@Mop it up

Playing World 5 over the last week has been...amazing, to say the least.

I'm on the last world right now, might wrap it up tonight, we'll see. I can't say enough about it, pretty much everything since my previous post has been brilliant.

Just beat the game. Stitched all of the Yoshi's back together, but missed some of the flowers. Tried to get as many as I could though.

I like this game quite a bit. I think it's in the running for Good Feel's best game, it's right there with Wario Land. Definitely better than Kirby's Epic Yarn.

I think the thing I'll say is that it follows the 2D Mario formula, as far as how you progress through the game and the worlds. But it does everything better. The levels themselves are a lot more creative and varied, the "Boo houses" are better, the standard 3-stage boss fights are all done better here. This is a very good game.

Will hopefully get to play this game over the long weekend. My 5yr old son has been enjoying it. I set it to mellow mode for him. Maybe we'll play co-op on Normal and see how he does.

I have officially beaten the game… and in fact I've 100%'d the game except for the final final final level. So that's like… 97.5%'d it. It's tough! Anyone 100% the game?

I made it to the fourth portion of the final level but I'm rushing through it too much and not playing well. I need to do better.

Edit: And there she is. 100% beaten. Excellent.

The final area of the final stage made me smile.

@DrFinkelstein

Congrats! I think I am going to 100% this game, possibly. It makes me want to 100% it, ha ha. But I haven't done that in... phew, probably a decade? At least? Maybe more? So I don't know, we'll see.

But I'm super excited to get back to it after finishing Xenoblade now.

Still slowly playing this game. It could be beat very quickly depending how you play games, but again, that's not me, and I've taken my time with it. If I pled nothing but this game it could probably be beat in a day or two, but what fun is that?

Anyway I think I already posted here how hard the levels get in what I believe is the second last world. My end level stats have taken a serious shit. Missing so many things by the end of these now. 100%ing this game honestly sounds pretty difficult to me. Basically one mistake and you've messed up a stat for the whole level and need to do it over again. Luckily you don't need to get ALL in one life and can just focus on one type if you need to.

Very happy and genuinely surprised this game sold over a million. I expected it to bomb more or less.

carlosrox said:

If I pled nothing but this game it could probably be beat in a day or two, but what fun is that?

Totally agree. This game is beautiful when enjoyed in bite sized pieces and really SAVORED. What a lovely, wonderful game it is.

Also echo your happiness at its sales! Oh boy I hope this sends some kind of message that wonderfully crafted, fun games like this are wanted in the marketplace. I found myself a little nervous as I was going through some levels and 100%-ing them, because I realized before you know it this game will be completed and THEN what?! (I guess Fire Emblem, then. But still!)

So I finally beat the last boss and have moved on to postgame content, mainly the Boss Tent and Craft Island-S. I see more challenges ahead...I like this.

I also got every stamp gem, flower, heart, and yarn piece in the main levels.

I ordered this from Amazon like a month and a half ago and it finally showed up! Usually my Amazon orders take like a week or so, not sure what happened.

Anyway, Shirley and I played the first two stages. It's fun, and charming. Not sure what else I need from Yoshi right now.

@Zero
Well you're certainly Link to the past. Trust me, there's some genius stuff in this game.

I'm oh so close to the end. I think I'm in the last world near the final official boss.

I've no idea what the post game content consists of.

I need to finish this too. I'm very close to finishing, just like Captain Toad. I have such a nasty habit of sitting on games when I'm almost done them. I did this with Alien Isolation, for well over a year. I guess I have a fear of finishing!

@Zero The game may have gotten back-ordered due to the price drop, which typically spur sales. I'm sure it caused a lot of people to "pre-order" at the new price, so it took a while to fill the orders.

I was surprised that the game's price dropped so much. I was at Gamestop on Tuesday and purchased it(used, but case&disc looked brand new) for only $23.84!!

Hell, I was surprised at the prices for alot of Nintendo's first party titles. I also nabbed DKCR & Zelda OoT for 3DS, only $15.74 each!! I couldn't believe that people had bought these and returned them already, as they were the Nintendo Select versions.

Surprisingly, the most expensive game was Capt Toads Treasure Tracker, at $31.49. I also bought New Super Mario Bros. Wii, in the red case for only $17.99.

