While it might not have the polish of link to the past, oracle of ages has such a magic to it that it surpasses every previous game in the franchise for me. With a fairly limited map it gives me the Hyrule that so far in my Zelda journey I've most enjoyed exploring. The characters have so much personality, the various groups that live here are all so distinct and well implemented. It also gives you really unique things to do that extend past the classic trading quests (although they don't go away), one stand out for me is the Goron dance, essentially briefly turning the game into a rythm game and it's fun as hell. Another section I absolutely adore is when you wash up on Cresent island and you have all the belongings you've acquired up to this point stolen, it makes for a really memorable puzzle and hammers home exactly how certain abilities need to be used. It's not a perfect game, there's some annoying design to be found and I haven't played the linked game stuff so I can't fully comment on that, but I just loved my time with this game so much. Also it has moosh in it

First things first this game is so cute, the art style is lovely and I think it looks great. Playing as Yoshi is always fun and I enjoy the basic mechanics and the way he controls but that's kind of where the positives stop. The baby switching mechanic is cool in theory but it's really underused and when it is used the implementation isn't great, the actual switching itself feeling a bit clunky. The original Yoshi's Island is great and full of creative level design whereas there's not much memorable here, and the ones that stand out in my mind stand out for having needlessly frustrating segments. This especially goes for the auto-scroll levels which are way too common and add nothing of value, the auto-scroll just slows the pace and adds to frustration, my main example was on one level where you have to descend in a cave but the screen moves at such a slow pace I ended up dying from going off the screen way too many times when I knew a platform was just underneath me.

I wish the gameplay was more fun in this because I think it's such a cute game and love Yoshi but I don't know this just isn't something I enjoyed playing.

Insanely great expansion pack that does everything you could not an expansion would do in terms of building on what the base game (and it's older expansions) get right and get wrong, keeping the high points and adjusting the things that hold it back. The highlight is definitely the level design which is a huge improvement on the base game, there's a great amount of variety and creativity that makes every level memorable in a way the original game doesn't have. Ruined earth is a major highlight but I want to shout out corpse runner for while not being as aesthetically interesting has some really great moments that again is something the base game just doesn't have. The weapon selection is great, taking the best of the previous dlc and cutting out the lackluster ones and unlike the previous dlc it gets raising the difficulty right, it's hard for sure but never feels unfair, I think largely a benefit of modern game design. The reason I can't quite give it a perfect score is the final boss leaves a sour taste in my mouth, it just reuses bosses from previous levels in a very bland arena that just wasn't very fun. But aside from that unfortunate ending this is a near perfect expansion to a game I already loved.

A much much shorter but I'd say streamlined version of the game. While not beating out the PC original, the gunplay still feels good and the level design at time works even better due to the changes with the mission system making the levels shorter and cutting anything unnecessary. Undoubtedly too much is cut, and the atmosphere of much of the design is lost due to the different colouring and graphical changes making it a clearly worse version of the game, but it's still really good fun and a different shorter experience that stands on its own

Massive downgrade from the main game, the level design sticks largely to big brown interconnected rooms that feel nebulous to explore (thank god for the compass), the new weapons are not much to write home about, the little black hole launcher was fun to use but the rest felt completely inconsequential. Add onto that the enemy placement being hellish, just spamming flying enemies and turrets in almost every room as well as those bullet sponge medics being all over the place towards the end make for an incredibly frustrating experience. I'd also like to mention that the final boss, although I'm grateful it was a new design was incredibly easy in comparison to the rest of the expansion, I beat it super quick without dying and I died a lot with this thing.

I only finished it to get the achievement