This treasure focuses on a unique gimmick: stakes in the lake that rise when other stakes are ground-pounded, creating puzzles where you have to figure out how to arrange the stakes so that you can reach the next cliff, or in the middle section, to reach the gray key up in the middle.
It’s a very linear, straightforward treasure: you just go right, only going up & left a bit for the gray key, with the chest down a ladder in the last cliff. But the unique gimmick makes up for it, & having a linear path is refreshing once in a while in a game that mostly has mo’ labyrinthine layouts, & the twist for the key where you have to solve 2 different puzzles with the same stake setup is interesting ’nough.
O’ the few uses o’ the octopuses in this game, this is the most interesting use, challenging the player to navigate an underwater maze to find both the key & the chest room while avoiding the charge attacks o’ the octopuses who alternate from up & down as they enter the screen & threaten to shove the player back — & possibly make them lose track o’ where they are if they aren’t paying close attention to where they get shoved.
The chest room is also a novel concept, challenging the player to jump out o’ the water while dodging the apples that will make Wario fat & sink back to the bottom o’ the water, albeit underutilized with just 1 straightforward iteration. I can imagine potential twists where you need to intentionally get fat @ a certain part o’ the water so you sink down & break donut blocks. Howe’er, such extra variations would work better for their own treasure, not @ the end o’ a treasure that already has a theme.
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.
’Nother similar treasure to “Bank of the Wild River” & “The Tidal Coast”’s green treasures. Despite “Bank of the Wild River”’s having the boss, I rank this e’er-so-slightly ’bove that treasure. While Tower of Revival’s wire mesh is just a large rectangle broken off by spikes, like “The Tidal Coast”’s, rather than the snaky design o’ “Bank of the Wild River”’s, its path is more o’ an open maze, stretching in all directions rather than just going rightward, with mo’ meaningful dead ends than just having music coins — tho it does have them, too — & its path is less obvious. Also, there is mo’ enemy variety & challenge, replacing the slow-moving Kushimushi bug enemies & their awkward hitboxes with the faster sparks & Applebies· Granted, I do still prefer the look o’ “Bank of the Wild River”s mo’ natural vines than the o’erbearing grayness o’ this level.
Mo’ importantly, this treasure has an actual relevant challenge to getting the green key, forcing you to deliberately eat 1 o’ the Appleby’s apples that you mostly try to avoid to become fat & break thru the donut blocks to reach it. The more open mesh allows them to hide the key, downward on the left after the initial rise leftward, the last direction players would likely think to go, given the way this level goes upward & is a tower.
Tho having nothing to do with this level’s general lake theme, this treasure’s gimmick o’ having you cross platforms obscured by leaves is interesting in itself — & unlike “The Grasslands”, where it’s just trial & error, here they gave you a way to judge where solid ground is with all the helpful Spearheads scattered round, walking o’er the hidden platforms & not walking on the areas that are just empty space.
This treasure avoids the problems that its close cousin, the green treasure o’ “The Vast Plain” has, lacking all its padding & focusing purely on platforming to get the key while having the red chest door placed right under the beanstalk, cleverly opened up by the beanstalk not by letting you access the upper area but by having the beanstalk lift the rock that was previously blocking it.
The crux o’ this treasure, hopping ’long falling leaves while trying to avoid the water shots the fish spits @ you or falling into the lake, is a unique challenge that meshes well with the forest theme while adding the water twist to it. I specially like how they make this room darker & bluer than the rest o’ the level, giving it a mo’ mossy feel. Howe’er, it’s hard to ignore that said unique mechanic is just a new paint job o’er falling platforms & projectiles, which are not the most exotic o’ mechanics, especially in a game like this.
While I like the way they foreshadowed the green key from the beginning, I don’t feel like they tied it into the actual green treasure itself very well. Maybe if what you need to reach the green key, hopping off enemies, was what unlocked the leaf room, but that’s not the case; & e’en tho the sequence requires you to get the high-jump boots before the treasure that unlocks this treasure, I don’t think you actually need to high jump to jump ’cross the leaves. It seems they could’ve found a way to hide it ’mong the leaves — maybe have extra leaves ’bove & to the left @ a branching point. Or, hell, they could’ve placed it high up in the trees, which otherwise just has music coins. That would cohere a bit better since you have to jump ’cross tiny leaves that disappear soon after you land on them.
