There are so many good reasons why this game is controversial, and I can easily get behind both the lovers and haters of the game.

Donkey Kong 64 was supposed to be the technical masterpiece of the console, and in that regard, it certainly succeeds. Indeed, its large open spaces give a sense of freedom unlike a vast majority of other games on the N64. The DK Isles feel as immense and dense as Delfino Plaza in Super Mario Sunshine, a game from the next generation of consoles. In some regards, the size of the map and the amount of things to do in each corner you go to is reminiscent of the Zelda series, and especially in the woody areas of the game, I sometimes felt like I was playing an unintended sequel to Ocarina of Time.

The sheer size of the map is accompanied with pure beauty, too. It is an incredibly cinematic game by all means, from its hilarious cutscenes to its colourful levels. If anything, it's worth playing through the entire game 101% just to get to watch all the cutscenes, including the special ending cutscene you get after getting everything.

Its music is great, too. It has one of the most iconic theme songs in all of gaming history and the actual game's soundtrack has some beautiful moments, with Jungle Japes, DK Isles and Hideout Helm being personal favourites of mine. It makes me wish Grant Kirkhope had composed soundtracks for some non-Rareware games, as he is definitely up there with Koji Kondo.

The dialogue and character design is also phenomenal. The strong but insecure Chunky as well as the goofy but reliable Lanky are beautiful new characters that I hope get some more love in future DK games. The existing characters' personalities are amplified: DK is stupid but determined, Diddy thinks and moves quick, and Tiny is a very smart logical thinker that brings a bit of logic to the family. Not to mention Cranky Kong which is as much of a grinch as he has ever been, Funky Kong who is an absolute gun maniac, Candy's weirdly flirty dialogue and King K. Rool who is the perfect evil antagonist who will keep you on your toes for the entirety of the game. Everything is charming and wonderfully written.

The cinematic, musical and theatrical aspects of the game makes it one of the most entertaining games to watch someone else play. This is indeed why in the prime of its speedrunning scene, streamers such as Connor75 managed to be very successful and why its 101% category makes it into so many marathons, such as the Rareware 301% marathon and the 1545 relay race. Having been introduced to this game in that form of gameplay, it made me very excited to play it and made me have high hopes for it.

Unfortunately, my hopes were likely too high.
This game basically has four different 'types' of challenges: collectibles, platforming, minigames and fighting.

The collectibles here have been talked about to death. Most people complain about the sheer amount of collectibles there are, especially regular bananas. It is however not what bothers me; the real problem with the collectibles in DK64 is the fragmentation and the character barrels, which were one of Rare's worst design mistakes ever. In order to change your character, you need to enter a character barrel, and there are only a handful in each stage. For instance, in Fungi Forest, there is a tunnel that you must go through, but there are two doors preventing you from going through it. In order to open these doors, you must shoot tags with two different characters, one for each door. There is also a banana for a third character in the room that this tunnel leads to. I don't remember what characters exactly, but you get the point, and the problem is that the barrel is relatively far away from the tunnel, so you waste minutes going back and forth over and over again just to get through this tiny section. The collectibles being so deeply linked with each character (you can only collect the bananas, coins and golden bananas that are assigned to the very character you're playing), and needing certain characters to unlock parts of the level leads to so much backtracking that you'll be spending more time walking in places you already know instead of discovering new places. This makes the game's length feel artificial, annoying and disingenuous. If the collectibles were actually arranged in a way that prevented excessive backtracking, then I would have much less problems with it, but when you consider that most bananas don't require you to do anything or require you to play a bad minigame (I'll get back to this later), I find the same problems in here that I did in Super Mario Odyssey's excessive ground pound moons and repetitive minigames. Very little of the game feels like you're actually playing something exciting, since maybe 95% of all of it is just getting tedious collectibles. Even for somebody who loves Rareware-style collect-o-thons, there is just too much backtracking for it to be enjoyable.

