After beating the GBA port of the original Yoshi's Island, a felt an immense sense of satisfaction, joy, and amazement. That specific port of that specific game is the game that I deemed perfect. Its controls were tight, its music was charming, its gameplay was challenging but not rage-inducing, and it concluded with a phenomenally designed final castle, one of the greatest final battles in all of gaming, and an amazing conclusion that drew the curtains shut in the same way they were opened. I cannot stop praising this game because of how great it was. If you haven't played the original Yoshi's Island, then play it, specifically the GBA port. It's an experience you won't ever want to forget.
A few years later (11 years after the original Super Nintendo game, 4 years after the GBA port) a sequel was finally released. Yoshi's Island DS. I was so excited when I saw it in Wal-Mart while randomly strolling around. I didn't use the internet that much back then, so I wasn't into watching all of the fancy trailers and reviews. It was as simple as just seeing it on the shelf. And you had better believe that I took it.
The sad part is that I was happiest before I played the game, because the game was one disappointment after another, and nothing more.
Story
Remember the original story for Yoshi's Island? Your brother gets kidnapped, and a group of Yoshis help you rescue him. Yea, that's it.
I still have yet to understand the convoluted mess of a story that this game has.
Basically, Kamek has decided to kidnap more than just Luigi this time. He decided to kidnap all of the babies, including Baby Peach, Baby Donkey Kong, and Baby Wario. The three babies I just mentioned join your clan as you come across them, along with Baby Bowser, who joins you for no apparent reason, especially since he was the final boss last game. Also, apparently there's this legend about seven superstars or something, which claims that seven babies are supposed to be heroes. Baby Bowser even gets one, and you fight him before the final boss of the game, not to mention that he's Mario's rival in every other Mario game in existence. Adult Bowser also has time-traveled to the past for no apparent reason, and Baby Wario and Bowser leave at random points throughout the game and don't return until the final level.
Not only am I confused by this story, but I also don't understand its purpose. The original Yoshi's Island had a simple storyline that gave a reason to do what you're doing, and nothing more. This game's story, for the most part, serves no purpose. All it does is confuse the players.
1/5
Gameplay
For the most part, the gameplay is true to the original. If you don't know how the original plays, then I'd recommend reading my review of the original or, even better, playing the game.
The gameplay is still partially nonlinear and all of the collectibles are the same, with the addition of a baby coin, which is fine. The coins don't affect your score, however, so it's not necessary to collect them along with everything else. The enemies are still unique and charming and the eggs are still useful for hitting enemies and the nonsenical winged clouds. For the most part, it's the minor tweaks that irk me.
For example, the hover-kick has been nerfed. It just doesn't feel like the hover-kick of the original. It feels different, and that isn't good.
But in the grand scheme of things, that’s relatively unimportant. Let’s talk about the most notable addition: the other babies. For the most part, their concepts are unique, but the main problem is that the gameplay style changes as a result of their implementation. You can only change babies at a stork stop. So if you come up to a part where you need a different baby, you have to backtrack all the way to the stork stop, get the other baby, and then head back. For the most part, stork stops aren't too far away, but when you're trying to explore a level and get everything you can get to maximize your score, you find yourself constantly switching back and forth and back and forth again. it adds a step to the tedious backtracking that used to be fun in the original game.
A few years later (11 years after the original Super Nintendo game, 4 years after the GBA port) a sequel was finally released. Yoshi's Island DS. I was so excited when I saw it in Wal-Mart while randomly strolling around. I didn't use the internet that much back then, so I wasn't into watching all of the fancy trailers and reviews. It was as simple as just seeing it on the shelf. And you had better believe that I took it.
The sad part is that I was happiest before I played the game, because the game was one disappointment after another, and nothing more.
Story
Remember the original story for Yoshi's Island? Your brother gets kidnapped, and a group of Yoshis help you rescue him. Yea, that's it.
I still have yet to understand the convoluted mess of a story that this game has.
