30. N3 The Vast Plain — Gray
I like this treasure’s focus on the theme o’ invisibility: while the Pneumos @ the beginning hinder you by covering your face, making you able to see yourself but not your surroundings, taking potions that the Mad Scienstein throws @ you, which make you unable to see yourself but not your surroundings, is necessary for progress. & yet being unable to see yourself makes the next series o’ jumps mo’ treacherous than normal. All o’ this really instills the duality o’ status conditions in this game.
My qualms are that I feel the 3rd treasure in the game is a bit early for making players do platforming while invisible. Also, having to get to where the gray chest & gray key are, right next to each other but blocked by an seeing-eye doors, while invisible, only to have to fall back down, eliminate one’s invisibility by going thru a pipe, & then climb back up & do the same platforming one did invisible while visible so they can return to the gray chest, — which is only accessible while visible, for unexplained reasons — feels repetitive, specially since the latter part is easier: once you’ve jumped o’er these platforms while invisible, doing the same while able to see perfectly just feels silly. I think this treasure would’ve been stronger if they, A, placed it later in the game, & B, were able to program in some kind o’ challenge where you have to do platforming — maybe the same platforming — but with a Pneumo o’er your head, able to see yourself but not your surroundings, as an extra challenge for the gray chest. Maybe they could’ve had a new area, where you couldn’t take any enemies, & had the Pneumo as the only thing you could pick up & have @ the end blocks you have to throw the Pneumo @ to pass thru.
29. W2 The Volcano’s Base – Gray
The roll puzzles that this treasure focuses on where you have to slide down slopes & roll thru cracked blocks clogging tunnels in the mountain to reach the gray key & break open the entrance to the boss are very clever, specially the boss 1, as you have to break out o’ the tunnels up to the top & then fall straight down to break open the pipe.
Granted, leading the player onto the upper path with the conspicuous platform floating in the air after breaking out the top, only to give them a music coin, while the intended destination is to fall straight down, is a bit o’ a scam, forcing the player to go back & try ’gain ’cause they were misled. I appreciate the way they added music coins to these tunnels to make them multidimensional, but they probably should’ve made the music coins mo’ off the beaten path, specially since there’s no use in getting them this early in the game, since you absolutely can’t get them all.
In fact, these puzzles are probably too clever for this early in the level, & the boss is probably too difficult for the 1st boss, too, — it’s probably the 2nd hardest boss in the entire game — specially thanks to the heavy RNG element in the hammers that Doll Boy throws. This does give you the 1st powerup, so I can understand why the developers might’ve wanted a bit o’ a difficulty spike, but arguably a spike this high & this early merits a music box a’least.
28. N2 The Peaceful Village – Green
Due to its placement in The Temple’s recommended sequence being postgame & its reward being bonus that doesn’t open any other treasures, this treasure’s use o’ the invisibility-potion-throwing Mad Scienstein is less well-remembered than his introduction in “The Vast Plain”’s gray treasure or e’en “Cave of Flames”’s green treasure; which is too bad, as this is 1 o’ the stronger uses, mixing it with the rare, unpredictable lightning-dropping lanterns that remove your invincibility if hit to create a much mo’ interesting challenge zigzagging up the platforms.
Mo’ interesting is the alternative ways to enter the green treasure area: if it’s night & the player has access to the roof — or can pull off a pixel-perfect clip up the giant stone wall on the right, — they can just enter the red double doors to reach the bottom o’ the main room, where the player starts their climb; or, if the player has earthquake ground pounds, the player can go thru the blue treasure sewers & enter the pipe just next to the blue chest to reach a hidden side area o’ the level’s main outside area &, after breaking thru some terrain, find a doorway to an alternate passage into the green treasure room that climbs up a series o’ platforms to the right. While this side entrance takes mo’ steps & is harder to find, the advantage o’ this side route is that the player can grab the invisibility potion near the bottom o’ the rightmost platforms & climb straight up, bypassing the majority o’ the lightning lanterns ( tho this is a 1-way trip, so if the player manages to get hit by 1 o’ these lanterns, they have to go back down to the bottom o’ the center & take the traditional path — ’less they want to go thru the sewers all o’er ’gain ).
That being said, the green key room is rather weak, requiring you to pass a series o’ hopping tadpoles, which was already mixed with the invisibility potion in “Cave of Flames”, but that made it mo’ interesting by having them jump out o’ fire ’stead o’ just regular water. This room does a’least look cool @ night.
E’en weaker & mo’ superfluous is the green chest room itself. Rather than suffice with the challenges this treasure already has, this room has a pointless “puzzle” where you have to ground pound a random part o’ the floor to break your way to the chest below. The only “puzzling” aspect to this is that they also put a Fire Robota there, so the player may waste their time trying to throw it all o’er the ground or set themselves on fire & roam round trying to break e’erything before trying ground pounds.
