I had a hard time getting into this game and enjoying it. The graphics are beautiful, the characters are fun, there's some amusing dialog, and in general it is a charming game. However, there are some elements about it that are frustrating. First, there is too much dialog. I don't think it's possible to play the game for more than 1 minute without some kind of dialog popping up. For instance, in each area there is a side objective to find toads and rescue them, there can be from 10 to 20 toads to find. Every time you find one there are at least a couple boxes of dialog to scroll through. Granted, some of the dialog is funny, but c'mon, just let me get back to the main game without needing to go through dialog boxes. Additionally, it felt like this game was in constant tutorial mode. I played i through the second stage and the game was still constantly telling me how to play it. I appreciate new game mechanics being thrown in during a game, but it in this case it seems like you never fully understand how to play the game aside from just doing exactly what the game tells you. It makes you feel like you have little control and are constantly being guided through and are only there to push the button the game tells you to. The battle mechanics are new, I applaud that, yet I found it frustrating. The puzzle on a timer element grows tiresome to the point that I try to avoid battles as much as possible. It's a long process that gets tedious. It's nice they added things to help like the ability to buy time and help with coins, yet still it grows tiresome. You can block attacks, but the problem is the timing on the enemy attacks is always different and you never know when to initiate a block. In Mario RPG for instance it's very easy to know when an attack is going to hit you and when to block. In this game you usually have to take a few hits first before you get it down. Boss battles are even more frustrating, the puzzle element is different and I found it tiresome. Finally, this game added the element of weapons breaking. Yes. Every few battles your new shiny item will break and you will need to backtrack to the nearest shop to get a new one (I haven't found a way to repair them yet). Imagine in Mario RPG needing to repair new hammers or turtle shells every 10 battles.
I think you'll still enjoy playing the game, I had fun. Collecting coins and hearing that pleasant ringing sound never gets old. But man, this is the most frustrating Mario game I've ever played.