Basically, Kamek has decided to kidnap more than just Luigi this time. He decided to kidnap all of the babies, including Baby Peach, Baby Donkey Kong, and Baby Wario. The three babies I just mentioned join your clan as you come across them, along with Baby Bowser, who joins you for no apparent reason, especially since he was the final boss last game. Also, apparently there's this legend about seven superstars or something, which claims that seven babies are supposed to be heroes. Baby Bowser even gets one, and you fight him before the final boss of the game, not to mention that he's Mario's rival in every other Mario game in existence. Adult Bowser also has time-traveled to the past for no apparent reason, and Baby Wario and Bowser leave at random points throughout the game and don't return until the final level.
Not only am I confused by this story, but I also don't understand its purpose. The original Yoshi's Island had a simple storyline that gave a reason to do what you're doing, and nothing more. This game's story, for the most part, serves no purpose. All it does is confuse the players.
1/5
Gameplay
For the most part, the gameplay is true to the original. If you don't know how the original plays, then I'd recommend reading my review of the original or, even better, playing the game.
The gameplay is still partially nonlinear and all of the collectibles are the same, with the addition of a baby coin, which is fine. The coins don't affect your score, however, so it's not necessary to collect them along with everything else. The enemies are still unique and charming and the eggs are still useful for hitting enemies and the nonsenical winged clouds. For the most part, it's the minor tweaks that irk me.
For example, the hover-kick has been nerfed. It just doesn't feel like the hover-kick of the original. It feels different, and that isn't good.
But in the grand scheme of things, that’s relatively unimportant. Let’s talk about the most notable addition: the other babies. For the most part, their concepts are unique, but the main problem is that the gameplay style changes as a result of their implementation. You can only change babies at a stork stop. So if you come up to a part where you need a different baby, you have to backtrack all the way to the stork stop, get the other baby, and then head back. For the most part, stork stops aren't too far away, but when you're trying to explore a level and get everything you can get to maximize your score, you find yourself constantly switching back and forth and back and forth again. it adds a step to the tedious backtracking that used to be fun in the original game.
The most disappointing thing about the babies is what they did to Baby Mario. Since all of the other babies had unique assets to them, they had to add features to Baby Mario to make him special. And what they decided to do is give him "M" blocks, which you can only hit with Mario (a homage to Mario's block-breaking endeavors that he'd journey upon later in his life). They look out of place, but I can live with it. The other thing they did to Baby Mario is clearly noticeable right when you start playing the game.
The original Yoshi's Island was innovative because it had no run button. Instead of holding a button all of the time, you just had to use the d-pad to move at a speed that was amazingly fast. It worked really well. This amazing innovation was completely removed in Yoshi's Island DS, and replaced with a run button feature that is only accessible with Baby Mario - a TERRIBLE design choice because of how SLOW it makes the game feel. So many times I backtracked all the way to the stork stop just to get Baby Mario just so I could MOVE faster. And the more annoying thing is remembering not to hold a run button when I go back to the original game. They also added a lot of Baby Mario sections where you just run and jump with a giant rolling chomp behind you, something that was fun in the first game but now just feels like a stupid gimmick in this game. They changed the fundemental gameplay minorly, but it had tremendous implications on how the game feels. The game feels so slow now, and it makes the game more tedious and less fun. Take a game like Donkey Kong 64 for example. A lot of people call it tedious. I just think that you don't move fast enough. The worlds are freaking huge and you move slower than Banjo in Banjo-Kazooie without the Talon Trot. That's why that game's tedious, and that's why this game is tedious. Point is, the run button was a stupid idea, and making it exclusive to one baby was even stupider.
Peach is the second baby you get, and for the most part her gimmick is pretty solid. She opens a parasol that can catch wind gusts that will propel Yoshi and the baby in the direction of the wind. It has very nice physics, and it’s actually pleasantly surprising how it feels like it looks. In so many games with wind, the visible effects of the wind make the wind look a lot weaker than it actually is, which would throw me off so much. Here, it’s not a problem. The issue with Peach, however, is how useless she can seem sometimes. I think she would have benefited greatly from having a glide like the adult version of her did in Super Paper Mario. An extended hover ability seems a lot less gimmicky than the wind gusts.
