If I had to describe this game in any way, it's "collectathon hell." So many things to collect, many of them mandatory. You have to beat the original Donkey Kong twice to beat this game. Beaver Bother is an abysmal minigame to play. Diddy's Rocketbarrel is by far the single worst thing to control in the entire game, and they love to force you to use it.
Now, I don't have all but dislike for this game. The soundtrack is very good, for one thing. I liked how each Kong had their own sets of moves that only they could use. Sure, Lanky and Chunky are going to be borderline wiped from existence after this game, but it was nice to use them while they existed.
However, there's a reason it only took me about 14 hours to beat this game, and that's because I had the benefit of quality of life options thanks to using the DK64 Randomizer, like allowing you to switch Kongs without a Tag Barrel. If I played this game totally vanilla, my playtime probably would've doubled. Backtracking is insane in this game, and without the quality of life stuff and occasional save states, it would be even worse. I already had to revisit Japes and Aztec multiple times, so I don't want to imagine how much worse it could've gotten.
On top of that, control in this game is generally very jank. There were times I did long jumps when I wanted to do high jumps, just because of a misclick since Z is used for so much in this game. The previously mentioned Rocketbarrel is by far the worst offender of jank control in this game. Movement in water was also not fun, but this game predates Majora's Mask, which had amazing control in water as Zora.
Like, here's the thing. I don't want to hate this game. I liked the different areas, the music was great, but the jank control, somewhat frustrating minigames, a final area on a time limit, and a 5 part final boss that put a lot of those jank things (and K Rool's hitbox) just don't do it for me. It's not a bad game, and if you like collectathons, you may love it, but the bad outweighs the good for me in this one. At the very least, I'm glad I finally got the chance to play and finish it myself.
Now, I don't have all but dislike for this game. The soundtrack is very good, for one thing. I liked how each Kong had their own sets of moves that only they could use. Sure, Lanky and Chunky are going to be borderline wiped from existence after this game, but it was nice to use them while they existed.
However, there's a reason it only took me about 14 hours to beat this game, and that's because I had the benefit of quality of life options thanks to using the DK64 Randomizer, like allowing you to switch Kongs without a Tag Barrel. If I played this game totally vanilla, my playtime probably would've doubled. Backtracking is insane in this game, and without the quality of life stuff and occasional save states, it would be even worse. I already had to revisit Japes and Aztec multiple times, so I don't want to imagine how much worse it could've gotten.
On top of that, control in this game is generally very jank. There were times I did long jumps when I wanted to do high jumps, just because of a misclick since Z is used for so much in this game. The previously mentioned Rocketbarrel is by far the worst offender of jank control in this game. Movement in water was also not fun, but this game predates Majora's Mask, which had amazing control in water as Zora.
Like, here's the thing. I don't want to hate this game. I liked the different areas, the music was great, but the jank control, somewhat frustrating minigames, a final area on a time limit, and a 5 part final boss that put a lot of those jank things (and K Rool's hitbox) just don't do it for me. It's not a bad game, and if you like collectathons, you may love it, but the bad outweighs the good for me in this one. At the very least, I'm glad I finally got the chance to play and finish it myself.