I have some insanely conflicting feelings about this game. There are some amazing aspects to this game but at the same time has issues that are so prevalent that it's preventing me from fully enjoying it. I both love and fucking can't stand this game at times. The more I played it the more it burned me out.
I only just started playing this game like a week ago, and as a first timer, this game was fuckin' painful to get though and I'll explain why.
But just to be fair, I'll start with the great things about this game.
{ The Very Noticably Good }
The soundtrack is fuckin' orgasmic for the ears. This game has some of the best music I've ever heard in a Super Nintendo game. I could listen to this music for hours. The SNES is an absolute powerhouse in terms of sound. There is something about this era of video game music that is just timeless.
There isn't a single track I dislike in this game. I also love how almost every stage has a different track. And there is also a different song that plays whenever you die, depending on the stage you're playing on. There is so much variety. Once I got to Krazy Kremland I started humming the music as I was playing, it was so goddamn addictive. The music makes up half of these older games.
This is also one of the best looking games on the system. I find it hard to believe that they even managed to make a game look this fantastic on a 4-6 MB cartridge.
This game is so good graphically that it could pass as a mid era PS1 game. All of the character sprites remind me of the old Mortal Kombat games where all of the sprites are just digitized actors. The animations are excellent and the backdrops look absolutely amazing, and so rich in detail. This is one of those games that should be in an art museum, it's that beautiful.
The controls also work fine. They do the job and are quite responsive. Moving around and platforming is very swift and I feel like I'm in control at all times. There doesn't feel like there is a moment where I get screwed over because of the controls, no, there are other reasons why.
{ The Very Noticably Bad }
The biggest reason why it's so difficult for me to fully enjoy this game is two words:
SCREEN. CRUNCH.
The camera is so zoomed in that it's insanely difficult to know what is coming up ahead, so many times I end up running right into enemies like a complete dumbass. This game is just not meant to be rushed through. And yet there are many, many moments through the game where you HAVE to rush and go fast. The only way to know what is coming up ahead is if you have played the stage over, and over, and over again, dying repeatedly in the process.
The mine cart levels are just painful. Because many jumps require pixel perfect accuracy and you only have a fraction of a second to react. Dying in these levels are just very easy. Trial and error and resetting your save file is the only way to get good at these levels.
Because if you run out of lives, it's not like other games where you just restart the level from the beginning, no, you have to reload your save file and just hope to God that you don't run out of lives on your pilgrimage to the next save area.
I like difficult games. Hell, I've pretty much mastered the first 7 Mega Man games, and those games are known for being hard. But the devs of this game went way too far with this. The difficulty in this game is legendary.
The first two Worlds aren't that bad, but once you get to Krazy Kremland, the difficulty spikes up so hard that it feels like a completely different development team designed these levels.
Enemies and obstacles that you can't see coming until it's too late, only one checkpoint per level and it's at the halfway mark, unkillable enemies spammed repeatedly throughout the level like those goddamn hornets, having to know how to jump higher off of enemies, and other things like having to know all the controls for each of the Animal Buddies.
If you're playing this game for the first time, like, emulating it like I did, I hope you looked up the instruction manual and looked at all the controls in this game. Because this is one of those games where you're not told any of the controls. You just gotta figure out everything yourself and know all the mechanics of each of the Animal Buddies.
Like pushing A and Up or Down to fly higher or lower much faster with Squawks, and, holding A before you land on an enemy to go three times higher as Rattly the Rattlesnake, and, pushing A and then pushing A again to make platforms with Squitter the Spider, and that you can push Down and A to make platforms below you, and that you can jump and push L + R to make an instant platform higher above.
These are things that you have to know in order to make getting through each stage so much easier. There are obstacles in the later stages where you need to have this prior knowledge to get past them.
The enemy placements in a lot of these levels are just atrocious. Some stages just relentlessly spam enemies at you and I feel like many of my deaths are just out of my control because of again, the scrunched up camera and not knowing that I need to know specific controls to get through certain obstacles.
