I know the original Super Mario Maker was extremely popular, but I didn’t get a Wii U until late in its lifecycle, and the game never appealed to me on 3DS - I have always preferred to play platformers on a TV over a handheld. So when Super Mario Maker 2 came out, I decided to pick it up right away despite my huge backlog. It was a great decision - like most first-party Switch titles, the game is an absolute blast to play, although it does suffer a little from Nintendo’s frustrating decisions regarding online play.

This review contains minor spoilers & screenshots.

Story Mode

I am typically not very interested in online play, so a deciding factor for me in purchasing Super Mario Maker 2 was the addition of Story Mode. Unlike its predecessor, you can play through over 100 premade levels offline as you work to rebuild Peach’s castle after Undodog uses a Reset Rocket to demolish the whole thing.

Toadette instructs you to complete levels (called “jobs”), earning coins as a reward in addition to coins collected as you play through each stage. These coins can then be turned in to Toadette to finance new additions to the castle. Each part of the castle then progresses as you complete more levels - I think the most levels I had to complete in order for the Toad crew to build any part of the castle was five. Multiple sections can also be constructed at once.

The levels themselves are extremely fun, taking advantage of elements unique to Super Mario Maker 2. One of my favorite surprises was clear conditions, which require you to not only finish the level, but to satisfy a special condition while doing so. By far the most challenging for me were levels where Mario can’t jump at all - I had to manipulate falling donut blocks, seesaws, and pow blocks to finish without Mario’s feet leaving the ground. Another brilliant mechanic is the Koopa Car, which adds a Mario Kart-like element to levels. Other clear conditions include defeating specific enemies, carrying objects, and collecting enough coins.

The levels themselves are not connected in any way - there’s no map to progress through or anything like that. This makes the game easy to jump in and out of, which was nice as I’m super busy with work, planning a wedding, and an upcoming move. When I needed a quick break, I could power up my Switch and play a few levels without getting sucked into the game.

Each level is rated with a difficulty level from 1-4, with 4 being the most challenging. I consider myself a pretty adept platformer, so I didn’t have too much trouble with many of the levels. Anything ranked 2 and under I mostly beat on the first try. Some of the harder levels I did have to play through a few rounds before I could complete them. The nice thing about the harder stages is that most test some element of your platforming skills. I found myself struggling the most with levels that require bouncing from enemy to enemy.

If you’re really stuck on a level, you can call on Luigi, who will provide “parts” at any point in the level. You can give Mario a power-up or even add blocks to help you jump higher or prevent you from falling. Levels you finish with Luigi’s help are marked with a green flag in the job selection screen, so you can always return and finish the level without his help later on. You also still get the coin rewards for finishing levels with Luigi, so players who aren’t as strong in platforming will be able to progress through story mode.

My completed castle - quite the masterpiece!

The castle is completed relatively quickly and does not require all of the story mode jobs to be finished. I think I had enough coins for the full castle to be built after around 60 levels finished, which left more than 40 more to play. Once the castle is fully built, you can finish up extra jobs for coins to give to Toadette for a little art project next to the castle. Other characters like Toad, Undodog, and Yamamura the Pigeon also have jobs for Mario to complete. Finishing these extra levels adds additional detail to the are around the castle or earns you outfits or hats for your Maker Mii.

Overall, story mode is genuinely fun. The level designs are impeccable, and it’s extremely satisfying to unlock the hidden secrets and extra jobs as you work on the castle. The only downside for me is that it’s not a very long part of the game - after all, the focus of Super Mario Maker has always been building your own levels. I had fully beaten all of the story mode courses after playing less than 15 hours.

Course Mode

Having never played the first Super Mario Maker, I had no idea what to expect from this part of the game, and was a little hesitant about jumping into the course maker. I elected to explore other player-created levels first. There are a few ways you can try out player-created levels - by jumping into courses directly, playing competitively against or with other people, and a mode called Endless Challenge, where you try to last as long as you can through a series of never-ending player levels.

Course Selection

Viewing courses is both simple and needlessly complex. When in Course World, you can open a navigation screen divided into tabs with courses sorted into categories - Hot, Popular and New. You can also search for courses using specific parameters such as game style and difficulty. This section of the game does a pretty good job at showing high-quality player levels. It’s so fun to see how creative people are with their levels - one of my favorite creators has a bunch of levels based on Legend of Zelda dungeons.

Course ID: YG5-5NJ-20H // One of my favorite player levels, Mario exploring the Fire Temple from Ocarina of Time - complete with a Goomba-Goron to rescue. — **Course ID: YG5-5NJ-20H** // One of my favorite player levels, Mario exploring the Fire Temple from Ocarina of Time - complete with a Goomba-Goron to rescue.

