Beautiful visuals and an adorable aesthetic. The levels themselves are darn creative, both in the stage settings/backgrounds as well as the panoply of mechanics, cloth-related or otherwise. The highlights of the game are without a doubt the parts where they take full advantage of the yarn theme and toy with it--the velcro stage being a personal favorite of mine--but there are few (if any) levels that felt particularly uninspired. With this game, the developers also show their mastery of player-created difficulty. There aren't any levels that are difficult to complete from beginning to end, but when you go out of your way to collect the extra hidden goodies (of which there are an insane amount) you're like to find yourself navigating some treacherous obstacle courses... and for a game as mellow as this, the checkpoints are spread rather far apart.
Of all the Yoshi games that have been released since Yoshi's Island, this is by far the most worthy successor, if only because it trades out the grating kazoo soundtrack from Yoshi's New Island and replaces it with some soft acoustic tracks as well as some kickin' guitar-and-bass grooves.