And getting a Game Over can just be the absolute worst feeling ever because you gotta do all of that progress all over again, bosses and all.
And speaking of bosses, Jesus fucking Christ, the bosses in this game are just brutal. Again, the first couple bosses are not hard. But once you get to Krazy Kremland, the bosses are so unforgiving that it's straight up sadistic.
The Hornet King boss was the absolute worst. I can't tell you how many times I died on that guy because he flies around the stage and you have to shoot him with Squawk's eggs, but there are two major problems.
1: You can only damage the boss by hitting the stinger, yes, the fucking STINGER
And 2: The eggs travel at an arc, making hitting the damn thing even harder than it needs to be
Not to mention you have to hit him EIGHT times and each time you hit him he flies faster and faster. And you only get two hits to do this, you don't get any more DK barrels.
This boss drove me fucking mad. I must have died at least 30 times on this fight. It got to the point that I had to force myself to use Save States, because I was not putting up with another 20+ minutes of progress just to get back to where I got a Game Over.
Then there is the boss fight where you fight the ghost of the Pirate Vulture from the first World.
It's simple enough but what makes it so brutal is the fact you have to climb up ropes while dodging falling eggs, and you only get like, a fraction of a second to react and get out of the way. Again, I've died around 20 times on this shit alone. And again, you only get two hits. No DK barrels throughout.
The most successful way was to just go as fast as I could and hope to God I don't get hit, and just abuse the invincibility frames whenever I had the chance. Either way, I ended up using Save States.
In fact this game pretty much forced me to use them whenever I felt like I needed to. And that sucks. I shouldn't have to do that shit.
A game shouldn't have to force the player to use cheat codes or Save States in order to make progress, but without Save States, I doubt that I could have even finished this game. This game was so brutal that I can't tell if that's by design or lack thereof.
The camera really does plague a large portion of the stages and bosses in this game.
I find it hard to believe that this game was marketed towards children in the 90s and it is this difficult. Imagine being a kid in the 90s and you jumped into this game or the first Donkey Kong Country game completely blind and you didn't have Save States.
I know that you can get a handful of extra lives from the game show stages but even then, it's not enough.
You would think that after the first Donkey Kong Country game that there would have been some more regard towards children, hell even as an adult these games are insane. This is definitely one of the toughest platformers I've played in a very long time. And I've played Rayman 1, Mega Man 9, Mega Man X3, Mega Man X6, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, Cuphead, etc.
But at least with those games, if you die you just start from a checkpoint and they're frequent enough to be acceptable, and if you get a Game Over you just start the stage over. Well, except Rayman 1. I never finished that game either.
And then there are the Lost Levels. They're the hardest levels in the game, obviously, but they just put front and center all of the issues that I have with this game. There is so much precision involved that it feels like I get lucky if I even manage to beat them.
{ Final Thoughts }
This game is better than the first DKC game there is no doubt about that. That game is even more difficult than DKC2, so I can only imagine the insane amount of rage that game must have caused back then.
But even then, rarely have I played a game like this that has made me just want to drop the controller and call it a day. I play games to have a fun, not to have an excuse to break a fuckin' monitor. I understand if you like or even love this game, all the power to you.
But for a first timers, I don't see how you can enjoy this game that much without the use of Save States or an Extra Life code. Maybe it would have grown on me the more I played it, but after beating the game, I haven't really looked back at it, and that is not really a good sign.
The music is orgasmic, the graphics are stunning for a SNES game, the sound effects are great, and the controls work good for what they are.
But the awful camera, the bad enemy placements, the lack of checkpoints, bosses being hit sponges meanwhile you only have two hits yourself to get it done in one go, and having to restart from your last save upon getting a Game Over can make the game just infuriating to play without the use of Save States.
The difficulty spiking once you get to Krazy Kremland is so severe that I imagine kids back then had to just drop the game because they couldn't finish it.
Overall I just feel very mixed about this game.
