Finally started this yesterday; been looking forward to it for a long time.
Fun so far. Even though the plan is to play it with my wife; I think we'll still to 1 player mode... 2 player feels awkward, where you really have to both be in sync. It's a neat idea, but seems like it would only be suited to 2 players who are both already really good at the game; not for a casual playthrough.
It's a fun time exploring things. Not quite the open world experience of BotW, but still plenty of stuff to just explore. The game play feels smooth and fun; the regular 3D Mario platforming is all there; and the hat just control really well.
I am a bit confused about the "story quests" though; can someone explain how the actual requirements work? So to leave an area, you have to collect a minimum number of moons (at least for the first couple of areas; I'm assuming that basic mechanic stays the same). But aside from collecting random moons, there is always an active "story quest"; not actually sure what that's called... Mission? Quest? Thing? Anyway, you can do that main mission, but do you have to? Is the moon you get from the active mission any different than any other random moon?
For example, in the sand world, we got the required 16 moons needed to go to the next area, but we did so without completing "Showdown on the Inverted Pyramid". This allowed us to leave to the next area. We came back to fight the boss on the inverted pyramid, but was that completely optional? I'm assuming that if we had just done the story moons and not found other random ones, then even after completing all story, we still would have to find 16 total moons before going to the next area.