I'm having fun with it, but this ain't no Banjo Kazooie. I've played through BK this past weekend. I wasn't planning on it, it just grabbed me and I played through it in 2 days. First time I played it since its release and man that game holds up perfectly, I had a blast.
Going in it with a fresh view on BK probably soured my YL experience as it just doesn't compare very well. It's clearly a clone, but it's lacking in all the important areas like controls and level-design. Overall it just feels very unpolished and rough and a lot of Pagie challenges are just shit, whereas BK was almost always oozing with creativity; it was tightly designed and the controls were fine for the most part. YL's levels just have lots of dead space and seemingly random junk thrown in to fill them out, only making it seem cluttered in all the wrong ways, they just don't seem that well thought out.
Combat in BK was pretty bad (one of the few downsides to the game, together with a clunky camera), but somehow it's worse in YL, moves often don't seem to connect, adding to the frustration.
The camera is just shit, it kinda baffles the mind how this could have passed quality control; it gets stuck all the goddamn time, has a mind of its own and actively acts against the player.
That said, even though I might sound really down on the game, I am having fun with it. This type of game just doesn't come around very often and I find it charming and overall it controls well enough and offers plenty of content.
If you're a fan of the genre I'd cautiously give it a go; see if you can cope with the issues and look past them. I'm (for the most part) able to, so I'll give it a pass. It's a BK clone through and through and that's exactly what saves it. In the end it's not quite there in the design department, but there's enough good to be said about it too.
Not alone. I'm about to complete the entire game and get the platinum trophy and its been exceedingly rare that the camera has given me issues in the ~20 hours spent with the game. It does require babysitting, but decades of right stick management should not be giving GAF players much concern.
I'm usually the last guy to complain about a wonky camera, but I'm finding YL's to be quite a nuisance. I hate that it literally gets stuck, forcing me to correct my movement. I'm not even done with the game and this happened a bunch of times.
