Beat it a few hours ago, with 101 pagies.
The good (or at least decent)
- The first world, swamp world and space world were great. Especially the latter. A space world was something I had wanted in Banjo-Kazooie for a long time, and this was a perfect version of that, mixing a space world with an ocean world in what basically amounts to a giant amusement park. It also has the most fun transformation. It has the best designed NPCs (that space marine! those frogs!) The entire game I was thinking "lol no way these guys don't make a beach/pirate level, that's a core theme of the Kazooie series." And never would I have thought they'd go in that direction for the pirate level! These three really felt like Banjo worlds and were interesting and really fun to wander around and discover new things.
- Capital B is a fun big bad that differentiates himself from Grunty, while also working as a nice parallel to her. His fight was also one of the better boss fights in the game, even if it's just pattern recognition.
- The character designs are mostly good. The main characters and villains are very good.
- The game mostly succeeds at what it set out to be, an indie reboot of the 90s 3D platforming genre made by former Rare staff.
- The snow world minigame is fun, why couldn't all the arcade games be like this one? It's the only one that actually feels like Tooie minigame and isn't a chore to complete. I dare say it was actually an enjoyable distraction part of the game (which is what the arcade games should be)!
- The music ranges from okay to fantastic. The only real dud song is the arcade theme, which feels like a wasted opportunity to make chiptune remixes of the stage's theme instead of a generic theme used whenever there's an arcade. David Wise's great songs are wasted on garbage parts of the game.
- The bosses range from trivial (the first one) to okay, if not too easy once you memorize the patterns (Capital B) to brutally hard (the space one) to "I can't find this boss so it might as well not exist." (Snow and Casino) I don't really know why I listed this as a pro, I guess because I wasn't really annoyed by the bosses like some other people, even if the space boss was brutal and extremely punishing, but was still pretty fun in a weird way. And the two I didn't find maybe are bad, but I won't know any time soon!
- The little nods here and there to Rare's old game were charming. The random Grunty snowwoman (complete with rhymes) was really appreciated.
- People were complaining that the worlds were too big and too empty or whatever, but I never got that. Other than maybe the Casino, every stage is packed with stuff to do, and every area serves a purpose.
- Gimme all the puns
The bad (or not that great)
- The snow world is mediocre and the casino is pretty boring, bordering on bad. Coins for pagies is a novel idea, but the stage seems to move really slow with progression because tasks that would usually award you a pagie just give you 5ish coins, so you have to do a bunch of random tasks to get the same rewards the other stages have for tasks. The snow world isn't as bad, but it's just kind of... boring. Which is a shame, since Freezeezy Peak is like the gold standard of Banjo stages, but this one goes in a completely different direction and feels more like a DK64 stage, right down to the music. I was expected a high energy Christmasy sort of jingle (like Freezeezy), but ended up with slow, kind of generic "glacier" theme. And I know Grant can do a quiet snow theme because
this exists.
And this. But this stage's theme didn't really hit the same notes (har har) as Click Click Wood or Hailfire Peaks.
- On that note (har har), the music is really subdued in the game. Banjo Kazooie's music was a part of the stage, and in most cases was
loud,
high energy and
set the mood. This game's music is more tucked in the background and doesn't really stand out. And maybe it's unfair to compare the soundtrack to three of the original game's best (objectively) but... it's the same composer making the same style of music for the same genre of game. And in every case except space world, he was making music for a stage theme he's already made music for.
This is the first level of Tooie. The first stage. And it's in your face loud, powerful gladiator tribal sort of music. This game's first stage is roughly the same stage theme (tribal jungle ruins) and yet the theme is not really as powerful at all. Even the
"powerful" version of the first stage sounds slow and meandering. It's actually kind of a shame, since I really like the actual tunes in the game, I think they're just way too slow and low energy. I know this game can do high energy themes.
Because this exists and it's awesome. On an awesome stage. My god this stage was great. Make more space amusement park pirate stages. Pls gib orchestrated patch soon. Just for this song. But I will say the slow music works for the swamp stage, that theme is a fine pace.
