Finally finished the game after a couple of tries against Gruntilda. Now that's what I'm talking about, a nice and challenging boss fight. The only annoying thing was getting hit by the fireballs in really inconvenient spots, such as when you're feeding the Jinjonator statue at certain angles and unable to see where Gruntilda is firing the fireballs, and when she fires them while you're in the air.
Other than that, what a freaking amazing game. The ending cutscenes do such a fantastic job hyping up Banjo Tooie while cranking up the humour and lack of seriousness. Too bad Stop N' Swop doesn't work, but I was told that the exclusive stuff in Banjo Tooie can still be accessed on N64.
In the XBLA versions of KAzooie and Tooie, they actually added the Stop and Swap back into the games so that they connect with Nuts and Bolts. All it does is unlock some pretty mediocre items for your vehicles, but it's still cool they had it.
There are hidden things in Kazooie that people can see but couldn't do anything with for years (ice key behind the walruses cave, the little island in the beach level, a door in the desert, etc.). But with the right code in the sand castle you could actually get into those areas and collect the key and some eggs, but they didn't do anything because of the scrapped Stop n' Swap functionality.
Kazooie is my favorite 3D platformer ever. Tooie I got bored of within a few hours. It's a superbly crafted game, but it's not just bigger and more elaborate, it is that x1000. It crosses the "to a fault" line and then shits on it.
The point when I stopped? Somewhere around the 6-7th world, when I had just unlocked my 37th new move, and trekked for 30 mins across the hub world to the new level. To be met with no Jiggies or way of advancement. I literally had no idea what to do.
Looking up a guide, I have to go back 3 levels, activate this weird switch that opens something else in another level, then go talk to this NPC in the hub, which activates a thing in another world, then walk 20 minutes back to the first area, so I can open the door. And then start the process for the next Jiggy.
I made all that up but it's not really an exaggeration. I discovered what I had to do next, and it was such a massive slog and burden of work across these ridiculously massive and sprawling levels I just stopped and walked away.
Pretty much my experience with Banjo Tooie as well.
My first time playing the game was when it came to XBLA and Banjo Kazooie was one of my favorite games of all time, so I was really excited to play it for the first time (never had an expansion pack for the N64).
I wanted to play the whole game without a guide, but I didn't last long before being forced to use one. My main complaints are the overly massive levels as well as the unreasonable amount of moves you collect throughout the game. There was a sick dinosaur quest that had so many steps to complete that I think I stopped playing once I read how to do it in a guide.
There were quests that required me to use a power that I had no memory of even having because it had such limited use and I forgot how to even perform it. And I got stuck for a while because there was a fence I didn't realize could be knocked down with a certain type of egg and there was no indication that it would work to my knowledge.
And not only are the moves themselves annoying, but collecting them is a chore too. I can't count the number of times I found a mole hill only for it to be a move for Banjo OR Kazooie, which meant I had to backtrack, find a splitting platform, and then remember the route back to the mole hill as the specific character.
I'm crossing my fingers that Yooka Laylee's levels are all Bajo Kazooie sized and not Tooie oversized. There are some good ideas in Tooie, like the interconnected aspects of the levels, that Yooka Laylee could build upon, but they just need to keep it tight and not make the game a chore.