What's bad about it? I'm curious. o:

It certainly has its flaws, but it just edges out Super Mario 64 as my favourite 3D Mario entry.

I'll give you that some of the objectives, especially the Watermelon Festival, can be quite frustrating, but I don't believe that they're any worse than certain objectives found in Super Mario 64 and the Galaxy series. For example, and perhaps this is just me, the timed and daredevil comets in Galaxy can be on-par with the Watermelon Festival in terms of difficulty and frustration.

I think the biggest flaw with Sunshine is the abundance of blue coins (240, enough for 24/120 shine sprites). I grew up with the whole 'collect-a-thon' platformer subgenre in the 90s -- and I still enjoy that subgenre today -- so I don't have as many problems with searching for particular items as other people, but I can definitely see the argument that the blue coins become harder to find as you find more of them in each level and there's no item or mechanic to highlight or help you find the blue coins you're missing.

I liked it.

There were somethings I found meh, like that one bonus level with the lillypad...

It was a solid game tho.

I absolutely loved Sunshine. Main reason is it's difficulty. It's actually really challenging sometimes and not so super-easy like Mario 3D Land or 3D World.

Weakest of the 3D platformers imo, good game but not on the same level as the other games.

This thread needs a poll! =P

This!

I spent more time just having fun with the FLUDD than with the stages.

The central gameplay mechanics involving the FLUDD backpack aren't much fun. It blows my mind how bad the level design is at utilizing it, especially the booster nozzle. The levels are typically too easy but in the worst way possible. For example, instead of having bottomless pits that kill you outright and place you back at a checkpoint in the middle of the action there are bodies of water. I can not stand falling into the water because I have to swim to the shore and slowly climb back to where I was which is just a giant pile of busy work, it's so damn boring. Mentioning boring gameplay there's the fact that so many jumps require me to slowly hover across the largest gaps possible which makes for tedious, repetitive sections which are pretty much the antithesis of fun platforming. Then come the sections without the FLUDD that are far more difficult which just makes the game feel disjointed and downright schizophrenic. These sequences are generally quite good but they feel like the development team realized that Mario 64 was a vastly superior experience and they tried to recapture some of that previous success. You know you're doing a bad job when the portions of your game where you regress backwards are blatantly the best parts. I have a myriad of other issues such as how useless Yoshi is, the flawed camera system, some of the outright dreadful mission design and all of the unutilized space in the giant empty levels (making them feel like very little effort was put into the game). I wasn't blown away by the soundtrack or graphics and the story is lackluster even by the standards of a Mario game. I don't like anything about Sunshine, it was easily the worst platformer I played that entire generation. I'm really having a hard time understanding what makes Sunshine good outside of the a couple boss fights and the secret levels.

Edit: The extremely manic music that plays during time trials is generally very poor. The sound that plays when you die is grating. Collecting the blue coins is horribly tedious and unrewarding. The art direction for the secret levels is extremely uninspired. Riding the boats in Delfino Bay is slow and boring (a common theme in this game). Getting kicked out of the stage everytime you collect a 100 star coin is awful. The lack of content (half as many levels as Mario 64) does it no favors.

2nd Edit: Collecting the Shines really shouldn't have been so linear, they had an opportunity to imporve over Mario 64 in this respect and they failed utterly. Many of the missions don't even require any platforming and these sequences are often very poor (pushing the watermellon in particular). The camera attempting to reposition itself behind Mario as you hover works poorly and causes nothing but frustration during more difficult levels.

3rd Edit: The final level is terrible. The final boss is disappointing. The ending is garbage. The voice acting is lousy. I promise this is my final edit. If I keep thinking about Sunshine's flaws I'll be here for days. It's objectively bad in so many ways it blows my mind.

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

Sunshine feels like a poorly thought out, half finished, heavily padded, boring, fragmented mess.

Sunshine and 64 are my least favourite 3D Mario games (probably because they had almost none of the qualities that made the old 2D Marios great), but I can't decide which one is worse. Don't get me wrong, they're still enjoyable games.

The camera is much better than Mario 64, but its automatic movement is weird and causes the need of constant adjustments in some sections.

The gameplay mechanics are much better, too. I like the possibilities that the F.L.U.D.D, but they wasted its potential.

The problem are the stages, there aren't enough of them and many are too big. There's too much non-platforming and filler material. 64 did that better.

Difficulty was good, but 100%ing it got tedious (getting all blue coins).

Never played it because it has never looked appealing to me...