I thought with the game's darker aesthetic compared to the original, along with its sort of weird pre-occupation with death (skeleton Grunty, zombie Jinjo), that it could be a fun thing to revisit around Halloween.

Jumping into a half-finished save file you haven't touched in over a year is ill-advised in a lot of games, this is maybe the worst example. The game is fucking huge, it is basically completely structureless, and there's actually fewer jiggies than in the first game. You will have no idea where you're going, let alone what objectives you've already completed.

A weird thing I don't know if other people have is like, when you're a kid, and your parents don't like a thing, or don't let you see a movie or something, and that makes you want to like it out of spite? When I rented this game as a kid, my parents thought the humor in this game was stupid and juvenile, and even at that young age I thought they were right.

I don't know whether this is worse than DK64, but I'm not playing it long enough to find out.