I don't know why I waited so long to finally 100% Banjo-Tooie. I grew up playing this game here and there, but never made it very far. Banjo-Kazooie has always been one of my all-time favorites, but as an adult, I never took the plunge into tooie until recently. And wow, am I glad I did. <3

This game is just as charming as the first, and it will make you realize just how small the worlds of BK are. The interconnectedness of Banjo-Tooie is mind boggling. Some folks find this to be a tedious venture, but in my opinion, it's where the game truly shines. The jiggies and objectives get harder as the game progresses, and some of the challenges really make you work for a single jiggy. But that being said, the satisfaction I felt after finishing a tough section (lookin at you, Grunty Industries) made it well worth the effort. The cheato-pages definitely helped alleviate some of the pressure of the final boss as well, which improved the pacing at the end of the game significantly from BK.

I love how this game reignites that spark of wonder that you feel while playing a game for the first time as a child. Where is the secret Glowbo? What will it do? Will I ever find the alleged Ice Key from BK? What will the Stop n Swop eggs hatch into? There are just so many little mysteries in this game that keep the player returning to discover. Not many games can do that, and for that, this game deserves a perfect score.

I hope someday we see a true Banjo-Threeie, and I hope it feels a lot like this game. 5/5, I love this series so, so much. <3

Banjo-Tooie is a sprawling platformer that picks up right where its predecessor left off. Rare's ambition is clear – bigger worlds, more complex puzzles, and an expanded arsenal of moves for our bear-and-bird duo. While this creates moments of brilliance, the sheer scale often leads to frustrating backtracking and occasional confusion. The game's undeniable charm and Grant Kirkhope's delightful soundtrack still shine through, making this a worthwhile experience for nostalgic N64 fans, but Banjo-Tooie falls short of the focused brilliance of Banjo-Kazooie.

And so my trek back through nastolgia concludes by playing through my favorite-est 3D platformer ever. I'd never 100%'d it before, but gosh I did it this time. It was certainly FAR quicker and easier to do than doing DK64's would've been XP. I only had to use a guide for about 5 minor collectables as well (ones which I know I've found on previous playthroughs, but missed this time), so I found just about everything myself :) . Granted, this is like my fourth or fifth time through this game, but it took me about 13.5 hours. Judging from another save file on the cartridge that had about 18 for the minimum amount of jiggies to beat the game, I'd say I've gotten much faster :P

It's still Banjo-Tooie. Dripping with style, color, and silly dialogue, it's still the best the N64 ever had to offer in terms of 3D platforming. The bosses are also still fantastic as well. I certainly don't remember the final boss being as hard as it was, but all of them were certainly a blast (I even beat Weldar on the first try this time :D ).

Being a Rare game, there are of course some technical issues in terms of framerate. Especially in world 7, the game experiences some really significant slowdown quite frequently. Nothing that ever made the game impossible to control, but definitely annoying now that I'm old enough to notice it. I'm fairly curious if the XBLA versions of the game fix that problem, tbh.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you like 3D platformers even a little, then this game should totally be a must-play. I know they're really not for everyone, but if you enjoy classic collectathons, there's really nothing better than this game.

A sequel that is still fun but flawed.

I still have a love for this game. It improves on some things but falters in others. And this is just another part of the story of how Rare didn't listen to criticism.

Where last left off with DK64(Go check my review of it so this makes a bit more sense.). The biggest problem with Tooie is that worlds are yet again too big. They are tedious to get around. It requires a stupid amount of backtracking. You have to get a move 2 world from now and then return to get this jiggy. Worlds are not self contained anymore. They actually connect in insane ways. You can do things in one world that effects another. It's cool but it also leads to tedium. They tried to add warp pads in worlds like DK64 but it doesn't really solve the problem.

Now, why am I mentioning DK64 so much? It's because it came out a year before this. And they learned nothing! They were told how tedious it was. They were told the worlds were too big. Yet here we are, with Banjo-Tooie having the same issues. The one thing they did improve is there is way less to collect in Tooie than there is in DK64. Rare simply did not listen to very valid criticisms.

Now, let's compare it to Banjo-Kazooie. It is a sequel after all. What does it improve it on? Note count no longer resets on death or exit of a level. You can now collect packs of notes instead one 1 note at a time. The overworld is a bit more interesting than the first. Although I feel like Grunty's Castle is a better vibe and theme. Ilse of Hags has more variety and there is more life going on. It has more moves to learn. Moves are more varied and all of them are used more. We get a lot more lore about the world. We also get what most people wanted and that was, to see Kazooie out of the backpack.

