I just finished Woolly World after powering through a string of the Yoshi games, and man - there was a lot of mediocre there, but with Woolly World, I'm not seeing it. I was reading some old thread on here with some topic like "Why can't Nintendo make a good sequel to Yoshi's Island???" and it's mind-blowing how people seem to ignore this game - literally because it doesn't have "Island" in its name, or it's got a Yarn aesthetic, or whatever. If we can't parse good games because they're not literally named "<series> <x + 1>", we don't deserve good games.
This game has essentially the entire core of Yoshi's Island. 6 Worlds. Egg throwing mechanics. The exact same batch of collectibles, plus more. You've got Baby Bowser, Kamek, you've got vehicle transformation sections, you've got keys, you've got Chomp Rocks, you have Shy Guys, you have Watermelons, you have Poochy, etc., etc., it's all here. I'm reading Super Mario Wiki and they cordon it off to some separate "Yoshi (platform series)" section from the Yoshi's Island games, and I'm just rolling my eyes. The fundamental difference here is there's no Baby Mario, and honesty - this is what everyone wanted. The "Baby Mario as health" mechanic was never not frustrating and obnoxious at its core, in audio and mechanically. Woolly World streamlines it to basic health in the most faithful way, and actually makes the game more difficult for it - you don't regenerate health like in the original Yoshi's Island, and you can actually be a single hit from death and consider enemies as a threat. That's like the opposite of modern Nintendo sawing off the pointy edges.
Yoshi's Island ain't untouchable. Woolly World makes piles of mechanical QoL improvements, like to that health system, and crucially the collectibles. The collectibles are the meat and potatoes of Yoshi's Island. It's not a hard game - you can barely die - it only gets hard when you have to collect things, take risks, spend longer time in the levels and risk losing it all. But Yoshi's Island treats it as a bizarre all-or-nothing - collect every item, or you wasted your time. And the levels do nothing to help that goal - you get trapped constantly after points-of-no-return. Woolly World, while letting you save every collectible you got when you finish a level, also does the UI miracle of tracking which collectibles you got in order, rather than just something like a 5/5 count. If you pick up the third flower in a level without collecting the second, you can actually weigh if it's worth going back and scouring the level before exiting a section, and at least you'll have an idea where it is next time.
Honestly, this is the sort of stuff I'd never expect to see in a mainstream review, even when it matters a ton to the experience. But even then, you've got people decrying how "unoriginal", or even "uncreative", or god forbid, "soulless" this game is. It's just a derivative, they say. It'll never match the originality of Yoshi's Island ... why can't they make another Yoshi's Island??? And I dunno, these people are insane. Woolly World, thanks in part to its Yarn aesthetic, has piles of original ideas. It's more of what you liked, plus more. And the plus more is no slouch.
You ain't got any levels like these in Yoshi's Island. If you look at these and go "I dunno what I'm looking at", well, you need to go play Yoshi's Woolly World, a game with tons of solid creativity. I'm not sure what people expect. They want a new Yoshi's Island, but if they see too much they recognize, it's just not fresh enough. Too derivative. SOULLESS. I'm not sure what you people want. It's all here.
One of the most obvious things I could see people rag in the DS/3DS Yoshi's Island sequels was how they were also audio-visually inferior. That's kind of without debate. They each have about a single decent music track to their names, and their art style is passable but not really comparable.
But Woolly World doesn't have that problem. It might not have the SNES producing its finest pixel art and chiptastic tunes, but instead it goes back to that original creativity of Yoshi's Island and essentially invents its own art style: the Yarn aesthetic is indisputably beautiful and creative, and even better, it complements the level design. It's what we want, right?! We want inventiveness! We want soul! It's here. The game wants to love you. Some art designer somewhere put their heart into this. But it will never be enough.
And the musical tracks are incredibly solid. It might not be chiptune, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It goes its own way, and doesn't slouch with it. You've got vibes for days. Yoshi's Island is a vibe and Yoshi's Woolly World is a vibe.
