I really wanted to like Banjo-Tooie more than I did. There are improvements to movement, variety through new abilities and fun egg types, a great cartoony art style, impressively large worlds, and a very funny, cynical sense of humour.

Unfortunately most of the gameplay is just no fun at all. There is so much of going back and forth for simple tasks and it's so tedious. I don't hate backtracking, but this fails to make it interesting.

Most levels are massive and complicated. That's not inherently bad, but it's a major problem here because there's no map. It leads to constantly running around looking for the 1 place you need to go; then repeated for so many of the longer Jiggies. Even a map that only shows areas in a level you've already been to would've been fine, considering the amount of backtracking. It would've also still encouraged exploration, which the game does sometimes achieve between the boring slogs.

There's a lot to love in Banjo-Tooie, but it doesn't work at some of the most important parts.