My first Donkey Kong game, this is making me want to revisit all the previous entries. Movement is fantastic, especially with companions, you can pull off some incredible stuff. This has been said to death, but the fact they go out of their way to theme each level to such a level of detail is incredible, you aren't bouncing on a non-descript bouncy platform, you bounce on a block of strawberry jelly after 5 levels of them showing you how they harvest, preserve, and process said strawberry.
The temple levels at the end of each world are definitely the highlight. At first I thought the lives system was just there as a flourish, you get so many lives in this game that you'll end up maxing out by world 2, but after world 2's temple level I understood. Suddenly, when playing through a world, it was almost as if I was a bear stocking up on food before hibernation, I was trying my best to get as many lives as possible to prepare for the temple level, this added objective made each world a lot more enjoyable, and I was always looking forward to each temple level. That being said, the final "secret" world was a little disappointing, it's only 4 more levels (if I remember correctly), and none of them are particularly hard or memorable, especially compared to the temple levels, the final reward was a bit disappointing as well

Game is still great. This was my first time playing the remake (I've played the original once), unfortunately I didn't play this in an ideal environment, there were multiple people in the room being loud, so I couldn't fully appreciate the atmosphere.
Still, visuals alone are enough to carry this experience. All the colossi look beautifully terrifying, the environments are beautiful, and perfectly convey a sense of loneliness.
The core gameplay loop is simple, and effective. You get on your horse, follow you magic sword, and defeat a colossus. Figuring out where they are and how to kill them is the meat of the game, I'll say some were extremely hard to find due to the guiding system, which was a bit frustrating. Likewise some of the colossi's AI wouldn't cooperate with what I wanted them to do which also resulted in some frustration. But when you're on top of a colossi, about to hit the killing blow, with the music rising, it's a feeling like no other