"A worthy sequel to a true classic!"

Jumping back in time for a moment, let's look back at Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. The game, through its fantastic musical soundtrack, interesting graphical style, and overall being fun as hell made it an instant classic. Now, with the release of Yoshi's Island DS, I'm sure many people are wondering if it retains the glory of the original.

In short? Hell yes.

Graphics: 10/10 :

There's absolutely nothing to complain about as far as the graphics go. It should be noted that as a sequel to the original, Yoshi's Island DS kept the same graphical style. Now, if you're expecting Nintendo 64-style graphics, you're going to be disappointed. However, if you're looking for traditional, lighthearted graphics, they accomplish their job thoroughly. No qualms with the graphics here!

Sound: 6/10:

Here's where the game falls flat on its face. Where the original Yoshi's Island DS had fantastic, memorable music, that truly added to the lightheartedness and appeal of the game, it's just much too mellow here. There's only a few notes every few seconds, to the point where the game is almost absent of music whatsoever. This, in many stages, truly kills the mood that was prevalent in the original, and made it such a memorable game. The sound effects themselves are alright, but the music is absolutely horrible.

Gameplay: 9/10:

Here's where the game makes up for its utter debacle of a musical score. :P
Putting it simply, Yoshi now has access to multiple babies, that which includes Mario, Peach, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Bowser. (Wario and Bowser only make brief appearances, although they are used.) Basically, every baby has a unique power, whereas they were just a hindrance in the original.

For instance, if Yoshi is carrying baby Mario, he can hit blocks to obtain coins, and blocks will appear over uncrossable gaps in some events. If Yoshi carries baby Donkey Kong, his entire moveset will change. Yoshi will be able to climb vines, do a charging attack, will have exploding, extremely quick egg shots that invoke splash damage, and will have a charging attack against enemies. There's multiple points to switch babies mid level, and it's often required to either get perfect scores, or in some cases, to progress further.

One issue to bring up is the difficulty. Stages are enormous in this game compared to the original. Overall, the game is VERY generous on lives, to the point where I had 56 lives going into the seventh level. There are over 48 levels in the game, and in each, it is insanely difficult to obtain a perfect score compared to the original.

Overall, the game is basically as hard as you make it. It's not too difficult at all to actually beat the game, but it's insanely difficult to obtain a perfect score on each stage, and it'll take a lot of time to do that, giving the game a good replay value after initially finished.

Story: 10/10:

It's a Mario game. XD There's not much in the way of story, but it works. Baby Luigi gets kidnapped, baby Mario and Peach fall down, Yoshi finds them, and he's got to stop Kamek, the evil magikoopa. It;s pretty much the same plot of the original but with more babies.

Overall:

Overall, I'd say its an amazing buy. Despite the horrible sound, I didn't factor it much into the overall score, simply because the other factors make up for it. It manages to have an average difficulty, with an acceptable storyline and perfectly executed graphics. Overall, it's a solid 9/10, and I definitely recommend it.

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 6/10
Gameplay: 9/10
Story: 10/10
Overall: 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/06