For the longest time I refused to acknowledge this as a "Mario game" because it barely has anything in common with them aside from the annoying little shit screeching every time I so much as graze a thorn bush. Alas, it does share more similarities with traditional Mario games than I'd wanted it to, mainly in how little music there actually is. What music it has is typically very good, but by area 3 I was getting tired of it.
There's also some really janky interactions like if an enemy hits me and makes me spin, I'll stop at the ledge, only for Yoshi to go flying off the side at mach 3 once he's actionable again, sending me plummeting to my death.
It also has some of the worst mandatory autoscrollers I've ever seen in a 2D platformer, one of which has almost no checkpoints at all in the part that matters.
It also gives SMB3 and SMW a run for their money for most pathetic bosses, with the potted one in particular feeling less like a boss and more like a deliberate joke, whereupon entering I immediately held right, and just held right, and before I knew it the fight was over. Just hold the one input. :|
That's all for outright negatives, a more middlig thing to me is just the pacing of the game difficulty/level design-wise. It feels like it does next to nothing for the entire first half of the game, then when you get to world 4 there's a massive difficulty spike into the realm of what I'd have expected 2 worlds earlier, then another spike in 5-6 that feels borderline unfair at times. I can't imagine going for the 100% in this legitimately.
On the brighter side of things, I fucking love Yoshi. I'm probably the only freak on this planet who outright would rather play Yoshi's Story over Island any day of the week purely because it feels even more Yoshi-centric and heartwarming and bubbly and whimsical and more fluffy buzzwords etc. But my love does extend to this, it shares a lot of that same aura.
It should go without saying but the visual design is masterful (barring red coins being evil to find sometimes, the only outright bad choice imo), like every aspect of it. Visually it is probably my favorite SNES title alongside Super Mario RPG.
The audio design was really goofy to me, seeing sounds from SMW reused in different contexts felt so alien but gradually I not only got used to them but loved them.
I felt pretty ready to be extra mean and give this a 6 by the end of it, mainly because the game is very long in the tooth while dragging its feet for difficulty, a huge fuck-you to "The Very Loooooong Cave" in particular, which I would have appreciated as a joke in like world 3 but not near the very end of the game in world 6 :(; but the reason I'm settling in with a 7 and have half a mind to bump to an 8 is because of the final boss and credits, mostly the latter. This is top 20~ credits for me probably, tugging on strings I thought only Yoshi's Story could do in the face of such wholesomeness.
There's also some really janky interactions like if an enemy hits me and makes me spin, I'll stop at the ledge, only for Yoshi to go flying off the side at mach 3 once he's actionable again, sending me plummeting to my death.
It also has some of the worst mandatory autoscrollers I've ever seen in a 2D platformer, one of which has almost no checkpoints at all in the part that matters.
It also gives SMB3 and SMW a run for their money for most pathetic bosses, with the potted one in particular feeling less like a boss and more like a deliberate joke, whereupon entering I immediately held right, and just held right, and before I knew it the fight was over. Just hold the one input. :|
That's all for outright negatives, a more middlig thing to me is just the pacing of the game difficulty/level design-wise. It feels like it does next to nothing for the entire first half of the game, then when you get to world 4 there's a massive difficulty spike into the realm of what I'd have expected 2 worlds earlier, then another spike in 5-6 that feels borderline unfair at times. I can't imagine going for the 100% in this legitimately.
On the brighter side of things, I fucking love Yoshi. I'm probably the only freak on this planet who outright would rather play Yoshi's Story over Island any day of the week purely because it feels even more Yoshi-centric and heartwarming and bubbly and whimsical and more fluffy buzzwords etc. But my love does extend to this, it shares a lot of that same aura.
It should go without saying but the visual design is masterful (barring red coins being evil to find sometimes, the only outright bad choice imo), like every aspect of it. Visually it is probably my favorite SNES title alongside Super Mario RPG.
The audio design was really goofy to me, seeing sounds from SMW reused in different contexts felt so alien but gradually I not only got used to them but loved them.
I felt pretty ready to be extra mean and give this a 6 by the end of it, mainly because the game is very long in the tooth while dragging its feet for difficulty, a huge fuck-you to "The Very Loooooong Cave" in particular, which I would have appreciated as a joke in like world 3 but not near the very end of the game in world 6 :(; but the reason I'm settling in with a 7 and have half a mind to bump to an 8 is because of the final boss and credits, mostly the latter. This is top 20~ credits for me probably, tugging on strings I thought only Yoshi's Story could do in the face of such wholesomeness.