I did not grow up playing Banjo-Kazooie. My primary exposure to Rare's game design was through the GBA reissue of the original Donkey Kong Country (and somehow none of the sequels, because I only seemed to buy the worst fucking GBA games as a kid). I love a good collectathon, and I respect Rare’s work in solidifying it as a genre. But I’ve bounced off of Banjo-Kazooie every time I’ve tried to jump in. Maybe it's something you have to grow up with or otherwise spend time getting acclimated to, but the nondescript clipped, guttural vocalizations, the “Danny Elfman on Quaaludes” music, and the googly eyes on everything was always more mildly annoying to me than charming. The structure of the Banjo-Kazooie games always felt intimidating and dated—more so than other contemporary collectathons—which made them difficult for me to get into. For this and many other reasons, I did not enjoy the original version of Yooka-Laylee. I bought it on Nintendo Switch at a deep discount many years ago; I ended up finishing the main story out of stubbornness, but dropped off long before getting anywhere close to 100% completion. I was simply deriving more frustration from it than enjoyment and felt it was held back too much by dated, often aimless design sensibilities and a general sense of clunkiness. I didn’t hate it, but I definitely didn’t like it. The more focused and polished followup/spin-off, Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, was a much more consistent and enjoyable title in my tastes that went in its own direction, but the original game still conjured slightly sour feelings whenever I thought about it.
Considering how little I cared for the original, I was surprised to find myself harboring the foreign feeling of genuinely enjoying my time playing Yooka-Replaylee. Between sessions, I actually found myself thinking about the game and being excited to jump back in. Is this game actually pretty good now?
It's hard to overstate just how sweeping the changes to the game are in this… remaster, I guess you’d call it? There's barely a mechanic or design choice that hasn't been refined, polished, streamlined, or expanded. Taking cues from other recent 3D platforms, particularly Super Mario Odyssey, much of the structure has been modernized and streamlined. This isn’t just a slightly prettier update of the same game—it’s basically a top-to-bottom modernization of Yooka-Laylee; a rebuilt and rethought “director’s cut” that makes massive fundamental and structural changes. It’s a full second pass at the same core game, and one that I largely found successful in reinvigorating and salvaging the best aspects of a very flawed title. It evoked some of the same qualia I experienced when watching the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League for the first time: that unexpected feeling of “holy crap, this is actually pretty good” cutting through my weary cynicism and learned distaste for a director or franchise.
Borrowing from Recent Titles
It might be bias on my part, but I think it’s pretty clear that this game borrows a lot of concepts from Super Mario Odyssey in particular. And that’s not a knock at all; if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best. That game was a recent collectathon 3D platformer that made some pretty sweeping changes and refinements to the 3D Mario formula and landed to critical praise. The original Yooka-Laylee released a few months before Odyssey and largely stuck to a more traditional, Banjo-Kazooie-style structure and gameplay loop. With lessons learned from platformers over the last 8 years or so, this remaster falls closer in line with some of the more modern 3D platformer outings.
For starters, your moveset is now complete from the beginning; no more buying new moves from Trowzer, and no more progress-blocking gates that require new moves to bypass. Your starting kit is now what you will have for the whole game. Certain moves, like the Reptile Roll, are also now freed of their energy consumption and can be used indefinitely. The late-game ability from the original that allows for full flight is now relegated to a power up in specific areas. This was a smart choice, as since unlocking new moves is no longer a thing, unrestricted access to this ability for the entire game would have broken all of the level design. With nothing gated behind new or upgraded moves—coupled with the fact that levels are now at their full-size from the first moment you visit them—there is now nothing stopping players from cleaning out levels all in one go. This heavily simplifies the collection process for completionists in a good way. I found it fun and straightforward to completely clean out each Tome before moving on to the next one.
A new cosmetic system also synergizes with the collectables. The Quills from the original game—which were finite collectables used to purchase stat upgrades and brand new moves—have been repurposed into something resembling Odyssey’s purple Regional Coins. Each Tome World now has its own type of Quill color, and they can only be spent on the items that Trowzer sells within that world. Said items are now limited to stat upgrades (more health or energy), new cosmetics, and Tonics.