A cavoite to the separation move though. It does lead to tedium. Gotta find a pad to do it. Got to find a pad to switch. Got to separate in order to learn individual moves. It does lead to tedium but it was still a cool thing to do.

As usual, the worlds are varied. Most are fun. Later levels get to be a bit too much. Music is great as always. The final boss is honestly less frustrating. Dare I say, it's fun? Or at least very close to fun.

There are a few incredibly frustrating jiggies. Cough CANARY MARY cough. Some of the timers in the game are very tight. Like unfair tight. Some of the mini games suck due to bad controls.

One cool thing is the addition of a Golden Eye like multiplayer minigame. It's really fun with friends. You have to deal with the bad controls, but the 360 version does it fix it.

How does the Xbox 360 version improve on Tooie? Not much to be honest. It improves some controls. Stop n Swap lives on in this version. You get some player icons/profile pictures and a wallpaper for your 360. It looks better. I believe you could select a boss rush mode and play all the mini games from the menu.

I know I complained a lot about it. But I do love this game. I'm harsh because it needs to be said. It is not better than the first game, but not a bad sequel. It is just another example of Rare, not listening.

I know what some people are going to say. They were developed to close together. They couldn't change it even though they knew the criticisms of DK64. Fair enough. Here is the thing though. That's a trend with Rare. DKC 1, 2 and 3 were all released with 1 year of in between each other. 94, 95, 96. Bk1, DK64 and BK2 did the same thing. 98, 99, 00. Do you see the problem there?

I'm not going to go into much but DKC 3 is a mess of a game. It's not as well regarded because Rare didn't polish it like the other two. Bad hitboxes, worse graphics, worse music, etc. They simply didn't have the time.

Yet again, I know what some of you are gonna say. It's not Rare's fault they had to pump out so many games in a short amount of time. Yet again, fair enough.

I just need to paint the picture of why Tooie is the way it is. And how all of this effects not only Banjo-Kazooie Nuts n Bolts but Yooka-Laylee. I'm telling a story here of how they did not listen to criticism. Did not learn from their mistakes with DK64 and Tooie.

It is an improvement over the original game in many regards (cinematic, presentation), but it didn't delivered it as powerfully as the first one.

Is it a bad game? Ofc no, not in the slightest.
It can be tedious? Yes, mainly due to the backtracking, hard jiggies to find and not a real 1st-time friendly game.
Oh, not to mention: the framerate on N64 is dreadful.

Banjo and Kazooie new moves are really interesting. It's sad that we never got Threeie because I can't imagine how much other crazy stuff it could come up with if just Tooie provided enough (like a freaking Dragon Tooie).

I'm so indecised between a 3 and a 3.5/5. Considering that they'll barely do stuff like this nowadays, I would give a 3.5 alright. But man, it didn't do the trick as amazingly as other collectathon I played...

As I stated in my Kazooie review, I replayed the game two times back in September of 2023. With Kazooie, that doesn't seem too crazy because it's about half the length of Tooie. However, I also replayed this game twice as well. And with it being twice as long, or maybe even longer for some people, as Kazooie? Seems a bit nuts right? Well, I really went Banjo crazy that month because after beating both games once, I couldn't stop thinking about them which led to me replaying them again right away. The thing is, that whole time I couldn't stop thinking about playing them again...I was thinking about Tooie pretty much. I don't know what happened to me because I went from thinking this game was just decent and definitely worse than Kazooie, to thinking it was amazing and super addicting and better than Kazooie overall. After replaying both games yet again, do I still think this? Probably, tho it's a bit complicated.

