Apparently, I grossly underestimated some fan's disdain for Good Feel. I still like their stuff for the most part, though a more internal Nintendo studio potentially handling DK does feel like it might yield stronger consistency for the brand.
With the lack of Kremlings and K Rool, it's hard to tell if it's just deference towards Rare characters they didn't create or if there's been an intentional attempt to shift towards a type of antagonists that Nintendo generally prefers. The sad thing is there's not really been enough games or even spin-offs in the last 15 years to even spot a pattern in to know one way or another.
The funny thing is that Wooly World's Special courses actually were the kind of challenging levels you'd more typically see in certain DK titles and were the element that sparked my intrigue at the idea of them working on Donkey Kong. A lot of their other output doesn't really reflect that true, but I'd argue they've demonstrated some decent level design emphasizing spectacle, which is something that also fits recent DK titles.
It's a moot point anyway given that's likely EPD or nothing in terms of teams working on the series. I just got my fingers crossed that any hypothetical game has a distinct enough visual identity to it.
I just wanted to say I absolutely love Good-Feel's Yoshi games. The emphasis on spectacle and set pieces is really present and the challenges you mentioned, I totally agree were very tricky to pull off. I've only watched my SO play the 3DS port but the new Poochy levels appeared super hard, too.
I was surprised and disappointed at the poor game feel in the Princess Peach: Showtime demo. Folks making YCW a bit but it runs at a very smooth frame rate, often 60 fps.
From Digital Foundry: "Frame-rate is highly impressive - with just the smallest of hitches, the vast majority of Yoshi's Crafted World plays out at 60 frames per second. This is no mean feat for a game that looks this good."
Even though YCW starts slow, it always feels good to control the game. The game feel is on point. With Peach, I was disappointed that it felt slow and choppy, and not smoothly slow like Kirby but just laggy and slow. The action commands felt at a disconnect from the game. I really hoped for a better feeling game to play.
Anyway, I wanted to make sure I tagged
@Supreme Overlord in here because they had an amazing idea for a crafted DK game, I think it was with a wrought iron and steel motif. I've wanted to see that type of crafted DK ever since, at least as a spinoff.
That reminds me,
@JazzyFuture, I think I saw you mention that you only tried the beginning of YCW. If you enjoyed YWW, I really recommend giving the sequel another shot at some point. The game started off surprisingly unexciting but after the first five or so levels it very much branches off into lots of my exciting and unusual levels and compelling design, much more akin to YWW. My only knock really is that YWW is more aesthetically pleasing to me, and has much better music. But yeah when you see the later levels I think you'll be very pleased.
To be fair, the last few levels in Crafted World were ridiculously difficult to 100%
They really were. Beating the secret final boss without getting hit was one of the most challenging things in a Nintendo game in 2019, beyond anything in Link's Awakening or Luigi's Mansion 3 (which I loved).
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