I'm so glad much of the Banjo-Kazooie team was able to get back together, but I don't think they were able to recreate what they had before. To be fair, the team had an idea they were working towards, and eventually the player is able to "get" what Playtonic was going for, after which point the game experience improves considerably. Even so - the game reads like such a rough first draft at a Banjo-Kazooie spiritual successor so as to be incomparable.
If I were to describe the game in one word, it'd be "sterile". This is due to the game's use of Unity as its engine. Ignoring Unity Technologies' recent string of questionable-at-best business practices, their game engine is perfectly fine; actually, my class used it exclusively for our senior projects in my game design program in college. Out-of-the-box, Unity is a basic but serviceable engine, with a lot of focus on modular physics due to its easy integration with programming scripts. Unity by its nature heavily emphasizes drag-and-drop programming, which makes it a good learning tool and a solid choice for indie devs.
The consequence of this design is that it's very easy for games to feel samey if little is done to differentiate them. Yooka-Laylee leans into a fairly stock suite of physics, texturing, and especially lighting systems that exist within Unity. I'm not saying that I've made a game like Yooka-Laylee, but I am saying that I've played enough student projects thrown together in Unity that Yooka-Laylee doesn't stand out. Naturally, for a game duology as vibrant and creative and unique as Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie, it's reeeeeeally disheartening to see that Playtonic either didn't know how to make a stock engine feel unique, or they chose not to do so. I think the most generous read is that they simply lacked confidence in this, their first big statement as an indie company.
If this is all too technical for you, think about it like this. Yooka has the ability to take on different elemental properties by licking things. For example, by licking cannonballs, Yooka becomes metallic and becomes too heavy to be gusted about. This is similar to Metal Mario from Super Mario 64, of course. But in Mario 64, Metal Mario's physical properties are somewhat altered: he can't swim, a loud metallic sound accompanies his walking, and his jump height is impacted. Metal Yooka has no change in physical properties; when Yooka moves around, he moves as lightly and effortlessly as he normally does. The only thing that's different is that his model's texture changes - a purely superficial effect that is easy to program into the game. Many of the design decisions made in Yooka-Laylee are like this.
I think I could qualify a lot of my miscellaneous critiques of the game this way, as products of developers not confident in what they were doing. Capital B is a lowest common denominator version of Gruntilda. Many sound effects, shockingly, are stock and limp. The game reaches for a prolonged fart joke with Buddy Bubble, which I guess is comparable to Kazooie's Ass Egg, but Banjo-Kazooie at least had the good sense not to underline it in dialogue. The Snowplow transformation is presented as being fleshy rather than metallic because that seemingly would've taken effort. Dr. Quack's quiz sequences feel like they're there out of obligation rather than a genuine passion for stuff like Furnace Fun. A lot of the NPCs feel like Playtonic's punching down, particularly the shopping cart homeless stereotypes...
...so let us instead look to what Yooka-Laylee does well. Soundtrack is of course good, with Grant Kirkhope and David Wise at the helm; I do find the melodies unmemorable, but they're good atmospheric compositions. The core stand-in NPCs like Trowser for Bottles and Dr. Puzz for Mumbo are cute enough. Shovel Knight is always fun to see as a cameo character. You can sort-of tell that the team developed each new level in sequence, so by the time we get to Capital Cashino and Galleon Galaxy, the levels start to feel tight and well-realized. I actually quite like the Kartos sequences, and I especially like that they're tied into a boss fight. Even though I don't care for Capital B, his boss fight does the "test all the mechanics" thing I love to see in video games. Icymetric Palace represents a considerable amount of effort and creativity which adds a ton to the experience...
Finally, there's Flappy Flight. You unlock flight in this game late compared to Banjo-Kazooie, but it becomes apparent why: unlike in B-K, Flappy Flight is not gated to context-sensitive pads and is instead useable at any point in time. Suddenly, the game's huuuuuuge levels make sense - it's incredibly low-commitment to travel from one corner of a given world to another, and particularly to do so quickly. Part of what makes Capital Cashino and Galleon Galaxy so effective is that their designs lean into this philosophy, and so the bigass levels become manageable playgrounds operating on hub-and-spoke design. For that matter, backtracking into previous levels becomes much more tolerable, to the point where I'd urge the player to stave off the obligatory revisits as long as they can until they have free flight. This does, in some way, break the intended game design, but it also makes it fun to run around as these characters, which I would argue is far more important to this game.
I do think there's potential with Yooka-Laylee as a series revival. There are ideas at play there, and I think something really interesting is waiting to be teased out. I do suspect that we're not likely to see it at this point. Impossible Lair went in a separate direction (though I understand that game's actually quite excellent), and Yooka & Laylee have mostly just served cameo roles since then. Bit of a shame, but if Playtonic has something up their sleeves, I'm curious to see how they do. As for this game? I think I'm content with my one and only playthrough.
