I really wanted to like this game a lot more than I did. For years, Banjo and Kazooie were my most wanted characters for smash despite never having brushed up with this franchise at all, just because something about the premise and design rubbed me the right way. A pure collectathon 3D platformer with cartoony animal mascots is right up my alley. Playing it however, I was let down. Most importantly, it doesn't play stellar. It's not bad, just a little sloppy. Maybe it has something to do with the Xbox port (although any problems introduced by it are overshadowed by the misery of the n64 controller) but a lot of actions felt slow and unresponsive, everything was moving a pace just below where I needed it to be to feel fun to just exist. Plenty of ink has been spilled on the importance of how fun Mario is to just run and jump around in, even without objectives or level design. That simply isn't present here. Beyond that, the level design also is pretty hit or miss. Sometimes the bright color, wide variety of objectives, and scale of the whole thing, makes it fun to run around in and explore. Other times, those objectives are tedious or obtuse, the colors are bleak and ugly, and I experience such little joy being in the levels. I think this game is neat, it deserves some respect clearly, and I do wish more games were made like it, given that 3D platformers have moved more Mario (ie collecting "stars" and clearing a sequence of levels or objectives) than Banjo (ie exploring one large level for a variety of small collectibles at your own pace) but in the end, this game doesn't hold up amazingly.

One of the most acclaimed 3D platformers of all time, Banjo-Kazooie was unfortunately a slog for me to finish. It’s not a bad game and has a lot of redeeming qualities like the animation, art direction, music, sound design, and level theming. However, I want to highlight some design choices I found baffling, which contribute to why the game didn’t fully click with me.

Let’s start with the movement. The titular duo has a wide arsenal of abilities, but they don’t flow into each other very well. It’s tiring enough to constantly have your finger on the Talon Trot button for going faster, but you’ll also be forced to slow down or come to a stop to perform actions like headbutts, backflips, shooting eggs, and the rat-a-tat rap, the latter of which is needlessly difficult to pronounce. Seriously, why not rat-a-rat tap instead?

Anyway, the slower movement isn’t inherently a problem, but it does mean Banjo-Kazooie is far more dependent on interesting level design than its inspiration, Super Mario 64. In that game, there were often multiple routes available for acquiring a star, with faster routes requiring riskier maneuvers. Banjo-Kazooie’s Jiggies actually offer more freedom on a level-by-level basis since they can always be acquired out of order and in one seamless run, except in Gobi’s Valley and Freezeezy Peak for some reason. At least unlocking their respective items doesn’t take more than a handful of minutes.

The macro structure, however, is almost the complete opposite of Mario 64. You unlock levels in a mostly linear order because the Jiggie and music note requirements are very high. While this should have allowed for a natural difficulty curve, I don’t believe Rare stuck the landing. To demonstrate this, I’m going to first outline the order in which the levels are unlocked:

1. Spiral Mountain (Tutorial)
2. Mumbo’s Mountain
3. Treasure Trove Cove
4. Clanker’s Cavern
5. Bubble Gloop Swamp
6. Freezeezy Peak, Gobi’s Valley
7. Mad Monster Mansion
8. Rusty Bucket Bay
9. Click Clock Wood

Now, I have no complaints about Spiral Mountain, Mumbo’s Mountain, and Treasure Trove Cove. The other stages, however, have at least one issue that makes for a rather uneven difficulty progression. Clanker’s Cavern is a great example to start with. It’s the first level requiring you to swim underwater. It’s odd that this comes after Treasure Trove Cove, which taught you to avoid the water because of the shark. Clanker’s Cavern even has its own shark. He may be friendly, but it’s still an odd decision by Rare. A bigger issue is the swimming controls. The default speed is pathetically slow and boosting forward requires using Kazooie. You actually lose control when using the boost, which makes collecting things underwater needlessly difficult. In other words, you’re always going too slow or too fast. Despite this, you are required to swim through a keyhole at the bottom of a trench three times before you can access most of the collectibles. This is like asking a kid who is afraid of diving to fetch three diving rings from the deep end in one go. Needless to say, you will likely drown on your first attempt. If you’re playing the N64 version, then you will also learn that music notes aren’t saved upon death, instead being recorded as high scores. This was fixed in the Xbox 360 remaster and I don’t intend to hold that against the original, but the constant retreading of levels helped me realize how stupidly difficult some of the Jiggies are to acquire given their location in the game. That is the main issue I have with the remaining levels. Here are my summarized thoughts on each of them:

Bubble Gloop Swamp
— This and Clanker’s Cavern should have swapped places. It builds on Treasure Trove Cove’s treacherous water gimmick and most of the Jiggies are easy to acquire. The feeding frenzy minigame is insane though. Despite that, this is one of my favorite levels.

Freezeezy Peak
— Solid stage with great theming, but killing the snowmen requires precise aiming with the Beak Bomb. The lack of a reticle makes it hard to judge whether the attack will land.

Gobi’s Valley
— Entering one of the pyramids for a Jiggie requires pressing a timed switch with little margin for error. Other than that, the level is fine.

