Normally this would have the opposite effect, but after playing this and thoroughly not enjoying it (I've made it halfway through before throwing in the towel here) I'm genuinely more interested in playing Re-Pac now.

It should go without mentioning this game's hellish start of development plus all its documentation regarding its lack of playtesting but every single moment of Pac-Man World reminds you of it. Too much does this game struggle to play smoothly, whether it's Pac-Man randomly choosing not to grab ledges, a ramp misfiring you into a pit, literally falling through moving platforms, or picking and choosing any of it's six main bosses that don't play fairly. The physics are not only awkward but inconsistent, as Pac-Man rolls and slides (or doesn't) on all kinds of slopes and angles that don't necessarily make sense. Every butt bounce is unpredictable, every dash roll is a Hail Mary. I've even gotten softlocked twice, both by butt bouncing at certain angles where Pac-Man gets stuck in the terrain on landing.

The difficulty, whether intentional or not, is all over the place. I had genuine trouble in the second stage (in the first world), game over'd twice there before I got it, and then breezed through until I reached Manic Mines, halfway into the second world. Most of my struggles actually were due to the camera movement/placement during sections that shifted perspective, as crucial platforms required to progress are obscured, made completely out of view unless you grab a glimpse of the way forward before the camera makes some weird angle shift that omits it from your viewpoint. Weird, unnatural leaps of faith become common unless you keep a keen eye on what's ahead. Bosses are just plain absurd as well, with the second boss being notorious for being unfinished and receiving the least amount of playtesting, but if I'm being honest each one that I got up to was on some similar level of bullshit. The bosses are the lowest points of an already meandering experience, as you're thrown into arenas and are ravaged with uncoordinated amounts of different projectiles with different behaviors. You know sometimes in Cuphead you could just get really unlucky and find yourself in a shitty split-second situation where the enemy projectiles just line up in a way where you just have to take the hit? Imagine that but that's how the game's bosses work. And no, I didn't get filtered by Anubis Rex. I got filtered by fucking King Galaxian, the spamming shit bastard.

Pac-Man World wants to play fair but unfortunately hasn't been made to. Which is a shame, because conceptually it is not a miss; while the setpieces are bland and boring and the soundtrack sounds like a phoned-in score for a Saturday morning cartoon, the platforming and gameplay as a whole can be, at times, thoughtful. You can see a glimpse of the polished Pac-Man World it was meant to be when you can successfully chain bounces, rolls, and make quick maneuvers through stage hazards in succession. It can almost feel like a Sonic game after some slight mastery, but I just kept calling this game "Ass Bandicoot" in my head as I fumbled along. Unfortunately, things just don't happen they way they're supposed to, and the duct tape and stapled-together Pac-Man World becomes a game that's only really fun to imagine rather than play.

Now that Re-Pac exists, however, I feel like I can look forward with some optimism, knowing it's not just a straight remaster but a full ground-up remake with better balancing and polish in mind.

