This game just feels cruel.
The Bad: Uneven difficulty level is easy at one moment and punishing at another; multiple babies adds too much complication to finding everything; levels are too large; soundtrack is mostly annoying or overly subtle.
Yoshi's Island holds a special place in many gamer's hearts. It was a very original game late in the lifetime of the SNES from the brilliant mind of Shigeru Miyamoto, and it had a unique art form. It was rereleased on the GBA with moderate success.
While Yoshi's Island DS is not the first follow-up to the original, it is the first to come close to recapturing the spirit that made the first one so good. Unfortunately, due to an obscenely high difficulty level and tons of irritating little quirks, it just doesn't live up to the pedigree.
The game is really cute looking. For the most part, it gets the visuals down pat. It looks a little less hand-drawn than the original, but it still is bright and colorful. The music is a bit irritating at times, but it's okay for the most part.
The gameplay is solid and it works, for the most part. Unfortunately, it's really, really unforgiving and tough, especially if you want to get all of the red coins, stars, and flowers. Good luck with that. It's so frustrating it often feels like a chore rather than a game. Luckily, extra lives are generously given out, but they have little purpose anyway.
It's just too bad the difficulty is so unbalanced and the atmosphere isn't as good as the original. If it could have gotten these things down, we would have a masterpiece on our hands. But we don't, and it's sad.