's only because its shortcomings are really major considering the expectations I had going into this game. This is heralded as one of the best platformers of all time, and I kind of see it, but even if I do think most of the game is pretty good, I can't say I think its praise is entirely deserved. I do overall recommend this game, but don't do the post game if you don't want to, because it's not good.
I like the original Galaxy for a few key reasons. For one, it was incredibly consistent. Before putting down the game I had gotten around 90 stars, I didn't bother to do the purple coin missions, though I may go back now, and I think that the motion control levels are pretty terrible; trust me, I actually like motion controls (more on them later). However, I did like a vast majority of those 90 stars. I don't think many of the levels were particularly excellent but the fact that the only ones I disliked were ones based around poorly implemented mechanics is a testament to how consistent the general gameplay is.
This is also mostly true for Galaxy 2, with some caveats. Level design is pretty good across the board, to explain how great it is, I'll use two examples: Fluffy Bluff Galaxy and Melty Monster Galaxy. Fluffy Bluff Galaxy begins with a small, but open area filled with shallow water, and within that water are various coins and star bits to collect; this is important as this Galaxy's main gimmick is the Cloud Mushroom, and the Cloud suit will disappear upon contact with water. Having the area be open is also a plus because, anyone who has ever watched or read a review of Mario 64 will know what I'm about to say, it allows the player to get familiar with the unique mechanics, this being how the Cloud Suit making Mario much more floaty as well as giving him placeable platforms, giving Mario significantly more distance and height. After this, Mario is either lead onto a large cloud platform or up onto a cliffside, with some cloud platforms along the side, but even if the player fails at platforming up these cloud platforms, the area below is mostly solid ground, so there is little reason to worry about falling down. This cliffside stops at a bottomless ravine which would kill any player if they fail to cross, with a couple of cloud platforms along the way, so therefore, these elements incentivises the use to the cloud suit to pass. However, players with a keen eye will notice that a well timed long jump can make it across the already placed cloud platforms, which creates some level of a skill gap. After a pretty mediocre section where we collect launch star pieces, we reach another section with a bottomless pit, however now we have platforms that disappear into the wall after a certain amount of time. This further incentivises the use of the cloud platforms whilst also adding a sense of urgency, which is then finished off by another pretty bland section that's basically just a repeat of the section with the ravine. This is level design 101, introducing a mechanic and then increasing the stakes as you go along the level.
If you couldn't tell, the game has an issue with levels becoming redundant after a while, where they figuratively repeat sections; not every level suffers from this but there is another thing to praise about the level design. Going back to that large cloud platform from the beginning of the level and feeding the Hungry Luma 100 coins (which rewards players whom had explored the open area below) we gain access to a brand new area, which is a 2D section with moving platforms. The moving platforms are important since it asks more of the player with their timing and tests their knowledge of the Cloud Suit more closely, whilst also utilising different mechanics than the primary star to do so. This is what I like to call "tree-like" level design, and it's most prominent in 3D Mario game, where you have a singular mechanic taken in one direction for one star, but taken another way with another star, and it is a major strength of the Galaxy games.
But Galaxy 2 doesn't just offer tree-like levels with branching evolutions of its ideas, it also features level design that does continuously innovate and expand upon its core ideas within singular stars. Melty Monster Galaxy star 1 is probably my favourite star in the entire game for just how good the level design is. We start off at a very basic pull star section with Lava Monsters attempting to damage us and in turn, kill us, lava and these "melty monsters" are this level's main mechanics; it's not too hard and even if you are hit, you can fairly easily pull yourself back to safety. We then blast off with a launch star, where we come across a trope of the Mario series: rising lava. It comes in waves and isn't too difficult, but it still requires a tiny bit of skill and patience to cross. This leads into a section without that rising lava (more on that later), replaced with rotating platforms which float like icebergs upon lava, but they only start rotating once you start moving on them, which is then intertwined with those lava monsters from early; this keeps the level fresh and interesting whilst also going back to the central mechanic. This then leads into an entirely different section with tornados, seen before in a previous game, where once you spin you activate a sort of "helicopter" form and slowly descend to the surface below, which happens to be lava. Once again, fresh and interesting. The final section involves a bunch of those lava monsters acting similar to the rising lava from before, in one final test of patience and platforming skill, where you have to traverse small planetoids, all with their own gravity, and then eventually break the star free whilst under constant pressure from the lava monsters.
This star shows everything great about Galaxy 2, it's got a lot of variety and it's consistently fun to play. But, there's two issues with this level. For one, see how there are many mechanics that are just placed in and never brought up again? Yeah, Galaxy 2 does this a lot. It's not bad, it stops levels from getting repetitive, but it also results in a lot of the mechanics feeling shallow. Perhaps this is simply because I've been spoiled by Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze which continuously innovates upon mechanics whilst intertwining them with entirely new ones, but I definitely think more could've been done in Galaxy 2. The second issue is, do you notice how I only mentioned the first star? That's because the 2nd star of Melty Monster Galaxy is easily one of the worst. Why? because Galaxy 2 has a major issue with theming, as many secondary stars are just trivial minigames that have barely anything to do with the primary star, and nowhere is this more evident than Melty Monster Galaxy Star 2, where it's essentially just a challenge course with the rock mushroom. It's a fun level and pretty good for grinding star bits, but how the fuck is this related to the first star? Why would you put a minigame involving a power-up that was barely present in the original level? Of course, it was in the original level, but it was only present in a "hidden" section where you play... bowling. Do you see the problem here? Both of the negative points with the galaxies I've analysed can be lead back to one central problem: consistency. The game really does have some great levels but they're placed alongside these underwhelming levels that have little to no theming, and/or are just rip-offs of galaxies from the first game. But this sadly isn't the only issue with this game.
