I’ve got six shines and - I’m just really not having fun. I don’t want to force myself to have fun. I’m just not enjoying it at all. I don’t care for the environments, for Mario or the music. Whoever this game was made for, it certainly wasn’t me. No point trying to force your way through if it’s just not fun, right? Also, it’s not to do with difficulty; I find DK and Crash can be very challenging but I always find them loads of fun. 

You can’t win them all, and I finally have found a Mario game that I dislike and don’t want to play further. 

Stop now. It only gets more tedious and more annoying as the game goes on. Peach accused of being Bowser Jr's mom (he's fake Mario) he says she is his mom (she didn't deny it and thus confirming She and bowser fucked). The final boss fight is Bowser in his bathtub full of Bowser sewage. Yoshi vomits everywhere in this game and melts in water. This game almost had a giant mushroom with 20-foot skinny legs walking around the hub world and was shown in promo footage.

Miyamoto took some bad shrooms when making this travesty of a game.

Is this... is this a joke?! Or is this actually for real?! 

This is in the game. Bowser talks btw and his VA is bad. Real bad. Why they never did it again.

I finally managed to conquer the pachinko level this time around. Took me about 20 attempts though. Like yourself I didn't die as often and beat Corona mountain without losing a single life (I was dreading the boat in the lava part) 

In terms of control feel, I think Mario controls as well and in some cases better as he does in 64 and Odyssey, which by extension it feels better than the Galaxy games, and 3D L/W, like I think if there is one thing I can't dock points off Sunshine is how Mario feels and plays. FLUDD is a good extension of Mario's moveset, I would argue is the most helpful tool to correct your jumps compared to other power ups and abilities in the other 3D Mario games.

Sunshine was rushed and it shows. I find that there are plenty of fun levels, but there are also a larger percentage of levels that are not fun than in any other Mario game. The worst part is that unlike 64 or Galaxy you can't skip any levels you don't like and just get the minimum number of shines. You have to get the first 7 shines in each world without exception and you can't even do them out of order like in 64.

The problems I had in terms of control were primarily camera based. Whenever Mario was on a narrow platform I could never move more than a snail's pace because no matter what the camera would not line up behind Mario on the platform and so Mario would want to run off the platform, and that's before such masterpieces as the ferris wheel level where you can't see crap. Wider areas where the camera could afford to be pulled back weren't a problem and Fludd often took away the need for precision, but those areas where precision was needed were a nightmare.

The game needed another 6 months to iron out the kinks in 2002, and one of the disappointments of the 2020 rerelease is that they didn't fix any of the 18-year-old issues with the game.

The controls in SMS were partially saved mainly because of being able to use FLUDD to compensate for the vast majority of missteps. That said, you are 100% right when it comes to the bonus levels where Mario loses his access to FLUDD. In this case, I agree that the controls can become quite frustrating and is one example of where the game really ceases to be fun. Also some of the bonus levels (e.g. the pinball machine level) is completely broken which is very surprising to see come from Nintendo, much less in one of their flagship titles.

Sunshine was not a great game, in my opinion. It had some fun moments, but a lot of the time I found myself just playing it so that I could complete the game and then move on to something else. I know that Nintendo was trying to take Mario 64 to the next level, but the more intricate platforming and puzzles just felt tedious most of the time. FLUDD was clearly inspired by Banjo Kazooie and it even looks like a creature hanging on mario's back similar to Kazooie in Banjo's backpack. That said, I just thought that the BK did a better job with the dynamics of a tandem platformer than Sunshine did. The best part of Sunshine, I felt, was the final boss which actually wasn't as tedious as I was expecting it to be after some of my experiences collecting the shine sprites.

That being said, after finishing Sunshine, I moved on to Skies of Arcadia. I can tell you that I had at least 10 times more fun and made probably 100 times better memories playing this game than I did with Sunshine. It's far more worth your time if you are spending time gaming on the Gamecube.

Sunshine is very frustrating to play especially after playing other 3D Mario games. The biggest offense to me is the removal of the long jump which I use constantly in other 3D Marios which results in Mario feeling very sluggish.

I loved the game then and I love it now. It takes a different approach that I love and it still looks great. My biggest gripe is the CAMERA. It's insane at times! And there are definitely times when the game just won't let you do what you wanted to do even though you know you pressed the right buttons. That should never be the case in a Mario game.