With all this, and given other praises for Wii U that I missed, I'm gonna assume Wii U may be the most overrated Nintendo console of all time at this point? People were really that starved for Nintendo games they called Tropical Freeze a GOAT.
The console was owned by almost no one but desperate corporate sluts who know no narrative beyond "everything Nintendo does right at this moment is the best thing they ever did". I like the new Donkey Kong gameplay, but as a sequel TF wasn't great. While DKC2 improved upon its sequel, TF copied most of the things from the Wii game, including all the supbar elements like flappy bird levels, useless puzzle pieces, generic bonus rooms, etc. The music is good, but again way overhyped by fanboys who don't know anything. The highs aren't quite on the level of Aquatic Ambience, etc., but several lows are well below the lowpoints of the DKC1/2 OSTs. The biggest surprise for me was that they actually made the partner characters playable for singleplayer... but only once you beat the game.
But at least the core is still very good to me. Unlike the Mario games on WiiU, which are all a disgrace considering the series history. NSMBWii from a gameplay perspective was the only one that had a right to exist, because it brought multiplayer and new level dynamics with all these moving elements. But the sequels and 3D World felt like playing the exact same thing again and again, except it was getting lamer and more annoying each time.