Yoshi’s Story is one of the few first party Nintendo games from larger franchises (Kirby 64, Wario World) that I never really played or was really familiar with at all. All I really knew about it for the longest time was there was a stage based off of it in Melee and the music was catchy. After having played it now, its pretty average. Gorgeous art style that kept up with the trend the Yoshi Series would carry on, but id have to imagine this being kind of a disappointing game back in 1999 as a sequel to Yoshi’s Island (though pretty much all Yoshi games are disappointing compared to the original Yoshi’s Island). A regular story mode run through will last under an hour, and though the point is definitely to replay and get all the levels / preform different runs, your milage my vary. I personally did 2 full playthroughs, playing 12 different levels. Once I started my 3rd and got to the second world and saw that I needed to unlock the other levels by grinding my current ones, I lost interest and called it for the game. Thats a typical problem with Yoshi games, that sometimes it becomes a little too dependent on finding collectables. Otherwise, the levels are creative and constantly feel fresh from one another, the fruit mechanic is pretty unique and adds some weird stratagies in harder levels. The controls suck though, compared to Yoshi’s Island, these feel like your on ice constantly in the air and on the ground. Overall, not a bad way to spend a fall or winter night if you wanna do a single run through and then not really have to think about it the next day.