I agree heartily with this review. The main game can stand on its own just fine, and Luigi\'s Balloon World is great (even if I wanted Luigi playable dangit), but by the postgame, you\'re collecting stuff just to collect stuff, which really highlights how uninspired and simplified a significant portion of the content is. The only things that I think make the postgame good are the Mushroom Kingdom, which references a lot of older content (but only one room from SM 64, surprisingly), and the Sunshine outfit, which will never cease to be the best outfit in the game.
I\'m in the complete opposite camp, funnily enough. I much preferred the post-game experience to the main game — I found the way content was gatekept (complete these objectives to unlock these basic features across the level) kind of stifling. It wasn\'t until I went back after the final boss, trying to fully complete levels one at a time, that the game really clicked for me.
I didn\'t find the process too terribly grindy, either — I\'d polish off a level\'s regular moons in about an hour before work, and come back and take on the post-game moons in about an hour after I got home. I probably would\'ve been miserable had I taken it all on in one sitting, but I wouldn\'t have done that even if I could have. I just had fun going around and grabbing moons over breakfast.
Even now, I\'ll still go back and play balloon world or jump rope sometimes, just like I\'d play around in Wii Sports Resort — it\'s a relaxing, entertaining experience unto itself.
I found it to vary a lot depending on the kingdom—I had a much better time in Metro post-game, while Sand was kind of awful, despite being one of my favourite story quests
By the "harder bosses," do you mean the boss rematches in the Mushroom Kingdom? There isn't a Power Moon requirement for those; you can access them as soon as you open up the Mushroom Kingdom, assuming you can reach those places.
I personally like how Odyssey is one of the easier Mario games for an amateur or otherwise casual player to complete, but it's challenging to 100%, especially since Culmina Crater and several other Power Moons are more challenging than any of the Stars in Super Mario 64. I also like that there's a lot of post-game content available, which provides incentive to keep playing. Even if getting the Coins for extra Power Moons requires "grinding," I personally don't mind; in some of the harder segments of the game, I died a lot, but was able to have a net gain of coins, allowing me to save up for moons and other things.
To each their own, I suppose.
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How grinding can kill the game experience
I'll be clear from the get-go: until the story finishes, the game is excellent. The capture mechanic is surprisingly nice and well-used (albeit at the cost of some vanilla platforming) and it has a lot of tricks under its sleeve - tricks that are helped by the amount of traps and enemies you encounter through the worlds. Also, the game's pacing is really good and even rewards exploration by letting you unlock further areas faster the more Power Moons you have. It gives you a free world and, most importantly, it encourages you to explore it - something that I find incredibly uncommon in the open-world genre (which often throws content around its world and gives you no reason to go through it, assuming you are playing blind). The final area is really cool, as well, and the Balloon minigame that was eventually added was a nice skill test.
But then we get to the post-game.
The Dark Side of the Moon is fairly easy to unlock. Depending on how much you've done before beating the Moon, it's likely to be around 50 moons worth of effort, or less. But then there's the Darker Side of the Moon, which requires you to double the amount of Power Moons you currently have. And then there's the harder bosses, that require 880 Power Moons at most. That means "grinding", and that means slowing the game's pace to a crawl, quickly making you lose motivation as you realize you are getting Power Moons for the sake of getting them (either that, or it's spamming the Balloons minigame or an exploit just for the sake of doing them, as well). And that's a horrible thing to happen in a game. It makes you think "So why was I doing this?" and you give up the game (which I did before even reaching 300 Power Moons).
And it's unfortunate, because up to the point the main story ends, it was easily one of the best Mario games ever... but the post-game makes it lose a lot of its worth.