Really don't want to look up more info on the 'hard stuff in the post-game' bit but might have to, the odd way power moons are strewn about in the game after the credits doesn't seem very engaging to me when I thought it absolutely would.
I liked the controls enough (SM64 and Galaxy were a better feel for me than Sunshine, 3D World) but outside of Balloon World I can't find a nice place or whole level to do my endurance runs - ala the Bowser levels from SM64. The closest one is probably Bowser's Kingdom.
That's on me, not the game - I like the mini-dungeons but most of the time they require a Cappy capture so Mario's graceful movement is traded in for something else.
I'm missing something aren't I?
Actually most of the game is built so that Cappy isn't completely required. It's just that not using him makes those areas more challenging. Platforms are often placed juuuuuust so that Mario can reach them with just his base moveset. The game is incredibly thoughtful and well designed when it comes to this kind of stuff. Outside of gimmick moons that specifically don't appear without the use of something like, say, jump-roping, or moving the letters around to spell Mario. And even then, jump roping doesn't lock you into a specific, controlled mini-game. It's just out there in the world and you can use different abilities or or items to make it easier. But a moon is just hanging out somewhere, and the goal is just "Get there" (as in the case in most gauntlet rooms), it's very rare that a capture is required to do so. There are exceptions, of course, but with some thoughtful and skillful play without captures in several areas that you wouldn't think you could.
The game is just brilliant in its design this way. Mario is at point A. Your goal is at point B. And as long as getting there doesn't exceed Mario's abilities you can just do it. And the levels are clearly designed to allow and encourage creative solutions, or risky plays. There's no invisible walls that are gonna get in your way. Your sidekick isn't going to yell at you for going the wrong way (the opposite, in fact. Cappy will often praise you for sequence breaking). You're not gonna get "Mission failed" for not following an arbitrary rule you didn't even know existed. You're not going to try to land on a surface and slide off it while your character floats in the air in their falling animation. Other Mario games like 3D Land/World are the same (speedruns of the games are amazing, by the way), but it's just very impressive to see it applied in such large and dense spaces. To see the way an area like Steam Gardens gets bigger and bigger as you explore it and find new areas, and then smaller and smaller as you learn how the areas connect and the shortcuts between them. It's impressive to see a game like this that just bends and bends but never breaks.
I understand some people want more direction, or more fanfare, or more mandatory challenge (actually that one I don't understand as much because the only challenging 3D Mario is Sunshine and it's challenging for all the wrong reasons......), but this style of game is just so fascinating to me. It's so simple on the surface, but so satisfying and clearly took a lot of effort and years of learning from past games to create. To me, this is next level stuff.
