Game Info
Game Name: Yoshi’s Crafted World
Developer(s): Good-Feel
Publisher(s): Nintendo
Platform(s): Switch
Genre(s): Action/Adventure/Platformer
Release Date(s): March 29, 2019
ESRB Rating: E
Yoshi’s version of Super Punch Out
The Sundream Stone shines over Yoshi’s Island and makes the land warm and bright. When Baby Bowser learns that the Sundream Stone has the potential to fulfill the owner’s wildest dreams, he and Kamek set out to steal it…but instead send the gems scattering across the island. It is up to Yoshi and his brothers to retrieve the gems and restore the Sundream Stone before it is too late.
Developed by Good-Feel and published by Nintendo, Yoshi’s Crafted World is a side-scrolling platformer. Following Yoshi’s Woolly World in 2015, the game was released for the Nintendo Switch and received positive reviews.
The Yoshi games are always a bit iffy for me. I like some of their creativity, but in general, the challenge level of the games isn’t that hard. Unlike a story driven game, you are essentially playing it to play it…and occasionally, the game does things to be real creative, but it doesn’t necessarily feel compelling.
Burt the Ball, we’re coming for you!
The game is typical Mario filtered through Yoshi wish Yoshi trying to collect lost gems on Yoshi Island’s and Baby Bowser and Kamek dogging them the entire way. The Yoshi games are slick and intuitive, but they are also not to the level of difficulty of New Super Mario or Donkey Kong games. I wish that between Yoshi-Kirby-Mario-Donkey Kong that Nintendo would find a nice happy medium side scroller that doesn’t bore nor makes you want to pull you hair out.
The controls for the game are pretty consistent with other Yoshi games and are easy to master. With the “hover jump”, it is much easy to save yourself and accuracy isn’t a priority. The game varies control gameplay by having levels where Yoshi’s movements control cars, fly planes, or track levels where the goal is to get a certain number of points in essentially a shooting fest. There is variety in the controls, but I wish that the “special levels” were more regular and less one-offs…fortunately, there isn’t a ton of the irritating Poochy.
Wow…Baby Bowser got big…what a shock! (said no one)
What Yoshi succeeds in creativity. Woolly World crafted Yoshi out of yarn and played with the idea of crafting and “homemade Yoshi”. This entry steps up the craft approach and creates worlds in a pop-up book fashion. The surroundings are made of man-made material (kind of like the miniature world of Pikmin) and these are often used creatively like the taped boxes of Cheery Valley’s “Open, Shut!” or the mobiles of Outer Orbit’s “Ride the Stars”.
Yoshi’s Crafted World is long and there is a lot of replay to it (each level has a number of flowers to collect in multiple run-throughs with “find” missions). In that sense, the game is a great purchase. It will keep you busy but taking breaks in playing it will be mandatory since the Crafted World sometimes feels a bit repetitive…but always manages to do with style.
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