Reviews are in
About what I expected.

I've been curious about this game for a while, and I've gotten bored with replaying older stuff, so I might have to check this out. I was waiting for reviews to see if the game actually has a sense of discovery or not; sounds like all the gimmicks are quirky and playful enough to make for a fun sandbox at the very least. I'll probably pick it up.

I'm picking this up regardless because I'm an easy mark for Nintendo....but why is it so difficult for them to make a Yoshi game as good as Yoshi's Island back on SNES?

A couple of games got close, but never quiiiiite there.

@GameDadGrant
The answer is pretty simple: Yoshi's Island was made by the best developers in the world at the prime of their lives! Miyamoto and Tezuka worked 4 years on the game. Barring them putting their very best team on a new high-budget Yoshi, I think the best we can hope for in terms of a traditional Yoshi platformer at this point would be something like Woolly World--perfectly fun and serviceable but not mind-blowing.

Sounds like this new one really depends on how much the game's unusual structure clicks with the individual.

TriforceBun said:

@GameDadGrant
The answer is pretty simple: Yoshi's Island was made by the best developers in the world at the prime of their lives!

Touché.

I've been playing this a bit this past week. Having beaten the first three worlds, I'm still not sure where I stand on it. Sometimes it feels like a very literal puzzle game, sort of a deconstruction of the genre at best and a banal experiment at worst; other times it feels like your typical Mario/Yoshi creative platformer but with less linear level design. Either way, I don't know if it's doing anything for me, but the original Yoshi's Island doesn't do anything for me either, so I'm open to there being some substance to both of these games that I'm not seeing.

...I've also heard that there's some crazy story stuff later on and feel compelled to press onward for that delicious corporate fanfiction.

Oh, this is a Switch 2 game, but it's marked in the database as Switch 1!

@GameDadGrant

I understand and agree with your sentiment, but also, they did make that kind of game. It was called a Yoshi's Woolly World.