27. E5 The Warped Void – Blue
This treasure takes a bunch o’ standard challenges seen thruout the game, but links them in a rare nonlinear way, introducing some before you can accomplish them, as ’nother challenge accessed from ’nother side is necessary, all tied up in what is admittedly this level’s weakest mechanic, but its best use here, the 1-way doors.
For example, you enter the 1st door o’ the 2 divided by a large wall o’ cracked blocks, & you end up in the upper right o’ a room, where you can eat an apple to become fat & jump on a donut block placed in the way o’ a thin passageway, where later you’ll be able to become squished & slide in to the bottom right & enter a door that leads to the blue key.
But before that you leave the room from the bottom to enter a falling-platform challenge that leads to the blue chest, e’en tho you don’t have the key yet. This would be annoying, but thankfully Wario Land 3 has a habit o’ having easier ways to enter areas from the inside once the main challenge has been completed. In this case we have the common wall o’ cracked blocks on the inside that you can break thru, allowing you to just crouch thru later.
26. N2 The Peaceful Village – Blue
Unlike other levels, which suffice with having caves under bridges, this treasure both adds variety to this level without breaking coherency by having it take place in the sewers ’neath the eponymous village — sewers infested with a Robo-Mouse that chases you & tosses you out if it catches you, just like in “The Stagnant Swamp”. But unlike there, by the time you reach here, you can plow straight thru all the cracked pipes without being bumped back, so you’re not guaranteed to get caught like in “The Stagnant Swamp”’s red treasure.
E’en the way you find this area is cool: in the basement o’ a seemingly filler room there’s a red Prince Froggy stuck in a passageway, bringing it to tears. Only when you get the earthquake ground pound from the red o’eralls can you shake it out & go ’neath it to a series o’ pipes, 1 o’ which leads to this area.
1 minor quibble with this treasure is that the blue key isn’t in the most interesting place, just right near the middle-end. It is up a bit, so I s’pose it is possible to miss it if you don’t stop & make sure you grab it, but it’s also possible to charge jump thru the pipes & get it while going thu. The music coin ’hind the Robo-Mouse would’ve made a mo’ interesting location.
25. E5 The Warped Void – Gray
In a game full o’ forests, lakes, & way, way too many volcanoes & caves, this level, with its terrain made up o’ abstract spheres rather than textured blocks, earthboundesque background & sci-fi warp, stands out, & not just due to its surreal aesthetics: ’nother unique element to this level are the lemon-yellow warp spheres that warp you back to the start if you touch them, replacing this game’s habitual reliance on status effects to enforce retrying challenges in the face o’ invincibility with a different alternative to health mechanics. This treasure’s main use o’ this mechanic @ the bottom o’ the 3rd room in particular cleverly merges this mechanic with ’nother, the smashers: the player has to time jumps ’cross the blocks ’bove a lake o’ these warp orbs while keeping up in the air as the smasher ’bove slams & quakes the ground to avoid being startled into the lake.
& like status effects, these warp orbs aren’t always a detriment, as like many other gray treasures in this game, the gray chest is right @ the beginning & this level’s yellow doors are 1-way-only, so once the player gets the gray key they need to intentionally fall into the lake o’ yellow orbs @ the bottom o’ the 3rd room.
For the gray key, this treasure employs ’nother trick this game is fond o’: foreshadowing. The gray key is in the 2nd room, but is locked ’hind a ceiling o’ throw blocks, as is the 1 enemy in this room, a Hammer-bot. Jumping up, the player can see a barrel up top, but can’t reach it. The player has to go thru a few mo’ rooms before reaching the upper layer & being able to open the gray key, either by opening it directly or opening access to the Hammer-bot to throw.
24. E2 The Frigid Sea – Red
A series o’ simple challenges tied together with the snowy / slippery theme o’ this general level. Both the key & chest rooms need to be opened by throwing something @ throw blocks, a task that’s much harder here than anywhere else thanks to the slippery terrain making it easy to slide too far, bump into a wall, & knock what you’re holding onto the ground. There’s an interesting challenge dynamic to what the player throws: players patient ’nough to wait till they’ve gotten the powered-up gloves can just pick up any nearby Brrr Bear to throw @ these blocks; otherwise, if they just have the regular gloves & can only pick up small objects, they can go all the way to the right side o’ the gray key to find a crystal. This not only requires the player to traverse more o’ the level; if the player bumps into a wall or gets iced by 1 o’ the many Brrr Bears swarming the level & drops their crystal, it breaks, forcing the player to go all the way back, whereas a Brrr Bear can just be picked right back up.
Similarly, the red key room uses slippery physics to make jumping up the small platforms while avoiding all the birds harder than the normal bird-swarmed area. Part o’ me is disappointed they didn’t go full-on & require hopping off a bird @ any point, but I s’pose they didn’t want to require high-jump in order to get this treasure — & it would be annoying to go thru the trouble to enter this door with the crystal only to be unable to get the red key ’cause they only have the gloves & not the winged boots.