And there's piles of other little things that make it its own. Like how you can flutter jump to infinity, which sounds bad, but this is the pathos of a game that made dying from enemies a bump and not the curtain. Simultaneously giving some forgiving to the the sudden obnoxious instant deaths of falling off a stage and losing all your collectibles, it's also a kind of technical move for "pro" players. You might find it trivial to float indefinitely, but this is a Yoshi game - I doubt your 8 year old child can pull it off to the degree you can. And the level designs can be built around that. Use that to your advantage. Take some risks. Even better, a variety of natural difficulty options also exist for young players without bothering the core gameplay. They even intertwine with it, removing the nearly useless "lives" mechanic, another whatever idea from Yoshi's Island, and give "coins" a new purpose, to massage the difficulty in much more direct way if you so choose. It's an adaption of the inventory system that the handheld games lack, and again, Woolly World apes it with aplomb, with its own mixture.
The level design is even intelligent using the power of these high fidelity yarn designs and the classic coin patterns of old and so on, in hiding off-screen secrets with subtle indications - walls you can pass through or scrunch, invisible egg clouds, clues to the pro, the trained eye, it's all there. No one was asleep at the wheel here.
It's all just icing on cake - co-operative play, unlockable Yoshi designs, and (optional) motion controls just enhance the experience in subtle but fundamental ways. This is a game with features, not gimmicks.
I can't say I'm hyped for Yoshi's Crafted World reviews. Piles more "oh, woe, why can Nintendo not match Yoshi's Island? I don't feel the magic, the soul, the I-can't-say-what. Why won't Nintendo just stay in their lane, and simultaneously do it all fresh?" Yoshi's Island diehards will be waiting forever, for the true, proper game that Miyamoto himself squirts his special sauce all over. Maybe, because, in the end, the "magic" is just magic - a time and a place, and that's not going to happen again. You've been nostalgia'd. It's with you forever. Poo-poo that you don't like the marginally slower paced Woolly World platforming physics, or somehow think the Yarn aesthetic is just whatever, but don't come at me with your magical soul of secret sauce criticisms and how nobody is smart enough to get Yoshi's Island right. It's here. It's been done. You're not gonna get any closer without a romhack or pray Nintendo pulls a Mega Man 9. That'd be rad, but there's no point yelling B-TEAM here. Enjoy video games. Please and thanks. Cool.
This game has essentially the entire core of Yoshi's Island. 6 Worlds. Egg throwing mechanics. The exact same batch of collectibles, plus more. You've got Baby Bowser, Kamek, you've got vehicle transformation sections, you've got keys, you've got Chomp Rocks, you have Shy Guys, you have Watermelons, you have Poochy, etc., etc., it's all here. I'm reading Super Mario Wiki and they cordon it off to some separate "Yoshi (platform series)" section from the Yoshi's Island games, and I'm just rolling my eyes. The fundamental difference here is there's no Baby Mario, and honesty - this is what everyone wanted. The "Baby Mario as health" mechanic was never not frustrating and obnoxious at its core, in audio and mechanically. Woolly World streamlines it to basic health in the most faithful way, and actually makes the game more difficult for it - you don't regenerate health like in the original Yoshi's Island, and you can actually be a single hit from death and consider enemies as a threat. That's like the opposite of modern Nintendo sawing off the pointy edges.
Yoshi's Island ain't untouchable. Woolly World makes piles of mechanical QoL improvements, like to that health system, and crucially the collectibles. The collectibles are the meat and potatoes of Yoshi's Island. It's not a hard game - you can barely die - it only gets hard when you have to collect things, take risks, spend longer time in the levels and risk losing it all. But Yoshi's Island treats it as a bizarre all-or-nothing - collect every item, or you wasted your time. And the levels do nothing to help that goal - you get trapped constantly after points-of-no-return. Woolly World, while letting you save every collectible you got when you finish a level, also does the UI miracle of tracking which collectibles you got in order, rather than just something like a 5/5 count. If you pick up the third flower in a level without collecting the second, you can actually weigh if it's worth going back and scouring the level before exiting a section, and at least you'll have an idea where it is next time.
