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.
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.