The crash series starts off with a real mixed bag. For the positives, level design is great on the whole with a lot of fun platforming challenges and there's a lot of fun experimentation which lead to a lot of infamous levels whose concepts understandably weren't brought over to the sequels (foggy bridge, slippery climb/sunset vista-esque vertical levels). The design philosophy of being a 2d game at heart makes it an unique experience for its time and even now, and makes it easier to go back to when compared to other more traditional 3d platformers where you're dealing with early attempts at camera controls and the like. The game also does the whole DKC gimmick of how the levels get less natural and more sinister as you progress, but I think it might work better here? The game has some fun spots where you go up a waterfall in a basic river level called Up The Creek so you can fight Ripper Roo whose fight takes place at the top of a waterfall, and then there's the last island that has all the factory/lab levels and that gives you the Cortex Power -> Toxic Waste -> Pinstripe sequence of levels which is fun thematically.
The problems arise with general gameplay polish and a lot of small issues that permeate through the game. A shitty gameplay quirk is that when you walk and spin you keep your forward momentum even after you stop holding forward as you spin which can result in a lot of annoying fuck ups in a game that can be punishing when shooting for 100%. Speaking of 100%, in order to get the special gems needed for max completion, you have to beat the level while breaking all the boxes without dying. The problem with the no death requirement is it doesn't feel designed to be that way. It feels like they ran out of time to implement a box tracking feature so when you die all the boxes are just respawned in and if you do die you're just not brought to the "Great! But you missed" screen. Bonus rounds are also bad in this game because outside of getting a gem completing a bonus round is the only way you can save the game. You can't retry a bonus round if you fail it outside of restarting a level which means you'll rarely actually give a shit about them. Reloading a save also resets your life count to the default four which makes it really annoying when you're deep into the game and you need to go back to an earlier level to get some lives for some of the harder end game levels. Most of this obnoxious shit is why it took me until now to 100% the game outside of NST and even then I used emulation saving to keep my life count and I also gave myself save states at the beginning of the Cortex key bonus round because fuck that. Overall, it's Pretty Good and has a lot of good things going for it but the annoying shit bothers me a lot and brings it down to just being Good.
The problems arise with general gameplay polish and a lot of small issues that permeate through the game. A shitty gameplay quirk is that when you walk and spin you keep your forward momentum even after you stop holding forward as you spin which can result in a lot of annoying fuck ups in a game that can be punishing when shooting for 100%. Speaking of 100%, in order to get the special gems needed for max completion, you have to beat the level while breaking all the boxes without dying. The problem with the no death requirement is it doesn't feel designed to be that way. It feels like they ran out of time to implement a box tracking feature so when you die all the boxes are just respawned in and if you do die you're just not brought to the "Great! But you missed" screen. Bonus rounds are also bad in this game because outside of getting a gem completing a bonus round is the only way you can save the game. You can't retry a bonus round if you fail it outside of restarting a level which means you'll rarely actually give a shit about them. Reloading a save also resets your life count to the default four which makes it really annoying when you're deep into the game and you need to go back to an earlier level to get some lives for some of the harder end game levels. Most of this obnoxious shit is why it took me until now to 100% the game outside of NST and even then I used emulation saving to keep my life count and I also gave myself save states at the beginning of the Cortex key bonus round because fuck that. Overall, it's Pretty Good and has a lot of good things going for it but the annoying shit bothers me a lot and brings it down to just being Good.