This one took me a while to get to. As a kid, I never played Banjo simply because I didn’t have an N64. Many years later, I tried out Yooka-Laylee when it finally released and found it to be a bit underwhelming. Seeing as how everyone loved Banjo, I put down Yooka-Laylee and I finally decided to give Banjo-Kazooie a try. I had a great time with it! Immediately upon completing the game, I decided to give Tooie a try as well. While it’s still very cool, I began to notice that this game is where most of Yooka-Laylee’s problems start to creep in.
Tooie overall is a very fun game. After all, it’s just more Banjo-Kazooie! However, if you were to draw a line in the sand and label it as “tedious,” Tooie would not hesitate to cross that line. There are a few major issues with this game, but I think they all loop back into what I think is, fittingly, the biggest problem of all: the levels are simply too big. All the characters (minus solo Kazooie) move so slowly that it takes forever to get anywhere. Switching between all the playable characters and transformations is a process and a half. You’ll switch to a character, do everything they need to do, run all the way back, switch back, and then realize “oh! I missed something!,” then run to wherever you have to switch characters, switch back to the other character, do whatever it is you need to do, then run back, then switch again. There are lots of sub-areas which is fine, but there are very few visual indicators as to where they’ll take you, meaning you’ll get lost quite a bit. Then you have the massive array of moves you can learn. In some cases, the game straight up tells you when you don’t have the proper move yet. Other times, you hit a roadblock without any notice and your only thoughts are “am I being dumb or do I just not have the right move yet.” You combine all these factors and a good amount of your time will be dedicated to running back and forth in large, almost-empty landscapes while accomplishing barely anything. With that in mind, little things start to become more grating, like watching Banjo slooowly transform into something or watching Chuffy the Train slooowly switch levels. Or sometimes an enemy will knock you off a cliff and kill you instantly, meaning you'll respawn a mile away from where you were. I’m grateful for the warp pads, because the whole thing could’ve been much worse, but it almost feels like a band-aid solution. Either making the characters faster, making the levels smaller, or even just giving some sort of map system could’ve gone a long way with Tooie.
Those are the main issues I had with Tooie. I have a few minor ones listed below mainly because I feel they don’t need too much explanation:
- Notes are no longer used as breadcrumbs. They’re grouped in bundles of 5 and almost feel unnecessary.
- Many of the new moves feel underutilized or redundant.
- Some of the most annoying enemies in the game respawn after like 10 seconds which defeats the purpose of killing them at all.
- Upgrading your health is no longer automatic, you have to go to an NPC in the hub to do it.
- There are many parts where Wonder Wing SHOULD be a viable solution but you end up taking damage anyway.
To be fair to the game, I didn’t take note of just the bad things. Tons of people love this game and I wanted to see the good in it as well. While playing, I took note that there were quite a lot of improvements from from the first game along with generally nice additions as well:
- You start with all the moves from the first game.
- No lives system. Hugely appreciated since many 3D platformers at the time were still using lives. Having no lives system lets players play more dangerously, allowing them to have more fun AND you can use death-warps as a fast-travel in some scenarios.
- You no longer lose your Notes upon death. I know this was removed in the Xbox versions, but it was still a general pain to lose Note progress if you died in B-K.
- The bosses feel more like actual bosses with proper fights this time.
- The new method of shooting eggs with an aiming reticle. It's a little janky, but still miles better than shooting eggs in B-K.
- Eggs and feathers are plentiful and you no longer pick 1 up at a time (minus the Clockwork eggs).
- Grenade eggs are pretty fun to use and are arguably the most useful of the new moves.
- I’d argue that Minjos are an objectively funny addition to the series. Jinjos are funny themselves, but to occasionally have an evil one chase after you while going “grr” is inherently hilarious.
- The minigames are super simple and don’t last very long compared to Rextro’s in Yooka.
- Playing as Banjo and Kazooie separately is a really cool idea in general, it just needed better execution.
- The NPCs and writing are genuinely charming and funny.
- Doing puzzles to unlock each world is a fun and clever way to use Jiggies.
- You can do a weird double jump with Banjo by himself. I don’t think it was intended but it saves a lot of time.
- The world themes are pretty creative this time around.
- Grant Kirkhope is back at the helm in the music department and delivers some of the most memorable tunes you’ll ever hear in a video game.
- The sound design in this game is awesome, almost every single sound is so silly that you’ll find yourself repeating them without even thinking about it.
