Summary: Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze features level-design so perfect it makes you forget about the very few, small by comparison problems it has.
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze nails everything a 2D platformer should nail: the level design and the music. These two components of the game are close-to-perfect. There's only one level in the whole game that was, in my opinion, bad. The rest of the game levels range from decent enough to absolutely amazing. This game is pretty slow-paced for a 2D platformer, and really emphasizes collecting everything you can see on screen. It's a very different pace to other 2D platformers, but it's by no means worse, far from it. The vehicle and rhino levels aren't the best, but they're good enough. It's just a shame that these nice changes of pace aren't as good as the usual gameplay. The rhino just controls awkwardly and the vehicle levels aren't anything amazing.
However, the game does fail with everything that surrounds the level-to-level gameplay sadly. There are only three different Kong companions: Dixie, Diddy and Cranky. Sadly, Diddy is pretty much useless as he's just a worse version of Dixxie. Dixxie allows you to float and gain a bit of height (Diddy only allows you to float). Cranky allows you to pogo off his stick. Dixxie is by far the best, for most levels, but sometimes Cranky is useful.
As for the shop, it doesn't offer anything exciting. You can buy Kong companions, hearts, ballons to save you from different hazards, mystery boxes that give you figurines (that don't look too hot)... It really isn't a very exciting way to spend the ton of banana coins you get. Also, the fact you need to equip the items you bought in the shop before the level really discouraged me from using my items, ad I didn't know what type of item would be useful.
The boss fights can be very good or quite poor. I would say they're all too long, and that the final boss is unnecessarily annoying, because of how ridiculously small his hitbox is.
Overall, I would sum up every one of my complaonts under the umbrella that the game feels rushed. The UI outside of the levels looks cheap, the shop feels like it was tacked on... I don't know if it was rushed, but the Switch re-release could've brought a few improvements with it, but it didn't sadly.
Overall, you may not understand the high grade for this game given how many things I've complained about, but with level-design this good, and a game this fun and easy to breeze through, Tropical Freeze is a masterpiece at heart, but with a few cheap aspects that stop him from being perfect.
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze nails everything a 2D platformer should nail: the level design and the music. These two components of the game are close-to-perfect. There's only one level in the whole game that was, in my opinion, bad. The rest of the game levels range from decent enough to absolutely amazing. This game is pretty slow-paced for a 2D platformer, and really emphasizes collecting everything you can see on screen. It's a very different pace to other 2D platformers, but it's by no means worse, far from it. The vehicle and rhino levels aren't the best, but they're good enough. It's just a shame that these nice changes of pace aren't as good as the usual gameplay. The rhino just controls awkwardly and the vehicle levels aren't anything amazing.
However, the game does fail with everything that surrounds the level-to-level gameplay sadly. There are only three different Kong companions: Dixie, Diddy and Cranky. Sadly, Diddy is pretty much useless as he's just a worse version of Dixxie. Dixxie allows you to float and gain a bit of height (Diddy only allows you to float). Cranky allows you to pogo off his stick. Dixxie is by far the best, for most levels, but sometimes Cranky is useful.
As for the shop, it doesn't offer anything exciting. You can buy Kong companions, hearts, ballons to save you from different hazards, mystery boxes that give you figurines (that don't look too hot)... It really isn't a very exciting way to spend the ton of banana coins you get. Also, the fact you need to equip the items you bought in the shop before the level really discouraged me from using my items, ad I didn't know what type of item would be useful.
The boss fights can be very good or quite poor. I would say they're all too long, and that the final boss is unnecessarily annoying, because of how ridiculously small his hitbox is.
Overall, I would sum up every one of my complaonts under the umbrella that the game feels rushed. The UI outside of the levels looks cheap, the shop feels like it was tacked on... I don't know if it was rushed, but the Switch re-release could've brought a few improvements with it, but it didn't sadly.
Overall, you may not understand the high grade for this game given how many things I've complained about, but with level-design this good, and a game this fun and easy to breeze through, Tropical Freeze is a masterpiece at heart, but with a few cheap aspects that stop him from being perfect.