In my opinion, Wario Land 4 is the best game of the Wario Land trilogy. I rate every category a perfect 10 including: the graphics, music, gameplay, storyline, and content. I would have to say that this has to be my favorite game on the Gameboy Advance, and for the most part, one of my favorite video games ever! It is right up there with great classic games like Donkey Kong Country 2, Super Mario World, and Super Mario Bros. 3. There is a lot to talk about with the fourth game of the Wario franchise.

Graphics 10/10: Whenever I reviewed Wario Land 3, I talked about how animated the graphics in that game looked. Wario Land 4 looks even better on the 32-bit Gameboy Advance. The sprites and backgrounds have even more detail to them than that game had. Wario Land 4 looks a lot like many of the Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z games. It was released in late 2001 whenever those games were very popular. This fourth Wario game looks almost like a cartoon! This looks like a game that was perfectly designed for a handheld gaming system that was fairly new at the time. What a great looking game!

Music 10/10: The soundtrack of Wario Land 4 has the most variety to it of any other video game I have played so far. The music is catchy and fun to listen to from start to finish. The musical numbers are also a big part of what gives this game that animated feel, and it sounds very cartoonlike. I like how in some of the songs you can hear a girl singing in Japanese. Wario Land 4 sounds very much like a Japanese anime! The title song is also one of my favorites. The only way to experience the music of this game is to listen to the soundtrack in the Vizzed Video Game Music Room (or play the game). I think it sounds better than the classic Sonic games!

This has to be one of my favorite parts of the fourth installment. The track for "Toy Block Tower" is one of my favorites. I liked the trumpet that plays in that song. Some of the others like "Arabian Night" are also pretty cool too. The best part is the ending where you get a collection of the best songs from the whole game that play as Wario is riding off in the desert in his big car! That scene is a perfect way to end the game and the Wario Land series, even though it wasn't the end. From beginning to end, this is one of my favorite video game soundtracks ever!

Gameplay 10/10: This is a very long section because there are a lot of things about Wario Land 4 that will make you want to come back and replay this game a lot. This Wario game is a lot more straightforward than the previous game (Wario Land 3) on Gameboy Color and is more of a return to the traditional gameplay style of the first ones in the trilogy. You have the overworld map of the pyramid and a kind of status screen of the individual levels of each area of the pyramid. The player can see if they have found the stone tablets and CDs on each level. Wario can die in this game, but he also has a lot of health. I don't find myself dying much from running out of health except for on the boss fights.

What will really make newcomers want to play this game is the first level which is a tutorial level. This part shows off Wario's basic moves and how to perform them. It basically shows people how to play the game, which I like. There is a new move called the Supercharge that is performed by holding down the R button while pressing the right or left arrow keys. This maneuver is used for plowing through a lot of blocks or for breaking those dark green blocks that Wario cannot break with his normal charge attack. I feel like Wario Land 4 is the best game for new players of the series to check out because of how self-explanatory it is. About all the games (except for WL3) are like this.

In order to make progress in this game Wario has to find all 4 stone tablets in each level. The pieces are found in treasure chests and are necessary for unlocking the boss stage in each area. The player also has to find the key on each stage in order to unlock the door to the next stage. There are also optional CD pieces in each level that are used to play sound effects in the game's sound room. I didn't find it all that hard to find these items on the levels. You just had to do some exploring in the first part of the stages before you hit the Frog Switch.

After you hit the Frog Switch, a timer is set off, but the player can now reach different parts of the level that were not accessible before. You can explore these new areas in order to find more tablets, the key, CDs, and even more optional items such as: jewels and coins that are worth points in this game. However, you have to find your way back to the beginning of the level before time runs out and jump into the vortex after hitting the switch. It seems like the game does give you plenty of time to do so on the early levels of the game, but towards the end this becomes more challenging which is the way a game should be.

This time Wario starts the game with his basic abilities just like in Wario Land 2, and he also has the Supercharge ability. Wario Land 4 is lot more straightforward than the third game because you don't have to find treasures in order to gain back your basic moves. All you have to do is find the 4 tablets and the key on each of the stages in order to make progress and unlock the boss areas. All this has to be done in a certain amount of time which is a lot like the way the levels in the Super Mario and first Wario Land games were designed.  

Wario can die in this game too if he takes too much damage from enemies. He starts out each level with only 3 hearts, but the player can find more heart pieces within the levels. There is also a treasure chest in some of the stages that give you full health. Another thing worth mentioning, is that there are two modes to this game: Normal Mode and Hard Mode. Players have the option of playing this game in either mode after selecting an empty save file. There is also another S-Hard Mode that is unlocked by completing the game in Hard Mode. WOW! I think playing this game in Normal Mode is challenge enough! I don't feel like playing all these modes are all that exciting or different from normal mode and can just be skipped.

In order to complete Wario Land 4 100%, players have to find the mandatory stone pieces and keys, but they also have to find the CDs and beat the bosses under a certain amount of time. Yeah, the boss fights are timed. You have to beat the bosses of each world under a certain time limit. Wario does have full health to start with, but it can be very difficult to keep from taking damage in these parts of the game. You have to figure out how to avoid getting hit and land a lot of hits of your own on these bosses all under a certain time limit. The first boss (Spoiled Rotten) is a joke it is so easy, but the next one (Cractus) is a lot more difficult!