If you played Kazooie prior, the first thing you'll notice with Tooie is just how much Banjo and Kazooie's moveset has improved. The roll attack lasts longer, is more mobile and has a nice visual of Kazooie shielding Banjo. The normal attack you perform by standing still, which before was a simple claw move by Banjo, is now replaced by a more effective stationary rat-a-tat rap. The swimming is now WAY better naturally and doesn't require you to hold the R button for it to be good. In fact I don't think the R button does anything when swimming lol. You can now flip-flap directly out of a talon trot. When you do a beak buster, you can now move forward while you're doing rather than staying in place. This change can actually lead to some exploits you can perform too which is rad. These along with some non move-set changes like how whenever you speed up the text it makes the characters talk faster and doesn't pitch up their voices (which was an issue I had forgot to mention in Kazooie), the camera is slower but smoother to use and is overall an improvement, Banjo's backpack animates now when he walks and something about it is incredibly satisfying to me idk why, and the biggest thing is now notes don't get reset when you die (for a reason I'll get into later). All of these improvements drastically enhance the basic gameplay and I honestly miss a ton of these whenever I go back to Kazooie.

That's all fine and dandy, but how about new moves? Well, Tooie's got you covered because it's got like double the amount of moves in Kazooie. The biggest addition is the split-up mechanic. Now you can play as Banjo and Kazooie separately which makes for some clever puzzles. Each singular character gets their own specific moves and while Kazooie's are generally really fun, Banjo's are mostly situational. Kazooie's consist of moves that aren't as context-specific like the ability to glide on her own, her own backflip that's better than the normal one, and the ability to hatch eggs which gets used quite a bit. Banjo's however, besides the first one that lets him pick up and move objects which can lead to some fun puzzles, aren't used that much. He has an ability that let's him recover HP which is nice but only gets used a couple times overall and isn't as helpful as you think because lives aren't an issue anymore. I actually forgot to say they don't exist anymore and it's actually better to die sometimes because it respawns you at the last split-ip bad/beginning of the world which can work in your favor. But anyways, his other two abilities which let him go in dangerous liquids and the other let's him go in his backpack like a burlap sack to cross dangerous obstacles, just aren't used much and are incredibly situational. They all feel pretty samey too unlike Kazooie's, so overall I'd say Kazooie had the better new moves overall. This isn't even getting into all the new moves they both got together. There's 4 new egg types: Fire, Grenade, Ice and Clockwork. All have various uses and are fun additions. There are two new shoes, the claw clamber boots and the springy step shoes. The springy step shoes feel a little derivative because of the jump pads but they're still cool. The claw clamber boots however let you walk on designated parts of walls and it's awesome. There's the bill drill which is also kind of situational but is super satisfying to use. You can now fire eggs in first-person, which can be a little tricky at first with the N64 joystick but is also fun. Because of this, the game also added egg shooting in the air and water when going in first-person mode. The first-person shooting also leads into this FPS mode where you use Kazooie as a gun, certainly riding on the success of Goldeneye, and they can be super fun as well. All of these additions, plus the split-up stuff just really add to their whole move set and makes traversing through worlds a ton of fun.

Speaking of the worlds in this game, they're overall a lot bigger than Kazooie's. The first couple are kinda comparable in size to the first game's but by the time you get to Terrydactyland, they become just massive in size. You'd think this would be super annoying compared to Kazooie, but the game added warp pads that can warp you all over the level. These are the reason I never found the game tedious, if the game didn't have them or if they were awful like DK 64's warps, then the game would be way worse than it is. Anyways, the world's are much bigger in size and there's a lot more things you can do in each world. Though, overall there are less collectables because notes are now in bundles of 5 and 20. So overall the game has less of a focus on tons of collectables like the notes and more of a focus on the jiggys themselves. Jiggy's require way more steps than they did in Kazooie and this turns a lot of people off of the game. A bit understandable but the game is clearly trying to be more of a slower paced adventure platformer rather than Kazooie's brisk pace. I like both approaches but when it comes to Tooie's unique world themes like a run-down amusement park, a dinosaur world and a combined fire and ice world, I definitely prefer just how creative Tooie gets.

I mentioned how Jiggy's take longer to get because more steps are involved, and that's partly because of Mumbo Jumbo and Humba Wumba. In this game, Humba is the one that transforms you and Mumbo is actually a playable character. It greatly depends on the world but overall, I think this is a fun change. Mumbo has a very basic moveset compared to BK but his whole deal is using his magic on specific Mumbo pads. This is incredibly situational ofc and depending on the world it can be a bit tedious, but it can also lead to some interesting puzzles where you have to switch back and forth between BK and Mumbo. Same thing with Humba, sometimes you actually have to switch between Mumbo and then the Humba transformation. Mostly in the later levels do they make these portions kinda puzzling. In terms of everything new they added, this is probably the weakest addition just because it can lead to some tedium, I'll admit that, however I personally never had much of an issue with it tho I also have the whole game memorized at this point so take that as you will.

