I recently beat this Super Mario game. I have beaten the first Super Mario Galaxy game too. I gotta admit this might have been a better game. The two games are similar but the way you go stage to stage is very much more linear here. You basically travel with a chubby Luma named Lubba as you travel on a Mario head shaped spaceship.
The plot is kinda of a retelling of the first game. You are trying to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser. There are a lot of returning elements from Galaxy one like Launch stars which can take you to a completely new planetoid in many cases. There are a lot of returning enemies from Galaxy one as well like Goombas, those little things that spit rocks at you, boo ghosts, bullet bills, Chomps, and hammer bros.
Some of the boss fights were really creative. There was a big creature that was only vulnerable from underneath so it constantly forced you to go to one of the openings of the arena and ground pound it from below. The Bowser fights were considerably different too. You basically had to ground pound a circular rock and launch it at Bowser which sounds tough but it wasn't too bad....
The power ups in this game were great. There's Cloud Mario which enables you to create up to 3 platforms to jump off of. Of course if you take damage or touch water you lose the power up. Boo Mario was dope too. Bee Mario was rarely used but I liked that one. The Rock Mario was maybe my favorite. There are some stages that really take advantage of it. The drill power up was ok. Of course one of the big things was Yoshi's inclusion. Yoshi is controlled with motion controls which takes getting used to. The final level really puts your Yoshi skills to the test.
Overall this was a really fun but challenging game. I kinda preferred Mario Galaxy one's format for unlocking levels a little more but then again I got way more stars in this game than I did in that one. This is one of Mario's greatest games!
Verdict 9.7