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How would you rate Super Mario World in terms of level Design?

Mario World Level Design Rating

11.5% (3 votes)
0.0% (0 votes)
34.6% (9 votes)
50.0% (13 votes)
3.8% (1 vote)
I would give it a 4 personally.
Probably somewhere between solid and mediocre. Maybe if the cape was unlocked in a later world, it would be a little less easily broken, since all you really need is flat ground, which about 99% of levels other than underground, castle/fortress, or auto-scrollers have. Super Mario World giving you the cape feather in world 2 is like if Antichamber gave you the red gun as the second gun in the game (after the blue one), or Super Metroid giving you Space Jump after beating Crocomire.
Without flying thru the levels (that you can actually fly thru), the levels are actually pretty fun.
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Quote
Probably somewhere between solid and mediocre. Maybe if the cape was unlocked in a later world, it would be a little less easily broken, since all you really need is flat ground, which about 99% of levels other than underground, castle/fortress, or auto-scrollers have.


I don't know if it's fair to call this a flaw in level design, since you don't have to fly over levels and skip everything.

That being said, if you find yourself wanting to fly over and skip everything in a level, it's likely because the level has got some flaws.

I'd give the design a 3. Levels in Super Mario Bros. 3 were shorter, but felt like they gave you more to do and hit you with more variety. SMB3 doesn't have any levels I consider boring or bad, SMW has a handful.
GANYMEDE

Chapter Two: Land of No Shame
I am going to give it a solid 4. Each level has something different in it, whether it is an introduction to a new concept or a test of your mastery of the concept, and it doesn't repeat itself. There isn't a whole lot of filler. Each stage is distinctive and memorable. For the time, it was also pretty wacky. (Chocolate Island 5 and Forest of Illusion 3 especially strike me as so fascinatingly weird with all this stuff flying around in bubbles.) Yoshi is actually well-integrated and made necessary for some secrets. I don't give it a 5 because I feel like there are a few things that could have been pushed further, like the dark room segment of Bowser's Castle, and the alternate Yoshies feel like a last-minute add-on when their utility beyond the Blue one is not organically explored: the other two are more or less a novelty. The Star World levels should have exploited their new skills.

Even the dull levels have a purpose. Yoshi's Island 2: your dinosaur companion, something never featured before, has its introduction and you get a brief showcasing of new things like enemies popping out of the dirt, and immediately get shown that you can carry shells in this game like you could with the last. You learn that eating enough berries rewards you with a mushroom. Vanilla Secret 2 is pretty spammy in the first half but that level also has a merit: with a cape, you can milk it for a ton of lives. It also teaches you that sliding is a good way to protect yourself against a lot of bad guys.

With the cape thing, I remember playing as a small child and had to practice a lot in one of the bonus rooms in Donut Plains 1 so I could not just sustain but gain height. If you could get every coin in a line in one go, your rhythm was perfect. It definitely wasn't easy when you were new to the game. Being able to skip content was kind of a reward for getting better and if you replay, you can opt to skip not every level, but a decent amount of stuff. Even good levels get boring if you play them too much. I see it as a quality of life thing and a replay value booster for players. I think Cape Spin is more broken given it KOs and stuns most enemies, and Blue Yoshi laughs at cape flight.

Just look above you...
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Solid. They manage to be unique despite re-using assets, but you can just fly through some using the cape, and some areas are just awkwardly empty or long (at least for me)

Benny Harvey RIP, miss you big man.

How do the best SMW hacks hold up against SMW itself? Always wondered that, and this thread gives some interesting insights. I'm about to replay SMW for the first time in ten years, so I'll sure leave my own opinion once I've experienced a fair share.
I honestly can't choose between solid or mediocre. So I just decided to choose solid. Because honestly to me it's a little of both. The castle stages are a little cool and had some cool gimmicks. The special world levels are of course infamous for being extremely difficult for not as skilled players. But like some other people said. It just doesn't nearly have as much variety or non linearity as SMB3 did. So like I said it's kind of in between Mediocre and Solid.
What hacks would classify as having mostly 'very good' levels? Would be nice to have a frame of reference.