Besides all that, one of my absolute favorite additions was the fact a lot of the world's are interconnected. Early on, you'll help this mayan cat character out in recovering this idol. Well, you obtain it from this caveman in a weird looking cave and bring it back to him. That's strange though, you're in a world called Mayahem Temple and you just saw a caveman. What gives? Well it turns out, you just entered Terrydactyland when you did that, the aformentioned dinosaur world. This happens a lot in this game where you'll briefly cross over from one world into another or even unlock paths to directly travel between each one. The most memorable one is where you have to feed a different tribe of (good) cavemen this time, and to do so, you unlock a shortcut between Terrydactyland and WitchyWorld. You pick up some burgers from this one character, use the claw clamber boots you get from Grunty Industries and walk along the wall to feed them. All these working parts and interconnectivity just make the world feel alive and I love it.

I mentioned how you had to get the claw clamber boots from Grunty Industries, which is world 6, and use them for a jiggy in Terrydactyland which is world 5. Banjo Kazooie did this exact same thing only once, where you had to backtrack with an ability from another world. Tooie does this way more often and because of that and the interconnectivity of the world, it kind of feels like a 3D metroidvania at points which is awesome. Anyways, people seem to have an issue with backtracking in this game and I don't get it. The more complex jiggy's I understand, but the backtracking is not required as there's enough jiggy's in the game for you to beat the final boss. And even then, there really aren't that many backtracking jiggy's in general. Maybe like 12 or 13 of the 90 jiggy's require backtracking I think? Either way I think that complaint is majorly overblown and is not an issue at all to me, again the Mumbo and Humba stuff I can understand but backtracking to old levels with future abilities? Never even crossed my mind as an issue.

Something else this game added was a boss for every world and they're all really fun. Some are better than others, Lord Woo Fak Fak for example is probably the worst, but I really like how almost every single one of them are large in scope. They really feel menacing even if some of them are pathetically easy.

The game is also way funnier and a lot more cynical in general which I dig. Kazooie was both of these things as well but Tooie cranks it up to the max. The game literally starts off with Bottles dying and Kazooie going "well, he wasnt the most popular character anyways". The game is just full of this tongue-in cheese cynicism. The cast of side characters is not only WAY larger, they're more distinct and memorable just because the dialogue is so much better. There's literally an immigration joke when BK have to help some actual aliens, it's amazing. I think this, plus the interconnected worlds and more unique world themes, are THE main things I like over Kazooie. That plus the improved move set ofc.
The OST is again wondeful just like the first game, but instead of being upbeat, catchy tunes..Grant went for a more atmospheric darker ost this time around. Because worlds are much larger and take more time to beat, I think this change is for the better since the music track won't get old at all. Some of my favorite songs were Grunty Industries, Weldar's Theme and Mr Patch's Theme.

Yes I know two of those are from Grunty Industries. I honestly don't get the hate at all for that world. Something like Terrydactyland I can get, even if I still like it, because it's a massive world with empty space in a lot of it. However, Grunty Industries is a complex, zelda dungeon-like world and it's amazingly designed. I guess if you went into Tooie expecting it to just be like Kazooie, you'd hate it however it's very fun to explore and again super well-designed. It's not even that easy to get lost imo, it's a multi-layered world with distinct set-pieces rather than a super large open world. Sorry for the rant, I just don't get Grunty Industries hate lol. Something I did end up feeling a tiny bit sour on this time around was Hailfire Peaks. I still really like that world, and think the theming is awesome. However the fire side is a little too big for its bridges I will admit and the lag gets really bad sometimes there. The game can get laggy throughout portions of the game, which is only a thing on the N64 version, but there especially it's pretty bad.

One more thing before I mention the endgame and close out the review, is Canary Mary. Canary Mary has methods that make her very doable but she's still easily the worst part of the game and the only part I straight up dislike and dread doing. Her first button mashing races in Glittergulch Mine are perfectly fine. Her races in Cloud CuckooLand tho are insane. If you aren't doing the pause trick, idk how it's humenaly possible to win without using a turbo controller or something. The 2nd race isn't as bad because you can stay near her until the very end and then button mash to hell to pass her right before she can catch up. These races are easily doable with the right methods but the fact you have to do them this way, it just stinks man. But luckily this is only for 100% and only a tiny portion of the actual game so it's not the worst thing in the world.

