Why is Mario Sunshine bad?

I've heard many people say that Mario Sunshine is a terrible game, but I've never played it myself, could anyone tell me why it's so hated?

I don't know, maybe physics, secrets design, camera at times, the final area, I could go on for a while. Those are the most prevalent issues I have with it

Well yeah I do know that the final boss sucks

it's not a terrible game, it's just a flawed one and one that has the most issues out of all the 3d mario games.

The Toxic Lilypad level. Oh the Toxic Lilypad level.

It's amazing! Atmospheric, great graphics for the time (especially the water), full of charm and fun dialogue, all the worlds are connected, I love it. But it's true that compared to 64, it doesn't ever create that feeling of real connection or depth. Obviously going deep underwater is one thing, but I mean the calm tranquility of Jolly Roger Bay, the only time it does something like that is the Deep Sea of Mare. Also, it's a lot slower than 64. Having to collect 100 coins to get the 100 Coin Shine, leave the world and come back, so you can't get two at once anymore, isn't good. Oh and the blue coins are pretty bad in parts. Fun to scour the landscapes and find them, kind of Zelda-y, but when you're missing two in Noki Bay, and they could be only available in certain episodes, somewhere high up on a cliff, it's a nightmare.

But a loveable nightmare!

It's great and bad at the same time

Honestly the best way I can describe it is, the physics engine isn't all that more advanced than SM64, but the levels are designed as if it was. I think that's why there are so many weird, clearly unintended interactions that often result in the player's death. For all the shortcomings of 64's engine, it understood its limits and didn't design levels that would be overwhelming. But with Sunshine's level design, you'd need the physics engine to be on the level of Galaxy (not the moveset or speed, just the polish) for it to be fun and not frustrating imo. The setting and characters are the best thing about it (after all it introduced the goat Toadsworth)

Imo:
- Boring levels (Noki Bay especially). A lot of them feel the same.
- Boring objectives (brushing teeth, cleaning graffiti, chasing Shadow Mario, leaf/canoe physics, blue coins). Literally the plot is that you're falsely convicted and they force you to become a narc.
- Boring main mechanic (FLUDD)
- Boring bosses (Petey Piranha, final boss)
- Every level is a beach whereas other Mario games you'd get different themes
- With very few exceptions, having to collect the shines in order in a level, instead of getting to explore and stumble across them. This excludes the sequence breaking that speedrunners do because 99% of players aren't going to do that
- No way to tell if you've collected all the blue coins in an area, or what mission they're in
- I don't even think the water looked *that* nice given Star Fox Adventures released around the same time and has it beat. Like it's fine for beach water but gets a bit old after the 6th world with it.
- Jak and Daxter did the, 'one island collectathon where you can see the levels in the distance and travel to them' a year earlier. It does it better because it literally is *one world* without loading zones and you just walk to the place. It also has different level themes.

I watched a full longplay of Super Mario Sunshine in the "Super Mario 3D All Stars" longplay on YouTube. With several things I like I can enjoy everything with them, even the bad stuff, but I found myself very disappointed by the time I finished watching the complete playthrough of Mario Sunshine. It got really boring and repetitive really quick, and, like, the ending-most disappointing ever. No big celebratory party with cake and confetti and a parade or anything, which would have made all the boredom I felt watching the playthrough feel somewhat tolerable, just a boring screen that said "Enjoy your vacation!". I never thought I would ever come across a Mario game I didn't like, but this one was just boring to me. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact you clean stuff up. If the cleaning mechanic had not been in there, probably might have been half as less boring. The one perk however to this game is that it's the first time we see Bowser Jr. However, Super Mario 3D All-Stars wasn't all bad-I'm really enjoying the longplay of Super Mario Galaxy in the same playthrough, and Super Mario 64 is fun to watch playthroughs of too and it's the first game featured in this longplay, but I'm not going to watch it because I already watched a longplay of it somewhere else.