It goes without saying that Super Mario Maker was somewhat flawed. I was hoping the 3DS port would fix what it got wrong. Guess what didn't end up happening.
A good port will take note of the original's flaws and do its best to improve on them. This one doesn't do any of that. Everything that I had a problem with in the original game is either unchanged or removed entirely instead of being fixed. In fact, half of the game's fun is missing. I'll elaborate more on that below.
First off, remember this? Now remember how much variety it brought to courses? Yeah, the 3DS version doesn't have it. No Big Mushroom either, Power Up Letdown or not. They brought a lot more variety to level design. Without them, we're stuck making some very generic stuff. And Nintendo didn't bother to add anything in place of this. Honestly?
The next thing I don't like is a bit of a double-edged sword. The game has half of the menu unlocked by default. Sound good? It gets worse. If you want the rest of your elements, you have to complete the single-player campaign. Keep in mind that this takes hours while you could bypass the thankfully-flawed system in the original and cheat the system, on top of the official patch. Here, there's no easy way, and certainly no loophole to abuse. Want your full menu? Set aside a couple hours.
On a side note, the New Super Mario Bros. U theme looks awful on 3DS. It's understandable, considering the system can't handle HD graphics, but it becomes lazy when you realize they could've replaced it with New Super Mario Bros. 2.
By far the worst part about the port, however, is the online functionality, or rather lack of it. Course World was flawed, built was still half the game's fun. Here, almost everything about Course World is eradicated. There's no star system, no code search, no bookmarks, no anything! And certainly no name search. All you get is a random selection of courses. All you can do if you don't like any of them is refresh to get a new batch. That's it. As a bonus, 100 Mario Challenge is unchanged in all of its horrible glory, but with no Bragging Rights Rewards.
The only way to share your courses publicly is through Streetpass. This is okay if you live in a city, but if you live in a rural area, you've just wasted a lot of money. Cross that with the fact that Streetpass is pretty dead where I live...
It's easy to forget about the collab system (The only good thing about this port) under all this suck. I swear, I haven't been this disappointed with a Mario game since Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Take my advice and save your money. Waste it on the Wii U version. That one's better.
(3DS VERSION) Anyone can make it. Everyone can play it. Well, unless you own this version.
It goes without saying that Super Mario Maker was somewhat flawed. I was hoping the 3DS port would fix what it got wrong. Guess what didn't end up happening.
A good port will take note of the original's flaws and do its best to improve on them. This one doesn't do any of that. Everything that I had a problem with in the original game is either unchanged or removed entirely instead of being fixed. In fact, half of the game's fun is missing. I'll elaborate more on that below.
First off, remember this
? Now remember how much variety it brought to courses? Yeah, the 3DS version doesn't have it. No Big Mushroom either, Power Up Letdown or not. They brought a lot more variety to level design. Without them, we're stuck making some very generic stuff. And Nintendo didn't bother to add anything in place of this. Honestly?
The next thing I don't like is a bit of a double-edged sword. The game has half of the menu unlocked by default. Sound good? It gets worse. If you want the rest of your elements, you have to complete the single-player campaign. Keep in mind that this takes hours while you could bypass the thankfully-flawed system in the original and cheat the system, on top of the official patch. Here, there's no easy way, and certainly no loophole to abuse. Want your full menu? Set aside a couple hours.
On a side note, the New Super Mario Bros. U theme looks awful on 3DS. It's understandable, considering the system can't handle HD graphics, but it becomes lazy when you realize they could've replaced it with New Super Mario Bros. 2.
By far the worst part about the port, however, is the online functionality, or rather lack of it. Course World was flawed, built was still half the game's fun. Here, almost everything about Course World is eradicated. There's no star system, no code search, no bookmarks, no anything! And certainly no name search. All you get is a random selection of courses. All you can do if you don't like any of them is refresh to get a new batch. That's it. As a bonus, 100 Mario Challenge is unchanged in all of its horrible glory, but with no Bragging Rights Rewards.
The only way to share your courses publicly is through Streetpass. This is okay if you live in a city, but if you live in a rural area, you've just wasted a lot of money. Cross that with the fact that Streetpass is pretty dead where I live...
It's easy to forget about the collab system (The only good thing about this port) under all this suck. I swear, I haven't been this disappointed with a Mario game since Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Take my advice and save your money. Waste it on the Wii U version. That one's better.
EDIT: And IGN gives this a 7.2/10. WTF.