Yoshi’s Crafted World is a pleasant experience, the type
that I’m growing increasingly attached to as I get older. There’s something
just so inherently enjoyable about kicking back and turning on a video game
that’s simple and fun to play, one with vibrant and colorful visuals, one that
rewards thought but doesn’t require too much of it.
For so long I hated Nintendo’s increasing focus on simple
platforming sidescrollers; a practice they began during the later years of the
Wii and one which has continued to stick around to varying degrees since. But
all these years later, I feel I’m finally beginning to understand the appeal.
As life becomes more complicated in so many ways, especially amidst our current
(as I write this) COVID-19 existence, there’s something to be said about a game
that’s pretty much the essence of pure, simple fun, and that’s what I found
Yoshi’s Crafted World to be.
At the risk of overselling it, I’ll note that it’s definitely
a little shorter than I’d have preferred for a full priced $60 title, so I
think it’s something to bear in mind. But I enjoyed it as I played it, and
though it might not stick around too much in my memory going forward, it’s
still a fun platformer and one worth a look for people who like that sort of
thing.
Developer Good Feel has come to specialize in these types of
charming, 2D sidescrollers, beginning with the truly great (and often
misunderstood) Kirby’s Epic Yarn. It was a much better game than their previous
platforming effort, Yoshi’s Wooly World on the Wii U, which was still fun but
not nearly as well-designed, and its reliance on an unforgiving collectible
mechanic meant that a lot of its content was inaccessible to anyone who didn’t
go out of their way to find and collect almost *everything.* Yoshi’s Crafted World
finds itself somewhere in between the two; a significantly better effort than
Wooly World, though still not hitting the heights of the ingenious Epic Yarn.
As with the studio’s previous efforts, the platforming
gameplay here in Crafted World is designed around the environment and its
materials. The platforming involves making use of a world that seems like it
was crafted for a school art project, (a spin on the wool/yarn motifs of their
previous efforts) along with a cool new ability to venture into the backgrounds
and foregrounds of stages in the midst of levels, all of which provides a cool new
take on the usual tropes that Nintendo games often feature. (Fire world, beach
world, etc.) The platforming itself feels smoother and more fluid than in Good
Feel’s previous Yoshi effort as well, and while collecting Daisies throughout
the levels is necessary to remove barriers on the world map to progress, doing
so rarely forces you to go too far out of your way, while also serving to
provide the incentive to explore down multiple paths and trying to find hidden
areas as you play. Only one time did I actually have to stop my progress to
collect Daisies to proceed, with the rest coming to me naturally as I played,
which is ultimately the perfect way to implement this type of system. Once you
clear the story mode, there are additional levels to unlock; these require a
more aggressive amount of Daisy collecting in order to enter, which is a little
unfortunate, as after taking a lot of time to collect the Daisies needed to unlock
a couple of them, I decided to forgo the rest of the extra levels, but it’s at
least handled better than it was in Yoshi’s Wooly World, and thankfully only
rears its head in the post-game.
Crafted World makes use of Unreal Engine 4, allowing for some very
cool visual effects not typically seen in Nintendo games, along with
unfortunately a significantly lower resolution than you’d usually expect in a
2D sidescroller. The heavy use of the depth-of-field blur also comes across as
a little too much at times. The world’s still beautiful and very colorful,
however, and that, along with the visual tricks brought to us by Unreal Engine
4, makes its low resolution far less noticeable while playing it. I’ll add
though that when jumping back into Persona 5 Royal afterwards, I instantly
realized how comparatively sharper that game looked. The music’s Crafted World’s
weakest aspect; it’s fine, there are one or two nice tracks that stood out to
me, but the majority’s forgettable and at times even slightly annoying. It’d be
great to see Good Feel make some big steps forward in this regard for whatever
their future games might be.
Yoshi’s Crafted World’s a fun, pleasant, breezy 2D
platformer with pretty visuals, smart level design, and solid gameplay mechanics.
It’s a little shorter than I’d have liked, and ultimately I don’t find myself
remembering too much about its specifics after the fact, but there’s something
I so inherently enjoyed about turning on a video game and not being hit with a
barrage of incredibly complicated gameplay mechanics and long load times. It’s
challenging in the right areas but not a tough game, and one that’s genuinely
fun. I always looked forward to playing it, and enjoyed my time with it almost
all throughout. I’m not entirely sure I’d recommend it at $60, but if you can
find it for any cheaper and like 2D platformers, it’s definitely a worthy
purchase that offers more than its share of solid, pretty platforming.
3.5/5
