I'll be completely honest with you guys: when this game was first shown off at E3 2014, I thought Nintendo was joking. I had no idea they were going to be making a full-fledged game based on the minigames from "Super Mario 3D World," and I was kinda convinced that it would be alright, but nothing great. And then I remembered who we're talking about: Nintendo, the one company that seems to be pretty good with surprising people. And they definitely did that with "Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker."
The game is absolutely fun, visually beautiful, features solid character development (even for a "Mario" game), and the one thing Nintendo is known for when it comes to games: great level design. The level design in this game is extremely clever and it reminds me of why Nintendo dominated for most of the 90s. There's also plenty of challenge here and some reason to go back, which is more than some "one and done" games tend to do.
Unfortunately, the game is not perfect: though the challenge is good, it can be a bit TOO challenging at points, and the game will start to feel like it's overstaying its welcome a little bit near the end.
Even so, the positives highly outweigh the negatives and "Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker" is a great game that Wii U owners (or Switch owners, since it's now on that system) should definitely pick up.
Final rating: 8 out of 10 "Great"