This review contains spoilers
After seeing the recent surge in Wario Land inspired indies - mainly Pizza Tower (which I'm interested in playing sometime soon) and ANTONBLAST - I had a newfound intrigue in playing through these games. I've long heard about how fun and charming they are, but I didn't care much for checking them out until hearing the explosion of praise they're getting as of recent. Of course, I typically try to start from the very beginning when I start a new series, so naturally I began with this one. Thankfully, I was able to snag the whole quadrilogy before the 3DS + Wii U eShop died. Took me some time to beat this one, but its a Game Boy platformer so its not very long. I tried to use as few Restore Points as I could: I beat every level without it, but frankly the last few boss fights were pretty irritating so I used them just to save me the headache. Sorry if that makes me a fake gamer to you, I guess.
I'll jump straight into the gameplay. Wario Land feels like a pretty good successor to the Mario Land series, having the same basic structure as SML2 but shaking things up in a neat way through some of Wario's unique characteristics and a different gameplay focus. Wario has his signature shoulder bash, which has him running forward and knocking out whatever enemy he hits unless they have a weapon in front of them. You get a coin whenever you defeat an enemy with the shoulder bash. He can also pick up enemies and toss them around; if you really want to, you can just throw them around forever and they won't recover, but they only die if you toss them into a hazard (lava, bottomless pit, spikes, etc.) or if you...lodge them into blocks? Yea sometimes when you throw an enemy they just get stuck inside blocks and die that way. The goal in Wario Land is a little different from Mario Land. You're still getting to the end of each level, but, rather than that being the only real focus, Wario Land has you slow down a tad to focus on getting as many coins as you can. There's a bit more of a focus on exploration, with a bunch of treasures you can find (treasure hunting is far from my strong suit though so I only found two of them) and a coin counter that builds up as you gain more wealth. In replacement of the coins usual function of giving you lives, there are hearts you grab that give you a 1-Up when you get 100 of them. I think the focus change is a neat idea and it fits very well with Wario's character, but ultimately didn't feel too impactful or purposeful until literally the very end when your wealth determines what house the Genie gives to Wario. I got the birdhouse - the worst option - because of course I did. I died a lot, and lemme tell you, it's hard to make any bread when you're dying. If I had something to complain about with the gameplay, its that something about it just feels awkward. I'm not sure how to really describe exactly what it is, so instead I'll mention specific complaints. Wario's jumps are very floaty, but there were many times I thought I could go far enough to cross a gap and just couldn't. Usually, you have your dash to help you with going farther, but, when you don't, there are certain sections of the game where you pretty much just have to die and start again since Wario can't dash when he's small and you need to dash at certain parts. This also makes that dragon powerup feel like something you would never actually want because it replaces your dash with the fire breath. Grabbing enemies felt pretty janky to me, there's a few times where Wario just stopped in his tracks and didn't move when I was moving. There's this ghost enemy that functions like a Boo in that it only moves when you turn around, but you can jump on it too and I swear that was so awkward to finagle with. Especially annoying because there's a ghost boss where you need to jump on those ghosts to beat the boss. Any boss where you had to grab something and throw it at them was awful because of how janky the throwing feels. The physics are also just really odd and it can make taking out any enemy that moves around in the air an absolute pain in the neck. Overall I think this set a good precedent for the other Wario Land games, assuming they build off of what this one made, but it does feel pretty clumsy and odd. Surprisingly pretty difficult, too.
There's basically no story at all, so I'm completely skipping the section I'd usually dedicate to that and instead going to aesthetics. Wario Land seems to be very much going for a zany weird style. The Mario Land games were already pretty goofy, so, in my opinion, it only made sense to make the next game in the series make use of one of the Mario series most wacky characters. Wario was even invented by the Mario Land series, so its fitting to have him take the reigns. The music especially goes for a silly goofy sound, with none of it sounding particularly great on its own and rather just existing to elevate the mood. The worlds all have some kind of food related puns in the name (Rice Beach, Mt. Teapot, etc.) and the level design itself usually includes some weird looking enemies that have very expressive cartoony death animations. I think this is pretty neat.
