Hot new unpopular opinion/mini-review dropping.
With all the Pizza Tower hype I decided to finally play Wario Land 4. I played 1 and 2 as a kid, and 3 after high school. WL2 is one of my favorite gameboy games and every spiritual sequel always being based on 4 irked me so I wanted to see all the hype and maybe find out why it is the favored game.
Well, I just finished playing through it 100% an let me tell you, it sure is okay... but also by far the weakest Wario Land game. The amount of content in the game pales in comparison to WL2's with 17 stages vs. 51(!) and is most comparable to WL1 in terms of gameplay... which has more than twice as many levels at 40. Well, number isn't everything, if WL4's levels are of higher quality then... well, they're not. WL4's more linear progression and lack of any secret levels causes there to be much less room for exploration outside of coin rooms which are mostly useless. Coins in other games had a much greater purpose for changing the ending or ultimately unlocking it making them very important where as in 4 it is only used to play dumb minigames which award a different currency that... makes bosses easier, apparently, I never learning this until after beating the game and looking up if I needed to do the medal stuff for 100%. I just did the bosses once or twice to learn them and then beat them in the time limit for the max treasure... which, does it even have a point? Apparently only the last boss' time limit effects the ending so does getting 3 treasures on the other bosses... do anything? There are also CDs as the stage treasure equivalent which hidden ok 50% of the time and kind of just out in the open the other half but I sure wish they where something unique each time and not always a CD.
The mechanics of WL4 are skeletal and I am baffled they are regarded so highly. Pizza Tower ended up taking those mechanics and making them meaningful through clever design, but in WL4 the escape sections just feel pointless (as well as forcing greater linearity) and the super dash is hardly worth mentioning as it is not utilized well. In Pizza Tower the full speed allows you to smash enemies and maintain speed easily by keeping it when turning and climbing walls where as enemies still hurt you and you lose it all on wall collision in Wario 4... and also they made the questionable decision to bring back health that was gone in 2 & 3 and rightfully ditched for Pizza Tower. The facts that these weak mechanics where traded for greater level and puzzle complexity building up in 2 & 3 and people praise WL4 for it is mildly infuriating.
Wario Land 4 is good, but it just fails to live up to it's former entries. The only point I would give above the others is naturally graphics - gameplay, design, length and music (strangely underwhelming) are all well below.
2 > 3 > 1 > 4