Baby Donkey Kong is probably the baby that has the most additions. First off, his weight effects Yoshi’s physics a bit, which makes sense, but is also really annoying, especially given how much slower the game already feels as a result of Mario’s dash button, Baby DK really gets annoying, especially in early World 2 levels, where there are few stork stops given that you’re supposed to use DK the whole time. His main gimmick is his ability to grab onto vines and chains and climb on them, swing on them, etc. And, once again, it’s well-implemented. I am constantly surprised by the location of vines and how natural they look in the game (which is already a step above the “flower fans” that blow wind for Peach). It still is a bit gimmicky, but to its credit, it’s the best gimmick the game added. His final bonus is that he throws his eggs so forcefully that they cause explosions upon impact. It’s a great idea, but it just isn’t as useful as I’d like it to be. I expected the gimmick to make it easier to hit the winged clouds, but it really doesn’t. And yes, it can take out group of enemies more efficiently, but for the most part, it makes more sense to jump on them then to sacrifice an egg, especially since the eggs are imperative to your collect-a-thon.
I think the worst baby of the bunch would have to be Wario. He holds this magnet which is used to collect coins and move metal blocks and platforms. The problem with this is that it changes the gameplay style dramatically. The game slows down to become more of a puzzle platformer and less of an exploration adventure platformer. Plus, the magnet is very unpredictable, especially with the magnetic platforms. And it’s especially annoying when they try to put Wario’s gimmicks in an environment where there’s lots of obstacles because of how unpredictable the magnet is. I’ve had more cheap deaths with Wario than any other baby, which made me glad that I couldn’t access him in World 5, even though I don’t understand why I couldn’t. At least that was a guarantee that there were no more stupid magnet puzzles.
The last baby is Bowser. I still don’t understand why he’s on our side. He even looks out of place. He doesn’t look like he’s sitting on Yoshi’s back properly, which is weird considering there already was a sprite from the original Yoshi’s Island that had him on Yoshi’s back (from the battle with him in 6-8) that looked fine. Regardless, he’s a hit or miss character. He slows you down like DK does, which is disappointing, just like DK. His main gimmick is that instead of letting Yoshi swallow enemies and turn them into eggs, he shoots fireballs. It’s very useful, and makes it easier to hit targets, especially winged clouds that are directly above you. The main problem is that when you need eggs, it’s a lot harder to get them. Sometimes it makes more sense to go to the stork stop, change babies, eat a few enemies, and then change back. In essence, he’s a permanent version of the Fire Melon that was in the original Yoshi’s Island (but not in this game), except you shoot fireballs rather than have fire breath. And just like the original Yoshi’s Island, fire breath means ice levels involving melting blocks, which was fun in the original, but annoying in this game, especially with the altered physics you get with Bowser. It’s a combination of heavy physics and ice physics, which is very hard to adapt to. Also, you can only play as him for four levels and then you lose him until the final level, which seems like lost potential (unlike Wario, who I was happy to leave behind).
Overall, the babies hurt the game more than it did make it, which is sad, considering that it’s the game’s main selling point. I would have been perfectly fine with a sequel that played it safe. As a lot of people say, why fix what isn’t broken? So long as the level design wasn’t horrible, the game would have played a lot better and I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
Another thing that’s annoying is the dual-screen gimmick. It was kind of necessary because of the fact that it’s for the DS, but the implementation is annoying. There’s a void of un-seeable space in-between the two screens, which makes egg aiming easier, yes, but the main issue is that the game constantly hides stuff in that void. In order to solve that problem, the game lets you move the camera up and down to view the void, and it also lets you switch Yoshi to be on the bottom or top screen so that you can see what is above or below you. And it gets annoying, fast. I never had to adjust the camera too much on the original, but on this game, I had to do all the time.
I should also mention, without spoiling, that the final boss of this game is one of the worst and most disappointing final bosses in all of gaming. That’s quite a change from the original, especially since it was a homage to the original. The aiming feels awkward, the attacks are easy to avoid, and the boss doesn’t look as threatening as the final boss of the original. Plus, adult Bowser still makes no sense to me.
Here’s something else that’s annoying that’s really minor. You’d expect 6 worlds from a sequel to Yoshi’sIsland, but there’s only five. I was genuinely surprised when the title for 5-8 came up as “At Last, Bowser’s Castle”, which to me means “We Ripped You off, the Game Ends Here”.
I could keep going on and on about the tweaks that have been made, but in the end, it all comes down to the fact that it doesn't feel the same. And for a sequel, that's terrible.
2.5/5
I could keep going on and on about the tweaks that have been made, but in the end, it all comes down to the fact that it doesn't feel the same. And for a sequel, that's terrible.