I'm really happy those games were so inexpensive, cause Inhad owned the all previously, but had to sell them last year when I was going through a really rough time. I can't remember exactly what I received for those games, most I sold on ebay and a few I took to Gamestop, since their cash trade in was fairly decent, but I believe I profited, compared to what I spent on Tuesday, which was only $109 after taxes.

Best deal though!!
I'm going to make a separate thread for this, I was able to purchase New Super Mario Bros. for Wii U for only $17.99! Now, that game is still $54.99 pre-owned or $49.99 if you are a Pro Member. I'll leave ya'll to wonder about the shenanigans on how that deal went down.

So I mean, still liking the game, but the co-op doesn't feel as well thought out as it could be. The screen is relatively small but if anyone goes off it, they "die". Sure in co-op dying is just a temporary annoyance, but still... it is an annoyance.

Even weirder is when you have to drop down to proceed. Whoever drops down first... dies, because the camera doesn't follow them. So you either both have to drop down at the exact same time, or one person drops down, dies, and then the other drops down before the first is revived again. Bizarre.

This game can't be particularly taxing on the system, feel like they should have the camera zoom out and show a wider view if the two players split up. Weird to demand everyone stay so close to each other, especially in a "collecting" type platformer like Yoshi.

Still fun though.

I do feel like 1-4 is the first stage that really picked up the difficulty. First three were just walks in the park, but it starts to challenge you a bit at 4.

@Zero
Stick together better! I've barely got to coop this game with anyone, let alone my bro.

@carlosrox But it's a collecting game! This isn't Contra here (though the camera kind of reminds me of it at times.)

Shirley will have like gotten through some (for her) tough platforming and then I'll notice a secret down where I am and want to explore and she doesn't want to backtrack just to stand there while I grab a few gems, but if I go to explore on my own, I go off camera and die, so then she has either try to backtrack through the tough (for her) part that sometimes clearly wasn't made to be traversed backwards, and usually die, which is frustrating for her, or just kind of purposely die so the camera focuses back on me again... and then the secret ends up being just like a few gems that were *barely* off the edge of the screen or something... all that work for such a small payoff.

It's just a really bizarre and unintuitive camera system for co-op, doubly so for a game that involves all of these little side paths to collect things. Because in most cases collecting doesn't require or even benefit by having two people in that exact spot, so what you naturally want to do is split up a tiny bit, say... have one person going for one secret and another going for a different secret or clearing out enemies or something else... but nope, you kind of have to stay right by each other. It really should have more freedom for each player to go a little bit off the path of the other to collect stuff.

Keep in mind Shirley isn't a seasoned gamer either, it helps her a lot to give her some space for the platforming so I'm not distracting her or getting in her way or accidentally hitting her with a yarn ball at the worst moment, but in this game you try to have a bit of space in between each other, and someone ends up dying by camera.

I honestly get the feeling that co-op was a bit tacked-on here. Feels very much like it was built for single player first and foremost. And when I think of games like Smash Bros., etc. that have these wonderful, dynamic cameras that zooms in and out based on how far apart players are, I can't help but wish they would have done that here as well.

@Zero I would say it's more like bubbling in the NSMB games, since actually getting killed takes longer for the Yoshi to come back. I s'pose you do drop the yarn balls either way though.

But yeah, I ran into that same problem when I played through with my sister. I would just replay the levels later on my own to get what we missed. Things won't get better later, as things like those arrow blocks that bounce you upwards also make it close to impossible for one player to not get egg-bubbled.

I'm about halfway through world 2 now and I'm loving this game. Seriously surprised it only scored around a 7.8 on Metacritic and Gamerankings... feels a lot more creative than that score would suggest, and of course it is very charming as well.

Only real issues are the co-op issues above and the soundtrack doesn't really live up to what I expected from the developers of Epic Yarn (not to mention what is probably the best Yoshi's Island follow-up yet...)

What exactly do all of the collectibles do? I know getting the yarn balls makes a new Yoshi (which is so cool, I actually get excited about what each new Yoshi will look like), but I'm a bit confused what the rest do... stamps, flowers, etc.

@Zero Collecting all of the flowers in a world opens up the bonus level for that world. Stamps are nothing more than that, stamps you can use in Miiverse posts. Gems are used to buy badges at the start of a level.

So in theory I could *only* collect the flowers and I'd unlock every stage?

I believe so, yes.