cycycychris

User Score
6.0

Presentation - 9.5
Gameplay - 4.5
Value - 6.5

Yoshi Woolly World is the latest entry into the Yoshi series of games. With this being my 1st ever Yoshi game I’ve played (well, ones where he is the main character), I came in with a particular interest on what this series is like. Which there is a lot of interesting new ideas I found in this game, but sadly they all didn’t come together to be a great game.

Like most Nintendo game, Yoshi features no story… It has the usual bad guy comes in, takes something and the protagonist must come in and save the day… But at the end of the day, a 2D platformer is all about the gameplay.

I must say the presentation of this game is spot on and the yarn look of the world is amazing. Other than the background (which is a curtain), each element of the world is made up or yarn. But the graphics sadly can’t out do some of the blunders of this game. I'll first start with the gameplay, and I must say the mechanics are solid. With the new gameplay gimmick being the use of yarn balls. Yoshi is able to eat up yarn enemies and turn them into yarn balls or interact with elements in the environment to obtain yarn balls. With the yarn balls, you are able to open new ways of gameplay that should expand the game, and they really do. You use them to make platforms appear, to stun enemies, open cloud and more. So it’s a very solid gimmick. And it makes for a very unique experience for a game. They also kept the classic yoshi hovering in this game, no surprise.

The level design in this game I thought was rather interesting and they did a great job of mixing things up. Each level you went to seemed to be different from the last, whether it was adding in the elements of shadows, or swinging around on strings of yarn, Next was a classic platformer, and then onto a bit more of an open world design, I felt like it added something fresh each level. But they didn’t have much of a puzzle feel to them, rather to just go at your own pace to the finish line.

They did try to add in a bit of puzzle elements to the game by putting in yarn containers and flowers to look for, each level featuring 5 of each. I went for all them every level I played, which did put a bit of replay value in these levels and a bit more exploring element to the game. And they do reward you with costumes and miiverse stamps if you complete these collectathons, so there's motivation given to try and find them all. It just depends if you really want to play the level again. But one of the saddest things about this game is that finding the stars and yarn containers is probably the only challenge you will face.

But this is sadly where we get to the bad news, the game is extremely slow moving, easy and in all honesty… it’s boring to play alone. I think one of the huge issues with the game is that it’s hard to create a challenging level when Yoshi is able to hover such far distances and be able to stun and kill enemies very easily. This creates a bit of challenge for the developer to make a game that is nothing but leaps of prayers, and trying to make it doable for the casuals. I think this is the biggest issue that came up on why I found these level so boring to play alone.

I found myself having a little fun when I played with my friend in 2 players. It created a bit more entertainment since we could compete with each other on who gets to eat the next enemy, or who gets to do the next task. It was always a good laugh when we both had no yarn balls left and one of us had to get turned into a yarn ball to throw at the area that needed to be filled in. So we had to try and eat the other person before they notice or tried to eat you.

So, I must say that we had some fun in multiplayer, but when I asked him if he wanted to go back and try a level again to see if we can find that one piece of yarn we missed, we both agree on no normally. We both felt no need to go try again and by the end, we were grinding to finish the game. The issues still remained that the game is painfully easy.

What made it even worse is that the final boss of a world is something that your supposed to really look forwards, they really are supposed to be the highlight of a the world. But the bosses in Woolly World weren’t the highlight, they weren’t even good. They took little effort to kill and were so easy. We rarely felt challenged by them. And the final boss battle was extremely disappointing; there was no challenge in that battle.

One thing I will say that we loved is the little mini game Yoshi level within a level, in these Yoshi turns into a mermaid, an umbrella, motorcycle and more. They were really fun to play. They were fast paced, action pack, and had a level of difficulty. We both got excited every time we saw the door to one of them. But one downside to them is that the framerate took a huge hit during those level, the drops could get to slide show feeling at a times. And sadly these framerate problems don’t just exist in the mini games but in the real levels too. Quite a few can have some serious drops in frame rate and one level was consistently bad framerate that I have no idea how Nintendo approved it.