39. Invade Wario Castle Story 2: Storm the castle!!
Like the rest o’ the levels in this underwhelming chapter, this level is mostly a bunch o’ mid or weak challenges that repeat mechanics from other levels, lack much cohesion, & just in general goes on a bit too long. Particularly baffling is the dark room where you need to dodge weights dropped by bats, with no twist to this like in chapter 1’s “Go down to the cellar”: no reward for jumping on the weights after they fall or intentionally getting flattened anywhere. ¿& did this level need 2 levels where focusing on hopping on platforms & dodging moving spikes?
That said, there are some subtle touches to other rooms. There’s this unique roll section where you need to break thru & ground pound a bunch o’ pots before being able to roll out thru the short passage — tho it is a bit annoying have to go back & forth, rolling thru twice. The moving spike section on the small platforms just after has interesting arrangements, tho the awkward camera makes the last platform unfair, as you can’t see what’s down there till you already make the jump & the coin arrangements are just ludicrous: all the coins are down @ the bottom, where you go if you fail, but there are none on the main path with no extra challenge to collect certain coins while dodging the moving spikes. The fire-block arrangements in the room after that require fiddling with where you get set on fire so you’re position is timed right to burst into flames on the right side o’ the lakes on the top & bottom — tho this is mo’ a case o’ trial & error than making the right moves or thinking laterally.
It says something that 1 o’ the most memorable areas in this level is the big room with a bat & a smasher & many passageways you can glide into as flat Wario, including 1 with the goal & another with the treasure door. The problem is that flat Wario puzzles are used in many other levels, & much mo’ cleverly; & I ne’er found them all that interesting in themselves, as figuring out where to fall or jump off so you can aim your glides to go into the right hole always felt like trial & error. Nor does it feel all that clever to just have the treasure door in a hole below the hole with the goal door. But I do like the subtle twist o’ having a wall o’ pots below a small hole on the left, forcing the player to fall down there without flat Wario.
The 1 room that really stands out in this level is the 1st room, where you climb up the left side to reach a switch & cross to the right @ various heights — or drop down from the top — to 3 doors on the right. I like the touch that when you hit the switch the wall on the bottom turns into a bridge o’er the lake. What I’m less fond o’ is that the path that leads to the top door on the right has you pass the switch, but the top door is naturally open & gets blocked if you hit the switch, so you’re likely to hit the switch & go o’er there only to find out the door’s now covered, forcing you to go back & hit the switch again. Also, the palette in these outdoor areas looks bad: the shadow on the yellow coins now is this dark blue, which just looks glitchy.
38. Maze Woods Story 4: Escape from Maze Woods
Like “Defeat the giant bee!”, this level also feels like padding. This level introduces the bees that make Wario puffy who also appear in “Defeat the giant bee!” just after this level, & like that level, the bees & puffy Wario mechanic are pretty boring, thanks to the limited camera making it impossible to see what’s ’bove certain areas till you’ve already committed to it with puffy Wario. Since they do basically the same thing here as in “Defeat the giant bee!”, I, ’gain, think it would’ve been better to save it for that level.
’Tween these 2 sections there is ’nother repeat o’ an element from ’nother level, an autoscroll section where you ride a turtle, introduced 2 levels before this. This iteration has something o’ a maze where taking a dead end will likely make you miss your turtle & have to go all the way back to the start, which isn’t much o’ a puzzle so much as a beginner’s trap. What also makes you return to the start ’gain is taking an alternate bonus route to the top left, where you also get bonus coins, which are not worth the tedium.
That said, I do respect the secret where you stay on the turtle past the part where it seems like you should get off to go into a door to the next room, ducking to go under the platform to the other side, where there is another door, especially since there’s a 1-way path back to the other door, so you don’t have to redo anything if you take this bonus path. Unfortunately, this bonus path doesn’t lead to a treasure door, it leads to a lame coin room where you just break thru a short ceiling o’ throw blocks with an enemy & bump a stove round to reach the coins high above.