The progression in Galaxy was also another highlight of that game. I have not finished Mario 64, and that's because I don't like that game's progression. While levels were generally open, I didn't like a lot of them, and felt that only about half of the levels were competent, for one reason or another, but because of its consistency, Galaxy 1 comes out on top. I mention this because the progression is basically the same as 64, you can only play a select few levels at a time before fighting a boss and moving on, and only when you have reached a certain amount of stars can you progress. In Galaxy 1, it's way more lenient, so it doesn't feel like a chore getting those last few stars. There's 119 stars to obtain before you fight Bowser for the last time, and you are only required to obtain 60 of them to actually fight him. It's not that much less than the 70 of 64, but it's a welcome change nonetheless.
This is where my third complaint with Galaxy 2 lies, the progression isn't as good as the first game. This was an issue with Mario at the time, because ever since NSMB Wii, the series had begun to simplify itself to a very severe degree, some may argue that it started with the first NSMB game but that's not important; the progression goes like this: You must complete one star in a Galaxy in order to progress forward. This, of course, once again raises the issue of consistency, as if there is a level you don't like, you will still have to play it regardless. This was an issue solved by 64 and Galaxy (which was apparently absent in Sunshine but I haven't played that one yet) by having your progress be dictated by how many stars you have, and you're pretty much free to do what you want in that case. Thankfully, the game doesn't have any particularly bad level which would warrant this sort of criticism, the closest one I could think of is "Rolling Coaster Galaxy" from World S, which forces you to use motion controls. It's thankfully very short and isn't very difficult, I beat it on my frist try, but to some people it may be a much bigger issue, and because of that, I think it would've been better if they retained the structure of Galaxy 1.
From my previous statement, it would be reasonable to infer that because of the motion control levels, getting 100% in Super Mario Galaxy 2 would be tedious. This is true, but motion control levels were also present in Galaxy 1 and they were still pretty bad, and there is another major issue, but for the sake of being fair, I'll go into why the motion control levels are so bad. Simply put, the technology wasn't there at the time. The gyroscope in the original model of the Wii remote wasn't very advanced and really could only pick up on whether you were waggling the controller, which is why waggle was used so frequently in Wii titles, they literally couldn't do much else. "Wii Motion Plus" was supposed to be an answer to this, but it came near the end of the Wii's lifespan and, as far as I could tell from my research, it isn't compatible with Wii games outside of a few select titles; I say this because Wii Motion Plus specifically has to be calibrated, and Galaxy 2 has no such feature (plus there is also a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_Wii_MotionPlus). This is completely fucking baffling to me, Galaxy 2 was released a whole year after the launch of the Motion Plus accessory and a few weeks after the release of the "Wii Remote Plus" which had Wii Motion Plus built in. Similar to the Classic Controller on the Wii and the Wii U Pro Controller (to a lesser extent) it seems Nintendo has a habit of just straight up not using its technology for absolutely no reason. Okay, maybe you don't want to alienate consumers by making them buy more things with the console they already brought, but why make it in the first place then? Even if it does help the motion controls , they still feels like shit, which only furthers the point that the technology wasn't there at the time.
Okay, this has been very conflicted so far but I would like to mention, up until you defeat Bowser, this game is pretty much on par with the first game, and for those first 6 worlds, I recommend this game regardless. However, the straw that broke the camel's back on whether this game was better than the first game comes after you've defeated Bowser, in the post game. It's terrible. Now, the first game was also tedious to 100%, simply because of the motion control levels, but this game takes it way too far. In the first game, once you've defeated Bowser, you unlock some purple coin missions; they're basic collectathon missions but they add some good variety to the game. In Galaxy 2, you have the green stars. Fuck the green stars. They are the most blatant, most unashamed form of padding I have ever seen. Okay, re-using levels for stuff like prankster comets is fine, it is a form of padding but at least they add something new with new challenges and sometimes adding entirely new elements to levels; the green stars however are way too excessive and don't add nearly enough to the game to warrant there being so many of them. They're basically how stars in Mario 64 worked, where you collect one, get kicked back to the level select, and are forced to go back and find more of them in the exact same level. They're very bad for the game's pacing and they make getting 100% a chore.
I've been pretty harsh on this game but that's only because its shortcomings are really major considering the expectations I had going into this game. This is heralded as one of the best platformers of all time, and I kind of see it, but even if I do think most of the game is pretty good, I can't say I think its praise is entirely deserved. I do overall recommend this game, but don't do the post game if you don't want to, because it's not good.