Um jogo com muito potencial para ser perfeito, mas que tem defeitos notáveis.
Joguei esse jogo pela primeira vez no PS1 na minha infância. Resolvi que iria rejogar pela nostalgia.
Minhas observações:
O jogo graficamente é um dos mais bonitos do PS1, tudo é muito bem animado, as animações são lindas de ver, sendo o maior destaque o próprio pacman que tem muitas animações variadas muito bonitas e engraçadas e várias caretas para as situações.
O jogo tem mecânicas bem legais e divertidas como dar um dash rodando que nem uma bola, sair quicando também igual uma bola, lançar as bolinhas coletavéis nos inimigos e se pressionar o botão elas explodem e o pacman consegue se agarrar nas beiradas de plataformas, o que acaba te salvando de várias quedas e é uma animação bonita.
A trilha sonora é legal, mas eu não lembro de nenhuma música que consiga ficar marcante pro jogador, elas apenas fazem seu trabalho como música ambiente.
Agora começam os defeitos, infelizmente o jogo tem vários sinais de falta de polimento e que foi feito corrido em algumas partes.
HitBox várias vezes estranha, injusta e mal feita.
Inconsistência de dificuldade constante e muito notável. Tem fases bem fáceis e agradáveis e outras fases que parecem o inferno em forma de fase, sendo muito longas, cheias de obstáculos e com checkpoints muito distantes. Zerar esse jogo sem save state é um teste de sanidade mental.
Os bosses são todos diferentes com mecânicas diferentes para serem derrotados, sempre uma variação agradável, como por exemplo um boss que começa te perseguindo e a câmera fica em primeira pessoa na visão do boss enquanto fugimos em um corredor com armadilhas (quando vi isso fiquei encantado em como isso é um jogo de PS1, muito criativo essa parte), um boss ao estilo Space Invaders e etc. Mas tudo isso é destruído pela dificuldade inconsistente que faz os bosses demorarem muito para morrerem, com o final das batalhas tendo a tela toda poluída de projéteis e o checkpoint sempre voltar tudo do início.

Em resumo: vale a pena ser jogado no emulador com save state, jogar esse jogo puro vai mais te causar stress que diversão. O início do jogo é tão bom, mas a partir do segundo boss já se sente a dificuldade descarrilhando. O jogo tem qualidades muito boas mas tem esses defeitos bem difíceis de ignorar e que interferem na experiência deixando ela menos positiva.

Anubis Rex is genuinely worse than the Bed of Chaos oh my fucking god.
Edit: So as it turns out, trying to dodge the laser that is the sole reason this fight is difficult requires patience rather than platforming. Thank you youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdFCPYPZdjM
If this had been my introduction to the series I probably wouldn't have continued. Despite being shorter to 100% than its sequel I felt it was less interesting and more tedious. Anyway worlds 3, 4, and 6 are pretty alright, but 2 and 5 really drag.
Btw if you clear the Maze Marathon make sure you play a maingame level to completion and save in order to keep your progress. I quit after clearing the marathon and had my progress reset.

Pac-Man World is pretty good, I'm kinda surprised that this game isn't talked about that often. The game has such fun movement, and most of the levels were pretty fun!

I was going to give this game a 8/10 but there were a few things that made me change my mind. The camera was pretty bad at points, the controls felt kinda inconsistent, most of the bosses were bad, and i disliked how you were required to obtain keys to unlock the final world, because they were kind of tedious to find.

My favorite level was "crazy cannonade" (1-3) and my least favorite level (by far) was "spin dizzy" (4-3).

PMW doesn't do much if you seek anything that's interesting but it succeeds at being a fun 2.5D Platformer in the veins of crash bandicoot, although unlike that game where the difficulty can be determined widely based on your decision to go for 100% or not, World suffers from sudden difficulty spikes from the questionably designed boss battles to the level design reliance on backtracking when it comes to the collectibles, some are vital for even accessing the climax so ignoring them isn't given option,
Credits where it due, the designers avoided stretching the backtracking road further by having the collectibles placed close by the locked doors to avoid making this task tedious, in most cases it revolves around circling a bit back which is nice, investing time to collect them all outside mandatory keys can lead you to bonus stages like the mazes or post-level bonus round where you can potentially raise your live count and score depending on how well you do in the challenges, the mazes are fine challenge although stage hazards didn't really remove the tedious repetitious nature while bonus round are fine time challenges that actually offer variety.