6/10
I only just started playing this game like a week ago, and as a first timer, this game was fuckin' painful to get though and I'll explain why.
But just to be fair, I'll start with the great things about this game.
{ The Very Noticably Good }
The soundtrack is fuckin' orgasmic for the ears. This game has some of the best music I've ever heard in a Super Nintendo game. I could listen to this music for hours. The SNES is an absolute powerhouse in terms of sound. There is something about this era of video game music that is just timeless.
There isn't a single track I dislike in this game. I also love how almost every stage has a different track. And there is also a different song that plays whenever you die, depending on the stage you're playing on. There is so much variety. Once I got to Krazy Kremland I started humming the music as I was playing, it was so goddamn addictive. The music makes up half of these older games.
This is also one of the best looking games on the system. I find it hard to believe that they even managed to make a game look this fantastic on a 4-6 MB cartridge.
This game is so good graphically that it could pass as a mid era PS1 game. All of the character sprites remind me of the old Mortal Kombat games where all of the sprites are just digitized actors. The animations are excellent and the backdrops look absolutely amazing, and so rich in detail. This is one of those games that should be in an art museum, it's that beautiful.
The controls also work fine. They do the job and are quite responsive. Moving around and platforming is very swift and I feel like I'm in control at all times. There doesn't feel like there is a moment where I get screwed over because of the controls, no, there are other reasons why.
{ The Very Noticably Bad }
The biggest reason why it's so difficult for me to fully enjoy this game is two words:
SCREEN. CRUNCH.
The camera is so zoomed in that it's insanely difficult to know what is coming up ahead, so many times I end up running right into enemies like a complete dumbass. This game is just not meant to be rushed through. And yet there are many, many moments through the game where you HAVE to rush and go fast. The only way to know what is coming up ahead is if you have played the stage over, and over, and over again, dying repeatedly in the process.
The mine cart levels are just painful. Because many jumps require pixel perfect accuracy and you only have a fraction of a second to react. Dying in these levels are just very easy. Trial and error and resetting your save file is the only way to get good at these levels.
Because if you run out of lives, it's not like other games where you just restart the level from the beginning, no, you have to reload your save file and just hope to God that you don't run out of lives on your pilgrimage to the next save area.
I like difficult games. Hell, I've pretty much mastered the first 7 Mega Man games, and those games are known for being hard. But the devs of this game went way too far with this. The difficulty in this game is legendary.
The first two Worlds aren't that bad, but once you get to Krazy Kremland, the difficulty spikes up so hard that it feels like a completely different development team designed these levels.
Enemies and obstacles that you can't see coming until it's too late, only one checkpoint per level and it's at the halfway mark, unkillable enemies spammed repeatedly throughout the level like those goddamn hornets, having to know how to jump higher off of enemies, and other things like having to know all the controls for each of the Animal Buddies.
If you're playing this game for the first time, like, emulating it like I did, I hope you looked up the instruction manual and looked at all the controls in this game. Because this is one of those games where you're not told any of the controls. You just gotta figure out everything yourself and know all the mechanics of each of the Animal Buddies.
Like pushing A and Up or Down to fly higher or lower much faster with Squawks, and, holding A before you land on an enemy to go three times higher as Rattly the Rattlesnake, and, pushing A and then pushing A again to make platforms with Squitter the Spider, and that you can push Down and A to make platforms below you, and that you can jump and push L + R to make an instant platform higher above.
These are things that you have to know in order to make getting through each stage so much easier. There are obstacles in the later stages where you need to have this prior knowledge to get past them.
The enemy placements in a lot of these levels are just atrocious. Some stages just relentlessly spam enemies at you and I feel like many of my deaths are just out of my control because of again, the scrunched up camera and not knowing that I need to know specific controls to get through certain obstacles.
And getting a Game Over can just be the absolute worst feeling ever because you gotta do all of that progress all over again, bosses and all.
And speaking of bosses, Jesus fucking Christ, the bosses in this game are just brutal. Again, the first couple bosses are not hard. But once you get to Krazy Kremland, the bosses are so unforgiving that it's straight up sadistic.
