Game Debate #226: Yoshi's Story

[Reed Rothchild | 9,971]

[Kguillemette | 1,634]

It was a colorful and visual spectacle back in the day. Tried replaying it a few months ago and I feel like that's mostly all it has to offer. I don't like the float jumping mechanic, the sound effect yoshi makes when you do I find extremely annoying., and it's absurdly easy to the point it's boring. That being said, getting 30 melons in 1-1 is pretty fun. I like getting to listen to that iconic background music and enjoying the art style. I'll usually just do that and call it a day. 5/10

Edited Wednesday at 11:13 PM by Kguillemette

[OptOut | 9,040]

Yoshi's Story is a flawed game, there's really no getting around that. 4 levels in each of 6 worlds for a total of 24 is criminally short for a Mario platformer, a number that feels even weaker due to the fact you only play through one level from each world in a single playthrough. 6 levels to beat Baby Bowser is a complete joke.

The difficulty level is also a problem, as most levels in the game are so simple and easy to complete, you don't even need to see the entire level to finish it... It's an absolutely bizarre choice to make eating 30 pieces of fruit the goal of each level, and then stuff the level absolutely to the BRIM with fruit, so you can just rip through the level like wet tissue paper.

I'm also not a fan of the enforcement of analogue controls. It makes opting to either run or walk a nuisance, as it's not always easy to judge where you're holding the analogue stick, so you'll often be walking when you intend to run, it's just awkward. And, seriously, the most amount of deaths I ever have in the game are by accidentally ground pounding down gaps, because that is ALSO activated by the analogue stick! They could have EASILY addressed this issue by putting ground pound on the Z trigger and eggs on the R button, but instead eggs are Z and R is... Sniff. Seriously. Or just let us use the D-pad like any other freaking 2D Mario game!

It is a shame, because there really is a great game inside this one screaming to get out, and there's a lot going for it, from the visuals and music, to the level design, and puzzles etc.

A few small changes would make the game great, and they wouldn't even have to change the content of the game. All they need to do is make you play through all the levels to see the end, GREATLY reduce the amount of fruit in each level to make hunting fruit interesting and a challenge, and let me use the freaking D-pad, Jesus please.

You do that, you can add maybe a few optional collectable tallies like in all the other Yoshi games, and you'll actually have a great game here, it really wouldn't take much at all to fix this.

As it is, I may still enjoy playing this game every now and then, it's certainly not a TERRIBLE game, but it's a mild diversion at best.

[Tanooki | 5,145]

I don't know if I feel great about it but I rounded up than down on my vote.

Sure it's a Yoshi game, the second one really, and the sad thing is, the game is not only weak but also very thin and super brief depending how you hit it.  The game doesn't have a huge amount of stages, the pick ups are largely optional just for some lame ranking ticker the SNES shared.  But each page of that storybook you only need to basically using sentence structure here as a point, only read one of the few paragraphs her page.  The game can be over in just a few stages because of that, and the stages aren't really larger than the SNES stuff, and while decent looking, it's less challenging.

 

So it's overly easy unless you track that 100/100 score, has few stages, far fewer needed to get the last boss fight.  The game just is almost like a training game for the genre than a real full blown Yoshi game then and far more now in perspective looking back.  I mean if you own or emulate, if you got 30min to waste or so, and want to feel accomplished at some level, you can knock this off.  I could never recommend it, unless you're running out of more rounded stuff or wanting something you can get through fast without feeling pushed.

[RH | 5,246]

If I had heard these comments as a kid that this one is easy and quick-to-beat, it'd definitely be one that I'd skip. I've played, maybe, half of the first level and cut it off and that was years ago.

But now, as a busy Dad, hearing that it's easy and fast makes me want to play it even more. My kids and I really enjoyed playing through Yoshi's Crafted World on the Switch and I know that all of those games, including this one, are sequels to SMW2.  If this is fast and easy, maybe I should give it a try.  It's cute and I can enjoy that.

[TDIRunner | 2,927]

I never did play this one.  I've always enjoyed the Yoshi series games that I've played, but this one always seemed a little different from the rest of the series.  I do want to try it sometime, but I have a feeling that once I get a few levels into the game, I'm just going to want to want to play the original Yoshi's Island instead.  

[NostalgicMachine | 334]

I've always enjoyed Yoshi's Island and Yoshi's Story.

9/10 for me personally!

[mbd39 | 2,108]

Never played, never will. Zero interest.

[OptOut | 9,040]

1 hour ago, TDIRunner said:

I never did play this one.  I've always enjoyed the Yoshi series games that I've played, but this one always seemed a little different from the rest of the series.  I do want to try it sometime, but I have a feeling that once I get a few levels into the game, I'm just going to want to want to play the original Yoshi's Island instead.  

For a long time growing up, and into my teens, Yoshi's Island was my favorite game of all time, and I have enjoyed many Yoshi games since, whether it be DS, New, Wooly, or otherwise...

Story never even came close comparing to the rest of those, tbh. It is substantially different from the others, primarily in structure and scope.

It was released during a lull in Nintendo's N64 release schedule, where there was a massive software drought between the early days of launch, followed by a few Nintendo stragglers like Star Fox and the early batch of Rareware titles (Blast Corps, Goldeneye, DKR) which really held the release schedule together and sustained the entire N64 market at the time.

Then, there were months, and I mean MONTHS of basically NOTHING, and Yoshi's Story kinda got shoved out the door to fill that gap. It's almost certain that they rushed this one out the door, because it's the only way to explain how under-baked it ended up. That was early 98 for N64 in a nutshell.

It's possible that the poor reception to Yoshi's Story actually helped a lot though in the long-run. I'm pretty sure that's why they delayed F-Zero X so many times, as originally it was supposed to release close to when Yoshi's Story came out, but they delayed it almost a year to get it finished properly and make sure it was actually fucking good.

Of course, eventually N64 sales picked up, once Zelda hit at Christmas, and then you had a bunch of awesome releases in '99 and then the whole Pokemon craze hit and the N64 was coasting by then.

We might have more to thank Yoshi's Story for than we give it credit actually, thinking about it...