Pac-man was good enough to maneuver around the levels, his butt bounces specially can be useful for reaching higher grounds and allow potentially experimental players to bypass large obstacles, same can't be said for his other moves, the Rev-Roll and Pac-Dot Attack, both moves I use of in extremely situational, specially the Rev-Roll with moments like bypassing obstacle or activating switches, not all that fun or interesting like the butt bounce.
The Level design and visuals look great, I'm glad to see the developers willing to explore other avenues compared to most other platformers, the likes of the Pirate island, Circus Carnival, Space station, etc. are all treat to be hold, I'm specially glad the game doesn't shy away from the gloomy atmosphere like the dark temple levels with moody soundtrack and great lighting which unfortunately missing from many modern platformers

Unfortunately same can't be said for the boss battles as I mentioned, like of Anubis Rex and King Galaxian being extremely frustrating specially the former with how much projectiles they can spam at a moment notice overall resulting in unbalanced, unfair fight, but thankfully the final boss fight with Toc-Man is a great spectacle and definitely ends the game on high note by having to test your moveset against giant man himself!.

despite the awkward implementation of certain mechanics and designs choices, I still had good time and would gave it a solid recommendation from any platformer enthusiast out there.

I'M CALLING OUT FROM PAC LAND
I'M CALLING OUT FROM PAC MAN'S WORLD
IF YOU WANNA BE FREE
YOU BETTER LISTEN TO ME
YOU GOT TO LEARN HOW TO SEE IN YOUR FANTASY

I bought this game for my PS1 a couple years ago, and with the remake coming up, I figured I would finally go ahead and play through this game.

Now that I have, I can say that I think Pac-Man World is... decent. It doesn't do very much that makes it particularly stand out over other platformers of the time, but obviously not every game needs to be a home run and as it is, I do think Pac-Man World is fun, enjoyable platformer with some flaws that I do think hamper the experience a bit.

The level design in this game is somewhat of a mixed bag. For the most part, I do feel like this game's levels are fun enough. The platforming challenges are decent, and the game also offers some good exploration with the "PACMAN" tokens and looking for keys to rescue Pac-Man's friends (which, spoiler alert, you'll need to do for to unlock the final boss), in addition to fruits and Galaxian tokens to open doors, the latter allows you to play new takes on the original Pac-Man arcade game which I like.

That said, there wasn't really too much about the level design that really stood out to me, and even some of the things that did... weren't for very good reasons. Occasionally you'll find levels that hold some pretty annoying mechanics and gimmicks that make platforming tedious in some aspects - in which case the 'Spin Dizzy' level in particular really annoyed me with having the player hop between spinning platforms in a way that leads to a bunch of mis-timed or just outright bad jumps.

On top of this, the enemy and hazard placement in some areas feels odd. Part of it I feel like is a result of the game's camera system and depth perception, but I recall a few moments where I would run into an enemy or hazard that I didn't even know was there or coming towards me - in many such cases I would end up 'butt bouncing' into a hazard or enemy on the ceiling that I didn't even knew was there while trying to open a chest or jump on the bouncy pad thingies.

Also, as far as bosses go I'll just say that the Anubis Rex boss was designed by Satan.

The controls work fine for the most part - I do like the mechanics Pac-Man has but aside for the 'Butt Bounce' allowing for higher jumps it doesn't really feel like the other moveset options - namely the 'Rev Roll' and pellet attack - don't really come into play until the final boss. His movement feels fine, nothing mindblowing but it works well enough.

The game also has a weird issue where for some reason it doesn't reset your lives count to a minimum when you get a game over - meaning that if you save your file with 1 or 2 lives, and you game over from there, you'll still come back with, well, 1 or 2 lives. So if you get done with a particularly hard level that ends up costing most of your lives, to move on to another fairly hard level, you'll most likely have to go back to the earlier stages to try and grind for more lives. Admittedly it isn't so much of an issue since the game is pretty generous with lives especially if you go for the Pac-Man tokens... at least in the PS1 version.

I haven't played the GBA version but apparently not only did they not fix that issue but they basically exacerbated it by removing stuff like the Pac-Man tokens and mazes meaning you can only get lives by exploring the levels themselves (with a worse depth perception issue since the game has an isometric view... yeah don't play the GBA version lmao).

Overall, Pac-Man World is a decent time, but I do feel like it's somewhat letdown by some issues with the level design and lives system. If you do want to play this game, I would probably suggest at least waiting until the remake comes out and seeing how that is.