The 1st room into the red-&-gold snake door has a cool arrangement, especially the part where you climb up a ladder to loop around from the left crisscrossing the ladder thru a thin passageway as flat Wario, & the challenges where you have to quickly climb up, slide into a niche, & jump before the smashers fall & quake the ground are rare ’nough to feel fresh.
Unfortunately, the designers for some reason felt the need to put the blue key in a niche you have to fall down into & then fall back down to the start, making you redo the aforementioned puzzles again.
I don’t have a problem with this treasure’s core being just a straight path going right while avoiding the quite-treacherous Brrr Bears & their ice shots on slippery platforms that don’t allow too much room to maneuver, specially since they do add the challenge o’ finding the gray key.
That said, I think they could’ve picked a better hiding place for the key. Not only do you have to break thru a wall to reach it, but it’s placed ’tween 2 sides, but only 1 side is breakable, & you’re just s’posed to guess that. E’en mo’ counterintuitive, there’s a grabbable crystal on the unbreakable side, which makes it look like you can pick it up & throw it @ the wall to someone who might go back to this stage & forget that they don’t get the glove till after this treasure. They could’ve a’least integrated the Brrr Bear with the key: ¿why not put a Prince Froggie in front o’ the gray key & have you get hit by the Brrr Bear up there to break thru it. That would be a great way to tutorialize this mechanic & would better mesh with the treasure theme. This is nitpicking, but it in addition to the basic path to the chest does make this treasure feel a bit uninspired — a’least in comparison to a lot o’ the other treasures in this game.
This treasure made the mistake o’ focus primarily on a mechanic — dodging zombies — done in so many other treasures, & done much better in a’least 2 other treasures. While it’s cool to see sneak previews o’ all the chests in this level, — obviously unopenable this early, since you can’t get their keys but the gray 1 — having to go back & forth, crossing zombie-infested platforms & going into rooms to hit a switch, can get ol’, specially if you manage to get snagged by a zombie & have to go thru it all o’er ’gain.
The puzzle in the chest room, where you have to break the floor & knock the stove onto the bottom floor so you can reach the chest, is somewhat new, but doesn’t have much to it, & still feels a bit too similar to the stove puzzles in “A Town in Chaos”.
Wario Land 3 is the point @ which the Wario Land series finally reaches its fullest potential, combining the clever status effect mechanic, where getting hit by certain enemies gives Wario certain effects like floating upward or falling down thin platforms, — & including new ones that are some o’ the best in the series, like turning invisible, turning into a yarn ball, turning into a snowball, or turning into a vampire who can become a bat & fly — which can be positive or negative for the player depending on the context, with a more open, explorative level than the mostly linear levels Wario Land II offered.
Rather than going on a sequence o’ levels with goals with a few secret exits & branching paths as the 2nd game, this game goes all the way with breaking from traditional platformers with a unique goal system: each level has 4 different-colored pairs o’ chests & keys. Collecting a matching key & then chest o’ the same color acts as 1 goal that gives the player a certain treasure that unlocks access to other keys & chests, whether by unlocking new levels, changing certain levels, or giving Wario new abilities. This can lead to multiple ways o’ getting certain treasures, especially in Time Attack challenges, when you have all abilities unlocked: for example, you normally get the red key & chest in “The Peaceful Village” using a snake to hoist you up to the roof; but if you have the winged boot, you can also high jump up the right wall ( which isn’t e’en getting into the collision glitch you can use to clip up that wall near the beginning o’ the game & the other glitches you can use the heavily sequence break this game like Metroid games ).
With this mo’ elaborate gameplay mechanic comes mo’ elaborate levels, with levels that branch out into different sections for the different treasures, not unlike Super Mario 64’s levels. This does lead to some repetition like in Super Mario 64 as you have to traverse the same challenges multiple times, — with some egregious examples we will be looking @ — but this is surprisingly not much mo’ than in the 1st Wario Land or Wario Land II, which, despite being mo’ linear, repeat a lot o’ the same general challenges; & given Wario Land 3’s game design, it’s mo’ understandable here.