Tooie is a testament to how bigger isn’t always better, which is a concept many modern games are still struggling to grasp. It’s a good game, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel like an absolute slog at some points (Grunty Industries, smile). Even when it comes to my most favorite video games of all time, most of them have sections that make me say "oh god, not this part," and this game is chock full of them. Though in the same vein that I ended my Yooka review with, I’m excited to see what this team does in the future. I think if they really take some of the common criticisms to heart, they could make something amazing.
Tooie overall is a very fun game. After all, it’s just more Banjo-Kazooie! However, if you were to draw a line in the sand and label it as “tedious,” Tooie would not hesitate to cross that line. There are a few major issues with this game, but I think they all loop back into what I think is, fittingly, the biggest problem of all: the levels are simply too big. All the characters (minus solo Kazooie) move so slowly that it takes forever to get anywhere. Switching between all the playable characters and transformations is a process and a half. You’ll switch to a character, do everything they need to do, run all the way back, switch back, and then realize “oh! I missed something!,” then run to wherever you have to switch characters, switch back to the other character, do whatever it is you need to do, then run back, then switch again. There are lots of sub-areas which is fine, but there are very few visual indicators as to where they’ll take you, meaning you’ll get lost quite a bit. Then you have the massive array of moves you can learn. In some cases, the game straight up tells you when you don’t have the proper move yet. Other times, you hit a roadblock without any notice and your only thoughts are “am I being dumb or do I just not have the right move yet.” You combine all these factors and a good amount of your time will be dedicated to running back and forth in large, almost-empty landscapes while accomplishing barely anything. With that in mind, little things start to become more grating, like watching Banjo slooowly transform into something or watching Chuffy the Train slooowly switch levels. Or sometimes an enemy will knock you off a cliff and kill you instantly, meaning you'll respawn a mile away from where you were. I’m grateful for the warp pads, because the whole thing could’ve been much worse, but it almost feels like a band-aid solution. Either making the characters faster, making the levels smaller, or even just giving some sort of map system could’ve gone a long way with Tooie.
Those are the main issues I had with Tooie. I have a few minor ones listed below mainly because I feel they don’t need too much explanation:
- Notes are no longer used as breadcrumbs. They’re grouped in bundles of 5 and almost feel unnecessary.
- Many of the new moves feel underutilized or redundant.
- Some of the most annoying enemies in the game respawn after like 10 seconds which defeats the purpose of killing them at all.
- Upgrading your health is no longer automatic, you have to go to an NPC in the hub to do it.
- There are many parts where Wonder Wing SHOULD be a viable solution but you end up taking damage anyway.
To be fair to the game, I didn’t take note of just the bad things. Tons of people love this game and I wanted to see the good in it as well. While playing, I took note that there were quite a lot of improvements from from the first game along with generally nice additions as well:
- You start with all the moves from the first game.
- No lives system. Hugely appreciated since many 3D platformers at the time were still using lives. Having no lives system lets players play more dangerously, allowing them to have more fun AND you can use death-warps as a fast-travel in some scenarios.
- You no longer lose your Notes upon death. I know this was removed in the Xbox versions, but it was still a general pain to lose Note progress if you died in B-K.
- The bosses feel more like actual bosses with proper fights this time.
- The new method of shooting eggs with an aiming reticle. It's a little janky, but still miles better than shooting eggs in B-K.
- Eggs and feathers are plentiful and you no longer pick 1 up at a time (minus the Clockwork eggs).
- Grenade eggs are pretty fun to use and are arguably the most useful of the new moves.
- I’d argue that Minjos are an objectively funny addition to the series. Jinjos are funny themselves, but to occasionally have an evil one chase after you while going “grr” is inherently hilarious.
- The minigames are super simple and don’t last very long compared to Rextro’s in Yooka.
- Playing as Banjo and Kazooie separately is a really cool idea in general, it just needed better execution.
- The NPCs and writing are genuinely charming and funny.
- Doing puzzles to unlock each world is a fun and clever way to use Jiggies.
- You can do a weird double jump with Banjo by himself. I don’t think it was intended but it saves a lot of time.
- The world themes are pretty creative this time around.
- Grant Kirkhope is back at the helm in the music department and delivers some of the most memorable tunes you’ll ever hear in a video game.
- The sound design in this game is awesome, almost every single sound is so silly that you’ll find yourself repeating them without even thinking about it.
Tooie is a testament to how bigger isn’t always better, which is a concept many modern games are still struggling to grasp. It’s a good game, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel like an absolute slog at some points (Grunty Industries, smile). Even when it comes to my most favorite video games of all time, most of them have sections that make me say "oh god, not this part," and this game is chock full of them. Though in the same vein that I ended my Yooka review with, I’m excited to see what this team does in the future. I think if they really take some of the common criticisms to heart, they could make something amazing.