Honestly, this is the sort of stuff I'd never expect to see in a mainstream review, even when it matters a ton to the experience. But even then, you've got people decrying how "unoriginal", or even "uncreative", or god forbid, "soulless" this game is. It's just a derivative, they say. It'll never match the originality of Yoshi's Island ... why can't they make another Yoshi's Island??? And I dunno, these people are insane. Woolly World, thanks in part to its Yarn aesthetic, has piles of original ideas. It's more of what you liked, plus more. And the plus more is no slouch.
You ain't got any levels like these in Yoshi's Island. If you look at these and go "I dunno what I'm looking at", well, you need to go play Yoshi's Woolly World, a game with tons of solid creativity. I'm not sure what people expect. They want a new Yoshi's Island, but if they see too much they recognize, it's just not fresh enough. Too derivative. SOULLESS. I'm not sure what you people want. It's all here.
One of the most obvious things I could see people rag in the DS/3DS Yoshi's Island sequels was how they were also audio-visually inferior. That's kind of without debate. They each have about a single decent music track to their names, and their art style is passable but not really comparable.
But Woolly World doesn't have that problem. It might not have the SNES producing its finest pixel art and chiptastic tunes, but instead it goes back to that original creativity of Yoshi's Island and essentially invents its own art style: the Yarn aesthetic is indisputably beautiful and creative, and even better, it complements the level design. It's what we want, right?! We want inventiveness! We want soul! It's here. The game wants to love you. Some art designer somewhere put their heart into this. But it will never be enough.
And the musical tracks are incredibly solid. It might not be chiptune, but I wouldn't have it any other way. It goes its own way, and doesn't slouch with it. You've got vibes for days. Yoshi's Island is a vibe and Yoshi's Woolly World is a vibe.
And there's piles of other little things that make it its own. Like how you can flutter jump to infinity, which sounds bad, but this is the pathos of a game that made dying from enemies a bump and not the curtain. Simultaneously giving some forgiving to the the sudden obnoxious instant deaths of falling off a stage and losing all your collectibles, it's also a kind of technical move for "pro" players. You might find it trivial to float indefinitely, but this is a Yoshi game - I doubt your 8 year old child can pull it off to the degree you can. And the level designs can be built around that. Use that to your advantage. Take some risks. Even better, a variety of natural difficulty options also exist for young players without bothering the core gameplay. They even intertwine with it, removing the nearly useless "lives" mechanic, another whatever idea from Yoshi's Island, and give "coins" a new purpose, to massage the difficulty in much more direct way if you so choose. It's an adaption of the inventory system that the handheld games lack, and again, Woolly World apes it with aplomb, with its own mixture.
The level design is even intelligent using the power of these high fidelity yarn designs and the classic coin patterns of old and so on, in hiding off-screen secrets with subtle indications - walls you can pass through or scrunch, invisible egg clouds, clues to the pro, the trained eye, it's all there. No one was asleep at the wheel here.
It's all just icing on cake - co-operative play, unlockable Yoshi designs, and (optional) motion controls just enhance the experience in subtle but fundamental ways. This is a game with features, not gimmicks.
I can't say I'm hyped for Yoshi's Crafted World reviews. Piles more "oh, woe, why can Nintendo not match Yoshi's Island? I don't feel the magic, the soul, the I-can't-say-what. Why won't Nintendo just stay in their lane, and simultaneously do it all fresh?" Yoshi's Island diehards will be waiting forever, for the true, proper game that Miyamoto himself squirts his special sauce all over. Maybe, because, in the end, the "magic" is just magic - a time and a place, and that's not going to happen again. You've been nostalgia'd. It's with you forever. Poo-poo that you don't like the marginally slower paced Woolly World platforming physics, or somehow think the Yarn aesthetic is just whatever, but don't come at me with your magical soul of secret sauce criticisms and how nobody is smart enough to get Yoshi's Island right. It's here. It's been done. You're not gonna get any closer without a romhack or pray Nintendo pulls a Mega Man 9. That'd be rad, but there's no point yelling B-TEAM here. Enjoy video games. Please and thanks. Cool.