The platforming sections feel very weird and slippery, especially with the bigger characters. Donkey moves too much with the slight touch of the joystick, Chunky just doesn't move well in platforming sections, Lanky is way too slippery to control well, and Diddy is just hard to control especially in narrow places (that one bridge inside the temple in Angry Aztec...damn it). At least, Tiny is has a decent control scheme that makes her preferable for all the platforming she has to do in the game, which is really not enough. The characters' shadows are hard to make out, which really messes up the depth perception of platforming sections. The weird controls are often credited to this being still an era where 3D platformers were new and devs didn't know exactly what to do yet, but come on, this came 3 years after SM64 and a year after Banjo-Kazooie. Both of those games have great controls and their platforming is tight and skill-based. DK64's platforming sections feel more luck-based than anything. Tedious.

The mini-games, especially the God-forsaken barrel games, have been talked about to death. They're some of the most broken, glitchy, tedious and repetitive things I've ever seen in gaming and made 101% feel like more of a chore than a game. Some of those mini-games you have to beat up to five times without any difference except maybe how fast the characters move. It is pure hell, and these sections were some of the most infuriating experiences I've had in gaming. Rarely have I screamed out of pure anger into a pillow because of a video game, but damn, Beaver Bother did that to me and many other gamers. Comes directly from Hell. Two video game testing companies are credited in this game, yet it feels like the game, especially those sections, were never play tested at all. Were they that short on time that they had to fill the game with these abominations?

Happily, the bosses in the game are creative and have a lot of character, which makes the fighting sections (except for the battle crowns which were an absolute waste of time) really enjoyable. Each boss got better than the last, and the final boss fight is the ultimate test of everything you have learned in your journey.

I must also stress that the very last level is some some of the most tense I have felt while playing a video game and it is truly an incredible experience (except for the weird Lanky shooting minigame, but whatever). The beginning and the ending of the game is bliss, the rest is tedious.

Is it worth playing Donkey Kong 64 nowadays? If you like great cutscenes, love mindlessly moving around collecting items, and care more about the aesthetics of a game than the gameplay, then it is likely the game for you. If not, just watch a 101% playthrough on YouTube and save yourself the stress. I'm glad I played it, but I doubt I will be revisiting.

A very ambitious 3D platformer/collectathon full of content. There's a wide variety of challenges, levels, characters and mini-games, and the world in general is fun to explore. The characters all bring their own charm and abilities, and the graphics are good for an N64 game.
However, back-tracking is frequently required because in general a collectible can only be picked up by 1 of the 5 kongs, and the trek to a tag barrel so you can get the right one interrupts the fun constantly. There is a mod that allows you to "tag anywhere" which would bump the rating of this game at least half a star in my book.
The framerate can drop at times especially in some of the more open areas, and the mini-games that you have to do to earn golden bananas are not well-balanced; some challenges are incredibly easy, while others are maddeningly hard.
Overall, it's a fun game, extremely impressive for its time, but it tries to do too much. Definitely worth a play for fans of 3D platformers

Considering how much this game and its more negative aspects have been talked about to death by many people, I'll try to keep this brief as much as possible. To me, this feels like the epitome of a double-edged sword for video games, since, despite the huge issues I have with the game, I still had a lot of fun with the game and I can appreciate Rare making the biggest and most expansive game that they could for the N64. I love how incredibly flexible the game can be in how you collect the various collectibles needed to beat the game since I was rather overprepared for the later worlds and kept getting stuff like golden bananas, banana medals, and blueprints that, in hindsight, I didn't need, and I surprisingly liked that. I felt the game allowed you to traverse these worlds however you wish in a way that feels comfortable yet still encourages you to collect the various items needed for the game. It's a good thing as well because I also really enjoyed most of the worlds (with the only real exception being Crystal Caves), thought all of the bosses were amazing, got a kick out of all the playable Kongs, enjoyed some of the neat one-off things it provides like the playable Donkey Kong Arcade and Jetpac, and enjoyed the graphics and music.

