I plan to pick up this game as we just finished the game we were currently playing, Wind Waker HD. I've read on this forum that even if you have no pinball skills but are decent at platformers you can still succeed at the game. We usually like to 100% games we play so is that still doable for a pinball novice?
Yes, pinball skills aren't necessary. Exploration skills, puzzle-solving skills and (some) platforming skills are IMO what's required for 100%.
I also saw some mentions the game is incredibly easy for the most part and only harder to 100%. Is it Yoshi's Story easy or just standard non-Celeste level of difficulty, i.e. like the difficulty to beat a NSMB game (which in my mind are mostly very doable, mildly hard at most for the main game).
Well, the thing is that Yoku can't die. That makes the terms of "difficulty" harder to measure. Technically, Celeste also can't die, but Celeste warps back to the save point. The deaths/failures is a component in a side quest in Yoku, though. Very well implemented IMO.
There is one chest that's quite tricky (platformer-wise) to get, but not Celeste difficult. There are some Wickerlings and side quest that are tricky to figure out. I got huge help from this thread.
Oh, I also saw complaints about sometimes it's hard to know (in the early goings of the game at least) if there's something worth going to check out and then you spend tons of time trying to get to an area only to find nothing there because it was too hard to tell if it was worth going there. Is that a commonly held view or experience anyone here had when playing, in the early goings of the game or beyond?
AFAIK, all areas of the map have some type of content required for 100%.
Also curious to know if anyone here who liked or loved the game is a big Ori fan as that's my favorite Metroidvania and one of my favorite games overall.
Yoku and Ori aren't that similar IMO. Ori's world is mainly vertical/horizontal (since Ori is basically a 2D platformer), while Yoku's world feels more free form. Also, Yoku has no enemies until the final boss. And Yoku has no ability tree like Ori, only fixed abilities.
IMO, it's best to treat the Yoku game as its own thing.