- The minigames (sans snow world) are... well... ummm. Yea. That's a few pagies I'll never get.
- The game would have been a better game had the minecart stretch goal never existed. They make the game worse for existing. Wise's awesome Tropical Freeze tunes are wasted on those parts of the game.
- The camera is bananas. I've never seen a 3D platforming camera break
on a slide. As in sliding down a slightly curve slide. As in a camera that Mario 64 managed to do just fine with on its various slide themed stages over 20 years ago. And it'll randomly jerk around, get stuck on stuff, change perspective a rapid pace. Change perspective messing up your controls and causing a loop of in and out of an area. Often the camera will just give up on life and go hang out in a bizarre angle making it impossible to see anything. Jesus, when I was using the snowplow, sometimes the camera would actually shift
inside my player model.
- Some of the challenges are way too punishing. Especially the ones with timers. Many of them have no margin for error at all. None. You miss a jump slightly or take damage or whatever and that's the end. And with no easy way to redo challenges, you just have to buckle down and wait for the time to run out. This is especially jarring on something like the 3 minute long boat race in space world. If you fall behind, there is NO HOPE to catch up, at all, so you just mess around until the timer ends. It's like Canary Mary exists, except she exists in 15 different spots in the game. "Boy, these tedious and brutal minigames sure are awesome in DK64" said nobody ever.
- The autosave is janky, and needed to go to the options and jiggle with the stats to force a save to not lose your quills is bad. It should auto-save when quitting no matter what. Why doesn't it? Tooie managed to autosave just fine (Kazooie only really ever saved your jiggies, so it wasn't as noticeable if it saved or not, I don't remember)...
- Some of the NPCs are really ugly. Like they were plucked right out of the mid 90s, which you might say is intended, but it's not intended on any of the main characters, so why do these random NPCs look so dated standing next to updated modern Yooka or Trowzer or Capital B.
- The stamina meter starts off as "wow, this game needs way more stamina" and then one rolling stamina booster tonic and a single bar upgrade later and stamina is basically meaningless.
- Even so, it takes way too long to charge and this is most noticeable on the final boss. Also the bar fills up erratically, which appears to be a bug.
- Giving the player near unrestricted flight in a 3D platformer is a bold move. Note that Kazooie and Tooie limited flight to specific areas on specific levels. And maybe there was a good reason why that was the case. It works on the one stage post flight (SPACE). But for all the stages before, you can cheese any pagies you missed. The swamp stage basically falls completely apart with unlimited flight. There's no need to climb anything anymore. Or roll on tricky slopes. Or even jump for that matter lol. I found myself using flight to do simple platforming because why not?
- Shovel Knight is jarring and out of place. He feels like bad product placement, even if I don't think that was intended by the cameo.
- Progression on moves is awkward. Gliding and high jump should be stage 1 moves (why is Sonar??). Those really open the game up for more exploring and make traveling the huge overworlds less tedious.
- There are too many quizzes. One at the very end would have been enough. 2 might have been okay. 3 was too many. I was bored of the quizzes by the end of the game.
I wrote a ton of cons, but I actually really, really enjoyed this game a lot. I know a fantastic, charming, awesome game is in there. It's just rough around the edges and has some nagging problems that are very noticeable (like the camera and the poor arcade games).
But the thing is, if they really want to, I don't think any of the huge issues can't be fixed with patches. Rebalance the minigames and minecarts (just lowering the required totals by 20 would do wonders!). Tweak some challenge timers. Bandage up the camera. Add orchestrated music. Slow down the jibberish to Kazooie speeds. Adjust the autosave. These things can be patched. I've watched other indie devs patch similar things and more. And I hope they do, do it. Because there's a great product here and a great series here, and I really want this game to succeed and be the best it can be.
I still have a ton of stuff to collect in this game. But I'm going to hold off and see how the devs update the game. The orchestrated soundtrack and N64 shader alone might give me a push back in. But a nice re-balance and some camera tweaks and I might jump right back in.
