funkrockwarlock

I grew up on the 64 era platformers and was a huge fan of banjo kazooie. I was incredibly excited when I saw this came out and bought it to play right away. Why is my review years late? Well I got to the 4th level which is casino themed and just sort of lost interest. Years later while making list of my backlogged games I remembered it and was determined to beat it. The good Art direction Soundtrack old school platform vibes The bad The old school poor camara lack of levels Final boss fight I played through and expanded 4 of the 5 worlds, that's right there's only 5 levels which is a major disappointment. To be fair the expanded levels are fairly large but if one of the levels isn't fun for you, for me this was the 4th, then 20% of the game is just bad. I only got 3 pagies in that level and got everything else from the others which I did enjoy, even if the expanding bit felt like trying to stretch content by locking half a level away. I had a lot of fun, learning moves, solving puzzles, exploring and getting transformed was all amazing but that all ended at the boss fight. This fight was an incredible difficulty jump from anything previous in the game to the point where I felt the game had one vibe and totally switched. I understand it's a boss fight but it gets worse. This boss has more stages than a Final Fantasy battle and the inter-combat dialogue and cutscenes to match. Every death felt like a painful slog through spamming skip and watching 6 different transition scenes. The worst stage was the second which was so long. I often took damage just from the sheer boredom of that particular boss stage. In the end I realized I wasn't having fun anymore and I didn't really care to finish. I got what I wanted which was a platformer to go around and collect things and explore a colorfully animated world. What I didn't want was a clumsy and difficult boss fight. That wasn't what I really wanted after a game of smooth sailing and the tedious boss stage 2 and annoying transitions were too much. Over all I give it a 5 out of 10. 80% of the levels are really fun it's just that casino which really feels like filler. The soundtrack is good and the art and dialogue is clever. The limited number of levels, one of which is not fun and the terribly designed boss that feels too hard for what the entire game prepared are what really drag it down. It's an okay game and anything more would be me padding the score with nostalgia.

Preface this with I'm not quite but nearly done with the game, however I can say this game is okay at best. It looks great, and feels pretty good in the beginning but quickly runs headlong in to a forced narrative which makes about as much sense as FF13. GOOD graphics team bonding and personality BAD rushed confusing story characters you don't care about side quests are so trivial and tedious, feels forced to add game time The magic COMBAT OPINION I personally have always liked J-rpg turn based combat. This active combat may be great for some people who could not get into turn based game-play so I won't exactly say it's bad. It does however suffer from a horrible camera and a clumsy magic system which is deadly to your pals. Overall I'd say its a solid 5 out of 10, I enjoyed it more than I should have because I like the franchise. My favorite primal however is Leviathan which is a huge disappointment for reasons I'll let you google so I don't need to spoiler tag this review.