As the clock ticks down to the last minute, one of your treasure chests float away. Wario must have all 12 chests after defeating the final boss (The Golden Diva) at the end of the game in order to get the best ending and rescue the Princess in her prettiest form. If you don't have many treasures at the end, Wario will rescue the Princess, but she will not look anything like a Princess, she'll look more like a monster! You can go back and try to beat the bosses more quickly in order the retain all 12 treasures and rescue the Princess in her proper, more attractive form. This is an extra challenge that can be pretty hard to do because of the way you can't go back and try again if you mess up until you beat all of them again.

The design of Wario Land 4 is pretty cool, and like with all the other games, it is big on exploration. You don't have to keep up with as much as you did in the third game in order to know where you are going and not get lost. The stages and areas also have a lot of variety with: an island paradise, jungles, factories, toy block levels, domino levels (LOL!), haunted house stages, a fire/ice level, etc. It doesn't go overboard with exploration like in Wario 3 and keeps things more simple. The stone tablets are easy to find, you just have to look for them. In order to do this Wario has to undergo some his classic transformations from Wario Land 2 and 3.

His transformations for Wario Land 4 include: Bouncy Wario, Bubble Wario, Fat Wario, Flat Wario, Hot Wario , Zombie Wario, Bat Wario, Snowball Wario, Puffy Wario, and Frozen Wario. The transformation system is basically the same with no new moves. These transformations can become helpful in reaching secret areas where tablets, keys, CDs, hearts, coins (that have no other function but to give the player a higher score in this Wario game), and jewels are found. They can also hinder your progress, especially on the boss fights. It would not be right to not talk about the transformations and no Wario Land game would be the same without them.

Story 10/10: Wario Land 4 starts out with Wario's car breaking down on him. He wonders through a jungle where he discovers a pyramid. Wario was reading about this pyramid that morning and how it was full of all kinds of valuable treasures worth millions! Wario already has more than enough money from finding all the treasures from before in the music box world, but he wants more. Although, in the process, Wario ends up doing more than just stealing treasure. He finds this black cat, and to quote The Lonely Goomba "a scientist that looks like he has a brain tumor"!

Wario follows the cat throughout the pyramid and fights these strange creatures (A Giant Piranha Plant, Cuckoo Clock, Giant Teddy Bear, and a Catbat) along the way before reaching The Golden Passage to the final boss (The Golden Diva). It turns out this pyramid was once ruled by this beautiful princess named Princess Shokora. She was turned into the black cat that led Wario to this pyramid by the Golden Diva who has taken over the pyramid, thrown out Princess Shokora, and turned her into a cat. So, Wario is not only stealing treasure, but also rescuing a princess, and a scientist who got lost here too. This is not something Wario started doing much of until he saved the Music Box world in the third game, but in the fourth one, he does much more than that!

Although, if Wario loses some of his treasure chests on the boss fights, he won't be able to restore Princess Shokora to her true form. She'll remain ugly! The storyline for Wario Land 4 is hilarious! Nintendo did something a lot more creative than what they did with the second and third games this time around. However, after Wario does all this, the game shows another cat, a white one, wondering the streets. Could this be another princess for Wario to unintentionally rescue and another opportunity for him to steal even more treasure!?

Content 10/10: Wario Land 4 isn't as long as the other two previous games are, but it does take a good bit of time to try and complete. This is about a 3 and 1/2 hour long game which is typical for any good platformer. The game takes place inside the pyramid Wario wondered into in the jungle. The pyramid is broken up into 6 different passages: The Entry Passage, Emerald Passage, Ruby Passage, Topaz Passage, Sapphire Passage, and The Golden Pyramid. The main passages: Emerald, Ruby, Topaz, and Sapphire passages, are broken up into several different levels. These levels are pretty long, and some of them take up to 30 minutes to complete. Luckily, there aren't that many levels in this Wario Land game, but it still has a fair amount of content to it without being as insanely long like the other games.

Difficulty 5/10: There is no doubt that Wario Land 4 is a lot more straightforward, and isn't as much of a puzzle to figure out like the third game was. You don't need a sheet of paper in order to keep from getting confused as to which level to play next. The game clearly displays where the player goes after finishing the previous one. Getting to that level requires all 4 stone tablets and the key in order to unlock the gateway to the next stage. The player also has to find all these items under a certain amount of time, or Wario will die and have to replay the whole thing again. The tablets and keys aren't hard to find, and you have plenty of time to enter the vortex at the start of the stage before time runs out.

This never gets to be much of a problem except for on some of the later levels. Even then, it isn't that difficult. Wario also can collect a lot of heart pieces in the stages, so he can take a lot of hits from enemies before dying. The levels themselves aren't that hard, but the boss areas kind of are. Wario starts out with full health, but he must land a lot of hits on these bosses under a certain amount of time. He also has to avoid taking damage himself. These boss stages are what takes practice to master successfully, and this is where the transformations can slow you down as well. These bosses take so many hits to defeat, and they are timed. I'd say when you factor in all this, Wario Land 4 has a decent amount of difficulty but isn't as hard as the previous game.

Overall 10/10: This has got to be one of the longest reviews I have ever written!! The reviews I did for the other Wario Land games were also pretty long, but Wario Land 4 has lot of things to discuss. It isn't that long of a game, but there are so many things about it that I felt like needed to be talked about. The graphics, sound, content, difficulty, plot, and the gameplay had a lot that needed to be explained. A game doesn't get this high of a rating without explaining why it does. Wario Land 4 has been a very memorable game even though it was released years after I lost interest in video games. It wasn't until early in 2015 that I started playing it, and since then I have been hooked! I recommend giving it a try, and I'm sure there are probably still some other things I forgot mention about the game that need explaining.