2.5/5
Graphics
The graphics are just weird to me. The original had a coloring book style to it, and was very cutesy, but it worked. To me it almost seems like that the original sprites still retain their coloring book feel, but whoever made the new sprites didn’t know how to make it look like that, so it looks weird. It’s not bad, but there is no singular style as a result, and it also makes the game feel less of a true sequel.
3/5
Music & Sound
The sound effects are just about as good as the GBA port of the original. No complaints there.
The music is nice, actually. It’s not as memorable as the original, and I think the athletic theme could have been played with a higher tempo, but that’s just me.
The only real bad theme in the game is the castle theme, and it’s not bad so much as it is annoying. Since the castles have inherently been more nonlinear than the other levels in the game, it takes a lot longer to figure out what to do, and listening to that same short theme over and over again can get to your head. Like I said, though, it isn’t bad.
My favorite theme is the final battle theme. When I first fought the final boss, I was disappointed by the music because of how short it was. I eventually found out that the final boss track was shortened in the US version of the game. The full theme is one of the most bizarre Yoshi themes I have ever heard, and I love it. I don’t know why it was shortened (there was no reason to), but the extended version is what sold the soundtrack for me. It’s not as good as original, and they shortened the final boss theme, but it is well-composed and it is catchy.
4.5/5
Playability
The game is perfectly playable. That’s not the problem here. It can get tedious, and it is slow, but I never got frustrated because of something that made the game unplayable. The game is extremely well-polished and has no bugs or glitches as far as I know. There’s no annoying difficulty spikes, except for the Extra and Secret levels, which are supposed to be a real challenge.
The only real playability problem is when the babies get annoying, especially with Wario in world 4. But I’ve beaten Spongebob: The Yellow Avenger for the DS 100%, so I’ve dealt with far worse annoying tedious repetition.
4/5
Impact
Anyone who’s played the original can’t help but be disappointed by this sequel. It doesn’t matter how much you love the other babies or how great you think the new additions are (although I think most of them are crap), you can’t help but admit that the original was better. There was just something about it, something special.
While I’ve tried to highlight how this game isn’t the original, it just comes down to the fact that it isn’t the original. Anytime I play this game I wish I was playing the original, and when I consciously realize that, I go and play the original game. The first time I beat Secret 6 on the GBA version of Yoshi’sIsland was after being annoyed on not being able to 100% the final level.
The game just didn’t feel nearly as satisfying as the original, and, while it did try, it simply didn’t succeed. I hope that Nintendo goes back and makes a true sequel, because I still get a bit of a bad taste in my mouth from this game. I need a glass of water to wash it down.
2/5
Overall
When I beat this game and watched the credits, I didn’t feel nearly as satisfied. I didn’t feel like I had overcome any challenge (especially because the final boss was so easy). And once I had established that, I saw a little star hovering above a baby Yoshi who had just hatched from its egg, the alleged “seventh star” of the confusing story that nobody cares about, and it was then that I realized that the original game was that Yoshi. It was a star. This game couldn’t hatch from its egg because it knew it wouldn’t be as good as the original. It couldn’t match the perfection of the five-pointed beauty of a star that the original star. Just like Mario with a star, that game was invincible. And so it was, that when the shell of this game was forcibly cracked, it came out in a globby mess of yolk and egg. And even if you took your game and scrambled it with some cheese and salt and pepper, it would never make an omlette that would even come close to competing with the cute little Yoshi smiling and shaking off the little shell bits.
Analogy aside, the game tried. It really tried. But it just couldn’t succeed. I wasn’t expecting a perfect game, but I never could have imagined a game that even remotely resembled the PERFECT video game to ever be so bad.
If you want to play Yoshi’s Island, then go play Yoshi’sIsland. Don’t play this game before it even touches the title of perfection that the original claims and deserves.
If you want to play Yoshi’s Island, then go play Yoshi’sIsland. Don’t play this game before it even touches the title of perfection that the original claims and deserves.
Totals
1 + 2.5 + 3 + 4.5 + 4 + 2 = 17 / 30
57%
Recommended: No
1 + 2.5 + 3 + 4.5 + 4 + 2 = 17 / 30
57%
Recommended: No
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