A Gripe with Galaxy
It's been my opinion since 2010 that Super Mario Galaxy is superior to Super Mario Galaxy 2. That was based on my initial playthrough of 2 when it launched, and I have maintained that opinion since.
The problem is it's been so long that I can't remember why. I've played through the original several times since then, but never bothered going back to 2 to see what it was I didn't like. And then Christmas 2025 happened and I was gifted the bundle of both games for Switch.
I completed Galaxy 1 almost entirely in handheld mode, and almost entirely in bed. Two issues I had were a) there is a weird bug where Mario sometimes runs around in circles instead of the direction being held, and b) I had to sit up when playing the motion control levels like rolling the ball or surfing.
My original plan was finish Galaxy 1 with minimal Stars, then do the same on 2. Then I got carried away and ended up getting all 120 Stars before starting 2. Having now played through both back to back, has my opinion changed? Do I consider Super Mario Galaxy 2 to be worse than it's predecessor?
In short, yes.
My vague recollection of reasons for not liking the sequel as much were that I didn't really care for Yoshi, and that the levels were longer which necessitated the inclusion of checkpoints.
In my new playthrough, my views on that have changed. I still don't care a great deal for Yoshi, but his inclusion doesn't ruin the game like adding Tails into a Sonic game does, and the levels seem like they are around the same size as the original. The checkpoints must have invoked some weird placebo effect where it made them appear longer, but they are instead there to visually indicate a specific restart point instead of the first game having invisible checkpoints.
The first game had comets appear in previous areas seemingly at random to alter levels in some fashion (although I did see someone on YouTube explain that there is some strange logic behind them), and 2 continues on the trend of them being random, but also requires that you collect Comet Medals in order to get them to appear. These are a largely harmless additional collectable, although would benefit from a Save & Exit feature to save on having to replay the entire level if you had to go back and find one you missed (I deliberately quit a level after collecting one I'd missed to see what would happen).
The comets in the first game were colour co-ordinated so you knew roughly what kind of change is coming, but the colour co-ordination is completely lost in the second. There are two things about comet levels that the second does better:
- Purple Coin levels aren't all lumped at the end - they appear gradually throughout
- Checkpoints are available in Daredevil runs, although it raises the question as to why they picked long stretches instead of limiting to boss fights or particularly tricky sections
Overall the levels in Galaxy 2 are on par with the original. But this playthrough has solidified that my original opinion was correct. And it's all because of the hub area.
Super Mario Galaxy introduces Rosalina's Observatory. It's a decent sized area with small interiors that provide the entry points to a group of levels. If you want to play a level in a different area, you have to walk over to it, but the layout of the Observatory is pretty simple to navigate.
Galaxy 2's hub is Starship Mario. It's a small area shaped like Mario's head, but it feels like a maze trying to navigate it. All levels are accessible from the same entry point, so in theory you should never have to move if your sole objective is smash through the levels. In reality, the game will continually dump you on the other side of the ship or put you inside the engine room.
Galaxy 1 would only move you away from the level's entry location if you'd completed a level outside of one of the interiors, collected a Grand Star, or something major was happening. It largely let you continue with what you were doing. Galaxy 2 on the other hand is way more intrusive. It shifts Mario whenever a new character comes to the ship, the first time you use a power-up to show it's been added to the engine room (where nothing happens once you collect them all), and whenever a new chapter is available in the storybook.
The latter is the only one that I would argue justifies moving Mario because in theory it's a quality of life improvement over Galaxy 1, which instead just displayed a notification to say a new chapter was available and you had to go to the library to read it. But I prefer the Galaxy 1 approach. It lets me decide whether I want to go and read it.
When Galaxy 2 isn't shifting you around, it's opening the world map to display that a comet has appeared. It then immediately closes the map, even though 99% of the time the next thing a player is likely to do is open the map. In theory it's better that the player is now notified about comets appearing, as in the first game they'd show up silently, but all these interruptions have easily added an hour to my playtime.
It felt like the game was treating me like a baby right up until the end, as if it didn't trust that I wouldn't find things if it didn't explicitly show them, and that really sours the entire experience.