idk how to describe it, its good though
Story 4/10: honestly the story sucks, While Mario was away saving Princess Daisy in SarsaLand from Tatanga(SML1's plot) a sneaky Greedy Man known as Wario takes over Mario's castle(When the hell did Mario get a castle??)he uses this castle to put animals under his spell to kill Mario(OK 2 things: The Animals are mostly Koopas & Goombas, don't they already hate Mario? why put them under a spell?That makes no sense & how can a castle put anyone or anything under a spell?)but i didnt come to criticise the game's shallow story did i?no. Mario's castle has 6 golden coins that open the gate, if you are Mario why have Coins that keep a gate open? idk but the coins are in 6 zones in 6 of Wario's cronies hands find and kill them all and get the castle back.
Music 5/10: the music is ok i guess but if you played SMW you know the music is solely based off the overworld theme, like the athletic stages music is just like 2 times faster than the original, water stages are like .5 the speed of the original the cave music is just a cave version of the original the castle stages etc etc same here and its not like its catchy like SMW's overworld theme its more annoying than anything but the remixes are nice i especially LOVE the 2nd Space zones music its like a techno remix and it kicks ASS!!
Gameplay 9/10: Gameplay is the same as SMW for the most part its the same just without any yoshi's its like nintendo forgot yoshi's existed until SMW2 came and they got their own game telling Mario's origin, the "Zone" idea reminds me of the Sonic series in its early days each Zone had a unique theme, different music, unique enemies and different bosses, the map tells it all on the game like the Macro zone is a Large Zone everything even Ants tower over Mario and he has to get into the house through the chimney and find the rat with the coin. each stage is different no stage is alike which was a fresh new idea for the platforming genre and was carried over to SMW2 which is why i love SMW2 so much but you get Bunny Ears which effectively replaces the cape and instead of a feather or a leaf a carrot appears the Ears are more like the Racoon Leaf from SMB3 you can glide around and float safely anywhere you want the game uses alot of Japanese references like the one eyed chinese man in the pumpkin zone and the floating fireballs, thats mostly it about the Gameplay section...
Final thoughts: don't let the iffy music and bad story scare you away this game is a vintage Mario game its a classic and no one can say otherwise thats not the truth, sadly its only available on GB so its in monochrome or black and white but luckily carries a few colors like an orange tint for the flower power's respective color and the floating fireballs and the blue water but nothing impressive, nintendo rereleased WL2 on GBC with a new color look why couldn't SML2 get the same treatment?? there was guy on the net who did an amazing job coloring the original SML and announced he'd do SML2 he even put a video up on its progreess...it looked great but we never heard from him again so i dont have much time myself to crack open the game and sprite by sprite color the game in but it was worth every penny if you have a 3DS buy it off the store try it for yourself and you'l be amazed