Like it's good. But it's nowhere near as good as the first half. First off, the water levels in this game are just trash. They control like shit. They're terrible. But there's just a lot of areas where there's one or two small problems that'd be an easy fix, like the game needed one or two more quality pass throughs. Shit that isn't terrible, but just enough a drop in quality to be frustrating, cause you're going from the near perfect, 10/10 first half to some parts that are clearly rushed and unfinished.
Like, I know Super Mario Sunshine has a lot of issues and is clearly the more rushed game. But Super Mario Sunshine has you fight the same boss 5 times in the first hour. You know what you're getting into. Mario Galaxy's first like ten levels are so great that your expectations are too high for the rest of the game.
Completely disagree. I think nearly all of the later levels are the best the game, especially the ones in the bedroom and garden. The final bower level is definitely the most climactic final stage in the series. The water levels are also the best in the series, besides maybe Galaxy 2 in my opinion. Swimming with the seashell does feel a little awkward, but I feel like you don't even spend a ton of time underwater in most of the water levels. I just finished a replay last week and I'm going through Galaxy 2 now, so it's still really fresh in my mind. Now that I'm really thinking of it, the amount of duplicate levels is the closest thing to feeling rushed or unpolished. Like there are two nearly identical bee galaxies, multiple fire and ice galaxies, and the dreadnought galaxy is a near identical clone of the battle rock galaxy. All of the levels are still great on their own though, they're just recycling themes. Galaxy 2 really went crazy with the level variety and barely reuses any ideas.
I donno, I kinda hate every time I'm underwater cause the camera's so bad. I'm currently at like 82 stars and am really debating calling it quits before 100%ing it. I think Galaxy 2's method of having fewer missions in each level just was a lot better for me.