The Hornet King boss was the absolute worst. I can't tell you how many times I died on that guy because he flies around the stage and you have to shoot him with Squawk's eggs, but there are two major problems.
1: You can only damage the boss by hitting the stinger, yes, the fucking STINGER
And 2: The eggs travel at an arc, making hitting the damn thing even harder than it needs to be
Not to mention you have to hit him EIGHT times and each time you hit him he flies faster and faster. And you only get two hits to do this, you don't get any more DK barrels.
This boss drove me fucking mad. I must have died at least 30 times on this fight. It got to the point that I had to force myself to use Save States, because I was not putting up with another 20+ minutes of progress just to get back to where I got a Game Over.
Then there is the boss fight where you fight the ghost of the Pirate Vulture from the first World.
It's simple enough but what makes it so brutal is the fact you have to climb up ropes while dodging falling eggs, and you only get like, a fraction of a second to react and get out of the way. Again, I've died around 20 times on this shit alone. And again, you only get two hits. No DK barrels throughout.
The most successful way was to just go as fast as I could and hope to God I don't get hit, and just abuse the invincibility frames whenever I had the chance. Either way, I ended up using Save States.
In fact this game pretty much forced me to use them whenever I felt like I needed to. And that sucks. I shouldn't have to do that shit.
A game shouldn't have to force the player to use cheat codes or Save States in order to make progress, but without Save States, I doubt that I could have even finished this game. This game was so brutal that I can't tell if that's by design or lack thereof.
The camera really does plague a large portion of the stages and bosses in this game.
I find it hard to believe that this game was marketed towards children in the 90s and it is this difficult. Imagine being a kid in the 90s and you jumped into this game or the first Donkey Kong Country game completely blind and you didn't have Save States.
I know that you can get a handful of extra lives from the game show stages but even then, it's not enough.
You would think that after the first Donkey Kong Country game that there would have been some more regard towards children, hell even as an adult these games are insane. This is definitely one of the toughest platformers I've played in a very long time. And I've played Rayman 1, Mega Man 9, Mega Man X3, Mega Man X6, Super Meat Boy, Celeste, Cuphead, etc.
But at least with those games, if you die you just start from a checkpoint and they're frequent enough to be acceptable, and if you get a Game Over you just start the stage over. Well, except Rayman 1. I never finished that game either.
And then there are the Lost Levels. They're the hardest levels in the game, obviously, but they just put front and center all of the issues that I have with this game. There is so much precision involved that it feels like I get lucky if I even manage to beat them.
{ Final Thoughts }
This game is better than the first DKC game there is no doubt about that. That game is even more difficult than DKC2, so I can only imagine the insane amount of rage that game must have caused back then.
But even then, rarely have I played a game like this that has made me just want to drop the controller and call it a day. I play games to have a fun, not to have an excuse to break a fuckin' monitor. I understand if you like or even love this game, all the power to you.
But for a first timers, I don't see how you can enjoy this game that much without the use of Save States or an Extra Life code. Maybe it would have grown on me the more I played it, but after beating the game, I haven't really looked back at it, and that is not really a good sign.
The music is orgasmic, the graphics are stunning for a SNES game, the sound effects are great, and the controls work good for what they are.
But the awful camera, the bad enemy placements, the lack of checkpoints, bosses being hit sponges meanwhile you only have two hits yourself to get it done in one go, and having to restart from your last save upon getting a Game Over can make the game just infuriating to play without the use of Save States.
The difficulty spiking once you get to Krazy Kremland is so severe that I imagine kids back then had to just drop the game because they couldn't finish it.
Overall I just feel very mixed about this game.
6/10
2 Comments
yeah felt a similar way, the screen crunch makes this game a lot harder than it actually is
dleo
3 years ago
I think that I played it so much that the challenges and enemy behavior feels like second nature, now. But it certainly wasn't easy on the first try.