Overall, I don't think Wario Land is all that spectacular, but it has some fun ideas despite its jankiness. It was decently fun to play through and it does have a good amount of content (about 40 levels and 5 bosses if I remember correctly). You might enjoy it more if you're all about finding secret collectibles; I'm not really a treasure hunting fiend myself so I don't mind being stuck with the silly "bad ending". Wario Land gets an alright 3 stars out of me, the game is far from bad but its absolutely carried by the great silly vibes it has and it has some weird issues that sets it back from being a 3.5 stars to me.
I'll jump straight into the gameplay. Wario Land feels like a pretty good successor to the Mario Land series, having the same basic structure as SML2 but shaking things up in a neat way through some of Wario's unique characteristics and a different gameplay focus. Wario has his signature shoulder bash, which has him running forward and knocking out whatever enemy he hits unless they have a weapon in front of them. You get a coin whenever you defeat an enemy with the shoulder bash. He can also pick up enemies and toss them around; if you really want to, you can just throw them around forever and they won't recover, but they only die if you toss them into a hazard (lava, bottomless pit, spikes, etc.) or if you...lodge them into blocks? Yea sometimes when you throw an enemy they just get stuck inside blocks and die that way. The goal in Wario Land is a little different from Mario Land. You're still getting to the end of each level, but, rather than that being the only real focus, Wario Land has you slow down a tad to focus on getting as many coins as you can. There's a bit more of a focus on exploration, with a bunch of treasures you can find (treasure hunting is far from my strong suit though so I only found two of them) and a coin counter that builds up as you gain more wealth. In replacement of the coins usual function of giving you lives, there are hearts you grab that give you a 1-Up when you get 100 of them. I think the focus change is a neat idea and it fits very well with Wario's character, but ultimately didn't feel too impactful or purposeful until literally the very end when your wealth determines what house the Genie gives to Wario. I got the birdhouse - the worst option - because of course I did. I died a lot, and lemme tell you, it's hard to make any bread when you're dying. If I had something to complain about with the gameplay, its that something about it just feels awkward. I'm not sure how to really describe exactly what it is, so instead I'll mention specific complaints. Wario's jumps are very floaty, but there were many times I thought I could go far enough to cross a gap and just couldn't. Usually, you have your dash to help you with going farther, but, when you don't, there are certain sections of the game where you pretty much just have to die and start again since Wario can't dash when he's small and you need to dash at certain parts. This also makes that dragon powerup feel like something you would never actually want because it replaces your dash with the fire breath. Grabbing enemies felt pretty janky to me, there's a few times where Wario just stopped in his tracks and didn't move when I was moving. There's this ghost enemy that functions like a Boo in that it only moves when you turn around, but you can jump on it too and I swear that was so awkward to finagle with. Especially annoying because there's a ghost boss where you need to jump on those ghosts to beat the boss. Any boss where you had to grab something and throw it at them was awful because of how janky the throwing feels. The physics are also just really odd and it can make taking out any enemy that moves around in the air an absolute pain in the neck. Overall I think this set a good precedent for the other Wario Land games, assuming they build off of what this one made, but it does feel pretty clumsy and odd. Surprisingly pretty difficult, too.
There's basically no story at all, so I'm completely skipping the section I'd usually dedicate to that and instead going to aesthetics. Wario Land seems to be very much going for a zany weird style. The Mario Land games were already pretty goofy, so, in my opinion, it only made sense to make the next game in the series make use of one of the Mario series most wacky characters. Wario was even invented by the Mario Land series, so its fitting to have him take the reigns. The music especially goes for a silly goofy sound, with none of it sounding particularly great on its own and rather just existing to elevate the mood. The worlds all have some kind of food related puns in the name (Rice Beach, Mt. Teapot, etc.) and the level design itself usually includes some weird looking enemies that have very expressive cartoony death animations. I think this is pretty neat.
Overall, I don't think Wario Land is all that spectacular, but it has some fun ideas despite its jankiness. It was decently fun to play through and it does have a good amount of content (about 40 levels and 5 bosses if I remember correctly). You might enjoy it more if you're all about finding secret collectibles; I'm not really a treasure hunting fiend myself so I don't mind being stuck with the silly "bad ending". Wario Land gets an alright 3 stars out of me, the game is far from bad but its absolutely carried by the great silly vibes it has and it has some weird issues that sets it back from being a 3.5 stars to me.