HEARTBREAKING: World's coolest game is unfortunately not very good

I've always been a fan of all the Treasure games I played, and honestly I've always been a fan of Wario, love that guy, so when I recently was shown the manual for this game, which is all written by the man himself (highlights include him literally just being too lazy to explain how formatting a Memory Card works, always playing without Stereo sound because his ears get confused easily and generally just gassing himself up all the time) I decided I'd go and give Wario World a shot.

And initial impressions of this game are great, it's got such a manic personality, way unlike any other 'tendo game I've played, even among those featuring the big man himself. Wario's always shouting weird one liners (HAVE A RRRROTTEN DAY!) or just laughing his ass off, you love to see a king genuinely enjoying himself. It's not the best looking Gamecube game but every level has its own style and enemies consistently look very bizarre, with some bosses being downright unhinged (Shoutouts to big baby wind spirit man who uses psychic powers to stun you and then enters your body to inflate you from the inside). Combat is simple but at least satisfying and very much does carry that Wario energy in just picking people up and swinging them around however you please.

It's sort of a collectathon? Levels are linear but big and dense with secrets, and you need to find at least a few of them to access the boss at the end. Each of them can take upwards of half an hour which is good because there's only 8 in the whole game. The real problem is that even with how short it is Wario World ends up feeling repetitive real fast. In the beginning it's not so bad because it's very rapid-paced, but as the levels stretch out and become more difficult (well, they stay very easy, but completing them takes longer and 100%ing often requires a few replays) it becomes pretty clear that there isn't really anything to the game. Bosses are consistently fun and creative, as are the bite-sized platforming challenges that hold the boss keys, but the core loop of Wario World is just... doing shit, I guess? It's too simple to be fun without 100% completion but it doesn't really make that either interesting or smooth enough for it to be something you'll want to go out of your way to do. Doesn't help that a lot of things seem to be designed to be minor time-wasters, probably to help pad out the game length just a bit.