No, the treasure door is just @ the top right o’ the final dark cave room, which just requires you to get stung by a bee & float up. Why they couldn’t a’least save this brilliant hiding place for the next level, which has an e’en lamer treasure door hiding place, I have no idea. Also, I’m pretty sure this level’s treasure is a racist blackface. I don’t know how else I’m s’posed to interpret it.
37. Ruins at the Bottom of the Sea Story 2: Defeat the giant spear man
This level is just a long series o’ “pick a path” o’ slowly ground pounding down thru cracked blocks, which loops back around if you don’t take the right path. To their credit, they did try to add variations to the cracked blocks filling these passages & added sections where you have to duck & squeeze down in a zigzag pattern, that don’t amount to anything, gameplaywise, but do add to the feeling o’ squeezing thru ruins. It’s not all that fun, but I imagine neither would exploring a real mound o’ collapsed debris.
Less defensible is how these ruins are strewn with generic rooms holding common mechanics used thruout the game, including dodging sawfish in thin corridors & dodging bubbles, which are not only used too much thruout this whole game, but were also the focus o’ the level just before this 1. They also threw the treasure door into the sawfish room — ¿’cause where else should they put it? This is a perfect example o’ additions making something worse: if they didn’t care to make these rooms worthwhile, they might as well have cut them out & made the whole level just the pick-a-path maze, e’en if it lacked real challenges.
Some o’ the setpieces are just baffling. @ the end o’ the maze, just before the loop, you have a ridiculous set piece with 2 slopes pointed @ each other, but there’s no point to them, as you can’t break thru any passageways as rolling Wario here & it’s not as if you can accidentally fall if you accidentally turn into rolling Wario here, since the bottom is clogged by breakable blocks. ¿Maybe they’re decoration? & 1 room in 1 path has you fly down a passage with an owl just for coins, which is probably the most enjoyable section o’ this level, but doesn’t really fit the whole underwater ruins theme & is the weakest use o’ the owl in this game.
E’en tho this level already has a gimmick, they decide to throw in 1 o’ the many giant spear men in this level.
Finally, this level’s song is not only the worst in the game, but probably in any Wario game, with obnoxious high-pitched “ditta-ditta-ditta-ditta”, only for the following part to be abrasively slow & jerky, till it finally ends with an elongated squeal o’ a note. It makes my ears bleed.
36. SS Tea Cup Story 4: Drop the anchor!!
A mostly middle-o’-the-road level with a few standout elements. The 1st is the 2 different goals this level has: the main 1, as the title says, charge-attacking an anchor off the ship to stop it & allow Wario off, & the 2nd, which involves breaking… some weird box with a face for some reason to cause a leak inside the ship & make it sink, leading to the secret sunken ruins chapter.
The 2nd is the way the treasure door is hidden ’bove a set o’ pillars going upward, the 2nd o’ which has its top cut off @ the top o’ the bottom screen, but still partly visible, so only eagle-eyed players can see it. & if one does miss this, there’s a hint in the wall to the left, where you can break 1 block @ the bottom, but not anything else, hinting @ a 1-way coming from the other side o’ said wall.
The rest o’ the level is standard uses o’ Fat Wario after eating the cook’s — who a’least make thematic sense being on a ship — cakes to break thru blocks or plow thru the white puffs or jumping off enemies or throwing them @ walls to reach coin caches. There is 1 room where you shove a stove — ’gain, a’least it’s thematically relevant here — around so you can reach alcoves with coins or that lead to progress, which is rarer, but I always found that the stove in both Wario Land II & 3 ne’er amounted to anything mo’ than slow tedious padding, & here is no exception. Also, there’s an annoying quirk with the physics where you can sometimes position the stove so that you can jump up thru a crack ’tween it & a wall, but can’t fall back down, forcing you to knock the stove all the way right ’gain so you can get on the other side & knock it left ’gain.
35. Uncanny Mansion Story 1: Defeat the giant spear man
This level mixes 2 elements already done much better in other levels, & both o’ which were ne’er all that great in the 1st place: entering & exiting doors to change the level in bizarre, & yet also very unexciting, ways & switches that turn on & off the lights. For the former, we get the exciting gimmick o’ having certain doors with the icon o’ certain enemies o’er them spawn that enemy after entering & leaving, which is certainly not an idea that most developers would use… probably ’cause they realized there’s nothing interesting ’bout it, gameplaywise.
