I like this game better than Mario 64 in the end. The worlds are way more open and have a ton of secrets packed in. Exploring and using your brain to find secret Shines is a whole lot of fun. FLUDD is an awesome tool and really complements Mario's moveset. Going through the game while really combing through each world for everything is a blast and highly addictive.

BUT!

The post-game is trash! Whoever decided these blue coin placements needs to have their head examined.

Stuff like having it visible but hard to reach, or killing an enemy at the place where you got a shine before is fine, and the racing ones are a good time, but the others? "Spray this random tree!" "Spray this random window!" "Just keep spraying the beach hoping one will show up!"

Running around spraying absolutely everything in sight for coins isn't fun or intuitive, and since there's no reliable way to track down everything like the item sound in Metroid Prime, some of these are nigh impossible without a guide or a heck of a lot of luck.

I usually go out of my way to 100% every 3D Mario I play. 64, Galaxy, Galaxy 2, 3D Land, I've fully completed them all, and I do it because it's usually a blast. But doing it here has just stopped being fun, and I absolutely loathe the idea of staring at a guide while playing. So I'm taking my 115 shines and leaving.

Overall, loved pretty much every minute of my main run, but mopping up those last 10 shines is just a total pain, and not every level is a winner, so not sure I can give it a 5. Still, I had an awesome time playing it in general, and was way more addicted than I was to 64, so a 4 seems right.