Some thoughts after playing with my non gamer wife for a little bit.
I just started this game on my Switch with my wife, who hasn't really played videogames since the SNES era. I really wasn't expecting her to accept to play this game and I'm glad she did. We only got to the first boss (haven't beat it yet) and so far we've had a lot of fun. So here are my thoughts:
Dual stick controls can be really hard for non gaming adults. My kids, 6 and 8, were able to figure out how to play Mario Odyssey without much instruction from me (although I still have to help them with some of the hardest moons), but my wife has needed a lot of help. I am happy to teach her but I had no idea how complicated this would be.
I am amazed at how well the game is designed to be played cooperatively with very little instruction. So far I've been able to figure out what we need to do next and how to coordinate with my wife to solve the situation just by looking around. It's been mostly me figuring things out and telling her what to do because I'm the most experienced, but I expect her to catch on as she gets used to the game. It's incredibly fun to do this.
Split screen can be tricky when you are playing coop and your partner needs a lot of help. I often find myself looking at my wife's side instead of mine and this causes me to loose sight of where I am and dying in incredibly silly ways. That doesn't take away the fun, though.
The first boss seems too hard for a first boss. I don't know if this is the result of playing with a non gamer as a partner, but we couldn't defeat the first boss after several tries. We were close though, and I expect next time we sit we will be able to defeat it. But I usually expect the first boss to be very easy. It's not necessarily bad to get a hard first boss, though, it's just unexpected.
I couldn't have played this with my kids. Since both of my kids are competent with Mario games, I considered playing this with them instead of trying to take my wife outside of her comfort zone. But both of them are autistic so while they may be good at single player, I could not, at least at this point in their lives, get the level of communication required to do this with any of them.
I couldn't have played this online with a stranger either. The level of coordination required makes being able to talk to each other mandatory, and I'm too shy to have voice chats with strangers.
So far I think it's an amazing game and I'm thankful my wife accepted to get out of her comfort zone to play it with me, hopefully as we progress she will get better at the controls and require less of my help, but if she doesn't, I still enjoy teaching her and helping her out.