If I were to describe the game in one word, it'd be "sterile". This is due to the game's use of Unity as its engine. Ignoring Unity Technologies' recent string of questionable-at-best business practices, their game engine is perfectly fine; actually, my class used it exclusively for our senior projects in my game design program in college. Out-of-the-box, Unity is a basic but serviceable engine, with a lot of focus on modular physics due to its easy integration with programming scripts. Unity by its nature heavily emphasizes drag-and-drop programming, which makes it a good learning tool and a solid choice for indie devs.
The consequence of this design is that it's very easy for games to feel samey if little is done to differentiate them. Yooka-Laylee leans into a fairly stock suite of physics, texturing, and especially lighting systems that exist within Unity. I'm not saying that I've made a game like Yooka-Laylee, but I am saying that I've played enough student projects thrown together in Unity that Yooka-Laylee doesn't stand out. Naturally, for a game duology as vibrant and creative and unique as Banjo-Kazooie/Banjo-Tooie, it's reeeeeeally disheartening to see that Playtonic either didn't know how to make a stock engine feel unique, or they chose not to do so. I think the most generous read is that they simply lacked confidence in this, their first big statement as an indie company.
If this is all too technical for you, think about it like this. Yooka has the ability to take on different elemental properties by licking things. For example, by licking cannonballs, Yooka becomes metallic and becomes too heavy to be gusted about. This is similar to Metal Mario from Super Mario 64, of course. But in Mario 64, Metal Mario's physical properties are somewhat altered: he can't swim, a loud metallic sound accompanies his walking, and his jump height is impacted. Metal Yooka has no change in physical properties; when Yooka moves around, he moves as lightly and effortlessly as he normally does. The only thing that's different is that his model's texture changes - a purely superficial effect that is easy to program into the game. Many of the design decisions made in Yooka-Laylee are like this.
I think I could qualify a lot of my miscellaneous critiques of the game this way, as products of developers not confident in what they were doing. Capital B is a lowest common denominator version of Gruntilda. Many sound effects, shockingly, are stock and limp. The game reaches for a prolonged fart joke with Buddy Bubble, which I guess is comparable to Kazooie's Ass Egg, but Banjo-Kazooie at least had the good sense not to underline it in dialogue. The Snowplow transformation is presented as being fleshy rather than metallic because that seemingly would've taken effort. Dr. Quack's quiz sequences feel like they're there out of obligation rather than a genuine passion for stuff like Furnace Fun. A lot of the NPCs feel like Playtonic's punching down, particularly the shopping cart homeless stereotypes...
...so let us instead look to what Yooka-Laylee does well. Soundtrack is of course good, with Grant Kirkhope and David Wise at the helm; I do find the melodies unmemorable, but they're good atmospheric compositions. The core stand-in NPCs like Trowser for Bottles and Dr. Puzz for Mumbo are cute enough. Shovel Knight is always fun to see as a cameo character. You can sort-of tell that the team developed each new level in sequence, so by the time we get to Capital Cashino and Galleon Galaxy, the levels start to feel tight and well-realized. I actually quite like the Kartos sequences, and I especially like that they're tied into a boss fight. Even though I don't care for Capital B, his boss fight does the "test all the mechanics" thing I love to see in video games. Icymetric Palace represents a considerable amount of effort and creativity which adds a ton to the experience...
Finally, there's Flappy Flight. You unlock flight in this game late compared to Banjo-Kazooie, but it becomes apparent why: unlike in B-K, Flappy Flight is not gated to context-sensitive pads and is instead useable at any point in time. Suddenly, the game's huuuuuuge levels make sense - it's incredibly low-commitment to travel from one corner of a given world to another, and particularly to do so quickly. Part of what makes Capital Cashino and Galleon Galaxy so effective is that their designs lean into this philosophy, and so the bigass levels become manageable playgrounds operating on hub-and-spoke design. For that matter, backtracking into previous levels becomes much more tolerable, to the point where I'd urge the player to stave off the obligatory revisits as long as they can until they have free flight. This does, in some way, break the intended game design, but it also makes it fun to run around as these characters, which I would argue is far more important to this game.
I do think there's potential with Yooka-Laylee as a series revival. There are ideas at play there, and I think something really interesting is waiting to be teased out. I do suspect that we're not likely to see it at this point. Impossible Lair went in a separate direction (though I understand that game's actually quite excellent), and Yooka & Laylee have mostly just served cameo roles since then. Bit of a shame, but if Playtonic has something up their sleeves, I'm curious to see how they do. As for this game? I think I'm content with my one and only playthrough.