It can be fun alot of the time, but gets seriously bogged down in some areas. It's worth a try!
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Gameplay: Basically, Yoshi carries Baby Mario on his back the entire time, carrying him through all sorts of traps and obstacles, which is pretty fun to do in platformer game. You get to throw eggs, flutter jump, eat baddies, spit watermelon seeds, and all sorts of fun Yoshi-like stuff. Instead of a health meter, you will lose the baby Mario upon taking damage. As soon as Mario is off of Yoshi's back, a timer counts down. Once the timer reaches "0", Kamek's troops fly into the scene to take baby Mario away. Once the baby is gone, you must either restart the stage or the last checkpoint you've touched. There are plenty of interesting gimmicks and enemies, making nearly every stage interesting in one way or another. There are quite a few puzzles spread throughout the game which make this game a bit of a brain exercise as well as a coordination excersise. The stages are pretty big compared to other Mario games and don't get boring or repetetive. Yes, there is a wide cast of interesting baddies just waiting to annoy the heck out of you, so the game definitely does a good job at keeping you on your toes. I won't spoil anything for you guys, but if you ever want to beat this game, be prepared for a final boss which uses some 3D-like mechanics which are messed up, making the whole "fight" a random panic. Another part of the gameplay, which isn't very fun includes manuvering vehichles. Yes, they put vehichles in a Yoshi game. Bad idea. There are special bubbles which Yoshi touches, turing him into a helicopter, car, train, submarine, or a mole of some kind. Now, the bad thing about this is that you are forced to transform sometimes, and the gameplay mechanics for these vehichles are a bit hard to control and slow to respond. This is a problem because you'll run into baddies which seem to come out of nowhere and you will sometimes die. This gets REALLY annoying at times. But it gets worse: You have a limited time before Yoshi transforms back into himself and returns to his beginning transormation location. So you have to do it all over again because of bad controls and is thus no fun. Now, on the plus side of unsual gameplay, you may find little stars in a level. Once you touch one of these, you can run around as caped baby Mario himself. He is invinsible, and run up walls and ceilings. Kind of like Sonic the Hedgehog does, only nowhere near as fast. Yes, these areas are as fun as they sound, but there are too few of these parts in the game.
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Graphics: The screenshots you've seen may make the game seem a bit ugly to behold, but infact, the game looks pretty good while in motion. It'll give you a new respect for poorly-drawn cartoons. Also, the fact that there are quite a few different designs to the level artwork and different variations of the same ones, makes the game's appearance interesting and non-repetetive, unlike alot of other Mario games' artwork.
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Sounds & Music: The sounds of the Yoshis sound as good as ever on the Game Boy Advance and the other sound effects fit in as well. And as it is with most Mario games, the stage BGMs are seriously lacking in variety. Fortunately, the tunes are good ones which match the happy additude of the Yoshis themselves.
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Result: I like the game. It's a keeper. This game is definitely worth a try. It's cute, charming, and surprisingly fun. It even presents a challenge which most gamers are willing to take on. Nowdays, it's only 20 bucks if you buy it new, so give it a try if you like what you've heard in this review.