Mad Monster Mansion
— The Jiggie requiring the Pumpkin transformation is accessed via a small pipe on the roof of the mansion. It is neither explained, nor is it intuitive that the pumpkin is immune to the hedge thorns you must traverse to reach the pipe. Getting up there is also tricky since the hedges are so narrow and the pumpkin controls are a touch slippery. Aside from that, it’s a solid level.

Rusty Bucket Bay
— Exploring the area around the ship is fun and the oily water is a nice evolution of the treacherous water gimmick from before. Sadly, the ship itself is kind of a pain to explore. I had to look up a walkthrough to figure out both how to access the level in Grunty’s Lair and find the door used to enter the ship. The doors you have to break down in both instances do not look breakable, which is poor design in a linear game. Then, there’s the Jiggie behind the boat turbines. Everyone remembers this challenge for having zero margin for error. Why is this kind of difficulty not reserved for the final level?

Click Clock Wood
— Brilliant concept, messy execution. Many of the Jiggies require climbing the central tree, which you must do for all four seasons. This is where I really wished Banjo had a ledge grab. You’d think a bear would be able to do this easily, but nope!

Okay, the levels have their highs and lows, but so did Mario 64. What’s the big deal then? For me, it’s the requirements for finishing the game. In Mario 64, you only had to collect 70 of the 120 stars. That meant you could skip stars or entire levels you weren’t fond of and because you unlock levels so quickly, replays could be vastly different from each other. Casual speedruns of the game are proof of this. I mentioned Banjo-Kazooie’s linear structure earlier, but what I didn’t mention is how little leniency you are given for accessing the final boss. You need 94 out of 100 Jiggies and 810 out of 900 music notes. Every level has 10 Jiggies and 100 notes, with an additional 10 Jiggies found in Grunty’s Lair. Since you can only miss out on 6 Jiggies and 90 music notes, you need to complete every level nearly perfectly. I really don’t understand why Rare thought this was necessary. It makes repeat playthroughs far less interesting and may turn off players that don’t enjoy specific levels. As my earlier comments indicate, I am one such player.

Speaking of comments, how about you leave one saying how my opinion is invalid because I didn’t have the same experience as you? In all seriousness though, I hope this critique strengthened your love for Banjo-Kazooie. If you somehow haven’t played it, I suggest trying out the first two or three levels before you consider quitting. While I prefer Super Mario 64 overall, Banjo-Kazooie did improve on one important thing. The levels don’t kick you out after finding a Jiggie, which the mustachioed plumber wouldn’t adopt until Odyssey, almost 20 years later! Even if I dislike aspects of Rare’s works, they were often ahead of their time.

Excellently crafted game from start to finish. The challenge slowly increases, there are very little unfair sections. Each world has an abundance of things to collect, all well hidden, it tests your knowledge of the level. Nothing you collect is wasted, for you need Notes to Open Note Doors; Jiggies to Unlock new worlds; New Moves to access new places and get around quicker; Mumbo tokens for transformations, and upgrades. The camera is, not the best, but it's not the worst either, it's good for it's time. The game's got a lot of charm, and it's got great humor, for both kids and adults. Each character is fully fleshed out and have a ton of personality, you will end up liking them all.

It's really funny that Rare got the whole 3D platformer collectathon thing so perfect here on their first try that every time they went back to the genre for another attempt they could never get it quite as good again.

This is one of those games where you can tell the entire dev team was passionate about having their product be the best one on the shelf. They stuffed everything they possibly could into this game, and yet you never feel lost or overwhelmed. Sure some of it hasn't aged great (the camera, Rusty Bucket Bay, and pretty much everything about the ending to name a few things) but in the face of everything Banjo-Kazooie gets right these are relatively small annoyances.

Eu não costumo ter problemas com controlar o personagem até em jogos muito antigos, mas Banjo-Kazooie é um extremo onde eu não sei se é culpa do controle ou se o jogo sempre foi assim (atualização: testei o controle no Mario 64 e foi suave demais, é o jogo.). É um dos poucos jogos 3D onde eu tenho uma dificuldade enorme de ter noção de profundidade e onde o personagem não anda reto de jeito nenhum. Mirar nas coisas também se torna impossível pela mesma dificuldade de entender os objetos no espaço 3D e Deus sabe como ele é um jogo que requer mira pra tudo.

As fases são tematicamente divertidas e vão se transformando de forma legal enquanto você vai jogando elas. Diferente de Mario 64, elas tentam evocar a ideia de um lugar real e não só um conjunto de blocos que flutua e nisso fazem muito muito bem, quase todas são muito interessantes esteticamente.

Não é um jogo ruim, alias não é nem um jogo ok. Não dou 4 estrelas pra jogo ok. É um jogo legal e bom, que o resto compensa suas falhas percebidas e suas tarefas cansativas.

Eu só fiquei surpresa de sentir problema que nunca havia sentido antes.