& this level’s implementation is particularly weak, as it turns out, none o’ the enemies really matter that much. You need to enter & exit the 1st room to make any enemy spawn @ all to break thru the enemy wall to continue; but this could’ve been any enemy you could pick up & throw. The 2nd enemy you can spawn is smaller, so you can use it to break thru walls to get extra coins; but the 2 enemies you spawn afterward are useless. 1 o’ these latter enemies not being useful for continuing progress would be clever, specially with how they do force you to progress thru the upper-left door to reach the right rather than just enter & leave like the bottom 2 doors, but would be mo’ clever if the 1st 2 enemies felt mo’ substantive.
Similarly, the way the switch @ the end is used isn’t all that clever: it makes half o’ all the rooms you just went thru actually navigable, which means you have to go thru them all ’gain to find the treasure door & end goal. While it fits well with 1 o’ this level’s 2 mechanics, having the treasure door just be up a bunch o’ platforms that are in plain sight after hitting the switch isn’t the most clever hiding place — tho I s’pose putting it in the door ’tween the 1st & 3rd rooms that light up with the switch is the least conspicuous place.
The coin puzzles out in the main hall feel forced: there are 3 walls where if you charge-jump attack them, you’ll break 1 hole. You can then throw 1 o’ the purple electric catfish enemies thru those holes so you can break a single enemy block & continue past to mo’ coins. & in the middle o’ the left side it looks like there’s a branch where you can get coins, but you can only get those coins by charge-jump-attacking from the wall on the other side — tho this time without needing to throw an enemy.
What isn’t fitting with this level’s gimmicks is ending with yet ’nother giant spear man battle. Considering this level already focuses on finding the exit & already has the switch, which feels climactic ’nough, I’m not sure why they felt this o’ all levels needed it. & due to how the level names in this game work, rather than having fitting name like “Find the Exit”, this level is yet ’nother named “Defeat the giant spear man”.
This is not to say there’s nothing inspired in this level. There are some genuinely tricky sections where you have to dodge ghosts in the switch room & on the way toward the giant spear man, tho the latter has a part where you have to run down a series o’ platforms, going zigzag, where you have to duck @ a very precise point to avoid getting hit by a ghost & having to start o’er. The positioning necessary is ridiculous for an otherwise easy game. & while pointless, I like the troll o’ having a useless dresser you can break to spawn a ghost. I guess that’s Wario’s punishment for being so o’erzealous to break anything in his quest for gold.
34. Invade Wario Castle Story 3: Defeat the giant spear man
This level’s gimmick — other than defeating the giant spear man 1 out o’ the 5 times you have to — is a weird maze o’ halls, each ending in a 2-door split. Tho the halls have the same rough shape, there are slight differences ’tween them to help you remember what is what, specially the focal enemy o’ each hall. It’s not the most interesting idea, specially since there are other levels in this game with better hall mazes, but it’s something, I guess. As you could imagine, the dead ends are usually just puzzle rooms with coin rewards, as is the treasure door.
The coin rooms in this level are mixed. I like the room where all the terrain in the middle is invisible, as well as breakable, allowing you to collect a lot o’ coins by just charge attacking & plowing e’erything.
Less interesting are this annoying room where you need to sneak past a Pirate Goom & break thru a floor & then pick up the Pirate Goom in that tight space to place it on the floor & bounce off it while holding an ice cube to throw @ some throw blocks for some coins. Then you have a coin room where the “puzzle” is to charge attack up 2 surrounding walls in a tight chute, breaking thru steps, e’en tho the room arrangement makes it look mo’ like the solution would be to break thru a wall from the top o’ the other chute where you can see the platforms you can jump up.
In general, this level is much less stingy with coins that other levels in this chapter, being full o’ giant coins, making it feel much mo’ worthwhile going after them.