I liked Mario Sunshine, too.
Probably stated it before but I was one of those guys that started playing it and hated it. I got to where I was looking for that Kikwi in the woods. This was even before the first dungeon. The graphics were sucking. The controls were shit. The story was lame. The world was linear. I found that Kikwi, turned the Wii off, and didn't even bother to save my progress. I forced myself to play it and I fell in love.
It still had a lot of problems. Game was too easy, secrets were easy to figure out, Fi was sucking the life out of me, but somehow, I got sucked in. Boss fights suddenly became awesome, graphics suddenly grew on me, music was great, story was really good, and the controls went from being shitty to being amazing--the star of the show.
That was my experience, though. I understand that people may not convert. I hope you can still become engaged despite the games many flaws.