The red chest room is 1 o’ the only 2 treasures to use the falling snow obstacle & Snowman Wario ability. Both uses revolve round the same challenge: avoid the falling snow, which hinders Wario’s movement & abilities & makes it impossible for him to go on slopes without turning into a snowball & rolling down the slope & in its direction till hitting a wall, till you reach a slope that leads to snowman blocks you want to break. To demonstrate this, this level puts a wall o’ cracked blocks just after the 1st falling snow, blocks that Wario can’t charge attack thru if in snowman form. Not long after that, they tease players e’en mo’ by having a high slope pointing down toward the snowman blocks in the way o’ the red chest… ’cept it’s so close & the snowman blocks are so strong that Wario doesn’t built into a big ’nough snowball to break it. The player has to go all the way to the end, past the most minor o’ platforming challenges with basic Spearheads, to find the right slope.
Also, I like how they placed a music coin up in an alcove blocked by a single row o’ cracked blocks, which can only be broken thru while Wario is in his normal rolling mode, without snow, giving the final slope a 2ndary role challenging the player to not be a snowman here.
23. E2 The Frigid Sea – Green
This treasure involves a unique puzzle wherein you have to freeze the water so you can use the ice as a stepping stone to reach the green key & then unfreeze the water to reach the green chest.
The challenge on the way to the switch to freeze/unfreeze the water is fitting for this stage, requiring you to dodge Brrr Bears & their ice shots while avoiding the holes round the slippery floor, with the 1 mercy being a dip in the ground in which you can duck to avoid the Brrr Bears’ shots.
My 2 nitpicks are that you have to do the same section twice to freeze & unfreeze the water, e’en tho you enter the area from different ways, due to the underwater path that leads to the switch the 1st time being frozen off when going to unfreeze the water. My other nitpick is that the room between the underwater door & the switch room doesn’t have much but a breakable wall that, ’pon further exploring upward, leads to a music coin, & a Doughnuteer whose only use, I guess, is to slow you down if you somehow manage to get hit by 1 o’ its donuts. It would’ve been better to remove this middle section & add an other side to the switch room, going toward the switch from the left, for the 2nd route to the switch.
22. E2 The Frigid Sea – Blue
A solid, rare challenge wrapped up in a nice package: you have to go past a waterfall, — either unlocking daylight in the east to melt the waterfall from solid ice to water or super swim past the current below — & then you have to go thru an icy chamber, dodging all the falling snow till you reach the end & roll down as a snowball back to the start to break thru a snowman block to get the blue key just below the blue chest. This is similar to the red treasure, but better implemented, both in terms o’ extent in coherency: while the red treasure threw in a few easy gotchas like the cracked block wall & the red herring slope, this treasure focuses less on unconvincing puzzles & more on the explicit challenge o’ avoiding all the fall snow round all the slopes till you reach the final slope that gives ’nough runtime to grow & break all the strong dark purple snowman blocks. It’s simpler, but it also feels mo’ exciting & has less back-&-forth padding & superfluous elements.
Technically, this is ’nother case o’ the key being just before the chest, which I criticized heavily in “The Steep Canyon”’s blue treasure & “Sea Turtle Rock”’s red treasure; but here it works better, since it’s back @ the start, making it a rendition o’ the common chest-@-the-beginning pattern in this game, but without having to go backward thru the level, while adding symmetry to the level that those other treasures lack. Here you don’t unlock the blue chest, — it starts unlocked — you unlock the key; in those treasures you unlock both the key & chest @ the same time. This added symmetry & the better coherence ’tween the key & chest is also why this treasure’s ranked higher than its similar red brethren.
21. S6 Above the Clouds – Red
This treasure is full o’ interesting challenge ideas: needing to throw an enemy up @ a throw-block ceiling just above the key too high to reach so you can drop down on said key from the other side, the need to jump off an enemy to break a block from below so you can go thru the other side, & a tricky layout o’ appearing & disappearing cloud platforms made trickier by all the Beam Robotas all flinging beams @ you to interrupt your movements so long there’s no chance you don’t fall all the way back to the ground if you’re hit, requiring constant ground pounds to keep them stunned & unable to shoot their beams.
My 1 complaint is all the back & forth you need to do ’tween these 2 sides o’ the room, especially since dropping down from the 2nd door is a bit o’ a blind fall if you didn’t remember that the large platform is just below & to the left o’ where the door — which to be fair, is good placement. In particular, the chest is right after where you drop down to get the key, so you just have to go all the way back around again. It would’ve been cleverer to put the chest somewhere else — perhaps just below the red key as a clever twist on the common Wario Land 3 pattern o’ having the chest in easy access, but not the key.