A timeless classic that's always easy to 100% for fun on a whim. It's simple yet never dull given how creative and varied every single level is. Very well paced, and every sound effect and musical track is iconic.

I love every single thing about this game. I genuinely don't think this game has aged a day, and I don't say that about every nostalgia-packed game believe me. Controls well and movement for advanced players is just complex enough to keep me engaged after playing for decades. Flying and swimming is tight enough to make precise movements but still allow for hard turns by holding R. Early 3D platformers didn't have camera issues, 99% of "camera bad" complaints are a skill issue if you ask me. The graphics are so stylized that it holds up still even blown up to HD on the xbox360 Port. Which btw that port is not a half bad version of the game. For some reason they removed dialogue skipping in that version which is kind of annoying but otherwise, love the leaderboards it features. And if you're put off by losing your notes on death the Xbox one's the way to go.

Rare hiding unobtainable collectibles and obvious doorways you can't open during the early days of the internet set off the imaginations of so many people. Many fans know the story by now but at the time it was almost an ARG with how fans took it and ran. Especially because my copy of the game just happened to have the sharkfood mountain raised out of the water. Whoever owned the game before me somehow knew how to raise it and get the pink egg in the early 2000's and I'll never know how they got the dev sandcastle code to do that back then.

It's crazy how even after 25 years, just how few games have even attempted BK's take on the genre despite its endlessly iconic status. Even projects that start with the explicit inspiration of Banjo, they often end up going different directions entirely. Perhaps it's the limitations behind the beginning of 3D platformers that fostered experiences that simply can't be replicated without those same limitations. Because this game absolutely got the most it could possibly get out of the hardware at the time. Every obstacle in making a game for the N64 forced the devs to think of something wholly unique. Manifesting into an incredibly charming, one of a kind experience. BK is inherently tied to the unique strengths of the N64 and this is why despite it being functionally a dead franchise for decades...It's surpassed the test of time. Not every 90's platformer mascot with no game releases in sight after a 15 year drought survives strong enough to make it into the latest smash bros. You genuinely do not get games this fully realized anymore. Also the final boss is one of my favorite final bosses in all of gaming, h*eckin sick finale.

I loved this game so much as a kid that the three save files on my cartridge were the following - my original save file that sat at 100% and was frequently used for Stop N Swop hunting (which usually involved beakbombing suspicious textures in hopes I'd discover some ancient Rareware secret), the save file dedicated to replaying Grunty's Furnace Fun, and the save file I would routinely delete so that I could play a fresh game of Banjo-Kazooie.

"So you're rating it five stars based on nostalgia alone" you might be saying. Nah. I played this game pretty recently and damn, childhood me had great taste because this game still holds up. Sometimes things from the past aren't as good as you remember, sure, but sometimes you play a thing from your past and you're like "oh fuck yes" and that's Banjo-Kazooie for me.

One of my favourite games as a child, and one I can still revisit fondly every now and then. The offbeat cartoon style of this game gives it a lasting charm - its humour, characters and music.

There's a nice readable simplicity to the simple colours and level design. Each level is perfectly sized, just large enough for each concept to feel fully fleshed out without becoming overstretched. I never felt overwhelmed with collecting because there was enough variety and fun in the platforming to make it feel worth it. Each level has distinct character and soundtrack, with my favourites being Treasure Trove Cove and Freezeezy Peak.

Banjo and Kazooie have a nice moveset that amusingly compliments their design as a duo. The sprinting and flying I remember being a little awkward to control, but that was common at the time. The camera has similar issues. The game is far from unplayable though, and worth a look, especially on Rare Replay or something like that.

Third GOTM finished for December 2022. One of my favorite - if not my absolute favorite - N64 games of all time. The game oozes charm, and the music is absolutely fantastic. I recognize that there are some bits here and there that keep it from being perfect (looking at you, camera), especially coming back to it after a long period of time, but it still felt absolutely amazing to play this one again. The platforming is fun and tight, the writing is silly and very much a product of its time, and it absolutely scratches that "collect-a-thon" itch. Love it!

I wanted to love this so badly. The game is very wacky, funny, and full of zany dialogue. The combat is janky but alright to use overall. The swimming is unbearable (no pun intended), and there are a few worlds in the latter half of the game that are a slog and a chore to say the least. The final boss was dumb for a while until I went on a god spree and beat it so I was really satisfied. Music is great. I felt like some jiggy’s were too difficult to get and this is due to design flaws and not “git gid”. Like some of them are genuinely awful. But I don’t know man I just couldn’t stop playing. I played this for like the whole day yesterday. It still was a fun enough platformer and I liked it enough to get through it. Until by the end I was just waiting for it to end. There’s so many problems and it’s aged horribly in a few key aspects, but I don’t know I can’t say I didn’t like it or that it was mid for some reason. I am planning to play the sequel, so I hope the combat and swimming are fixed. I also hope some worlds are more tight-knit and filled with fun, quick ways to progress. Because that was the best when this game was to that point, but it struggled to maintain that majorly. I’d say play it, but be prepared to deal with some grating early 3D platforming.