Treasure never misses. This game is a 2D action beat-em-up with a lot of exploratory elements to make ya run around and check every nook and cranny of the levels. In order to get to the end of the level there are these red crystal things that need to be collected, and they can be found in these single-room mystery challenge areas, which can be either pure platforming challenges or puzzles that need to be solved. So the game is a mixture of puzzle platformer, action platformer, and beat em up. Wario's moveset is certainly not expansive but still diverse enough to make defeating enemies fun. The level themes are unique and the music is very wario-sounding, for better or for worse. One thing that caught me off guard is the graphical fidelity of this game. The lighting engine used is very impressive for the gamecube, with characters chasting dynamic real-time shadows, and light properly illuminating each part of the character it should shine on. In a lot of ways, it looks like an original Xbox game, which is cool. The enemy designs are very strange, and certainly go against the mario series norm, so if ya like a more different style of mario game, this game is def for you.

I have probably beat this game like 5+ times as a kid and I still find myself coming back to it every once and a while as a adult. In my opinion this is the best 3d platforms on the GameCube.

From making different models of the enemy types, to the music; each level feels completely different than the one before. Combined with the wacky looking enemies/bosses and the gimmicks of the stages and challenge areas, you can see how much focus the devs put into making a fun game while playing around with interesting ideas.

Some of the boss fights can really show how the game shines in it's wackiness and creativeness. You can fight a large dinosaur in a bikini, a guy who looks like a carny who hides in a cup and plays a shell game to avoid you, and a army spider.

The challenge zones are also another highlight, showcasing both what you and the game engine can do.

My only complaint is snow world being a pain to 100% due to the slides.

Part of me wishes this game was longer, but I feel like it's one of those quality over quantity kind of situations.

My god now that is what I call a good transition to 3D!

This game is exactly how I would've imagined a 3D Wario Land game, honestly, this is one damn perfect game with little to no issues with it. Actually thinking about it this game suffers from the same fate as Wario Land 4, quantity over quality! All of the stages from Wario World are fun to go through and very memorable just like 4 and it makes me want to beg for more, just like 4.

Unlike 4 this time it's 4 worlds with 2 stages each instead of 4. That sounds pathetic since it's only a total of 8 stages but the stages are fairly long with a ton of treasures to find and a unique boss at the end of each stage so the small amount of stage is excused.

This game was perfectly crafted for completionists, it feels so great to grab all of the useless collectibles just for the sake of getting a nice 100%. each stage has 4 different types of collectibles, the first one is the 5 elves per stage which determine the ending. The 8 golden Wario parts per stage which when assembled gives you half a heart, and the 8 crystals are required to enter the boss of the stage but it's odd since the amount required depends on the stage it can go from 3 to 5 so I have no idea what collecting all of them do I just do it cause it's fun. Last but not least the 10 treasures chest unlocks GBA microgames if you plug in the GBA link cable.

So that's the whole gameplay loop for 8 stages and 4 world boss stages, and honestly, I think it's perfect as it is though I'll point out some of the bad parts of this game.

My first complaint would be the combat, It's fun at first but it gets old quickly though it isn't required to beat most enemies in your path thankfully they mostly just serve for puzzles usually but sometimes you are forced into a one-minute arena and you must kill as many enemies as possible to earn a good chunk of coins.

My other complaints would be about the snow stage since it's the only anti-completionist stage, a lot of items are a bitch to find and a bitch to grab especially with the sliding sections that you can't climb back other than with the end stage balloon which brings you back to the very beginning of the stage.

I guess that's all, just like Wario Land 4 I don't really have much to say about this one since it's just good, but not good enough for a 5/5 since this game is only 5 hours long... just like Wario Land 4... C'mon Nintendo I need more to play! But the insane replay value of these two games is already good enough.

I was sorely disappointed in my time with this game. Wario World has a very unique and fun proposition as a game and one that I found promising, but the further I went on, the more I became either bored or frustrated. Any sense of enjoyment and satisfaction I had from the game diminished with the progress I made.

It's gameplay is a very simple and intuitive fighting-platform setup, but it's heavily flawed on both angles. Combat amounts to little more than landing hits and succeeding it with a maneuver that will almost immediately clear the surrounding enemies. Positioning is pretty cumbersome, so you cant tactically evade enemies, it usually amounts to pulling out while they play their long attack animations and then you can get back in. That, or enemies will block your attacks repeatedly/overwhelm you with major crowds which don't have any interesting risk or strategy in defeating them other than fenagling 3 hits on one of them and then running away to avoid attacks -> get back in to do one super maneuver. It has absolutely nothing going for it as combat gameplay besides landing those big attacks which are the biggest strength of the game, far and away. It's regrettable that Wario's kit is too limited for any interesting or thoughtful playstyle and that the enemies aren't constructed around it very well either.