I talked about a lot of improvements this game has over Kazooie. If there's one thing Kazooie destroys Tooie on however, it's the quiz section and final boss. Gone is the charming board game aesthetic of Kazooie, now you have a typical game show-esque quiz game where you have to answer enough questions to beat Grunty's sisters. It's not bad but it pales in comparison to Kazooie's version as it's less charming and even has less question types. Yeah, I won't miss the Gruntilda specific questions but no sound/music quizzes? That's kinda lame. Again, it's not bad and is only disappointing when compared to Kazooie. The final boss is also not nearly as good as Kazooie's. Is the Hag 1 harder? Most definitely but it's not as memorable as the Gruntilda fight from Kazooie and isn't as fun. It's a solid fight overall but compared to Kazooie's, just a bit lackluster.

So do I like Tooie more than Kazooie? In many ways, hell yes. It improves on many things like the duo's moveset, the writing is way funnier and the interconnectivity between worlds felt like a logical step to take after Kazooie. It may have the weaker end boss and quiz show, it's definitely and easier game to replay/100% and the Canary Mary rematch race is the worst thing between both games, however I'm still feeling like I may like this just slightly more than Kazooie just because of how ambitious and fun it is. It's kinda like Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 where each game has is own strengths over the other and it's just hard to choose what's better. Either way, it's still a 10/10 like the first game and one of my favorite games ever now. Easily in my top 3 N64 games, alongside the first game and Majora's Mask of course. Either way, if you see people saying you shouldn't play this game after you've beaten Kazooie. Don't listen to them, give this a try and you might fall become infatuated with it like I have.

This Banjo double feature was fun but I reckon it's time to play some Kirby again. Stay tuned for a Dreamland 2 review coming soon!

I have a lot of mixed feelings on this game, I really enjoy the level concepts a lot more here first than the first game and the music is also similar in this regard, I think as a follow-up game its 100% worth playing. but there's some things to be aware of heading into it, it loses a lot of the simplicity that made the first banjo such an enjoyable experience and went more in the direction of padding runtime with unnecessary and poorly implemented backtracking, I cant count how many collectibles I straight up never collect in regular playthroughs due the tedious nature and that's just to start, notes were given a reduced presence and instead of collecting a single note at a time you instead collect bundles which sounds great on paper however less notes means less notes to direct the player to where they actually need to be going which in this game is devastating in some areas

Banjo & Kazooies Moveset (both together and seperately) has greatly expanded but some of the movies feel like integral new parts of the movesets and others can feel like bloat, the split pads were also poorly used in my opinion and kinda groaned whenever I encountered them.

all in all I'd recommend it if you liked the first one but just be aware that its a much longer and tedious collect-a-thon


p.s: this game loses an entire star to Grunty Industries*

Pega banjo-kazooie, que tem as fases perfeitinhas fechadinhas e fáceis de se movimentar e situar devido ao level design compacto com pontos claros de referência, e joga tudo isso pela janela diretamente numa fogueira e esqueça isso.

Pra começar falando bem, todas as coisas boas que fazem o primeiro ser foda pra mim ainda estão aqui, o banjo se movimenta magnificamente, e agora tem muitos mais opções devido ao moveset expandido. Além disso o tom do jogo é bom também, ele tem um humor bem mais irônico que o primeiro jogo, e isso pra mim foi um acerto devido a se tratar de uma sequência com um plot mais "sério". Como de se esperar a trilha sonora é bem foda ainda, é mais sútil, mais ambiente mas no que se propõe é agradável.

Mas nada disso pra mim salva esse jogo do seu maior problema: Esse jogo é inchado pra caralho, as fazes são IMENSAS, muitas com várias áreas separadas por várias telas de loading. Não satisfeito com isso, por algum motivo esse jogo tem VÁRIAS jiggies que você tem que voltar depois na fase pra buscar com uma habilidade nova ou após fazer outra coisa em outra fase, isso pra mim é terrível pois eu não sabia o que dava pra pegar e eu tava perdido mesmo ou era pra eu voltar depois. Enquanto o primeiro era mais um mario 64 esse aqui é beeeeem mais um donkey kong 64 júnior (que nesse sentido de fases inchadas é beeeeeeeeeeem pior).