After completing a course, you can choose to “like” a level, which saves it to a list you can access easily. You also have the ability to leave comments as you progress or when you finish a level. I found the comment functionality to be pointless and rather annoying as stupid comments pop up as you play, sometimes even spoiling puzzles. Luckily there is an option to turn off the comments, which was a relief when I discovered it. You can also choose to favorite creators, which makes any level they design easily accessible to you. You also have the option to download levels to your console, which allows you to play them offline.

The frustrating part of Course Mode comes when you want to find your friends’ levels. For some unknown reason, Nintendo decided to add ANOTHER layer of codes into this game - there’s no way that I know of to quickly see levels created by people on your Switch friends list. Instead, every creator and level has a 9-digit code that needs to be entered in order to find them. This works fine when it comes to playing levels you find on the internet, but I don’t understand why there isn’t a friends list feature!

Network Play

I haven’t experimented at all with multiplayer mode so I don’t have much to comment on here. I will be sure to update the review once I get a chance to try it out.

Selecting the Network Play option brings up a few options - Multiplayer Co-op, Multiplayer Versus, and Nearby Play. I tried a couple of times to join a multiplayer match, but every time, it searched for a while for other players and I eventually just gave up.

I play on trying out Nearby Play on an upcoming vacation with my brother soon, but there is a frustrating limitation to this supposed couch co-op - it requires every player to have a Switch AND Super Mario Maker 2! Whyyyyy, Nintendo? Why can’t you just hand a friend a controller and start playing levels? I honestly have no idea. Apparently you can download courses to your Switch and access them through Course Bot, and THEN you can have a true couch co-op experience, but there’s not an easy or intuitive way to do this.

Endless Mode

While the course selection screen did a pretty good job of serving up high-quality levels for me to play, Endless Mode is a different story. I only tried this on Easy, so maybe the experience is better at higher difficulty levels, but I ended up with a lot of crap levels in this mode - including levels where you just run to the end, or “auto-Mario” levels that require you to do absolutely nothing and just watch Mario bounce through the level. While some of the auto-Mario levels are incredible in their design and creativity, it just isn’t very fun to “play” them.

Course Maker

After I had played through a bunch of player-created levels, I was eventually feeling inspired to create a level of my own. I decided to make a level based off of Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone, and jumped into Course Maker to put my ideas into action.

If you’d like to play any of my levels, my Maker ID is R2N-WXP-SNG! — If you’d like to play any of my levels, my Maker ID is **R2N-WXP-SNG**!

Course Maker is fairly easy to get the hang of, although there’s a little bit of a learning curve. Creating in docked mode allows you to use a standard controller to place elements in your level, while handheld mode switches over to touchscreen control. I found this a little annoying because the Switch doesn’t come with a stylus, which means that I had to drag my fingers all over the screen. I ended up making my whole level while the Switch was docked, but I feel like touchscreen would be a little easier to navigate. I ended up snagging the stylus that came with preorders off eBay when I saw it for a good deal, and I think I’ll experiment creating courses in handheld next. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to buy the stylus as a separate add-on, so you’ll have to resort to a third-party seller for the time being, although any rubber-tipped stylus will work on the Switch.

Course Maker allows you to select from several different game styles and level themes. The game style you select determines what parts you have available to you, and switching game styles after you’ve placed course parts down will reset the entire thing. This felt a little clunky to me, as I wasn’t completely familiar with all the parts available in newer game styles. I ended up switching game styles a few times after I had already started the level when I realized I wanted a part that was only included in a different style - it would be nice if swapping styles only erased parts that aren’t accessible in the new style. As it is, until I’m more familiar with what’s included in each game style, I will have to make sure I plan out my levels more carefully before jumping.

Once I got the hang of Course Maker, it was pretty easy to finish up my level, and it was incredibly fun to actually play through my design. Uploading a course requires you to be able to complete your own level first, to help prevent impossible levels from being added. One really nice touch that surprised me is that the title screen actually showed the level I was working on the next time I loaded up the game - I sat there grinning for a second as I recognized my handiwork. Classic Nintendo polish.

The title screen, showing the beginning of my Harry Potter-themed level - featuring three Bowser Jrs as “Fluffy”.

Once my course was uploaded, I started receiving little notifications as other people played it. I also received new Mii outfit pieces for various accomplishments related to my course - when I first uploaded it, the first time someone “liked” my course, when I received my first comment. It was a nice feeling knowing that other people were enjoying the level I had worked so hard on, and made me excited to create the next one.

Rating

Super Mario Maker 2 is genuinely fun to play. I was surprised at how easy and how much fun level creating was, and the replay value from exploring other player-created levels is essentially endless. While I wish Story Mode was a little longer, I understand that it’s not the focus of this game, and it was actually kind of nice to have a game I could “complete” in under 15 hours. The only flaws I found are typical Nintendo mistakes - the clunky, tedious nature of online and “couch co-op” play resulted in me not even trying them out. However, they’re a minor part of an otherwise fantastic game, and didn’t affect my enjoyment much at all.