I do not know how to feel about this game. At all. I fully completed it and I still have no idea how to feel about it. It's an absolutely bloated mess that frequently has collectibles scattered about in seemingly random fashion. The list of things to pick up is absolutely never-ending, by the time any of its contemporaries would have finished you'll probably only be 1/3 of the way done with this game. There are challenges scattered about that will make you absolutely tear your hair out (Rabbit race, anyone? Also anything that makes you use Diddy's jetpack under a time limit. That thing controls like trying to swim through mayonnaise) and sometimes the game just makes you walk back and forth switching Kongs to get through one gate. You'll run into hallways that lead you down them with Tiny only to make you swap to DK to hit a switch.
However, despite all that, I find myself.... absolutely loving my time with the game? I love the sheer amount of things to pick up. The game is positively bursting at the seams with personality, watching the animations of any Kong is an absolute joy. The music and visuals are also some of the best on the system, this game truly pushes the N64 as far as it can and it remains one of my favorite looking games on the system. The abilities each Kong has are super fun, stuff like Lanky running on his hands or Chunky growing absolutely massive are so cool and I find them really enjoyable. The boss fights are also awesome, even if a couple bosses are reused it's fun to fight them with different Kongs/abilities. The scale of the game is honestly great, it feels like a truly massive adventure and having K. Rool's ship constantly looming in the hub world really gives things a sense of urgency. Overall I feel like the game's strengths outweigh its weaknesses but it's still an absolute mess at points and definitely hasn't aged as well as Rare's other offerings from the time period. I'd still recommend it if you like Collectathons but just be fully prepared to deal with the game's quirks.
Also, this isn't really related to my final score, but you can absolutely destroy this game with glitches if you want. You won't encounter said glitches unintentionally which is nice, but you can entirely ruin the intended order of things if you really want to which I think is neat.
overall game sucks dick. i love it with my whole heart
However, despite all that, I find myself.... absolutely loving my time with the game? I love the sheer amount of things to pick up. The game is positively bursting at the seams with personality, watching the animations of any Kong is an absolute joy. The music and visuals are also some of the best on the system, this game truly pushes the N64 as far as it can and it remains one of my favorite looking games on the system. The abilities each Kong has are super fun, stuff like Lanky running on his hands or Chunky growing absolutely massive are so cool and I find them really enjoyable. The boss fights are also awesome, even if a couple bosses are reused it's fun to fight them with different Kongs/abilities. The scale of the game is honestly great, it feels like a truly massive adventure and having K. Rool's ship constantly looming in the hub world really gives things a sense of urgency. Overall I feel like the game's strengths outweigh its weaknesses but it's still an absolute mess at points and definitely hasn't aged as well as Rare's other offerings from the time period. I'd still recommend it if you like Collectathons but just be fully prepared to deal with the game's quirks.
Also, this isn't really related to my final score, but you can absolutely destroy this game with glitches if you want. You won't encounter said glitches unintentionally which is nice, but you can entirely ruin the intended order of things if you really want to which I think is neat.
overall game sucks dick. i love it with my whole heart