The brand new Q.U.I.D.S. are comparable in form and function to Odyssey’s Gold Coins. These are used to buy new Tonics and cosmetic items from shopkeeping NPC Vendi, whose inventory is consistent no matter where you find her. Since there is no system for extra lives or 1-Ups, the default penalty for death (also like Odyssey) is the loss of 10 Q.U.I.D.S. The game is absolutely littered with them, with almost everything you break, defeat, or stand on providing you with a bit of income.
There is now a vast array of character customization options for both halves of the titular duo. You can mix and match basic parts at your discretion, but there are also more elaborate, fixed costume sets that more drastically change the appearance of the two. This system is a nice addition that adds an extra layer of incentive for players to go after the collectibles.
Pagies—the game’s main, progress-unlocking collectable in the same vein of Jiggies or Power Stars—are largely unchanged in their function. But there are essentially double the number of them to collect, making them strike a nice balance in the rate of collection. It’s not the same constant influx of Odyssey's Power Moons, which were all over the place, but it’s certainly faster than Jiggies from Banjo-Kazooie or Stars from Super Mario 64.
Other new quality of life features include fast travel, a full map system, and a Pagie list with optional hints and locations to point you in the right direction. All of this works to make completion a far more accessible and trackable endeavor; aside from the fucking Pagie Pieces, which can be pretty well hidden and have no hint system to narrow your search. The NPC that allows for fast travel is a sentient bookmark named Mark. I physically could not stop myself from saying “Oh, hi Mark” whenever I activated a new fast travel point.
Trimming the Fat
There was a lot of rather unenjoyable fluff in the original game that could be a chore to slog through. I’m happy to say that most of that has been streamlined or outright replaced.
The awful Quiz Show segments between areas of the hub world in the original are now entirely gone. This is an entirely good thing in my eyes. Those segments were an extended-yet-oversimplified retread of a joke from the Banjo-Kazooie games that wasn’t even that funny to begin with. Good riddance.
The overall gamefeel has been drastically improved. The duo is now much more fun to control, with smoother movement and a more amicable camera. From what I can remember about the original, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of readily apparent changes to the broader level design. But the improved gamefeel and movement systems automatically makes them much more fun to traverse.
For my personal tastes, I also appreciated that the clipped gibberish voices from the original seem to have been toned down. They now only last for a few “syllables” at the start of a sentence instead of the entirety of the time that the written dialogue is being filled in.
The clunky and largely unenjoyable multiplayer minigames from the original have been completely replaced with the entirely new Rextro Bites Back levels. In spirit, these feel similar to the Captain Toad levels in Super Mario 3D World. They are simple, quick little challenges, and I wouldn’t be opposed to this getting fleshed out into a full spin off like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker at some point in the future. Though I wish there was more clear telegraphing about which of the arcade machines in the hub world were actually new levels. I didn’t visit the arcade room in the hub until after I completed all of the Tome Worlds, so it took some trial and error to determine which of the arcade machines I had already finished in their respective levels and which were new ones that held hub world Pagies.
Some Rough Spots Remain
This remaster did not fix everything about the original. While the general quality has been improved across the board, there are still certain areas that stick out a bit in a negative sense.
I thought I was warming up to the Kartos minecart segments (my least favorite activity in the original version), since the challenges in the first four levels were pretty inoffensive. Even despite the fact that there is 0% margin of error to get all of the Pagies from them, the frustration was largely smoothed out with what felt like more refined and reliable mechanics. But all that went out the window during the clunk-ass low-gravity variant in Galleon Galaxy. The amount of trial and error I had to go through in order to time the floaty jumps in some of the wonkier track segments was infuriating. Fuck Kartos. God of Chore, more like.
In a holdover from the original that would have been hard to fix without drastic redesigns, the game seems to get slightly worse as it goes along, with the later levels getting more aimless, sprawling and more unintuitive. I don’t know what could be done about it without completely reworking the layout and challenges. This is still the same basic game underneath, so I understand why more drastic changes weren’t made. But still, I think Galleon Galaxy in particular needed some more fundamental reworking.
A Successful Second Attempt
It’s still not a match for the highs of the genre’s best, but this new edition of Yooka-Laylee successfully redeemed the game in my eyes. I enjoyed far more of it than I didn’t, and I look back on my time with it with warm feelings. If Playtonic can keep up with or exceed this level of quality with their next potential game in the series, then they have a new fan who will actually be excited about that announcement.