Despite my enjoyment, there were a few major issues that held it back from being a truly great game in my eyes. The one most people refer to is the game's serious pacing issues, thanks to the amount of backtracking you have to do with the colored bananas, which are required to beat the game, and having to switch to the Kongs in certain locations. While the locations of the Kong changes were, for the most part, rather convenient, having to constantly do that and go back to the same spots on the map just to collect 5-10 bananas gets rather tedious after a while and spoils the pacing of the game when you go back to the same areas again and again mindlessly just to look for 10 bananas to open the boss gate. There were a few other issues I had with the game as well that kind of ruined the experience in a few areas, mainly how somewhat finicky the swimming controls can be, Diddy's jetpack mode being a pain in the ass to maneuver around, some of the bonus stages being rather poorly thought out (Mainly Beaver Bother and Splish-Splash Salvage), and some of the platforming being surprisingly wonky at times.

Overall, despite the major issues that set back this game, inside those, I can see a game that, with some minor adjustments and fixes to the controls and pacing, can truly be great. I still had a pretty good time with the game, and a part of me wanted to like it even more despite the setbacks. But unfortunately, DK 64's pacing issues just hold it back from being up to par with previous DK games like the Country trilogy. Despite that, though, it's still a good game in various areas, and for the N64, you can honestly do so much worse than this game. If you like the kind of game that is focusing on offering as much as it can to the player and are willing to look past its issues, then I say go ahead. But personally, the only way I can see myself replaying the game again (especially if I ever think of completing the game) would be using a hack that switches Kongs on the fly to make my issues with the game not nearly as apparent.

Was definitely a slog to get to 101% but I finally did it. Would I do it again? Not in this lifetime.

There's just too many poor minigames and camera issues that get in the way of fully embracing this game; however, there's a lot of Rareware charm to enjoy.

3/5

The most over bloated collectathon there will ever be.

Why did I review this before Banjo-Tooie. I need to tell you the story of DK64 and how Rare didn't listen to the criticisms and thus kept making the same mistake over and over leading all the way to Playtonic's(the former Rare team that made all the classic collections)Yooka-Laylee.

I have a lot of nostalgia for this game. But it's not a good game. It's a test of your will. It's a test of your patience. It's the definition of tedious.

There is too much going in this game. At first, it's manageable. But it quickly becomes a tedious experience. I love collectathon, but this game pushes it too far.

Five characters all with their own things to collect. All with their own moves to get. All with their own areas they can access. Here's the thing though. You gotta switch characters constantly.

"Hey look, a trail of red bananas for Diddy leads to this gate and beyond. Wait...I need Chunky to open it. Sigh, let me go switch. (Opens it with Chunky.) Sigh, let me go back to get Diddy." This is the typical DK64 experience. Sometimes you have to get a move in a different stage all together to access something and it adds to the tedium even more.

The game runs at a solid 15 fps. A lot of things make it hit a good 5 fps. It's an ugly game. It doesn't control well. It's way too big for its own good. Some challenges are infuriating. On the official Wii U version some things are literally impossible with pause buffering. It controls worse on Wii U as well.

It is a charming game, don't get me wrong. I still love it. But it is a turd of a game. Especially the back half. The levels get larger and more obtuse. The character swapping gets even more tedious. The levels are uninteresting and bland. I will say the bosses are mostly fun.

This is not a game you want to 101%. It's such a chores. Back in the day it was fun because we didn't realize what a crime against nature the entire game was. You didn't realize the FPS was so terrible. You didn't realize how bad it controlled. Except for the obviously terribly flying mechanics. Even as a kid I found the constant character swapping tedious.

For the time it was amazing because how big it was. But that isn't really a good thing looking back on it. I know, I've done a lot of trashing on this game. It still is a fun experience. It is just very overwhelming to this day.

It's charming. The cutscenes are funny. The music is good. The first level is super fun and not too big. It's constantly giving you variety. Each character play uniquely different. None of them are so terrible that you don't want to play as them. You are constantly earning new moves or unlocking a new character. You get excited when you realize, "OMG, I can do this now!" The final boss, a bit infuriating at times, but still a very unique experience.

It's worth a play for collectathon fans. But you will lose your mind if you try getting 101%. I do not suggest doing it.

What do people say about this game? It's too big. It's too tedious. Too much collecting for a collectathon. This leads us into 1 year later to the release of Banjo-Tooie.