A massive change to the original with great ideas mixed with awful level design and pacing.
Gone now is the Mario bros style platforming the original changed it all for a more puzzle-styled platformer with the goal of either reaching the end door or killing X enemies usually at the end of a puzzle maze. On paper, this idea isn't too bad but when the game has 50+ stages it becomes a massive chore to go through them, and worst of all is that all of the stages suck! They are just big mazes with each room looking like the last one!
I'd like to say that the main new gimmick is the transformations but the game itself is a new gimmick compared to the original, but the most important change is that you can no longer die, all you do is lose coins when damaged by dangerous enemies or like Wario Land 2 and 3 get transformed into something usually to solve some puzzles but in this game, they mostly are just here to fuck you over.
About coins, this game removed all type of Mario-style item blocks since this game have no powerups so all of the coins are usually found by exploring the stage and breaking invisible walls. I actually like this sense of exploration and giving the incentive to find secrets, my only issue with it is that the coins are useless! Not literally useless but all they do is feed this awful gimmick minigame found in each stage that makes playing a stage 10 times more stressful.
The treasure-hunting part of the game. Each of the 50+ stages has a secret door leading to a minigame room for Matching games, It's irritating how it's the same damn minigame every time and the sole purpose of the coins is to select a difficulty (difficulty change how long you can see the cards) so the more difficult it is the cheaper it is. The coins don't even matter for the ending of the game, unlike the two previous entries and it's not the only minigame in this game as there is another one that plays after each stage to get one bit of the treasure map for the true ending, it's just a dumb guessing game and again it's the same minigame after each stage.
I honestly have no idea if the treasure in the game matter since I think you only need the treasure map to get the true ending, it makes me mad because I bothered playing through the fucking matching game 50+ times and looking for that secret door on each stage.
The positive point I'd like to mention is the flowchart, it's a pretty cool gimmick in itself but I'm not sure if I like it in a Wario game but for a 1998 game it's pretty dope. You can get a total of 5 endings and a true one, the endings are obtained by finding a secret entrance in a stage and usually getting 5 levels to get to the secret end.
This is the black sheep of the franchise, it's awfully boring and totally broke what Wario Land virtual boy had started with the quality over quantity stages. Even though the road was a damn rocky one to get to Wario Land 4 I'm glad this game tried something different from the original and let us have the perfect fourth entry.
Gone now is the Mario bros style platforming the original changed it all for a more puzzle-styled platformer with the goal of either reaching the end door or killing X enemies usually at the end of a puzzle maze. On paper, this idea isn't too bad but when the game has 50+ stages it becomes a massive chore to go through them, and worst of all is that all of the stages suck! They are just big mazes with each room looking like the last one!
I'd like to say that the main new gimmick is the transformations but the game itself is a new gimmick compared to the original, but the most important change is that you can no longer die, all you do is lose coins when damaged by dangerous enemies or like Wario Land 2 and 3 get transformed into something usually to solve some puzzles but in this game, they mostly are just here to fuck you over.
About coins, this game removed all type of Mario-style item blocks since this game have no powerups so all of the coins are usually found by exploring the stage and breaking invisible walls. I actually like this sense of exploration and giving the incentive to find secrets, my only issue with it is that the coins are useless! Not literally useless but all they do is feed this awful gimmick minigame found in each stage that makes playing a stage 10 times more stressful.
The treasure-hunting part of the game. Each of the 50+ stages has a secret door leading to a minigame room for Matching games, It's irritating how it's the same damn minigame every time and the sole purpose of the coins is to select a difficulty (difficulty change how long you can see the cards) so the more difficult it is the cheaper it is. The coins don't even matter for the ending of the game, unlike the two previous entries and it's not the only minigame in this game as there is another one that plays after each stage to get one bit of the treasure map for the true ending, it's just a dumb guessing game and again it's the same minigame after each stage.
I honestly have no idea if the treasure in the game matter since I think you only need the treasure map to get the true ending, it makes me mad because I bothered playing through the fucking matching game 50+ times and looking for that secret door on each stage.
The positive point I'd like to mention is the flowchart, it's a pretty cool gimmick in itself but I'm not sure if I like it in a Wario game but for a 1998 game it's pretty dope. You can get a total of 5 endings and a true one, the endings are obtained by finding a secret entrance in a stage and usually getting 5 levels to get to the secret end.
This is the black sheep of the franchise, it's awfully boring and totally broke what Wario Land virtual boy had started with the quality over quantity stages. Even though the road was a damn rocky one to get to Wario Land 4 I'm glad this game tried something different from the original and let us have the perfect fourth entry.