Yoshi’s Crafted World Review

Yoshi’s Crafted World is now available on the Nintendo Switch.

Story

Yoshi’s Crafted World starts off with Baby Bowser and Magikoopa trying to steal the gems from the Yoshi’s home. Once they manage to break the artefact and scatter the gems all over the hand crafted worlds, Yoshi has to go and collect them all and restore the artefact. The story is very simple as per usual with Nintendo’s platforming games but that’s what we like about these 2D, 3D and 2.5D titles from Nintendo. Simplicity is sometimes key to greatness when it comes to video games and Nintendo have proved it time and time again. While playing through the game you may not pay attention to the story much or if at all. There are little cut-scenes in which Baby Bowser and Magikoopa try to retrieve the gems for themselves and little choices can be made to change there reactions or steer the cut-scene in another direction. A nice little detail but nothing majorly game changing.

Gameplay

Onto the gameplay segments, Yoshi’s Crafted World shines in its multiple worlds that offer different obstacles per level, not only that but the levels also have flip sides which offer very interesting perspectives on the front side levels you may have just finished. Nintendo this time round used a 2.5D layout in which Yoshi can traverse in and out on different layers and seeing this used in the massive amount of levels is very interesting and it’s very fun to tackle. Through each level none of them ever felt the same or repetitive, it was just exciting thinking about what level could come next and what would it bring to the already content heavy table.

Once you have finished the story, the 100% completion challenge comes in to play. To 100% the game you will need to collect all of the flowers, search for little trinkets on each level, find a robot that will play hide and seek in each level and beat a boss in a certain way. Yoshi’s Crafted World has a lot to do after you’ve completed it but I feel like for some it may become a slight drag due to having to go in and out of levels frequently to find the next object. I feel that in this situation a check-list would have made it slightly less frustrating as eventually trying to get all of the flowers can feel a little repetitive due to revisiting the same levels over and over.

The one major bad point that sadly does take a few points from the overall score is the two player mode. Two player modes are brilliant in these types of games, you can work together to complete it and it’s a good laugh. Yoshi’s Crafted World was a major pain in two player mode with my partner. We enjoyed the game, we had a laugh, it was a good experience but also infuriating. You will constantly accidentally eat each other, land on one another head while trying to get somewhere, get in each others ways while going left or right or throwing eggs and killing each other by accident. I feel to make Yoshi a solid 9 – 9.5 the co-op needs an option in which you can ghost each other and not interrupt each others flow. Apart from this major issue, no bugs were encountered, it seems like a fairly polished title.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Yoshi’s Crafted World are brilliantly hand crafted. Literally hand crafted, the enemies are made out of cardboard, paper, plastic, celotape and so much more. It really brings the game to life and made it look like the developers had made the game themselves on a board and just thrown a Yoshi effect within it. I was really impressed with it and it all ran so smoothly as-well. The music on the other hand really started to get a bit repetitive. You’ll notice that many songs in the levels are used over and over again which I think is a little bit of a let down. They’re not bad songs but they’re simple and can get a little bit annoying. I felt that if they had invested more time into the audio tracks they could have fit different tracks with different themes in the game.

Verdict

As mentioned earlier I have to score it down due to the co-op gameplay, while it can be fun it can be absolutely awful at times and I feel there is a simple fix to it. Other than that Yoshi’s Crafted World is a joy to play, a wonderful brightly coloured fun and addictive title that I can recommend to any ages.

8.5/10