I voted both... but now thinking at some strategic moves you had to made and travel/explore in Sunshine... I think it is time for a new similar experience.

I love local multiplayer. Sooo I'll choose the top one! The Yellow one!

Galaxy has more in common with 64 and Sunshine than it does 3D World/Land.

Anyways, I like all styles, but for me the edge goes to 64/Sunshine/Galaxy.

I love both styles, but Galaxy is my favorite game of all them. In any case, it was time we've got another open world Mario game.

Why not both?
All of the 3D games have been fantastic, why do we feel the need to pick one over the other?

Strangely enough, I think the opposite of you. My views changed when Retro took over Donkey Kong - I truly felt they could build a 2D platformer and make it very exciting and fresh. On the other hand, the New Super Mario Bros. serie felt stagnant, with very few innovations here and there, while the EAD team was making excellent 3D Mario titles. Don't get me wrong, 3D World is good. But it wasn't nearly as good to me as was Tropical Freeze, with whose I bank an absurd number of hours.

I believe Mario can easily be a sandbox - collectothon game, because it does it better than DK. And now, DK does 2D better than Mario thanks to Retro. But this is preference, of course, mostly due to the fact that the last DK games were so good as 2D platformers.

Galaxy is a nice mix of linear and exploration, so I would choose those. 3D land and world are too linear, and while I have nothing against 64 and sunshines sandbox I still feel galaxy is the better way.

NSMB felt stagnant because it was. 3DW didn't feel exciting or fresh because it wasn't. That has nothing to do with the gameplay, though. Both the NSMB and 3DW games are much better designed games than both the Returns series and the sandbox Mario games. What the latter games have over the former is a distinct sense of identity and theming that separates them from other games, especially in their respective series.

If the first NSMB had the same gameplay, but looked like Cuphead and was called Super Mario Reeltime, NSMB2 had the same gameplay but looked like impressionistic art and was called Super Mario Canvas, SMBWii had the same gameplay but looked like a super hero comic book and was called The Legendary Super Mario Bros, and NSMB U had the same gameplay, but had some other identifying theme that separated it from other Mario games, none of the would be looked at with the complacency that they do now. Same with 3DW and 3DL. If they didn't just look like copy-pasts from other Mario games, no one would care that they're linear. Even if they kept there names, no one world care.

The gameplay was never the problem - the presentation was. People love Mario 1, 2, 3, and World because they have distinct identities and turning. A standard adventure, a dream, a play, and a world. Only SMB had flagpoles. Same with the 3D games. 64 was a castle with paintings. Sunshine was a beach resort. Galaxy was space. Odyssey is clearly trying to feel like a grand and epic journey. If all of those games instead had a bunch of course-clear levels, but left the theming the same, they would have been just as well received, if not more well received because they be better games that don't recycle the same level over and over again. Even Galaxy.

I'm just curious, people may have preferences and there's nothing wrong with that.

I agree about the identity part, but you can't just say that course-clear levels are better game design in general. That's a matter of taste.

I agree that the course-clear Mario games excel at what they are trying to do, but I am pretty sure I wouldn't have such fond memories of SM64 if it had linear levels with flagpoles.