Yoshi's Island is like a game that has everything in the right place, inventive level design, very good length for a platformer, the beloved art style, a catchy soundtrack and a bunch of unique abilities from Yoshi himself like the egg making and throwing and the occasional transformations.
So it's a shame that as you say there isn't much flow to jumping around as Yoshi himself, playing Yoshi's Island like a normal platformer rids you of most of the fun, if you were to speed through a stage as fast as possible bouncing across enmeies heads like you would in a 2D Mario you'd miss out on most of what's there because exploring is the name of the game. This sets up a different goal, Yoshi's Island to me never felt like a game where you try to overcome the stage design itself to reach the finish (well okay there is that but it's mostly non life threatening in the long run), it felt like an exploration based platformer where you try to get as high a score as possible, such a point I believe is hit further home by how Yoshi can take endless amounts of damage (spikes and lava being the exception) and the regaining of Baby Mario becomes the priority which is easily done.
To me Yoshi's Island is better compared to the Wario land games (after 1) than the main Mario series, they have a lot more in common. Judging by their work with Wario Land Shake it and Kirby's Epic Yarn i'd say that Good Feel are an excellent fit for a Yoshi game, Epic Yarn actually feels pretty close to a Yoshi style game, point collecting, transformations, unique art style, rewards exploring the stages and even Kirby's lasso and throwing is like a spin on Yoshi's tongue and the egg system albeit much simpler.
Really this post is basically me saying, yeah it's a great game but as a pure platformer it's a bit on the overrated side.
I think that's a good point, that Wario Land and Kirby's Epic Yarn are better comparisons.
The thing is, I
love those games. I don't mind the slower pace and more of a focus on exploring - I mean damn, my favorite series is Metroid. I don't mind that you're not bouncing from enemy to enemy Mario style. Even though they do something similar, I feel like they do it far better. I guess there are probably a few reasons for that.
- Wario and Kirby just
feel better to control. They move a bit quicker and jump a bit higher and have no momentum killing flutter jump. They don't come to a dead stop when you jump on enemies.
- I feel like Yoshi's egg mechanic kills a lot of momentum. Stopping to knock a bunch of eggs out of a block or eat a bunch of infinitely spawning Shy Guys just to fill up your eggs isn't fun. I also don't care for constantly stopping to aim and throw eggs.
- Collecting things is more fun. I find no enjoyment in collecting coins in Yoshi. I'm only collecting them because they might be red coins, and I'm just annoyed when they're not. In Wario or Kirby, I'm super excited to collect coins because I want that number to go as high as possible so I can get the secondary goals at the end of the level.
- Finding secrets is more fun. In Yoshi, many secrets are just a matter of touching the right corner of the level and making a a ? cloud appear. In Wario and Kirby, I feel like I was particularly clever and observant when I find a nice secret.
- Levels offer more visual variety. Yoshi has a nice art style, but there are only like three or four different level themes that are repeated throughout the whole game, and many of them look very similar to each other. Whereas Wario and Kirby try to give every level a unique theme.
- Getting hit doesn't make a goddamn baby start crying while you try to grab the damn thing. You get hit, you lose some coins, try to collect what you can before they disappear, and that's that. Yet another example of Yoshi needlessly killing your momentum.
I'm sorry, have you beaten the game including all of the bonus levels?
Years ago. Though I never unlocked all the bonus levels because getting 100% on regular levels was so astoundingly tedious. It's like the worst aspects of a Rare collectathon before Rare even got into the collectathon business.
Every time I've tried replaying it since then, I've gotten bored in the second world.