The platforming is probably the more frustrating area of the game. In order to clear a level, you have to play through these small box rooms with puzzles or platforming sections (which by the way, why would you completely sideline the main combat gameplay from what's supposed to be progression?) and these have really strange oscillating difficulty, one puzzle in the same level will be way more challenging and tedious than the other, and while I think utilizing action as your means of interaction is a strong pitch, it falls flat when most of it is finding a stupid solution or bashing tiny cubes precisely.

If I had to point at what I think is the largest flaw, it'd probably be the level design. By level 2, you're stopped into spinning enemies to open gates, and then you're jumping on rubber balls with some of the worst platforming ever invented and then you're fighting enemy spawners while nothing happens. The game will introduce jarring mechanics like mirror views and just expect you to perform at your best in that situation. It's got gimmick bosses that are each worse than the last, like the lava bull which you don't even attack or the awful cup matching boss which was what made me quit playing. It's completely thoughtless as to provide an engaging challenge and not frustrate you.

I do think there's strong points in the game's presentation, the visuals are rough but I think they are still a strong art direction, even if they're not particularly unique for the most part. (If you've seen another 2000's action game, you've seen what this looks like.) I do enjoy how it progressively employs more abstract and dangerous/unsettling environments across the game's levels, and in other cases, has ones that are comically augmented to fit the standards of a wario game. The enemy designs are probably my favorite part of the game, I think they're morbid in the best way possible, which is operating on some kind of logic that's still completely bizarre in retrospect. They've also got amazing expressions and, truthfully speaking, some well constructed visual design. I am a fan of the sound for the most part, All your core actions have a fun character and weight to them, and I think they suit the gameplay and elevate the basic feel of the game nicely enough that you'd want to keep playing it. Additionally, The music's incredibly audacious and viscous in any genre that it tackles, and it does really elevate Wario's character during gameplay.

On the whole, I don't know that a lot of what makes this game attractive saves it from how infuriating and tired it can become. I can certainly say that I probably would not have been happy spending 50 dollars on this back in 2003.

What would you do if you were in Wario's world? Would you become his best friend? Would you help him find treasure? Would you become an underpaid employee at his microgame company?

uhhhhhh

So Wario World is a pretty cool game where Wario suplexes every living being in his path. The only problem is that it's super short. You'll beat this one in a few hours max.

A very strange, interesting little game. In a rare statement from me for 2000s era Mario games, I wouldn't say Wario World is very good by most metrics, its a very flawed, fiddly, and occasionally frustrating game, however, this game also just shits soul constantly. It presents itself and what it is with this undeniable, braggadocios swagger that's rare to see in games that's absolutely not present in Mario games nowadays. So assured in what it is, stuffed to the brim with personality, soul, and a fucking whacky asthetic with a godlike OST to boot, this game is just infectious and puts a huge smile on your face all the way through, it truly does carry the experience. Add onto that it's interesting approach to level design, focusing on smaller, but incredibly compact and content stuffed levels, and this feels like a game that I should absolutely adore front to back.

However, it does have some abundant flaws. The game's controls are extremely loose and slippery, and the physicis system is frankly extremely wonky, and the game surprisingly expects a lot of precision platforming in tandem with its poor physics from you, with some of the things the game asks of you in later levels being frankly kind of ridiculous. The combat gets pretty monotonous and tedious throughout the game, with there being little variation in what you do and the enemies not really shaking things up with interesting mechanics until much later on, the main gameplay loop can get relatively tedious.

The smaller, content packed levels are initially pretty fun to traverse through, but frankly I think they're a little TOO overstuffed. There's only around 8 full levels in this game, and each one can take anywhere from 20-40 minutes (or longer!) to 100% complete, which is just frankly absurd. I enjoy levels that are highly compact and reward exploration, but this game kinda overdoes it at points and occasionally containts frustrating segments to navigate and redo. There's much more I could talk about, like how obnoxious some of the bottomless pit recovery minigames are or how some level gimmicks are just unfun, but I've gone on long enough.

While this is definitely one of the rare 2000s Mario games I'd actually consider sort of a dud, and is certainly a disappointment considering Wario's godlike run of games otherwise, I still generally enjoyed my time with it despite its flaws, and would certainly play it over a majority of Mario games released post 2010.

The game is like a very cool road trip where you're enjoying yourself, seeing strange sights, having a grand ol' time but then out of nowhere someone starts ripping some Wario tier farts while the windows are closed. The fart subsides quickly and you go back to enjoying yourself but you swear you can occasionally still catch whiffs of it even after the fact.
What I mean to say with this fart and trip analogy is to say games good but occasionally you start smelling the stinkiness of something (whether it's a specific puzzle(s), some platforming shenanigans or something else) and depending on your tolerance will write the game off as "janky Game Cube era nonsense" or a hidden gem on the system. Truthfully the game is probably somewhere in the middle of both. I just enjoyed it despite the perhaps thematically appropriate stinkiness.