Really creative level design and theming. Quite challenging, but never felt unfair. Controls are substantially more intuitive than DKC Returns (at least the 3DS version), and it works to its benefit. DKCR felt harder, but it's harder to tell whether it's just the difference in inertia/weightiness. The boss battles are pretty rough and tedious, though - many of them follow the old "wait for the right moment to attack" pattern, which is never fun. All in all, I think Rayman Legends is still my favorite modern, large studio platformer, but this is pretty dang good.

The original Donkey Kong Country Returns on the WII was a game I very much enjoyed as a kid, and one that I replayed on the 3DS port last year - finding that it still held up very well. I never, however, played the sequel. After all these years, I’m glad that I finally got around to it, because it is great!

What sets this game apart from other Nintendo platformers (and platformers in general, mostly) is that everything is consistently framed within the game’s context. That is - all the platforms are actually things that believably exist within the world, and aren’t just floating blocks. This seems a small difference, but this aspect of art direction places this game far above just about any other platformer on the market in my opinion; this now sits comfortably as one of my favourite 2D platformers ever.

So the graphics and art design is great, but so is the soundtrack - every single one is an absolute banger. I really don’t understand enough about music to be able to tell you why it is so good but once you play the game, you’ll understand. This is quite typical from Nintendo though, they quite often have some of the best music in the whole industry.

The gameplay is also very solid and a cut above most contempories of the genre. It’s quite simple, at least in terms of the player moveset, but the level design remains constantly engaging and thoroughly challenging. Paired with the smooth animations of both the player character and what they are interacting with and you have a game that just feels good to play.

The boss fights here, although few in number, are fun across the board too - with maybe the exception of the fourth world boss. The pufferfish boss Fuga is fought with entirely underwater mechanics, which I didn’t really enjoy in this game. Water traversal is very hard to get right in videogames, there is literally decades worth of examples of this fact, and while it certainly isn’t terrible in this game, it represented the games lowest point for me. I thought the foruth world was easily the weakest of the six purely due to it being water themed and therefore relying heavily on that stiff water movement. It’s something about how DK maintains momentum for longer than is comfortable, meaning that you drift into hazards that you see coming but can do nothing about. Maybe this was just me going too quickly for the levels pace and isn’t a common problem, but it plagued all of world 4 for me.

To balance out that criticism, world 5 was my personal favourite world in all aspects - gameplay mechanics, theme and boss fight. The uniqueness of all the different world themes is impressive and one of the games most commendable aspects. The previous game had pretty good variety too, the devs for these two games really get how to make a world memorable.

Little side note: the fact that minecarts and rocket barrels now have three hit points instead of just immediately being destroyed in one hit makes those levels so much more tolerable compared to the previous game. Sure, it makes them way easier, but the difficulty in those levels always felt artificial to me anyway.

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Man it feels good when a game you've always wanted to play turns out to be not only really fun but the best game in the series. I loved nearly every second of this game (minus the World 4 boss but that's to be expected with an underwater boss). The game is still difficult like the other DKC games, but this one felt the most fair, though I will admit it is a little easier than the others. That isn't to say that there aren't any hard moments in this game, but it just felt like smoother sailing compared to the other games. It also is a bit shorter, but I'm glad it didn't overstay its welcome. I also thought the ice physics would be really annoying, though I guess I shouldn't have expected that from a game called Tropical Freeze because they nailed the platforming this time. The game doesn't feel slippery like Returns sort of did somehow. I also think the level themes are really strong here, as it feels like there's more, such as Juicy Jungle or Autumn Heights. The bosses were all pretty fun (minus the World 4 boss, that one was annoying because its underwater) and the OST is incredible, especially the boss themes like Big Top Bop, Punch Bowl, and Volcano Dome. Overall, Tropical Freeze was another great Donkey Kong Country experience and I'm glad I'm ending it off with my new favourite.